In today's episode of Stupid Geek Tricks, I just basically invented Smalltalk using Kotlin.

Before you get angry, please know that I don't approve of this. I don't approve of a lotta shit I do. 120 lines of code. A marker interface for messages, a one-API interface for objects. Any class can handle any message it chooses to. Didn't bother with doesNotUnderstand, but it'd be an easy add.

gist.github.com/GeePawHill/2d7…

What is my favorite 20th c song from Broadway?

Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked.

[Editor's note: Nobody asxked this. No one. Not one. Nobody asked this.] Well, of course, it's "At The Ballet" from _A Chorus Line_.

Anyway, all and sundry, "geepawhill" is not a common moniker. Find me that way. I'm on mastodon, but I also have a whole website, geepawhill.org. Backstory: "geepaw" means "grandfather", and now, to look at me, it seems obvious. Of *course* this bitter old fucker is a grandfather, just look at him. But "GeePaw" is actually a name I've had for over 30 years.

Please, I'm sorry, please, remember through all this Elon-is-evil-and-stupid shit, remember, please, I'm sorry, please.

This ass-clown *bought* this place where you made community, he didn't steal it. And he *bought* it from the people who sold it to him. Baby, you were so sure you were the customer, all along, and so mad to discover you were product, all along.

Jussi Bjorling, "Nessun Dorma".

I once did a bake-off. It was in the early days with spotify, and spotify is the king-hell site for bake-offs. Type in "nessun dorma" and get 500 takes.

So I listened to maybe 200 or so, and I put together a CD of about 20 of them.

Bob Marley & The Wailers, "Redemption Song". vimeo.com/390484832 Late at night, when no one's around, or they're all abed, or I'm drunk and I don't care, I sing this to the trees outside my house.

One more shot for me, then I'm out. To distract me, tonight, from <waves hands> all this. I told my private slack one of my backstories. It's a story about a young woman, 25 or so I figure, and an old male child, 17 as I recollect, utterly and completely in love with her, and of how incredibly kind she was to that boy, how delicately, and gently, she handled that kid.

Didja ever sit and watch Fred Astaire act? No, not dance, act.

Astaire had a preternatural gift for body control. When you watch him dance, you can't really see it, cuz he's dancing, and stunning body control is central there. But when he acts, you can really see it. Every finger, the eyebrow, mouth-shape, the neck, the shoulder. It is astonishing, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

He was a man who had learned to control his body. He came up hard, he and Adele, and made their way through vaudeville, to eventually dominate dance.

Heh. Someone liked a tweet from way back in June, where I appeared on a list ever-so-delicately named "Prolific Tweeting Devs". The like's from what appears to be one of the accounts that will later offer me in DM great love, cheap sex, or a terrific investment opportunity.

Ahhh, well, the OP wasn't any of that, they were just callin' 'em as they see 'em.

I am certainly a prolifically tweeting dev.

Aight, kids, it's just 5 slides. We can do 5 slides, right? Sure we can. 5 slides, quick like a bunny, *go*!! *Bam*. Five content slides. First lightning talk for course. First segment of Tuesday's talk at Calgary Software Crafters.

"Nothin' but net. Billy, that kid is on *fire* out there!!"

(Got'em done, now off for late lunch and Tiger Patrol.)

If you're seeking technical change, you are actually also seeking consensus. We don't talk enough about this. In this technique card from Leading Technical Change, we start the necessary conversation. Consensus is the deep glue in sticky change. When our community adopts a decision *without* it, it will tend to last "as long as someone is looking".

For all its importance as an idea, though, it is often poorly understood and poorly communicated.

Tryna write a talk today, or at least get it started. What am I doing? Writing stickies in Miro. Basically, just tryna get everything out of my head, in no particular order or structure. I tend to go down the path of organizing my ideas too early. As soon as I type the second item of an outline, my compulsion for order & symmetry kicks in, and often, unless I've really already got the arc in my head, I just clam right up.

I can certainly *imagine* a world in which "journalists" accredited by "news organizations" and authorized by "governments" should get some kinda special rules.

I can also imagine a world in which old people like me don't have to get up three times a night to pee. OMG, I'm already encountering rage about "3". Three is the bare minimum. My privilege extends to genetics. I only got three things from my Dad genetically: excellent wrists and hands, great hair, and an enormous (if weak) bladder.

Three is the *minimum*, and I am lucky.

Draw a network, nodes and arcs, full of people.

You know what people near the center of such a network -- good people, connected people, community people -- don't understand?

That there are many people on the rim, with one, or two, or three arcs. One assumes that one's own connectivity is universal. You think of the diagram as being infinite, extending out in all directions, and when we center your node, it's just the limits of graphics that there is a rim.

But there is a rim, not a resolution limit, an actual rim.

The thing is, @MauriceRuffin, and you know I gotta lotta respect and affection for you, I think it's only her second saddest song, which is saying something, cuz they're the two saddest songs I know. Me and Va argue about this constantly, for >30 years.

@MauriceRuffin The story is she only did two takes. Don Was said, we only had to fix a couple of parts where she started crying.

Billy Paul, "Me & Mrs Jones".

Tryna get back to an even keel here.

This was a long time ago, mind, and I got older and wiser, but in the moment, in the moment, you know, I was just *thirteen*, and it was a revelation.

All these people in my house expecting a *handout'.

I am so hustle porn libertarian just this minute.

(Kidding, they will get a share. Libertarianism is for 60th percentile children.) Smoked turkey croissants with astonishing dill sauce are for everyone.

Patsy Cline, "Crazy".

Swear to God it wasn't a teaching moment, it came up in the VBS.

Barbra Steisand, "The Way We Were". Streiand is one of my most difficult challenges.

Gladys Knight & The Pips, "Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me".

Gladys Knight is one of the greatest singers of the late 20th, and because she was so popularly successful, I think people tend to underrate the sheer fucking astonishing skill and power of her voice.

The Ink Spots, "I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire".

This song is perfect.

It's not an endpoint, I don't mean that, I don't mean we should stop music here.

But this is a moment of perfection, rarely seen.