Month: January 2025

general media consumption thoughts for 2025

I looked at Facebook this morning, which is now something I only do once or twice a week. (I almost always check it on Sundays.) There was a post from an old high school acquaintance announcing his intention to leave Facebook, and essentially all social media. There was a point, I can’t remember exactly when, where a lot of my old high school acquaintances got on Facebook and started sending friend requests to each other. I went from not having any contact with anyone I knew in high school to suddenly being able to chat with 20 or 30 of them, and having a bit of a view into their current lives. It was fun and interesting. It only led to two real-world meetups, I think, but those were both nice, and wouldn’t have happened without Facebook.

Anyway, that friend’s post, and the presidential inauguration tomorrow, got me thinking again about how I’m engaging with social media and consuming general media, and what changes I should make, if any. So this post is going to be a (probably lengthy) rumination on that. I’ll try to make it a bulleted list, and see how that goes.

  • Facebook: I’d like to delete my Facebook account, but there’s still enough useful and fun stuff there that I feel like I shouldn’t. I only check it occasionally, at this point, and I try to stick to the reverse chronological feed, which they’ve made harder to access, but it’s still there. I don’t use the iOS app at all (which is one of the reasons I don’t check it often). I only use it from Firefox, with maximum ad-blocking.
  • Twitter/X: I still have an account there, but I’ve set it to private and don’t post there anymore. I still need to look at stuff there occasionally, if there’s a person or company that still has an account there, and they use it to post product updates or stuff like that.
  • Threads: I was curious about whether or not Threads would become a serious Twitter replacement at one point, and it was an interesting service at the start, but I’m not finding much use for it now. Most of the folks who went from Twitter to Threads, back when Bluesky was invitation-only, have now moved to Bluesky. So I still have an account, but I’m not using it much.
  • Instagram: I’ve had an Instagram account for a long time, but never really used it much. I’m actually checking it more often now, and have followed a bunch of accounts there. But it’s still mostly useless. It’s just that are some people/businesses who only post on Instagram, or primarily there, so I feel like I need to keep an account. And it’s a good place to get some random comics stuff, like the New Yorker cartoons.
  • Meta in general: Zuckerburg is not a good guy, so yeah, I’d like to drop off of Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. But they have just enough utility that I feel like I need to stay on them, to some extent.
  • Bluesky: I wish I could have gotten on Bluesky earlier, but I had to wait for the invitation-only period to end. If I could have gotten on earlier, I (and I suspect a lot of other folks) would have skipped Threads and some of the other niche platforms that were out there, and the mass Twitter exodus would have been bigger and more orderly. Well, anyway, at this point, Bluesky is a pretty OK place to be. I check it daily, I guess, and post there occasionally. I don’t have a lot of “real” friends there, but a lot of the people and companies I used to follow on Twitter are on Bluesky now. I’m a little worried about what the long-term plan is for Bluesky though. Right now, it’s ad-free and the default timeline is reverse chronological, but they’re going to have to find a way to make money, eventually.
  • Mastodon: I really wish more folks had come over to Mastodon. I still love it, and there are some great people there. But there aren’t a lot of mainstream folks or companies that have active accounts there. For an iOS client, I’m still using Toot!, though I feel like it’s probably time to check out some others. At some point, I’m hoping someone will create a good client that aggregates Mastodon, Bluesky, and maybe general RSS. I think there are probably folks working on that, and maybe there’s already a good one out there, but I haven’t found it yet.
  • RSS: Every once in a while, I try to embrace RSS. I stick with it for a while, then drift away. I’m still paying for an account with The Old Reader, and using that as my main RSS back-end. And I use it as the front-end when I’m checking RSS via the web. On iOS, I use Reeder as a front-end. I’m still using the previous version of Reeder. The newest version seems to be trying for that consolidated view that I’d like, if it could include RSS, Mastodon, and Bluesky, at least. But I’d also want it to have web-based view, and not just iOS and macOS apps, so I could use it on PC.

Well, that was an excessively long and rambling list of social media thoughts. Now let’s move on to more general media.

  • Newspapers: I still pay for the New York Times and the Washington Post, though I did the little dance a while ago where I threatened to cancel and they gave me lower rates for a year. So I’ll reevaluate those after those discounts expire. Both papers have their problems, but they’re both still better than most of the alternatives.
  • PBS: I still get my NJ news from our local NJ PBS station and their NJ Spotlight News program. And I support them with a monthly donation, though it’s honestly a small one. The donation gets me access to PBS Passport, which I use frequently to watch various shows, usually in the mystery or police procedural genre, and usually British.
  • NPR: I listen to WNYC in New York and WXPN in Philly. I don’t currently give to either of them, but I’m thinking about it. (I’ve given them both one-time donations in the past, multiple times, but not recently.) The NPR Plus thing might be worth doing. I should consider getting more of my news from NPR, I think.
  • YouTube TV: I’m still paying for YouTube TV, though I’m struggling with that. It’s useful for watching local news, baseball, football, and stuff like that. But I kinda lost interest in football this year, since the Giants did so poorly. At this point, I’m mostly using it to watch TCM, which is great, but maybe not worth $83/month, which is what they just raised the price to. (And of course it bothers me that $1 or $2 of that $83 is going to support Fox News.)

Whew. I could go on, but I’m pretty sure nobody wants me to. The world is full of billionaires who, more and more, exert control and influence on social media, news media, and entertainment media. It’s worth spending some time evaluating how you use this stuff, how you engage with it, and how you pay for it. I want to be an informed and responsible citizen. I want to keep in touch with friends and relatives. And I want to do so without funneling too much money into the pockets of certain billionaires. I hope I’m striking a reasonable balance here, without agonizing too much about it all.

 

The Gaiman situation

Welp, I saw the There Is No Safe Word article on the Vulture web site on Monday, and I guess I’m still processing it. To be clear, I didn’t read the whole thing. I skimmed a good bit of it, then gave up once it was clear that there was enough bad stuff in it that I didn’t need to read anymore to decide how I felt about it. Having seen some further discussion of it on social media, I’m glad I didn’t read all of the details and will not be going back and doing so.

I’ve been a fan of Neil Gaiman since the early days of Sandman, which started up in 1988, so that’s a long time. I knew about the earlier article/podcast from Tortoise, about six months ago, but I guess I was kinda hoping it was an exaggeration? I don’t know. Anyway, I guess the Vulture / New York Magazine article pretty much confirms that, yep, there’s a big problem here, and Gaiman isn’t the guy so many of us thought he was. It’s heartbreaking.

I took a look at my Goodreads account today, and I see that I have around 35 Gaiman books/comics on it, with about 6 of them unread. I probably have several other unread Gaiman books/comics/audiobooks, both physical and digital, that I haven’t added to Goodreads. So let’s say a dozen or maybe twenty items.

It’s hard to figure how I should feel about his work now. Do I still want to read the stuff that I have? I picked up my copy of The Graveyard Book graphic novel this afternoon, and stared at it for a bit. I bought it in 2016, and still haven’t read it. The art is by P. Craig Russell, who is maybe my very favorite comic book artist. So I’m not going to toss that one. On the other hand, I’ve got some random Gaiman stuff from an old Humble Bundle that I’m probably not going to bother reading now.

I also went through my Amazon wish list, and my Overdrive wish list, and purged most of the Gaiman stuff off of them. I don’t really need to buy any more of his stuff. (I left a couple of American Gods graphic novels on there, since Russell is involved with those, so I might decide that it’s OK to buy them to support Russell’s work. I don’t know.)

Gaiman has posted a statement on his blog, basically refuting all of the allegations. I’d love to be able to believe him, but at this point, I don’t think I can.

In terms of figuring out how to engage with work you love that was created by a guy who turns out to be a monster: I’ve seen a couple of good takes on this on social media, but I didn’t bookmark them, and can’t find them now. It comes down to deciding that, if you love a certain work, and it inspired you, or just made you happy, the guy who created it doesn’t get to take that away from you. If the work still makes you happy, that’s fine. I’m probably not expressing that too well. Here’s an article from The Paris Review that covers this kind of thing pretty thoroughly.

finished the Wheel of Time

I finished reading A Memory of Light today, so I’m finally finished reading The Wheel of Time! I started almost two years ago, in March 2023. I’d set myself a goal of finishing it by year-end 2024, so I missed that, but only by a few days.

Overall, I’m really glad I read the series. Most of it was very enjoyable, a nice escape from the real world, and something to keep me occupied on Sunday mornings and weekday lunch breaks. And I’ve enjoyed some of the associated media I’ve dipped into, like The Wheel Weaves podcast, or the tor.com articles, or some of the other online fan stuff. Of course, I’ve avoided a lot of it too, in fear of spoilers. Now, I can dig into the spoiler-laden stuff too, if I want to.

But I think I’m going to take a break from WoT and delve into some other stuff. (Except maybe The Wheel Weaves podcast. They’re on the next-to-last book now, so I might as well keep up with that to the end. It’s fun.)

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to start next. Maybe some shorter stuff, or some comics, as a palate-cleanser? Maybe some non-fiction? My Goodreads TBR list has… 653 books on it, so I’ve got plenty to choose from!

New Year’s Day 2025

Well, I made it through another year, I guess, so here’s my usual New Year’s Day blog post! I went to bed around 9:30 PM last night, after watching the first two Thin Man movies on TCM. I got out of bed around 6:15 AM this morning. My days of staying up late on New Year’s Eve are pretty much done, apparently.

WordPress stats

I like to use these posts for both useful self-reflection and pointless (but fun) stats. I’m going to start with some pointless stats related to this blog. I ran a quick SQL statement to get my posts per year, over the life of this blog, and got the following:

blog posts per year chart
blog posts per year

So that’s 49 posts in 2024. My most active year was 2005, with over 200 posts. The least active full year was 2013, with 33 posts. I don’t know if any of that is super-interesting to anyone but me, but there it is.

I was trying to think of why 2013 would be a low point, and I guess it probably had something to do with starting a new job that year. And that’s still my current job (SHI), almost 12 years later. (More about that later.)

I also looked at traffic stats on the blog. Nothing interesting to report there, except that December 2024 was my most active month ever, by a long shot, with more than 3000 views. All of that traffic was on one day though: December 9. And I’m pretty sure it was all search bots or AI training bots or whatever.

Health

I’ve been fighting a low-level cold since Thanksgiving (or thereabouts), so my health situation is pretty much business as usual. I remember having a pretty good run of “not being sick” at some point this year though. Maybe in the spring? I thought I’d made a note of it in Day One or somewhere, but I can’t quite pinpoint when it was or how long it was.

As for my weight: I started 2024 at around 160, and ended it at 165. I’ve been fairly stable at 165, plus or minus two, for the last three months. So I’m hoping that I’ve stopped gaining weight and have hit a stable point. (In 2023, I went from 150 to 160, so my gain this year was half of last year’s gain.) And I’m still logging all of my meals/snacks with LoseIt, as I have been doing since 2013.

I think I still need to do some work on getting my snacking under control. I need to cut down on cookies and pastries form the various bakeries and coffee shops here in town. (Having a good French bakery almost directly below my apartment, in the same building, has turned out to be a bit of a problem…)

On the exercise front, I’m doing good. I was going to look for some summary stats to support that, but I’ve just realized that Apple’s Fitness app doesn’t have any kind of “year in review” thing, similar to Apple Music Replay or any of the other end-of-year things that have gotten big over the last few years. Odd, since that would likely be really popular. You can get some yearly graphs in the Health app though. So, from that, I see that I’ve averaged about 45 minutes per day exercise and 550 calories per day on the “move” ring. That’s pretty good, and I see that it’s been pretty consistent over the whole year.

And, having written all this, I realized that I hadn’t gone for a walk yet, so I did that just now. Here’s a photo!

New Year's Day morning walk
New Year’s Day morning walk
Work

Wow, I could write a lot about work this year. My old boss retired at the end of 2023, so I’ve just finished out my first year under the new boss. I had a pretty solid relationship with the old boss, but I’m still working on building one with the new guy.

I had gotten used to near-perfect performance reviews from the old boss, so I was a bit surprised to get an average review from the new one. (Basically, a rating of 3 out of 5 on everything, and a lower raise than I usually get.) I have a feeling that he didn’t put that much thought into the review, since he doesn’t actually know that much about me or what I do. So I’m not too worried about him just clicking “3” down the row of questions on the review form; it’s not that I did anything wrong, he just doesn’t have much to go on. But I think I do need to try to build up some kind of relationship with him in 2025, if I can. It’s hard, since he’s in Texas and I’m in NJ, and since he has a fairly large number of direct reports, and responsibility for three main groups (AX, CRM, and ServiceNow). So I guess I need to just keep trying to be a good employee and make sure to do the stuff he wants me to do.

In terms of systems and projects this year: We’re still on AX 2012, and haven’t made any real progress towards moving to D365 F&O. Maybe that’s too simplistic a view. Some stuff is going on behind the scenes, I guess, but there’s really no concrete progress on the real work of moving off AX 2012 and getting to F&O. For 2025, we’re planning on upgrading our SQL environment and getting on the latest CU for AX, so that’s something, and likely a necessary start. At the start of 2024, we were saying that getting to F&O was a three-year project. I think it’s still at least a three-year project, and I’m not sure if 2025 is going to count as year one, or if 2025 will be more like “year zero” with the real project starting in 2026.

We’ve been going through what they call an “agile transition” over the last year.  We’ve been using something like scrum since 2022, but the new boss (and new IT management in general) has been trying to really formalize that. We now have a scrum master, daily stand-ups, and multiple standard meetings (the usual stuff). And our group has been broken up into two separate “feature teams.” Also, we’ve stopped doing weekly deployments, and now only do one deployment per sprint (every two weeks). So that’s been a lot to get used to. And for 2025, we’re switching from using Azure DevOps to Jira for our agile/scrum management. So, just when things are getting smooth, we’re going to upend it all again.

Learning and other fun Stuff

OK, that’s enough of the serious stuff. Now let’s go through some more fun stuff. Let’s start with my Goodreads year in books. Just 27 books for 2024, though some of the Wheel of Time books were pretty long (Lord of Chaos was 1049 pages.) I had set a goal for myself of finishing the WOT series in 2024, but I’m not quite done with the final book. So maybe I’ll finish it by the end of January 2025. I’m not quite sure what I’ll tackle next; WOT has been eating up a lot of my reading time. I have a bunch of Dresden Files and Laundry Files books in my TBR pile, so maybe some of those. Or Discworld? And I have so many comics piled up too!

In terms of professional learning, I only see three books on my list that count towards that, and they’re all fairly general books. I don’t seem to have learned any new programming languages in 2024, or anything else big.

Looking at my Pluralsight history, I see that I completed around 15 courses there in 2024. Some of those were work-specific, as part of Pluralsight “challenges.” Some were just stuff I wanted to learn on my own. So there’s a mix of agile/scrum stuff, C# stuff, AI stuff, and miscellaneous “soft skill” stuff.

At some point during the year, I started looking at maybe getting an AZ-204 certification. But I didn’t get very far with that, and I’ve pretty much dropped the idea now. Back in 2013, I also started thinking about a D365 F&O certification of some kind, but I’m not going forward with that either, at least not yet.

During my performance review, my boss said that he wants me to pursue a SAFe certification for 2025, so I’m starting to work on that. Honestly, I’m not too enthusiastic about it, but it’ll probably help my career, and I’m open-minded enough to give it a try, I guess. I’ve started a leaning path in Pluralsight, and a video series on O’Reilly. I might also try to read the SAFe Distilled book at some point too. I don’t know. This plan may fizzle out, honestly, but I’m going to give it a try.

Okay, back to fun stuff. Here’s my 2024 year in film, from Letterboxd. I watched a little over 100 movies this year. I started and ended the year with After the Thin Man. My five-star ratings for the year went to The Thin Man, Casablanca, When Marnie Was There, and 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki. The only film on that list that was new to me was When Marnie Was There.

My Apple Music Replay is kind of weird. My top song for the year is Hell of a Ride, by Nourished by Time. My top album is Songs of Surrender, by U2. And my top artist is Bombay Bicycle Club. I guess those all kinda make sense, though they’re all a little surprising. I guess the U2 album being on the top is mostly because it’s a four-disc set, and I added it in January. Looking at albums that I added to my library this year, none of them really stand out. There are some really good ones, but nothing that really stuck enough for me to listen to a lot, or that really blew my mind. At the moment, I’m pretty enthusiastic about the new Joan Armatrading album.

Ten Years Ago

I’ve been doing this so long that I can now look at my post from ten years ago (and even twenty years ago) and try to think about some big picture stuff. (The post from 20 years ago is just a one-liner about a song, so that one’s not too valuable.)

So, ten years ago:

  • I noted that I’d gone from 200 pounds to 165 over the course of 2014. So I’m starting 2025 at the same weight at which I started 2015. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but it is what it is!
  • 2014 was my first full year at SHI. I’ve been there since, so overall that’s gone well, I think.
  • I talked a little about consulting and volunteering in that post. I haven’t done any consulting in a long time, and I’m not planning to. I think those days are done, unless I decide to do that part-time after I’m retired. And I haven’t done any volunteering either. I’d like to do some of that, but I’m getting to the point where I’m too tired to do much of anything outside of my normal salaried work. (And I’m OK with that.)
  • I finished 30 books in 2014, so that’s pretty similar to this year’s total.
  • I moved this blog to WordPress in 2014, so I guess I should have celebrated my ten-year WordPress anniversary in 2024. I’m still OK with WordPress (even with Matt Mullenweg’s shenanigans).