it is 2024 and e-commerce is still a train wreck of epic proportions. Amazon is probably the only one that mostly doesn't flub it. Walmart feels sorta like next, but they have plenty of lameness. But from there on down the quality of the overall user experience just falls off a cliff. Especially when it comes to returns. Nordstrom's left hand does not knoweth what their right does - if you buy online and then try to return at all let alone in store, it is just an epic fail, and nobody anywhere in the org structure has any power or motivation to do anything about it. (Oh and you are extra screwed if you used PayPal.) If we all end up living with only Amazon as the single corporation on Earth it won't be too surprising.

Windows Update says there are no updates, it just checked a few hours ago. I click Check for Updates anyway. It says it is checking for updates. Then, lo and behold, there's an update. 

That is subjectively i feel empirically somehow more often the case than it saying that it double-checked and there are really no updates.

i've been a software developer of some sort for a little while now. i dare say things have gotten more "complex" over time. i use scare quotes because that's a complex and subjective subject, but i do feel that if only because we strive to support more platforms and skus these days, trying to develop software ends up being (this is my money quote thought of the day) about 90% recursive fractal side-quests. e.g. where you are trying to either set up some minimally reproducing example of a problem, or you are actually trying to fix some other issue that is getting in the way of the issue you started off with. it kind of bugs me that somehow our science & industry seems to think that's an ok status quo.

 adorama was very nice about helping me combine orders, actually very responsive and helpful customer service. wow, kind of crazy!

 c'est pleurer

i finally figured out one of the main surface reasons i find bazel to be a tad frustrating. i mean, there's never going to be an ideal build system, we have to all acknowledge that, but that doesn't mean we should stop striving for improvements.

sort of like scala's ux fail of having "val" vs. "var" or how most languages fail of "get" vs. "set" - although at least there the single-character-difference is at the start rather than at the end of the string - i find that bazel using starlark is annoying because it puts the type of the thing (e.g. cc_library) before the name of the thing. yet, the names are what we use as dependencies. by pushing the name down a level i find the readability and usability kind of take a real, avoidable, hit. it feels too much like the machine's needs winning out over the humans' needs.

(oh awesome blogger on ms edge still hasn't fixed the issue where every post starts with a secret whitespace character no matter what.) Smaller keyboards are tricky, if you ask me. I have been trying some during wfh, getting them used here and here. One of them is a Drop ALT which isn't too bad. At least it has cursor keys. One thing that is strange to me is that there's a Backspace, a Del, and a Home key all near each other, but there's no End key. You have to hold down Fn+Home to get End. I would have instead done Fn+Backspace=Del (since I don't use Del much) and have the freed up extra key be used for End. 

(some day i will get around to programming the keyboard to do that and replacing the keycaps to look right, but i just think for me in terms of usability this is kinda obviously a better default choice. but then again what the heck do i know. maybe most people really do prefer this. i mean, i go into the store to buy groceries and when i look at the "craft" beer section the only thing i see is IPA which i do not like. or the fact that people seem to think that True Faith is somehow not clearly far and away the best ever New Order song. or that blue clicky is a good key switch to use. or that either Democrat or Republican party aren't 99.9% evil self promoters. etc. ad nauseam. and it isn't just that i am getting older every day, i've been a non-conformist in my tastes for ever i guess. having said that, there are lots of things about fashion that seem to be about age, where i can't stand the new things. i think the Honda CBR900RR around 1998 or 1999, and the Kawasaki ZX-7R around 96 or 97 are the perfect motorcycles, aesthetically speaking, vs. all the new crap that has like no tail or some "aggressive" polygonal fairing design. (with the exception of KTMs like the Duke, i feel like they started it and own it really well.))