Three Years Ago Today, Vermont Shut Down Due to COVID-19

Today I was wondering why “March 13” was pulling at the back of my brain as a date of some importance… and then I realized why. Three years ago today, everything changed. It was on Friday, March 13, 2020, that Governor Phil Scott issued Executive Order 01-20, “Declaration of State of Emergency in Response to COVID-19 and National Guard Call-Out”. It imposed visitor restrictions at hospitals and state facilities, restricted travel by state employees, prohibited large gatherings, and called up the National Guard to assist. The Executive Order did not itself shut down schools, but it directed the Secretary of…

Three Years Ago Today, Vermont Shut Down Due to COVID-19

Today I was wondering why “March 13” was pulling at the back of my brain as a date of some importance… and then I realized why. Three years ago today, everything changed. It was on Friday, March 13, 2020, that Governor Phil Scott issued Executive Order 01-20, “Declaration of State of Emergency in Response to COVID-19 and National Guard Call-Out”. It imposed visitor restrictions at hospitals and state facilities, restricted travel by state employees, prohibited large gatherings, and called up the National Guard to assist. The Executive Order did not itself shut down schools, but it directed the Secretary of…

Waking Up at Times Beginning With A "4"

For most of 50 years, I held very firm to the belief that the ONLY time I should ever see a time beginning with a “4” in the morning was when I needed to get up and go to the airport to catch an early flight. Otherwise, any time like 4:30am was just downright uncivil and hostile. I should be asleep at that time. I should NEVER be awake at times beginning with a 4. And yet… here I am writing this post at 4:55am. 🤷‍♂️ What happened? Well, our dog got older! (And I might have, too.😉) For some…

The Single Biggest Thing Preventing Me From Doing More Writing Is…

As I’ve frequently lamented in my yearly themes (although not this year), I would like to get myself to write more. And back on December 1, 2022, I tried to commit to #100DaysOfBlogging, but that hasn’t worked out so well. I’ve been watching how I spend my time lately, and to I’m sure the surprise of absolutely NO ONE, including myself, it would seem the single biggest thing preventing me from doing more writing is… getting distracted by social media! 🤣🤣🤣 Take this morning. I was awake early at around 5:00am (courtesy of our wonderful but early-rising dog) and I…

Listening to Hear Versus Listening to Fix

In the last six months or so, I have had an unpleasant revelation about myself. I realized that for most of my 55 years of life whenever I’ve been listening to people, I’ve been listening to offer “fixes”, i.e. solutions. You’ve probably done this yourself at some point. The classic example is something like: Someone: “Ugh.. my legs hurt so much from " Me: “Oh, that’s rough! You should take two ibuprofen. You’ll feel better!" There I was, jumping in with a solution and trying to help. But here’s the…

The Awesome Clarity of Prioritizing Health

There is an awesome clarity that comes when you have very clear priorities – and in my case one of those is my health. As I alluded to in my three words for 2023, I’ve had a couple of recent minor incidents that have brought this home to me. A key one was back in November 2022 when I went for a routine colonoscopy. Having had colon cancer, this was my three year checkup and all was great. No signs of cancer and everything looked good. BUT… they had to keep me a bit afterward in the recovery area until…

Capturing My Own Memories Of The Internet’s History (and Pre-History)

Last month I boosted a post on Mastodon where an early pioneer of networking relayed an amusing story about shutting down part of the ARPANET during a storm. After I did that, I was asked “@danyork Do you have a similar story from your archive?" As I said in a reply,I have stories, but none quite so dramatic. Born in the late 1960s, I got involved with the Internet in the mid- to late 1980s at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). I was not part of the late 1960s / early 1970s group that was involved with the ARPANET….

Fascinating Article About the Early History of Python

Back in the early 1990s, I was active in some different developer user groups where perl was the scripting language of choice. I remember with great fondness some of the “obfuscated perl” challenges where the goal was to write something as obscure and small as possible… that actually performed some action. The perl slogan …

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With so many "Dan Yorks", ChatGPT’s interview questions are very generic

After Simon Willison wrote about how accurate questions from ChatGPT were when he asked “I am interviewing Simon Willison. What are some good questions I can ask them?”, I had to give it a try. Simon’s had some questions specific to the areas he works in, web development and open source, so I was curious to see what might be in one with my name. I was particularly curious because there are so many “Dan York”s out there on the Internet. Alas, my response from ChatGPT was boringly generic: I am interviewing Dan York. What are some good questions I…

FIR #312: The Social Media Press Release Redux

Everything old is new again, the saying goes. Despite touting the idea of a press release as a destination being a new idea, it actually dates back about 15 years — and retains all of its value. Neville and Shel explore the idea of defeating paywalls with destination press releases in this monthly long-form episode of “For Immediate Release.” Also in this episode:

  • Follow-ups to stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI) interns and facial recognition used for nefarious purposes.
  • The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer — and whether Edelman can claim to be trust experts
  • A roundup of news and commentary about ChatGPT
  • A decline in Mastodon users
  • Dan York’s Tech Report, which looks at some Twitter changes, good news for Mastodon users, a Mastodon instance for Medium users, Getty’s lawsuit targeting the generative AI image tool Stable Diffusion, Wikipedia’s new look-and-feel, and WordPress’s upcoming 20th birthday.

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