Things I have learned recently:
- Picking items for these lists can be a drag, because I’m trying to be very careful to have positive (meaning “uplifting”) assertions where I can. It’s not a perfect system; even in this post I have “I don’t like…” but hopefully it’s neutral enough to pass my criteria. My overall rule of content hasn’t changed for decades: I’m very uncomfortable posting anything about which I’d have been ashamed to tell my grandparents. No sexual content, and few (if any) curses, for example. I’m happy with that; I don’t really feel any temptation to write about those things, but it’s a good metric to have to keep my own writing “above board.”
- The world needs more success stories. I try to do everything I can to help create them… and I’m fine with not being featured in those success stories. The success is enough. “Tikkun olam” – a Jewish idea that means “healing the world” – drives me in this.
- On the other side of the previous point: I will always be grateful for those who try to ensure my success. It’s one of the ways I differentiate benevolent acquaintances from my friends: if someone works to ensure my success, that person is my friend. I will always appreciate them. Period. Acquaintances are those people with whom my success is of tangential importance. There’s nothing wrong with that, but those people are rarely my friends.
- When writing a crawler, it’s always nice to save the downloaded files in proper format rather than, well, improper format. Whoops.