Cherry picking my Google Plus feed

Google+ (aka G+, aka Google Plus) is going to shut down soon. As a social site, G+ stopped being relevant years ago. I won’t go into why, because it won’t change the way Google manages their products.

I used G+ in place of FaceBook for the better part of 2 years. I downloaded my archive of posts from G+ and cherry–picked some of the more insightful (or less), humorous (or not), or poignant. I hope you enjoy.

Date	Clever Remarks	Notes in Hindsight
2011/07/05	My mom joined Facebook last year. I joined Google+ so I could say “shit” in a status message without getting a phone call from her to chew me out for cursing.	I was 46 years old when I wrote that.
2011/08/17	The new Google Reader app looks really nice on Xoom. I use Google Reader almost an hour a day, so it’s nice seeing it using fragments	That didn’t age well. RIP Google Reader.
2011/09/07	Working on my slides for the O‘Reilly AndroidOpen conference in October. I’m talking about using Eclipse for C/C++ development. I’ve got a title slide. That’s a start, right?
2011/09/15	One of the many benefits of working from home is nobody can give you grief for eating Cap’n Crunch for lunch.
2011/09/30	Guy in 16D tells pilot “If you need any help, I got all the badges in ‘Ace Combat’”. I may need to start today with a Bloody Mary before I get to Austin.
2011/10/22	You haven’t lived until you’ve heard ‘Muy bien’ and ‘Muchos gracias, Mon-well’ in that slow East Texas accent.
2011/10/25	Good news from Fridays MRI—I don’t have a brain tumor. Bad news—the Doctor doesn’t know what causes my migraines. Good news—the new meds he gave me are helping. Bad news—I can’t have alcohol with the new meds. So a good time to turn over a new leaf, get some exercise, lose some weight, stop stressing out, and enjoy life. Right?	I was on the wagon for 6 months and dropped 25 pounds (11kg). Sadly, I put it back on.
2011/10/28	Brilliant blue skies this morning. Like you can only see the morning after a rain. No clouds. Up there somewhere, is an airplane. I can hear it, but I can’t see it. It’s going somewhere. I wonder who is in it. Where they’re going….
2011/11/04	I just received my first “Obama’s gonna take away our guns” email for the 2012 election season. Guess it’s time to set a new rule in GMail…
2011/11/20	A bad day getting lost on the wrong trail, going up and down 900 ft of elevation over 10 foot boulders beats the best day working. Trust me…
2011/11/25	The 8 year old, playing Hangman with her grandmother, used the word “defenestration” and spelled it correctly. Yeah, she’s mine. When her grandmother asked her what it meant, my daughter told her. That really got my Mom’s curiosity up. How did an 8 year old girl know such a word? Beau said her daddy threatens her with it all the time. We live in a single story house, by the way. And I don’t threaten her with defenestration. I threaten her with the wood chipper.
2011/12/01	Sitting in a pho house, next to a young man and an older woman. He’s describing his duties as a Social Media Expert. Based on her accent, a full bowl of noodles, and look of utter bewilderment, I assume that 1. His mother (or an aunt) is visiting from out of town 2. Chicken Fried Rice stretches her culinary boundaries 3. She has no idea what goes on out here and will go back home and fret about him.	This occurred in Mountain View, CA. If it were Oklahoma, she would’ve been eating Chicken Fried Steak.
2011/12/19	Well, here’s a new one. Flight 6240 delayed because our flight attendant is lost in the caverns of SFO. They know she’s in the airport, they just can’t locate her. The gate agent is apologizing in seven languages.
2012/02/04	Who knew a laser pointer and a kitten could keep a human entertained for hours?
2012/02/17	Another year that I’m not in Brasil for Carnaval. Does that seem right to you?
2012/02/19	My copy of David Kahn’s classic The Codebreakers is tattered and falling apart. I thought the perfect choice for an e-book. A new paper copy on Amazon is $48 while the e-book via Amazon or Google is $55. WTF? I will not pay more for an e-book than for physical media. Especially a book that was originally published in 1968.
2012/02/28	I wish someone would spike my San Pellegrino with a martini. Or absinthe. Or arsenic.
2012/03/08	Remember when “Apple Events” were bits of infrastructure intended to facilitate interprocess communication and not meetups of journalists intended to stimulate mutual masturbation? Now, get out there and buy a XYBOARD…	Good thing Motorola’s tablet naming strategy didn’t extend to other product lines.
2012/03/09	I killed myself in my internal monologue last night. So sad you weren’t there.
2012/03/09	this.faith_in_humanity--; // sigh
2012/03/20	At what point do couples with tattoos start having children with tribal bands around their necks at birth?
2012/04/06	Teaching a 14 year old to back a 1/2 ton pickup into a 4 ton fifth wheel RV. Not stressful a bit. Nope. #thanks2xanax
2012/04/15	Shoe shopping with my daughter. I can see the future and in it, I’m a dead man.
2012/04/16	I have a mental block from typing the word buffer. Makes it embarrassing trying to explain bugger overflows to a VP.
2012/04/28	Sitting on the porch with my daughter, listening to an amazing thunderboomer come in. This is what Southerners do for fun.
2012/04/29	I replaced my alternator in my pickup & the ignition in the boys’ scooter. Both continue to work. Pretty good for a computer nerd.
2012/04/30	The Boy learned a new phrase today: Road Rash. He took it pretty well. Now he knows that mud puddles are as bad as gravel.
2012/05/09	Let me think about the people who I care about the most. How when they fail or disappoint me, I still love them. I still give them chances. I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself. (courtesy @zefrank)
2012/05/12	In another 10 years Linus Torvalds is going to be yelling at kids to get off his damn lawn
2012/05/19	A loud, powerful thunderboomer is approaching from the west. I’m sitting on the front porch, cold beer in hand, enjoying an awesome light show.
2012/05/22	I, for one, welcome our new four color overlords	On this day, Google officially acquired Motorola. As it turned out, this was a short-lived welcome.
2012/05/22	The Texas Rangers TV announcers on Fox Sports SW are the cure for insomnia
2012/05/27	Take it from an expert: Caipirinhas made with Stevia sweetener is an experiment that need only be tried once.
2012/06/06	Cat chased a snake into my barn office. Snake found a crack in the sheetrock. Hands on keyboard, eyes on wall. #lifeinthe405
2012/06/22	The hostess doesn’t believe my name is Joe Bob. Guess I’ll have to break out my passport from the Conch Republic.
2012/06/22	What if all those those people who danced in Matt’s videos met in a field and said “I love you, without reason or restriction”? What if they brought a friend along? And their friend brought a friend? Pretty soon, we’d have no one else to hate.
2012/06/23	Lying flat, staring into an endless dark sky, listening to David Gilmour guitar solos. Earth is a million miles away…
2012/06/24	It’s gratifying to hear an adult that I don’t know invoke the 5 second rule
2012/07/29	The words “it’s too hot to drink beer” actually escaped my lips. Fortunately, I have cachaça.
2012/08/13	Knowing the train is in the tunnel and seeing the light doesn’t make the impact hurt any less	As alluded above, Google laid off my entire division. I was retained for 3 months to sunset all our servers. In that time, I found a new job that had me flying to Ottawa every month for the next year and a half.
2012/08/29	Chipper Jones is a couple years younger than I am. His emergence coincided with my renewed love of baseball. My wife enjoyed watching him because he threw himself into the game like few others and he was so durned purty. Now he’s 40, twice divorced, and his body is starting to fall apart. He’s not as purty as he was any more, but he seems like a heck of a guy. He’s having a banner year for a swan song. And people are saying “are you sure you want to quit? You can stay, you know.” Of course he can stay, but he can also leave. He can leave on top, spend a few years with his kids while they are growing up, and still have some knees. Good luck, Chipper. Thanks for the memories. Hope you can find some happiness with Mrs. Jones #3.
2012/08/29	Yesterday I was at a friends shop, cutting metal and welding. Today, Google is serving up ads for CNC Plasma cutters. They’re getting good.
2012/09/03	I found a photograph of myself and my mates at a friends’ wedding, roughly age 23, all wearing tuxedos. No, you may not see it.	Not just tuxedos, powder blue tuxedos.
2012/09/11	Trying to decide if the quartet next to me in the bar are speaking French with a German accent or if they are from Quebec
2012/09/24	I don’t care where it redirects, I will always get my JDK from java.sun.com	Sadly, it redirects to an Oracle page.
2012/10/11	600 people in a 1000 person town show up to support our volunteer fire dept and raise funds for a new fire engine. Another night in the 405. Aside from the steak dinner, we were entertained with a charity auction with some top notch auctioneers. I did my part by overpaying for a signed Nolan Ryan baseball and authentication letter on Rangers stationery.
2012/10/14	Is there any ritual in sports that provides less benefit than the televised post game coach interview?
2012/10/17	I order things from the Sonic menu at McDonalds, just to annoy the people at the drive thru.
2012/10/26	Used my Global Entry card today. Dozens of tiny daggers shot into my back as the guard pulled back the rope to let me cut the line.
2012/11/07	I just realized that I’m a lot less obnoxious, and a lot less funny on G+ than on Twitter. You’re welcome and I’m sorry.	I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide if it’s true.
2012/11/13	San Diego… great town, horrible airport
2012/11/21	As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly
2012/11/29	If you must say it as a word, ioctl is pronounced “eye-oh-control”, not “eye-ock-tul”. That is all.
2012/12/07	Blessed be Saint Simeon, protector of fools, who kept my pickup battery strong all week at the airport with my phone charger plugged in
2012/12/14	I’m not too proud to admit that War Horse choked me up, several times.
2012/12/15	My daughter is getting to the age where she puts extra emphasis on the middle two syllables of “Dad”
2012/12/16	My neighbor has a new leaf blower. Shame. He was a nice guy. In an unrelated note, any idea where can I get 10 gallons of hydrofluoric acid and a 55 gallon plastic drum?
2012/12/21	Remember what your grandmother always told you: “tailing the log files won’t make CPU-bound processes finish any faster”
2012/12/27	On the phone with IT support of my former employer. They were never efficient even when they had a record of me on file.
2012/12/29	Do humans exist solely to open the laptop lid for our feline overlords?
2013/01/11	I thought the American Quarantine Zone at Toronto wasn’t so bad until I got to the Regional Jet Ghetto between Gates 89 and 99
2013/01/13	It appears that 2013 begins the era where I say “don’t give me that look” to my daughter more than once a day.
2013/01/18	I wonder if my cat tells other cats about how well she has her human trained
2013/02/02	I wonder who Ray Lewis will murder this weekend.
2013/02/07	What if Roboto is the new Comic Sans and we just don’t realize it yet?
2013/02/18	On my walk, I played “Name that Smell, SFO Edition”. I got human waste (liquid), cab exhaust, dumpster, pot & solvent.
2013/02/19	Oy Junior. Everyone got that she was yours when you kissed her on your way out for a smoke. No need to piss a circle around her.
2013/02/25	To whomever cleared snow in the west Chicago suburbs to spell #CUBS in 100’ letters: your efforts were noticed & appreciated.
2013/03/18	Local spends 45 minutes trying to pull the “lost dollar” trick on some tourists. There’s gotta be a better way to cadge free drinks. I was tempted go over to the trio and say “Here’s where the fucking dollar went. Now will you shut up?”
2013/03/18	One of these days, I’m just going to buy the pony so my daughter will shut the hell up.