Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)
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It had started about a month ago. He’d been restless in the middle of the night, and had climbed out onto the fire escape when he heard the phantom train approaching. He knew that one of these nights he’d find the tracks. He just hoped it would stop for him when he did.

This Means Nothing

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Pet peeve: The little fake level meter animation that Music shows when a track is playing drives me up the wall. It’s just a looped animation that bears no relation to what’s actually playing. Give me real data or a static icon, but this is useless.

Five-second clip of Apple's Music app UI.

On This Day: Nov 17

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 27 posts previously published on November 17th

  • 2024
    • Twisters 🎥: ⭐️⭐️: Not that I expected much, but I was hoping for more _enjoyably_ dumb instead of just...meh. ➡
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2020
    • Though no train had come through in ages, the ties were kept clear of growth, rails shined as if they’d just been laid down, and the whole town had come out for the ritual tying of the damsel across the tracks to be saved or sacrificed at the will of their diesel powered god. ➡
    • Happy birthday to the COVID-19 coronavirus! A 55-year-old individual from Hubei province in China may have been the first person to have contracted COVID-19…. That case dates back to Nov. 17, 2019, according to the South China Morning Post. ➡
    • It had started about a month ago. He’d been restless in the middle of the night, and had climbed out onto the fire escape when he heard the phantom train approaching. He knew that one of these nights he’d find the tracks. He just hoped it would stop for him when he did. ➡
    • This Means Nothing This is useless. ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 17 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 17 ➡
  • 2019
    • “Truly,” thought the commander, overlooking the fleet of ships before their eyes, “this is magnificent. Surely, no fleet as superb as this one had been seen since—“ “Alex!” “What, mom?” “Turn off the holoprojector and get in bed! Now!” They sighed. Microblogvember: superb ➡
  • 2018
    • Book forty-seven of 2018: Elevation, by Stephen King. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Almost done with the week! (322/366) ➡
    • Silly Snapchat filter because I forgot yesterday’s photo. (321/366) ➡
    • So Amazon had a really good deal earlier this week ($35 for this stack)! The Alien quadrilogy is an upgrade from the DVDs, the AvPs and Prometheus are new to my collection. No regrets. #alien #aliens ➡
  • 2015
    • Sometime soon it’s going to be time for us to have a mega Hobbit-thon! #lotr #lordoftherings #hobbit #thehobbit ➡
  • 2010
    • Fly Commando! I’m almost disappointed I’m not flying soon. I’d wear my kilt. Commando. Grope away, sucker! ➡
  • 2008
  • 2007
    • Missed One… Took a test in the morning before school (it was posted online at 6:30am), went to school, came home, had lunch with the girl, went to work, came home, had dinner with the girl, and went to bed. Somehow managed to completely forget about posting...and there goes the one-a-day streak. ➡
  • 2004
    • Weblogger’s Meetup Just got back a bit ago from this month's Seattle Weblogger's Meetup. Roundabout 20-something people in attendance, of whom I knew three or so beforehand. Now I'm tired, though, and will be heading to bed before too terribly long. ➡
  • 2003
    • Creators admit Unix, C hoax In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years. ➡
    • November Weblog Meetup For the first (and quite likely only) time, I'm going to be able to attend one of the local Weblogger's Meetup events, as my training schedule for this Wednesday has me off work at 6pm. ➡
    • Major referrer spam attack Looks like there's a major referrer spam attack going on at the moment. The sites in question look like real weblogs but aren't. ➡
    • The sound of silence Why can't we as a nation honor our four hundred and twenty two dead as touchingly and honestly as the Italians do their nineteen? ➡
    • Blog For Lease Blog for lease (in Bloomington, Indiana). ➡
    • Fight Link Rot! Calpundit has an excellent summary posted on how to link to New York Times articles without having the links succumb to link rot. This should be required reading for all bloggers, IMNSHO — citing sources is important, and it's best if the sources don't later disappear. ➡
    • GeoURL I've just added my GeoURL location identification to my main page — I had it on my old Long Letter blog, but hadn't thought to put it in here on Eclecticism yet. Silly me. ➡
    • Stuff I've Seen Every so often during my time working on the Microsoft campus, I'd see something that really caught my interest. However, I couldn't ever talk about it — NDAs and the like — so I've never mentioned any of them. However, the one that was always at the top of the 'I really wish I had this' list was just announced at Comdex. ➡
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The first experiments in directly accessing and manipulating human memory raised more questions than gave answers. No matter what memories were implanted, after awakening all subjects recalled one event that hadn’t occurred: the appearance of an alien craft over Seattle in 2007.

Bookshop over Amazon

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Most of the books we buy are second-hand, but we do occasionally buy/pre-order new books. We had two on order from Amazon, but I just canceled those orders in favor of ordering them from Bookshop instead. We’ll pay a little more and wait a couple more days for the books, but we can afford both the money and the wait, and this way some of the money goes to support independent bookstores instead of Amazon.

If you’re looking at buying books this holiday season (and beyond) and don’t have to have next-day shipping, I encourage shopping through Bookshop — and use their “find a bookstore” option to see if you can target a particular local bookstore; I set my default to one we just stumbled across last weekend. Until we’re comfortable going in to browse the shelves, we can support them this way instead!

On This Day: Nov 16

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 18 posts previously published on November 16th

  • 2025
  • 2024
    • Mad Max 2 🎥: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: This is where you can really see the world of the modern Mad Max movies taking shape in Miller's mind. ➡
  • 2023
    • Year 50 Day 198 This is my 'getting off campus later than expected for the third day in a row' face. ➡
  • 2020
    • The first experiments in directly accessing and manipulating human memory raised more questions than gave answers. No matter what memories were implanted, after awakening all subjects recalled one event that hadn’t occurred: the appearance of an alien craft over Seattle in 2007. ➡
    • Bookshop over Amazon Most of the books we buy are second-hand, but we do occasionally buy/pre-order new books. We had two on order from Amazon, but I just canceled those orders in favor of ordering them from Bookshop instead. We’ll pay a little more and wait a couple more days for the books, but we can afford both ... Read more ➡
    • Lockdown has affected your memory – here’s why: “Many of us have found ourselves in an isolated routine during the pandemic – and it turns out, that’s not very good for your memories.” ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 16 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 16 ➡
  • 2019
    • One nice thing about the aliens being so selective about who they accepted, even if the reasons were unknown, was that anyone who wasn’t an economically privileged cis straight white male could just get on with their lives. Things improved quickly. Microblogvember: selective ➡
  • 2018
    • Book forty-six* of 2018: Deathday, by William C. Dietz. ⭐️⭐️ * Yes, the last one said 44, but according to Goodreads, this one is 46, so apparently I missed photoposting a book somewhere along the line this year. ➡
  • 2006
    • Back already! Well now, that didn't take long! As you can see, I'm back...mostly. ➡
  • 2005
  • 2004
    • Jason Webley Halloween Deathday 2004 Bootleg laurachandae was kind enough to send me a copy of her recording of Jason Webley's Halloween show, so I've converted it to .mp3 and have posted it on my webserver. It's only the first half of the show (apparently a mic cable got unplugged during intermission), but what there is is pretty good quality, and very listenable. ➡
  • 2003
    • World record pillow fight! 766 people showed up at Oregon State on Friday to take part in a jumbo pillow fight in hopes of topping the Guinness Book of Records mark. ➡
    • Bombs? Assassinations? Attacks? Place your bets! Remember the Policy Awareness Market? It was a DARPA-backed plan to establish a 'futures' market wagering on the likelihood of terrorist attacks, assassinations, and the like. Well, guess what? It's back! ➡
    • Bush denied 'license to kill' What's more disturbing? The fact that we have an administration with the unmitigated gall to make such requests in the first place? Or the fact that we have a President who is so mistrusted, disliked, and outright hated by so many people that they feel the need for that level of security? ➡
    • The Democratic parties According to The New Republic, it's looking more and more like we practically have two feuding Democratic parties now: Clinton's version and Dean's version. ➡
  • 2001
    • XP sucks! This is a truely genius piece of work -- someone actually managed to scale up to wherever the sign is and alter it. In other words, this isn't just some joker with Photoshop at work -- this is a real-world hack job. ➡
    • Enterprise: Civilization Random bit of trivia I stumbled across this past week -- Kim Darby, who played Jenny Myer in Better off Dead had, much earlier in her career, played Miri in the Star Trek Original Series episode 'Miri'. ➡
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We had come so far in the years since we had left Earth. Not just in distance, but in guided evolution as well. After many generations of genetic manipulation to adapt to the low gravity environment, we had started to question whether we could still define ourselves as human.

Lockdown Again

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Honestly, there are still too many exceptions in today’s new restrictions for Washington state for my tastes (but I recognize that without federal assistance, the state can only support so much).

Stay home. Order delivery and get takeout for food. Let your hair grow out. Order the things you need from small businesses that offer delivery or curbside pickup, or from Amazon or other big retailers that will ship to you.

Travel, restaurants, haircuts, and many other things are niceties, not necessities. And they all depend on the workers who support and provide those services risking their lives to let you have those few moments of faux normality.

If you’re a worker who isn’t able to work from home, take every precaution you can. I’m sorry the federal government refuses to give you the assistance you should be getting so that you don’t have to risk yourself to cater to other people’s selfishness.

When you do have to go out, mask up. And even if you’re out on a trail or hiking and don’t think you’re close enough to anyone else to need a mask, think about those times when you can smell cigarette smoke from far away and reconsider that cavalier attitude towards aerosol transmission. Or, if you still won’t wear a mask, don’t scoff and mock those who do; they’re making the effort to protect themselves and others, and such behavior should be rewarded, not denigrated.

And yes, some of these comments are very pointed, and unapologetically so. As much as I love you all, I’ve seen far too many posts and photos and heard and read too many comments and statements that make it clear that these behaviors aren’t limited to red states, rural areas, and Republican voters.

Yes, this sucks. But death is worse.

If at all possible, stay home. When it isn’t possible, wear your masks. Stop risking the health of yourselves and others.