2025 and Two Years of T&N on Substack
I wrote my first post on Substack a little over two years ago. It was a short intro sort of post, and it offered these words on what Tech and Nonsense would cover:
On the tech side of things my aim is to post about mobile devices and apps, cybersecurity, security culture, and tech that I feel like I may have a decent take on. On the non tech/nonsense side of things I’m going to do away with guardrails and post on anything from dog memes to my efforts to try figure out what most matters in life and become a better human being.
Looking back at the 217 posts I’ve shared here, I feel I’ve stuck to those themes pretty well - with AI emerging as the tech topic I covered the most, by far. While thinking about what I’ve written on here, I thought it might be fun to share a small number of sampler posts. I’m hoping these might also be useful for any of you who are either new or still figuring out what to expect here. Here they are:
Cybersecurity
Interview Questions: Take time to think on the things you want to ask the hiring company about as early in the process as you can. Knowing what those are might even be useful on the first contact call or exchange of messages with the recruiter or hiring manager, depending on how that first contact plays out.
This might be my favorite topic I’ve written on in a long while, simply because I know that this has been enormously beneficial to me in my own cybersecurity career journey.
Just a few weeks ago I found out what the PKM acronym stands for, and here I am throwing it into another post title like I’m already one of the PKM cool kids. It’s justified though, because as I mentioned in that post it’s something I’ve been doing all through my 20+ years in cybersecurity and IT work. It just never had a cool acronym (or one that I knew of) and I wasn’t aware of all the impressive and deep thinking that’s been done around it in recent years.
Tech
If you’ve ever used a personal dictionary on an Android phone and then wanted to have that dictionary be available on a new/different phone, I hope this may be a useful tip for you. For me, it has relieved several years worth of frustration with having to recreate the personal dictionary from scratch every time I switched to a new phone.
That is a future mobile device I would very much like to see, and use. Taking the onus off us, users, and having smarter AI-assisted apps work their magic in the background feels like a far better way to use a mobile device.
Nonsense / Human Being Stuff
So why I am interested in learning about Buddhism and trying to embrace it along with mindfulness? I’ve found a lot of reasons, and continue to find more as I learn more.
It feels easy and natural. At its core (my rookie, very amateur take here) it is all about kindness and compassion - for others and for all sentient beings.
I web searched to verify, but I remember these tragic, harsh truth telling words verbatim from more than 30 years ago when I heard her song “Black Boys on Mopeds”.
And I remember the first time I heard “Nothing Compares to You”. It’s one of many songs that show off the sheer, staggering power of her voice. No words can do that justice, but every time I listen to this live version I don’t need any words.
Congrats on writing 2 years!
It’s been great reading! Looking forward to more AI and PKM stuff