Jeff Garretson

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Jan 13, 2025: Has “comprised of” become the new standard usage, or is there still hope? #grammar

Jan 9, 2025: Finally made the leap and moved my site to Micro.blog.

Sep 22, 2022: Meta Work

Meta Work is my term for everything from leadership strategies to individual GTD and PKM workflows—the stuff that transcends any particular domain of …

Sep 21, 2022: Some Thoughts on Report Usability

A usable report meets a specific need, clearly presenting the facts in a way that’s appropriate for the user’s context.

As an analyst …

Sep 7, 2022: We love spending time on the Oregon Coast, and Yachats (pronounced like yaw-hots) is one of the best places.

Sep 7, 2018: Apple has a bug in a beta version of iOS that pops up an annoying message periodically, and the whole Internet lights up, and it’s fixed in a …

Apr 24, 2018: For certain use cases, BIML is pure magic. The best kind of power tools!

Apr 7, 2018: Good grief, Samsung—this TV has power and Wi-Fi 24/7, but you have to wait to install updates when I want to watch something? Why?!?!?

Apr 1, 2018: This morning’s silly dad song: 🎶 “Banana ooo na na, half of my breakfast is banana ooo na na…” 🎶

Mar 20, 2018: I just can’t get enough of “Super Love” by Zero Venture ft. Natalia Natchan. It’s EDM + J-pop + NES. It’s nerdy, sweet, …

Feb 7, 2018: iOS 11.3 Beta 2 says battery capacity is at 87%, but it has shut down due to insufficient juice and is being throttled. So what—I’m just stuck? …

Jan 26, 2018: I just figured out that the Scroll Lock key actually does something on Windows! Made me want to scream and burn Excel to the ground, but hey—I learned …

Jun 23, 2015: Why We Encrypt Bruce Schneier: Every time you use encryption, you're protecting someone who needs to use it to stay alive. This is the clearest statement I’ve …

May 17, 2015: UK government quietly rewrites hacking laws to give GCHQ immunity Ars Technica: The UK government has quietly passed new legislation that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for …

Mar 27, 2015: I'm Terrified Right Now Derick Bailey: I want this horrible, sick feeling because it means I care about what I’m doing. It means I understand that I can really screw this …

Jan 15, 2015: You do not need permission Brooke Allen: You do not need permission to do the right thing. No one can give you permission to do the wrong thing.

Jan 8, 2015: The Reward For Good Work Derick Bailey: For me, my work and my reputation are tied together. I’m not known for social graces, being easy to work with, or having the best …

Jul 21, 2014: How a Microwave Should Work

I have strong opinions about the proper UI design for a microwave oven:

The number buttons should just be numbers. Pressing the 2 button should not …

Jul 17, 2014: One in a million is next Tuesday Larry Osterman: Gordon’s response was simply: “In our business, one in a million is next Tuesday”.

Feb 11, 2014: What I Want From Tech Support

I’ve been working with a software vendor on the same support case for 15 days now, and it’s driving me crazy. It would be unprofessional …

Jul 2, 2013: Windows Batch Gotcha: Use REM Inside IF Blocks Normally I comment out lines in a Windows batch script by prefixing them with “::"—it just looks better to me than “REM”. But …

Jul 2, 2013: SSIS Conditional Expressions (Lightbulb:On)

I’ve often been confused and frustrated by conditionals ( … ? … : … ) in SSIS expressions. The concept is straightforward …

Jun 5, 2013: I just ran across this great bit of advice I got back in 1995 from Larry Wall, creator of Perl: Don't get brainwashed by your education into thinking …

May 17, 2013: Connection: Wiretap Laws Ed Felten, yesterday: CALEA II: Risks of wiretap modifications to endpoints Today I joined a group of twenty computer scientists in issuing a report …

Apr 24, 2013: A Haiku I have had a thought. This is the content thereof. Disappointed yet?

Apr 4, 2013: Better Questions

Organizational culture emerges from the process of answering questions. The answers aren’t necessarily articulated explicitly, but they’re expressed …

Apr 4, 2013: Time Limits on Browser Plugins?

When Steve Gibson talked on Security Now 398 about how few users' Java plugins are actually up-to-date, this question hit me:

Should browser plug-ins …

Feb 5, 2013: New Project: Backbone Reference App Today I released a JavaScript reference application, built on Backbone, Marionette, and RequireJS. I've learned a lot over the past several weeks, and …

Jan 31, 2013: Lessons in Bug Hunting Yesterday's lesson in bug hunting: don't assume you're an idiot. I spent a few days trying to figure out why my success callback wasn't being called. …

Jan 25, 2013: /time I wanted to GET a lot done today: /coding, /writing, &more; but try as I might, I got 302, and /time returned 404.

Dec 17, 2012: Shipped! I launched a new intranet application today. Nothing fancy, just a simple app to address a real need in my organization. Initial feedback has been …

Dec 17, 2012: Gun Control and Strong Encryption In light of recent events, I wondered if anyone was making a connection between gun control and the regulation of strong encryption. So I googled it …

Dec 17, 2012: Recipe: Tuna Salad I recently made a salad that everyone in my family loved so much we made another batch the next day. I don’t have precise measurements, but this …

Nov 9, 2012: Day-of-Week Differences in MySQL and MS SQL Server Heads-up! In MySQL, WEEKDAY(‘2012-11-09’) = 4 (0-6 starting on Monday), but in SQL Server, DATEPART(dw,‘11/09/2012’) = 6 (1-7 …

Oct 25, 2012: Merlin Mann in Back To Work #41: If you're not asking the right question, then there is no correct answer.

Oct 25, 2012: Washingsoft UAnix Here’s another product parody Lars and I did in college: Washingsoft UAnix. This was born out of our frustration with the way the University of …

Oct 25, 2012: Microsoft Orifice Aaahhh, the joys of Photoshop and free time. I just stumbled on this little trip down memory lane—a parody of a Microsoft Office box that my …

Oct 11, 2012: How to Override IE's Compatibility View Behavior On Intranet Sites To force IE to edge mode (even on intranet sites, where IE would otherwise use compatibility mode), the server needs to send X-UA-Compatible as an …

Oct 5, 2012: Single Sign-On Epiphany When I wrote about my experience setting up AD Single Sign-On for Linux, I said the next step was to extend the transparent SSO experience into …

Aug 31, 2012: Something Old, Something New Digging into a web portal application. It uses Ajax … and frames. 17 years of Web history, all on one page. (I didn’t know browsers still …

Jun 4, 2012: Converting to Project Connection Across Multiple Packages in SSIS 2012

I’m migrating a Business Intelligence project from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2012. Microsoft has, overall, done a great job with their …

May 4, 2012: Generating a Range of Dates in MySQL

Working on a report from a MySQL database, I needed a table of all dates for the next year. With SQL Server (2005 and later) there’s a …

Mar 7, 2012: Active Directory Single Sign-On for Linux Intranet Servers

I mentioned a while ago that I have a Linux web server set up with Kerberos SSO in our AD domain. Setting it up was a lot more tedious than it seems …

Jan 20, 2012: Intranet Milestone: Transparent Authentication I’ve started a project to move the front-end of our intranet from SharePoint to WordPress (SP is just too icky to do any serious front-end work with). …

Mar 21, 2011: The Problem With GTD I’m a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, but it suffers from one major shortcoming, at least for me: it offers some great methods for managing …

Mar 16, 2011: Knowledge Work: Marshaling Inputs I’m beginning a personal project to help me manage the barrage of different inputs I juggle every day. I know I’m not alone in this, so I’ll be …

Dec 17, 2010: Mart Laar, Prime Minister of Estonia (1992-1994 and 1999-2002): I was young and crazy… I didn’t know what is possible and what’s not, so I did …

Nov 10, 2010: Where Good Ideas Come From This is a great video from Steven Johnson about where good ideas come from.

Oct 12, 2010: Beware the Limits of Reductionism There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies. – Shakespeare I said before that generalization, …

Oct 12, 2010: Powerful Ideas Ideas are the most basic of tools with which we understand and influence our world. And like tools, not all ideas are created equal—some ideas are …

Oct 12, 2010: Generalization, Patterns, and Abstraction εν αρχη ην ο λογος – John 1:1 Our world behaves in consistent, predictable ways. If it were not so, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, …

Oct 1, 2010: Internet Wiretap Bill Misses the Mark Charlie Savage reported Monday in the New York Times that the Obama administration is seeking legislation that would require “back-doors” in all …

Sep 3, 2010: Seattle Photo From my trip to Seattle a while back. Unfortunate circumstances that took us there, but we did get a chance to hang out at the waterfront for a while. …

Mar 18, 2010: When Low Tech Is the Best Tech We’ve been thinking about developing a quick application to replace a paper HR process—should be a simple state machine with four possible states: …

Mar 2, 2010: The Enterprise Information Protection Paradigm It used to be that network infrastructure was one of an organization’s most valuable assets and security was geared toward protecting the …

Feb 22, 2010: Fun With Flowers I borrowed my wife’s Valentine flowers for a while Saturday. This lily was a very patient model, and I had a lot of fun! (1/4 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400)

Sep 23, 2009: Recipe: Missile Burgers I was blown away by how good these are. I inherited this recipe from a friend. I can’t find it anywhere on the Web, so I’m putting it here. Enjoy! …

Jul 27, 2009: Book Recommendation: Getting Things Done Stressed at work? I highly recommend Getting Things Done by David Allen. The main thing I learned from GTD was how to manage my email—keeping my inbox …

Jul 27, 2009: The Spam That Got Through All of my company’s inbound and outbound email goes through a security service that scans for spam and viruses. From time to time I get an email from …

May 18, 2009: On Failing Successfully Inspired by an episode of the Ockham’s Razor podcast: Mark Dodgson: I want to argue that failure doesn’t get the credit it deserves. If you …