Joel B
@joelbennett.bsky.social
Software developer, woodworker, automotive enthusiast.
I'm not marketing genius, but Kal Tire just sent me an email about getting a deal on winter tires.
The day after I just bought winter tires **from them**.
Great job there, guys. (Yes, that's sarcasm).
The day after I just bought winter tires **from them**.
Great job there, guys. (Yes, that's sarcasm).
October 30, 2025 at 2:50 PM
I'm not marketing genius, but Kal Tire just sent me an email about getting a deal on winter tires.
The day after I just bought winter tires **from them**.
Great job there, guys. (Yes, that's sarcasm).
The day after I just bought winter tires **from them**.
Great job there, guys. (Yes, that's sarcasm).
If there's one annoyance I have with tabs in pageless Google Docs, it's not being able to have multiple tabs with the same name. (Even if they are nested under different tabs, the tab names have to be different).
October 29, 2025 at 4:52 PM
If there's one annoyance I have with tabs in pageless Google Docs, it's not being able to have multiple tabs with the same name. (Even if they are nested under different tabs, the tab names have to be different).
RSS seems like such an underutilized technology.
October 28, 2025 at 10:11 PM
RSS seems like such an underutilized technology.
As an Albertan, I'm shameful of how poorly our current government has treated the teachers. For those unaware, the teachers went on strike after a year of no contract, and the government not willing to work with class size caps. Danielle Smith is the worst Premier we've ever had.
October 28, 2025 at 2:26 PM
As an Albertan, I'm shameful of how poorly our current government has treated the teachers. For those unaware, the teachers went on strike after a year of no contract, and the government not willing to work with class size caps. Danielle Smith is the worst Premier we've ever had.
Has anyone ever made a marionette controlled by stepper motors? Could be interesting to play back animations on it...
August 21, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Has anyone ever made a marionette controlled by stepper motors? Could be interesting to play back animations on it...
Plot twist: all the episodes of Dr. Who are actually the doctor holding up his psychic paper, making us believe he's actually doing all the stuff he does.
August 13, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Plot twist: all the episodes of Dr. Who are actually the doctor holding up his psychic paper, making us believe he's actually doing all the stuff he does.
I'm curious to know why Samsung updates their terms of service so frequently. I swear it's almost every other week I get a notification for it.
July 31, 2025 at 5:55 PM
I'm curious to know why Samsung updates their terms of service so frequently. I swear it's almost every other week I get a notification for it.
If you are going to be wrong, at least be consistent. It makes it easier to fix after the fact.
June 27, 2025 at 10:57 PM
If you are going to be wrong, at least be consistent. It makes it easier to fix after the fact.
OpenAI seems to be having issues this morning. But no status page update about it. Hmmm....
June 27, 2025 at 3:33 PM
OpenAI seems to be having issues this morning. But no status page update about it. Hmmm....
OpenAI's API responses are terrible when something isn't correct. Just an HTTP 400, with no explanation or reason for the HTTP 400. This is a perfect example of how _not_ to write a public API. If I'm doing something wrong, tell me _what_ is wrong.
May 8, 2025 at 3:25 PM
OpenAI's API responses are terrible when something isn't correct. Just an HTTP 400, with no explanation or reason for the HTTP 400. This is a perfect example of how _not_ to write a public API. If I'm doing something wrong, tell me _what_ is wrong.
I get one email in French by accident (thanks TD bank) and now all my YouTube ads are in French. Funny how that works. Clearly there's some info sharing between Outlook and Google...
April 30, 2025 at 7:35 PM
I get one email in French by accident (thanks TD bank) and now all my YouTube ads are in French. Funny how that works. Clearly there's some info sharing between Outlook and Google...
Zoom's "meeting recap" is both useless and annoying. They must not care about how many user clicks they need to use their product. There seems to be no way to turn it off or permanently get rid of it.
April 23, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Zoom's "meeting recap" is both useless and annoying. They must not care about how many user clicks they need to use their product. There seems to be no way to turn it off or permanently get rid of it.
I love how half the Google documentation gives me "Service Unavailable" unless I use an Incognito tab.
April 23, 2025 at 3:26 PM
I love how half the Google documentation gives me "Service Unavailable" unless I use an Incognito tab.
The Auth0 forum is one of the worst I've had the displeasure of dealing with. So many unanswered questions that are closed, not because they have been answered, but because Auth0 hasn't answered them.
April 16, 2025 at 10:44 PM
The Auth0 forum is one of the worst I've had the displeasure of dealing with. So many unanswered questions that are closed, not because they have been answered, but because Auth0 hasn't answered them.
I find it amusing we call them "bookmarks" in a web browser. They aren't for books, they are for sites or pages. Shouldn't they be called Pagemarks or Sitemarks?
March 28, 2025 at 3:16 AM
I find it amusing we call them "bookmarks" in a web browser. They aren't for books, they are for sites or pages. Shouldn't they be called Pagemarks or Sitemarks?
It also has me wondering: has anyone made a modern arcade machine using off-the-shelf game consoles, networked together to distribute rendering tasks? Seems like it'd potentially be cheaper than having something custom built. And easier to swap parts out when they fail.
March 21, 2025 at 2:47 AM
It also has me wondering: has anyone made a modern arcade machine using off-the-shelf game consoles, networked together to distribute rendering tasks? Seems like it'd potentially be cheaper than having something custom built. And easier to swap parts out when they fail.
Reading "Racing the Beam" about the Atari 2600. Absolutely wild what developers managed to do with it.
March 21, 2025 at 2:46 AM
Reading "Racing the Beam" about the Atari 2600. Absolutely wild what developers managed to do with it.
Occasionally I do surveys for rewards. It's hilarious how often they end up redirecting between different servey services. Start on A, it redirects to B, which redirects to C, that survey fails, goes back to B, which redirects back to A. How long before one gets stuck in an infinite redirect loop?
March 15, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Occasionally I do surveys for rewards. It's hilarious how often they end up redirecting between different servey services. Start on A, it redirects to B, which redirects to C, that survey fails, goes back to B, which redirects back to A. How long before one gets stuck in an infinite redirect loop?
The fact that an M2 MacBook pro can't use more than one external display without stupid workarounds is frustrating.
March 11, 2025 at 11:20 PM
The fact that an M2 MacBook pro can't use more than one external display without stupid workarounds is frustrating.
It's amazing how many people buying circular saws aren't aware of left-blade vs. right-blade before spending one or two hundred dollars. Both are a thing, and there's a lot of videos out there describing the pros and cons of each.
February 11, 2025 at 10:01 PM
It's amazing how many people buying circular saws aren't aware of left-blade vs. right-blade before spending one or two hundred dollars. Both are a thing, and there's a lot of videos out there describing the pros and cons of each.
Hear me out: what if Gordon Freeman _is_ the G-man, just much later in life? Go through enough inter-dimensional portals, and it could really mess a person up. Maybe he's really just trying to stop himself from destroying the universe? 🤔
February 10, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Hear me out: what if Gordon Freeman _is_ the G-man, just much later in life? Go through enough inter-dimensional portals, and it could really mess a person up. Maybe he's really just trying to stop himself from destroying the universe? 🤔
Can we just assume that everything coming through DocuSign is a scam until proven otherwise?
January 29, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Can we just assume that everything coming through DocuSign is a scam until proven otherwise?
So many of our units we use today are named after people. Just imagine a future (or alternate present) where we say something like "My autowain gets three Jacobs to the Maddison"
January 27, 2025 at 1:47 AM
So many of our units we use today are named after people. Just imagine a future (or alternate present) where we say something like "My autowain gets three Jacobs to the Maddison"
Mark my words: the AI hype train will eventually slow down, just like all the other hype trains before it (crypto currency, 3D printing). Does AI have uses? Sure. There are legitimate cases where it helps. But 95+% of it is nothing more than hype.
January 24, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Mark my words: the AI hype train will eventually slow down, just like all the other hype trains before it (crypto currency, 3D printing). Does AI have uses? Sure. There are legitimate cases where it helps. But 95+% of it is nothing more than hype.
As a relative newcomer to React, there's still a number of things that I find quite confusing. Unless you were there from the beginning, it's hard to understand why things are built the way they are. And a lot of blogs trying to clarify them do a poor job of trying to explain it.
January 14, 2025 at 11:36 PM
As a relative newcomer to React, there's still a number of things that I find quite confusing. Unless you were there from the beginning, it's hard to understand why things are built the way they are. And a lot of blogs trying to clarify them do a poor job of trying to explain it.