I was watching a video today typecraft, and he used a word “idempotency” that I’ve never heard of before. So I asked what it meant.

Idempotence (UK: /ˌɪdɛmˈpoʊtəns/,[1] US: /ˈaɪdəm-/)[2] is the property of certain operations in mathematics and computer science whereby they can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application.

You’d think, with as much as people talk about NixOS and “immutable/automic” distros, I’d have heard of this word before. But this was a first for me. So I learned a new word. Always a good thing. If I were a real programmer, I’d have probably heard of this before, but I’m a pretender of the highest order.

Well, two weeks in a row is a streak, right? Good.

Work

Our year is almost over, and my time is wrapping up. The last of the writer’s work will be handed in on the 14th, and then next week we’ll edit and audit the last articles of the year. Those will be my last chores before I’m done at the end of November. Technically, I’ll be employed through December 31, but we have all of December off.

So, when trying to come up with a topic for today, I had several in mind. One thing I’ve taught myself to do, however, is check my Archives page to ensure I haven’t written about a topic before.

Now, I don’t see anything wrong with talking about a topic more than once. Goodness knows, I’ve talked about notes on this blog a lot. But I don’t want to basically write the same blog post over and over and over again. So I always check.

I’ve been trying to read the Dresden Files for over a year now. I love wizards. Harry Potter is one of my favorite series of all time, despite the many qualms I have with it. I’ve read many other books with wizards. Why? Because magic is effin’ cool.

So, I thought I’d be able to pick up the Dresden Files and have a good time. But I didn’t. I really, really, did not. Let me explain.

I’ve finished my reread of Ready Player One, which was this month’s book of the month for The Bookies, so I’ve moved onto another book on my list. I’m still very much starting The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, and I’m actually kind of getting into it. I’ve blatantly ignored all the reviews that are trying to stir this book up as “too woke”, and just trying to enjoy it as a fantasy book about dragons. I can always get behind a book about dragons.

I spent the evening working on an app called Poster. The app cross posts between Bluesky and Mastodon/GoToSocial. It’s not special, but it was fun to write. It took awhile, since my Python is still very noobish, and very much a “how do I do this” -> “Google how to do this” workflow.

But I did not write the README.md you see in that git repo. I had Claude do that for me (along with fixing a whole host of bugs because I’m shit at fixing my own code). I don’t feel bad about having Claude do that for me. Maybe I should, but it has to be better than no README at all. And Claude is pretty damn good at looking at some code and telling people how to use the outcome. Better than I would have been, at least.

All I have to say is that, unless you’re mom is a horrible person (there are cases like that, we all know it), you should listen to your mom.

As you get older, you will find over and over again, that most of the time your mom was right about things big and small.

I’m not saying my mom has always been right, but those mom sayings we all hear and roll our eyes at, she’s right about those. And, like any kid, I mostly ignored them.

I talked last week about how I planned on doing this weekly wrap up thing. I’m calling it a newsletter so that I can be pretentious about it. No sense in not being snooty about it. All of my fellow bloggers do “wrap ups,” I do a “Newsletter.”

Work

This was the week I found out that I’m likely not to have a job on January 1st. My company is moving most of its editing to AI, so it doesn’t need as many managing editors. I drew the short straw apparently (i.e. I make more than the other guy), so I’m done after Christmas. It’s not official yet, but it’s going to happen.

Remember a few weeks ago, I wrote about how I had these plans to read a literal ton of books in October? I had been coming off my worse reading slump in ages, and dammit, I planned on finally getting some of the books off of my TBR list.

Yeah.

That didn’t happen. Now, to be fair, I did read some. Here’s the list I set out with:

• Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones
• Grave Peril by Jim Butcher
• The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
• Dynasty by Tom Holland
• Investigation, Mediation, Vindication by Chris Tullbane
• Genghis Khan by Jack Weatherford
• The Will of the Many by James Islington
• Alexander the Great by Paul Cartledge
• A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J Penner

I finished the last one, and I’m much further in to Grave Peril. So I did read. But I didn’t really make as much progress as I had hoped to. Now, I knew when I wrote that post that I was never going to get through everything. I had hoped for more progress than I actually made, however.