brb reverse engineering a markdown file

The Pentagon has burned through so many missiles in the Iran exchange that Trump is dragging Lockheed and Raytheon CEOs into the White House like a failing factory boss demanding overtime. The military admits the Iran strike consumed more long-range munitions than 4 years of Ukraine. Trump is posting fantasies about “unlimited supply” while Raytheon can barely promise to “eventually” reach 1,000 Tomahawks a year and the Pentagon only budgeted 57 for 2026. The industrial base is so hollowed out they’re threatening contractors with punishment if they don’t ramp up, even though the system physically can’t produce at wartime tempo. America just showed the world that one regional confrontation with Iran drained decades of planning assumptions.

"Welcome to the Board of Peace, gentlemen."

The company hired me to lead their "Agile Transformation." I don't know what Agile means. Nobody does. That's why it works. I make $425,000 a year. To move sticky notes. From left to right. On a board. The board is digital now. The sticky notes cost $80,000 in Jira licenses. Progress. Day one, I said "we need to break down silos." Everyone nodded. Silos are bad. I don't know why. But destroying them is a career. My career. I introduced "squads." Squads are teams. But disrupted. We disrupted the teams into teams. Different names. Same people. Same problems. But Agile problems now. Agile problems are strategic. A senior engineer asked what we're actually changing. I said, "The mindset." He asked what that means. I said, "It's a journey." He asked where we're going. I said, "Toward agility." He asked what agility means. I pointed at the sticky notes. They were moving left to right. That's velocity. We have velocity now. The VP of Engineering said two-week sprints don't fit their work. I said, "That's waterfall thinking." Waterfall is bad. Like silos. I don't know what waterfall is. But I know it's bad. She stopped talking. Waterfall accusations end conversations. We had a retrospective. In the retro, we discussed what went wrong. Everything went wrong. We put it on sticky notes. Then we moved the sticky notes. Into a column called "Parking Lot." The Parking Lot is where problems go to die. It's full. We don't look at it. That's agile. Velocity is up 40%. I defined velocity. I also defined the points. I also defined the stories. We're crushing it. At the things I made up. To measure. Ourselves. The CEO asked for ROI. I showed a chart. The chart went up. Charts should go up. This one did. I didn't label the Y-axis. Nobody asked. Leadership is confidence. We do standups now. Every day. We stand. For 45 minutes. Standing is agile. Sitting is waterfall. My legs hurt. But we're transforming. The transformation is now "Phase 3." Phase 1 was assessment. Phase 2 was implementation. Phase 3 is "continuous improvement." Continuous means forever. Forever means job security. I'm very secure. My contract was extended. Three more years. For "cultural impact." The culture is confused. But impacted. Agile transformation isn't about being agile. It's about transforming. Continuously. Toward more transformation. The destination is the journey. The journey is billable.

Demand for Guild Wars Reforged blew past our projections, causing long downloads for some non-Steam players. We’re adding servers & exploring new options to fix this before the weekend. Thanks for your patience!

Which is not to say it isn't useful. It can be used as a tool for rapid prototyping. For learning how to use a library. For drafting documentation. But will it replace human software engineers? Not any time soon.

The nurses with the most experience seem to be carrying out administrative tasks and constant management and shepherding of lesser experienced staff. They were so clearly trying to make a very broken system work with the few scraps thrown to them by successive governments.

Everything they are doing to the NHS, they did to British Rail: • Underfunded it • Exhausted the service • Got the public angry Then said privatisation is the only solution.

A list of words rarely seen without a prefix... 10. Gruntled 9. Peccable 8. Shevelled 7. Advertently 6. Sensical 5. Couth 4. Kempt 3. Trepid 2. Combobulated 1. Whelmed

My most excellent colleague @ezimuel recently wrote an article on how to communicate with #Elastic using an #Arduino and the client library he built during one of our lab weeks. If you have a few minutes for something geeky, then it's well worth a read :) elastic.co/blog/elasticsearc…