Take Ownership; "Plant Your Flag"

Taking ownership or “planting your flag” in an idea, work, or concept is often one of the best things someone can do. To sit in a room full of people and say, “This is mine. I will take care of it.” Makes everyone in the room know you are the point person committed to making it happen. The same holds true when discussing documentation, processes, and ideas for long-range planning. ...

June 28, 2016 · Chris Short

Permanently Remove Any Record of a File From git

A co-worker and I needed to remove all instances of a binary blob from one of our git repos a while back. This was a lot harder than I thought it should have been, in my opinion. However, distributed version control is not really designed to easily allow folks to delete every instance of a file. But, if you ever run into a case where you do need to expunge a file in git here is how we did it. This would work to remove a file from any cloud, service, or local git repository. ...

June 25, 2016 · Chris Short

Understanding, Fear, and Hate

“Fear leads to anger… Anger leads to hate… Hate leads to suffering.” Jedi Master Yoda On Saturday, my wife Julie, son Max, and I attended church. This was a very special mass as it was the mass at which Max was being baptized. Julie’s family was present as were friends of ours. As a lot of my friends know, I’m not religious. My stance on religion is that I choose complete freedom over being beholden to humans interpreting what they believe to be the word of God. I have seen religion twisted to a few extremes in my days on this earth therefore I choose not to be a follower. However, I am not going to sway people to see things my way. I wholeheartedly support my Catholic wife and family in their choices. ...

June 21, 2016 · Chris Short

Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac

On June 1, 2016, Microsoft released an update to it’s Remote Desktop client for Mac OS X via the Mac App Store. The update to version 8.0.32 broke some functionality for people. The most commonly reported error I have seen is “Connection reset to peer” before authentication. Sadly, unless you have a Time Machine backup to grab the old version from you are likely going to have to find an alternative. If you do happen to have an older version that isn’t broken let me know and I will gladly host it for all to get here. ...

June 9, 2016 · Chris Short
MacBook Pro on Desk

My Mac OS X Setup Guide

I happen to be someone that finds themselves setting up new systems for myself often. I have to remind myself there are tools that I need installed before the scenario in which I need to use them (on an airplane, during a crisis, etc.). I use a Mac so this list of software and setup is going to be very Mac OS X centric. From the web: Google Chrome Evernote - My brain lives here Google Drive - I keep some .files (dot files) here iTerm - My Terminal of choice Shuttle - Super awesome ssh config menu creator Little Snitch - I don’t trust any one or any code Shimo - Need to use more than one VPN? Shimo is for you GPG Tools MySQL Workbench - When you login to a MySQL server and say, “WTF?!?” you might want a GUI as a safety Witch - CMD + TAB will never be the same Spectacle - Position your windows where you want them Skitch - Screeenshot tool that saves to Evernote Dropbox CleanMyMac - I use this to uninstall software and clear caches (among other things) DaisyDisk - Find wasted disk Wireshark Postman Mercurial VirtualBox Vagrant SourceTree - I am using this less and less these days but still want it around Firefox Chrome Canary Firefox Developer Edition Safari Technology Preview Telegram VLC From the Mac App Store: ...

June 8, 2016 · Chris Short