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Garrett Serack

@fearthecowboy

By day I am a principal software engineer at Microsoft working on C/C++ dev tools, and other open source things. By night, I'm a maker, a father, a husband and a Seattle Kraken fan.

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15.11.2024
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Latest posts by Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy

Saw a sign in France espousing "black Friday deals"... Lolwut?

28.11.2025 12:36 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Hmmm... I just went and tested them with a match, and two did nothing.

I just ordered replacements for all of them, Amazon will have them here in the morning

03.11.2025 04:58 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Huh. How did I not know this before??!?

Shit, all mine are 29 years old.

They do still work but... I gotta go buy new ones...

Is there a standard power plug they have?

03.11.2025 04:14 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The standard UI for this sort of thing would be a slider switch, which then you could tell if it was enabled or not. The ambiguity here is particularly bad.

Back in the day, when I worked at Microsoft, this would have been caught really early. I guess standards are slipping ...

17.10.2025 15:41 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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This is bad UI

In the Sound settings in Windows 11 - you can disable a sound device that you don't want apps to be able to use

However, when you open the UI to do that you are faces with a button that says "Don't Allow" or "Allow" - Which really doesn't tell you what the current state is

17.10.2025 15:41 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

I spent several months writing some code in Ruby.

I'll grant that it's not the least lovable language (by a wiiiiiide mile) but I found it weird as hell.

Actually, it probably doesn't even make my top 20 least lovable languages list.

But it's no TypeScript :D

25.09.2025 15:04 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I'd say something quip like "Just declare Ruby a deity or something, and then it's all allowed by the IRS because it's a religion"

Except that the mere existence of Ruby itself is undeniable proof that there is no god.

:D

24.09.2025 21:50 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Jfc.

22.09.2025 02:14 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

No...

πŸ˜‚

17.09.2025 17:44 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

If you like that, you should make your own

I use half n half- take 2 liters put in a pot and heat to 180F for a minute. Cool down to 110f and then stir in a dollop of your favorite yogurt. Wrap in a towel and leave on the counter for 12-24 hr. chill and drain in cheesecloth overnight. Mind blowing

10.09.2025 04:38 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I've been saying this nonstop for a year now. Hardware costs and energy costs are both magnified by usage, and features drive usage thru the roof. This stuff gets more expensive over time, and there is no rational means that will go the other way.

08.09.2025 06:03 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

And the "Likelihood that I would recommend either it or Windows to a friend" is zero. They can stop asking.

I don't "recommend" nagware to friends.

Really, I don't "recommend" much of anything to friends.

I do the reverse tho.

07.09.2025 20:52 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Three monitors is not enough

Three monitors is not enough

I'm working remotely in a hotel room, and I just had to break down and get a couple of those cheap portable external monitors.

However, I feel like @bitcrazed.bsky.social is judging me.

07.09.2025 19:59 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

The ability to map text from a "What I have now" back to a "Where did this come from" is a huge deal.

I would really love to see such a thing with LLMs as a means to 'cite their references' too.

🧡 [5/5]

22.08.2025 20:41 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Other languages have their debug symbol formats (ie, .pdb or COFF/XCOFF/DWARF symbols) but these aren't really designed for source-to-source transformations at all.

🧡 [4/5]

22.08.2025 20:41 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

But, in reality, if you have several steps (say a code generator or something), there is nothing stopping you from crafting source maps from your 'source-of-truth' to the generated code that you emit. There are many tools that let you navigate or visualize source code based on source maps.

🧡 [3/5]

22.08.2025 20:41 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Source maps provide a means to map from the 'final' code output, to the original source of the code. Usually this means you can debug the actual TypeScript code while you run the 'compiled' code thru the debugger and other things, like having accurate stack traces in your `Error` objects.

🧡 [2/5]

22.08.2025 20:41 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I think one my absolute favorite things about the JavaScript ecosystem, that nobody ever talks about, is support for source maps, and just how complex and innovative that is.

🧡 [1/5]

22.08.2025 20:41 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Yeaaaah. Some things are not bad, but then some times it goes off the rails and results can be pretty lousy

18.08.2025 01:38 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Wow. Is docker desktop ever bad at what happens when disk space hits zero.

13.08.2025 16:06 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Meh, what can go wrong?

Seriously tho' ... I discovered an actual viable reason to check the second box

Docker desktop is A BIT DISK INTENSIVE ... so I moved the vhdx files for that to an otherwise unused drive

It's for test/dev work only, so I don't care about the contents

06.08.2025 18:26 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Chevrolet

01.08.2025 20:38 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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That'll show them! Send another letter, this time STRONGLY WORDED!

And then follow up by playing this card:

01.08.2025 15:07 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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LattΓ© and I are coding out on the deck this morning.

16.07.2025 16:36 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

And today is my last day of continuation too

13.07.2025 03:25 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I am 34 days shy of getting my 55/15.

13.07.2025 03:24 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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About a year ago, I started my weight loss journey.

I've lost 100 lbs so far. I feel better, look better and I'm still going.

What a difference a year can make.

09.07.2025 22:40 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Sure he can. When large numbers of people die off from preventable causes, the remaining population will be healthier, right?

01.07.2025 20:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This all started when they killed harambe

27.06.2025 19:04 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Graffiti in Montana is a bit different I see

17.06.2025 00:14 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0