The Wrath of Kon

Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Author: jkonrath

  • 2019 Summary

    I just did a post yesterday about the summary of my decade, so I don’t really know what to say about my 2019, except it was pretty anticlimactic, and all metrics were low, and that’s all depressing, so maybe this is all stuff I need to work on next year. Here’s the list: I published…

  • The inevitable stupid end-of-the-decade summary

    So we’re twenty years into the 21st century tomorrow, and I still call it the 20th century half the time. Luckily, I never have to write paper checks anymore and put the year on them, right? OK, so regardless of my feelings that I need to stop looking back in a haze of stupid nostalgia,…

  • Milwaukee

    I am on day nine of a ten-day stretch in Milwaukee. I don’t know how this happened, how I managed to schedule ten days here, but as a rule of thumb, ten days anywhere is too long. It’s also a problem here, because I always get sick, and the trip was long enough that I…

  • flu, rom-com dreams, unix history, holiday mall-walking

    I think I have a bit of the flu right now. It’s the weirdest one, because I don’t have a lot of symptoms (congestion, throat, fever, etc) but I have been horribly underwater, unable to think, achy, and all I want to do is sleep. And of course this happens immediately before our Q4 deadline,…

  • stupid list #167

    I just paid my annual hosting bill for this site. It’s a bit depressing, because when I calculate how many posts I make per year, it averages out to like ten bucks per post, unless I make a whole bunch of entries in the next two months. The Apple Airpod Pro release made me think…

  • John’s new book, imaginary PCs, shaking hands is disgusting, nostalgia garbage (as usual)

    John Sheppard has a new book out called Needs Work. It’s a fun one, set in a bizarre, dystopian version of Cleveland, and is about a wounded soldier returning to his hometown after a bad divorce to live with his crazy dad. Lots of callbacks to his other stuff, and full disclosure, my old cough…

  • The Death of Blockbuster

    Here’s an interesting long read over at Retail Dive on the death of Blockbuster Video: Who Really Killed Blockbuster? A couple of interesting (to me) takeaways. First, I like that this article gives all the details other than just saying “Netflix, duh” because that’s not what happened. The thing that annoys the hell out of…

  • Kitchen, Commodore, Spider-Man, Dead JCP

    Kitchen is done. Four weeks took seven, but it looks good, and everything works. I posted an album over on Flickr if you’re really interested. I’m just glad to not have the plastic walls anymore, although if we ever make it out of second summer, it might be nice to have my office twenty degrees…

  • kitchen, 30 years, mall dreams, algorithms

    I’m in the middle of a kitchen remodel, allegedly halfway through with two weeks down, two to go, but you know how these things are. I don’t want to get into details, because this isn’t HGTV, but aside from not having a kitchen, having a house full of dust that has horribly triggered my respiratory…

  • The Death of Northgate

    Looks like Northgate mall in Seattle is quickly winding down. The JC Penney already closed, and the Macy’s and Nordstrom are in the process of shutting their doors. The plan is to demolish the main stretch of the mall, leave some of the external “village” buildings that were tacked onto the front in the mid-00s,…