The Boston Diaries

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Notes on an overheard conversation at a D&D game

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Last post: Sep 7, 2026
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Site title: Notes on an overheard conversation at a D&D game - The Boston Diaries - Captain Napalm
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Notes on an overheard conversation at a D&D game
Sep 7, 2026 · original
“There's a new Zuckerberg movie coming out!” “Yes, the ‘The Social Reckoning.’ It's an Aaron Sorkin film.” “Didn't he do ‘The Social Network?’” “Yes he did.” “I heard he asked Jesse Eisenberg to reprise his role as Mark Zuckerberg, but Jesse turned it down because he didn't want to play such an evil person again.” “Wait! Didn't he also play Lex Luthor?” “Yes.” “He's saying that Lex Luthor is less evil than Mark Zuckerberg?” “Seems so.”
Is it too early to call Google and Microsoft an email cartel?
Sep 2, 2026 · original
In the past week, we've learned through multiple trips to the pharmacy that two of Bunny's medications have been discontinued and alternatives have to be found. And then it was phone tag and several lost emails to her doctor before she got replacement prescriptions. And it's those lost emails that are very annoying. It turns out that the doctor's office uses Microsoft Lookout for handling all their email. I run my own email server. I've sent email to that doctor before, but that was maybe last year. This year, I guess Microsoft has decided to just simply drop emails from my server without any notification what so ever. Sigh.
I guess this falls into the “hate the game, not the player” territory
Sep 2, 2026 · original
I came across this video (untitled) which is a protest against LLM -generated videos on Youtube (with a title that is pure link bait and not in any way true). I do wonder how effective this form of LLM protest will be on Youtube, as so far, this seems to be the only one of its type that I've come across. I wish them luck, but I'm not too optimistic about this.
There's a more interesting story in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menance” than we ever got to see
Sep 1, 2026 · original
The Star Wars prequel trilogy was more political than the original series. I mean, “Star Wars: The Phantom Menance” started the film with a blockade and trade negotiations. And I felt that the plot was more sophisticated than the original series, as the main protagonist, Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious, arranged events to come out on top no matter what happened: By convincing the Trade Federation to blockade Naboo, his own homeworld, and coerce Queen Amidala to sign a treaty legitimizing the Federation occupation, he has already won the day and now must keep up appearances with the Trade Federation so they don't rat him out. Having the Federation attack the Jedi, symbols of the Republic's power, he only strengthened his position. No matter what, all roads led to Valorum's removal, and the path forward for his ascendancy to the Chancellorship out of sympathy for his planet's plight was cl
Notatoy
Aug 21, 2026 · original
Bunny received a flyer in the postal mail claiming she could win “$15,000 Cash or Choose Your Cruise—Spain, Italy, Greece, and More!” There were just three simple steps to claim the prize: Pull the tab of the attached VIN Gauge Combination Box™ and your 5-digit number will light up. Scratch off the circle below. If the two numbers match, you are one of our GRAND PRIZE WINNERS. Immediately call the phone number below to find out which of the five prizes you won (see the prize list below) . First off, I'm assuming that VIN stands for “Very Important Number” and not “Vulvar Intraepithelial Neoplasia.” Second, why is it a “ VIN Gauge Combination Box™?” What does “gauge” have to do with it? It's not referncing a distance, quantity, capacity or dimention, just a number. But whatever. The prizes themselves are nothing to write about, being a bit vague with “worldwide destinations” (Kandongjang-
Yet more noise on emails from other Sean Conners on the Intarwebs
Aug 17, 2026 · original
It appears that someone is wrong on the Internet , and if Hacker News is anything to go by , that person is me ! Or rather, it might Justin Prime who wrote that Stack Exchange post about Gmail's possibly buggy support for periods in the local part of an email address. But one thing not brought up in the Hacker News thread is that Gmail supports custom domains. So if some other Sean Conner were to have Gmail support email for example.org , then I would expect seanconner@example.org (our hypothetical Sean Conner who is not me) to be distinct from seanconner@gmail.com (which is me). And now I have to wonder if this might be a cause for some of the issues being reported? Google is a Leviathan system with millions of moving parts where a slight mishap (like a timeout or some lost packets on a database lookup or even a bug on a system not yet updated) causes email being delivered to seanconner
Did I inadvertently unlock someone else's car doors?
Aug 17, 2026 · original
I went out to get Bunny and myself some lunch, and as I was leaving, I used my fob to pop open the trunk to store the food for the trip home and I noticed that a car near my own honked briefly and flash its headlights. Odd, I thought. I then used my fob to unlock the car, and again, the nearby car honked briefly and flashed its headlights. I then used my fob to lock my car, but this time, the nearby car sat silent. I unlocked my car again, and again, the nearby car honked and flashed its lights. I know that fobs have a decent range on them but I always thought the data sent was unique per fob. Maybe not? And then there's the fact that fobs can help criminals steal cars ! That's more surprising.
Gmail might partially be to blame for me receiving emails from other Sean Conners
Aug 20, 2026 · original
I was reading the Lobsters thread about the article “ A researcher bought noreply.net. Companies started sending him secrets ” when I left a comment about my own struggles with receiving emails for other Sean Conners . That started a thread that swamped the comment section about other people who had similar stories, so it's nice to know that I'm not alone. Also, here's one of my favorite comments in that thread (for reasons that should be apparent): I was about to say, "I know a guy with a whole blog series about that." But then I looked, and you were him. Lobsters comment from Jason McBrayer Heh. But the thread as a whole left me with the idea that there's still a lot of people out there that barely understand email and aren't even sure what their own email even is. Sad. I did get an email about my comment from Keong Lim, claiming it was mostly Google's fault for the confusion and linke
Mowing Da Lawn, part II
Aug 8, 2026 · original
As I was mowing the lawn today at Chez Boca, cursing myself for letting it go a few weeks, I was reminded that it wasn't as bad as that one time at Casa New Jersey . I'm thankful for that.
What is even taste when it comes to programming?
Aug 7, 2026 · original
[This is me reposting a comment I left on Lobsters about “ Taste Is All That's Left ,” a post about vibecoding. I think my comments works well enough on its own here as a post. —Sean] As I read this, I was reminded of two quotes. The first is about the taste gap from Ira Glass: Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.
Unary operators and the Shunting Yard algorithm
Aug 7, 2026 · original
I use the Shunting Yard algorithm to handle precedence when parsing expressions in my assembler . It's great because not only is it simple to implement, but it simplifies the code in a hand-written recursive descent parser . The BNF is effectively: ; BNF per RFC-5234 expr = factor *(op factor) op = '*' ; just the basic ops for now / '/' ; adding more is just adding / '+' ; them to this definition / '-' factor = literal / var / '(' expr ')' literal = DIGIT+ var = (ALPHA / '_') (ALPHA / DIGIT / '_')* When expressing this BNF via a recursive descent parser, the function handling expr is where the Shunting Yard algorithm is used, providing precedence handling. In my implementation, the function handling op returns the precedence and associativity from a table: static struct optable const cops[] = { [OP_EXP] = { OP_EXP , AS_RIGHT , 1000 } , [OP_MUL] = { OP_MUL , AS_LEFT , 900 } , [OP_DIV] = {
Notes on an overheard conversation coming from the Family Room
Aug 5, 2026 · original
“The TV remote isn't working again!” “You need to really smash that select button.” “I am! See?” “Hmmm. Let me try … oh. There you go.” “The remote hates me!” “It seems so.”
The surprising email to “Sean Conner” that wasn't meant for me
Aug 5, 2026 · original
I received yet another email for Sean Conner but this time, it wasn't at Gmail! It was surprising because it was sent from my friend Lorie who currently lives in Pennsylvania, about the new Area Director for Toastmasters , which is funny, because I do not live in Pennsylvania, nor have I been involved with Toastmasters since the 5 th grade (ages 9–10 for non- US people). I wrote her back about this, and I received the following back: Oh my word, I was trying to send to a different Toastmaster that was Sean Conner - and the email got confused - so sorry! My God! The Internet is full of Sean Conners it seems!
Alarm clocks
Aug 5, 2026 · original
Chris Siebenmann uses iPhone as an alarm clock , and his reasons are largely why I too, I keep my old iPhone (which is no longer supported by the Oligarchic Cell Phone Company) as an alarm clock (and why I don't have a new iPhone that is supported is a complicated story I'd rather not get into for my own sanity). And I use the iPhone for all the reasons that Chris does. But one aspect that Chris doesn't mention is the ability to change the alarm sound to prevent myself from being conditioned to ignore the alarm. I have two stories about an old alarm clock (of the type that you plug into the wall) that illustrate my being conditioned to an alarm. Both of these happened in the mid-90s when I had been using the same alarm clock for maybe a decade at that point. The first was a dream. I was at work when my boss approached me. “Baah baah baah baah baah baah,” he said. Nothing I said deterred
The precedence of the factorial operator
Aug 2, 2026 · original
Back when I added a factorial operator to my assembler , the code only applied it to numeric literals because the code that implemented it appeared in the same function as parsing a numeric literal. I only found the bug when I tried to apply a factorial to a subexpression in parenthesis, for example, -(2+1)!. The fix was easy, just move the code out of the numberic literal parsing routine rvalue() to rfactor() where the unary + and - occur, as well as handing subexpressions. But the fix lead to another issue—how to handle a sequence like -3!. Should it error out since negative values aren't defined for factorial? Or should it apply the factorial to “3” and then the unary minus sign? I asked the question over on Lobters and a very loose consensus seemed to be that factorial has a higher precedence than unary minus. I also threw -3! at Wolfram Alpha (that I forgot existed until I started d

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