I've switched jobs. Usual gripes with the old programming shop. Nothing new, earth shattering or insightful. I sometimes wonder if I'm in the right field. I like programming, but I've talked with so many people who have quit and I don't see much regret from any of them.

Funny thing is, I like playing around and doing my own thing when it comes to technology. But I hate working on other people's garbage. I also hate producing more garbage on top of it. A little discouraged today. Everyone has those days.

I've spent the last few months using another Slashdot account. It was fun for a while but sometimes this place wears me out. Too many extreme points of view. I get all upset when I see poor thinking and judgement. I don't mean trolls either. I mean the people who are dedicated and serious. It bothers me. I've found I'm much happier being productive doing my own thing.

*sigh* Not one of my more insightful posts. Sometimes a little self honesty cleans the soul. Tomorrow is a new day.

I'm addicted to Slashdot. I go through these periods of having to visit several times a day just to make sure I haven't missed anything. I'm in one of those periods now. I've been sucking on the firehose lately too.

Then I go through other periods where I don't visit for months. I don't understand why I go through these violent swings of interest and disinterest.

I've been tweaking my friends and foe list now for a while and I think I finally have things set so I can enjoy reading discussions. I don't really see people I don't want to see here anymore. Once I configured the filtering like this, this place is pretty nice to visit and the comments are pleasant. It's taken months to get to this point.

I'm thinking about paring down my friends list so I stop getting the chronic posters. You know, the ones you see post on every story, every time with nothing to say but group think or some dumb wise crack. I haven't done it yet to anyone because once in a while my "friends" say something interesting even if they're noisy. That's how they made my "friends" list.

I have my friends modded +6, friends of friends +3 (so I see them if they have good karma), foes of friends -3, and foes -6. Then I set my threshold to 4. That seems to work well for me but Slashdot doesn't do a good job of arranging comments for higher thresholds. A lot of people seem to understand this so they quote what they are reponding to. This helps a lot but Slashdot needs to fix this formatting issue. Formatting nested only seems to work for threshold -1.

Friends are not necessarily people that I endorse. Foes are not necessarily people I don't like.

I add to my friends list when I see someone post something meaningful so I can easily pick them out the next time I come across that user. I expect consistency in quality comments. When someone posts something I can't swallow, I remove them from my friends list or add that user to my Foe list.

I add to my foe list when I want to flag a user who posts something trollish, extremist, flamish, stupid, or maybe just someone I want to keep track of because I don't like the viewpoint or the way the viewpoint was communicated. I remove people from my foe list when I see they have things to say that are useful. Maybe they simply had a bad post and I need to reconsider, so I do.

Friends and Foes are a way for me to track people with similar philosophies or academically valid arguments. My lists are not a way to gauge whether those individuals are good or bad, left wing or right wing, smart or dumb, etc.