Nickolas Means

@nmeans.dev

Storyteller, student of disasters, coffee obsessive. 📝: https://nmeans.dev 🎙️: https://managingup.show 👨‍💻: https://medscout.io 🌮: Austin, TX 🏳️‍🌈 Y'all Means All! 💚 Verde Hasta la Muerte!

There’s more creative financial engineering in this Inter Miami team than there was at Enron. MLS bent so many rules to make it possible for Beckham to bring Messi and half of Barça to Miami and buy this Cup. It’s a media spectacle, no doubt, but it’s so delegitimatizing for the league.

@andrew-wiebe.bsky.social Hope that Houston pen shows up on Instant Replay this week. Biggest question for me: If it’s “clear and obvious”, why does it take Alexis da Silva three full minutes at the VAR monitor to make that decision? IMO, VAR should be full-speed only with a time or replay limit.

Claude Code is hands down the prettiest, most usable CLI application I've ever seen. Bravo to whoever at Anthropic decided to care this much and put this much energy into building an elegant CLI user experience.

Third time seeing it live, know most of the words, even read the 800 page biography it’s based on. Still cried just as hard at the end. Hamilton is one of the best pieces of storycraft I’ve ever encountered.

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Welp, I managed to hold off on this rabbit hole for more than a decade. Long way to go on the art, but three weeks in and I’m making single-origin light roast Cortados I would be happy to get in a cafe.

A Cortado with art in the form of a slightly wonky heart. A Gaggia Classic Evo Pro espresso machine in thunder black with a tamper and tamping mat in the foreground.

If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company. It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably create. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m happy to invest and/or help

I’m pretty sure that shuttering 18F, likely necessitating each client agency individually tenders that work out to McKinsey or Booz or whoever at 5x the cost, is the opposite of saving money.

PSA: In case you're phone-anxious, know that your call to your Senator will most likely go to voicemail. If you're concerned about what's going on, you should call them.

Giving @kagi.com a try and loving it so far. I had forgotten what a calm and delightful experience it is to search for something and have the first result be exactly what you were looking for.

@gruber.foo Ozlo (ozlosleep.com) seems like one of these million-dollar-scale tech stories. Sleepbuds weren't a Bose-scale success but attracted a very devoted following, so 3 folks left Bose, licensed the IP, and added the most requested feature (Bluetooth streaming). They're fantastic.

Ozlo Sleepbuds®

Ozlo’s mission is simple: better sleep, naturally. The Ozlo Sleepbuds® are tiny, wireless, ultra-comfortable earbuds designed specifically for the best sleep of your life.

ozlosleep.com

Apple’s busy giving us generated emoji and text tone change AI tools, when all I really want is for Siri to make even somewhat reasonable grammar and punctuation choices when I dictate a text message.

My next talk will be on the lessons we can learn from the structural failure of this 10 year old IKEA Tobias chair that my son usually sits in but that I sat in tonight.

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If you have a relative who really needs but can’t afford hearing aids, grab a set of AirPods Pro 2 while they’re on sale. I helped my father-in-law walk through the hearing test and set up hearing aid functionality today. Watching him actually enjoy conversation at dinner tonight was everything.

So, I did a talk at #RubyConf. A keynote, an incredible honor. But before I did it, I updated my slides with my BlueSky (and Mastodon) handles. When I came off stage, I saw this, and it’s been literal years since I’ve seen this on socials after a talk. I’m so glad we all picked a place finally.

A BlueSky iOS icon with 49 notifications