Jason Alexander

As I approach 2k followers, I thought I should introduce myself to many of you… Hi, I’m Jason! 👋 I’m a 50yo who dropped out of college with 32 hours remaining on his CS degree to go to work at the fun place his roommate was working at. Turns out that was @mcuban ‘s Audionet/Broadcast.com where I was employee 17. But don’t worry, I left weeks before the IPO lol… From there I was a programmer and DBA for decades, working at various startups and companies… I worked at Match.com twice, once as the Lead over search and matching, again building the anti-fraud group and tools. Later, I started my own startup with a buddy from Microsoft, where we raised a big round from Intel Capital, and ultimately got let go just as we were about to sell (never start a company with a friend). All the while, making my way up the ladder, learning and growing. 15 years ago my company, Kalkomey, sold to PE and I want from COO/CTO to CEO where I ran and grew that until it sold again 4.5 years later. I then went into my next PE-backed CEO role at Concord where I again grew and sold that one 3 years later. Now, I’m at a Bessemer Forge owned software company in Toronto (I live in Phoenix; yes, it’s a crazy commute) called Mortgage Automator where I’m so lucky to be working with many of the same great people I’ve known for decades. I’ve been so fortunate to have about 30 close friends and colleagues that I’ve gone from company to company with. Many are still at Concord doing great work. All of this while getting the great advice of my mentor and previous CEO, JB (I won’t at you, but thank you). This life is all about the relationships you build. The people you meet. And the tough problems you tackle. Enjoy every step. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I tend to get in the zone and completely forget to do basic things like... oh... DRINK WATER or STAND UP for like 10-12 hours straight. So, I built Focus... just a little widget for Omarchy that can be pinned above everything and yells loudly when a timer is hit. Repo: github.com/last-refuge/focus

"All 2,604 tests in the affected crates pass..." WHAT THE ACTUAL FRAK This is a problem. Half of these tests are likely garbage. It's easy to write tests for something you already know the answer to. Does it give you later regression tests? I guess, sure. But, these tests don't make me feel that much better! This AI test bloat is a total racket, and it's not buying us much of anything, really. Useful, maybe? But, is the juice worth the squeeze? Highly doubtful.

And yes, I still love to code if you haven’t noticed. And I’ve been heavy into AI for the past 18 months or so.

Got a big polish pass into Overlook tonight, cleaning up the menu bars, the padding, and tightening up the UI quite a bit. It's really coming together! Amazing email/calendar client for Omarchy! Repo: github.com/last-refuge/overl…

🤯

Ash builds TensorFold... help him get some new hardware that would benefit the whole community!

Well, well, well... look what we have here!

As I start building out video conference capabilities into Lazy, I’m running into the lovely H.264 encoding patent. How ridiculous. Luckily the last US patents expire at the end of 2027.

For any of you other keyboard geeks out there like me, check this out! ScottW builds cool shit!

Beautiful morning in Toronto!

Such a house of cards…

Go on, Sam. It’ll be fiiiiiine.

I find myself bumping my font size regularly now. This kinda hurts my feelings. 🤣

Tell your head GrokBot to build you a dashboard that gives you an at-a-glance view of what’s going on, and to keep it updated at all times. Tell it to make it beautiful and create images to ensure it’s a delight to look at. @poteto - it would be amazing to be able to pin something in the app.

I worked on so much this weekend, but this is one that turned out kinda fun... grabbing libghostty (my favorite terminal that doesn't run on Windows, but it's libraries do!) I built Ghostlink! Sometimes I gotta be on my Windows machine and when I do, I want my experience to be beautiful, as always! Repo: github.com/last-refuge/ghost…

I got webhook integrations into Lazy with durable disconnect/reconnect, and easy client auto-updates. It's coming along! Now, I sleep... agents do work! Lazy repo: github.com/last-refuge/lazy/ Site: lazyto.day

Happy Halloween all!

Coffee in hand. Time to head back to the bat cave and see what got done overnight. 😂

I bought my daughters new MacBooks for Xmas (shhh don’t tell them) and I’m already thinking about getting their old ones so I can load Omarchy on them.