It's been a long time since I've written anything of substance here, so let this post serve as a catch up to what's been going on.

Since April of 2012, I have had the pleasure of working on the iOS application known as Sift. The company developing Sift is a San Francisco Bay Area startup, of which I am a founder. Needless to say, I put in many hours of work into the product.

Sift was more than a job to me. It was an opportunity to do something big, and perhaps make a profound impact in the way people shop online. It's still in its infancy, but the product that we put out there is pretty awesome.

However, I decided to step away from the company in February after three months of consideration. It was a very difficult decision for me, as I truly believed in the product and the company. I was a remote worker in a high-impact position, and I found that it wasn't easy maintaining the visibility required of such a position in a remote location while still being able to get done the stuff that needed to get done. This became especially true as the company grew, both with more internal employees and having to work with multiple contractors outside of the company (and the country), which would have me going as early as 8 am and as late as 2 am. Combine that with the demanding travel schedule - I spent only 8 of the final 18 weeks of 2013 at home - and it's not hard for most people to see how stress levels were through the roof.

Extreme stress levels aren't something I'm particularly fond of, which led to my decision to move on. I did spend a good deal of time with the company, accomplishing and learning plenty along the way. I learned much about the open source world, and found that I very much enjoyed working with Node JS. I met a lot of awesome people as well, and I can only wish for their further success as Sift continues to grow.

While leaving was certainly not a decision I came to lightly, I'm quite happy that I was able to leave my second startup on my own terms after being able to accomplish so much for them. My first startup, Trax in Space, ended in financial disaster, and I wasn't ready to step away when it all fell apart. This time, I look back fondly on the experience, knowing that I was a major contributor, and that the company is still growing upon the foundation that I helped to build.

So what's next for me? Well, back to the Monday through Friday, 8-hour a day grind, resharpening and honing my .NET skills while bringing my schedule back to a sense of normalcy that I have found was very much missed. What else?

Music. I'm slowly getting back into my music, and as always have several songs floating around. I want to get myself a new electric guitar next, as my last one bit the dust some years ago. In the meantime, I post things I'm working on to my creative blog as I work on them.

Coding. I'm in the process of upgrading all of my .NET projects to 2013, will be updating LibWowAPI, and plan on slowly transitioning my websites over to Windows Azure. I plan on learning Rendr and incorporating it into my personal website, roncli.com, as a way of learning and showing off my node.js skill. And I am wanting to figure out Xamarain so that I may be able to write mobile games.

Gaming. And of course, I spent a ton of time between jobs gaming. I'm big time into Diablo 3 these days, have gotten into streaming my gaming experiences, and am a regular host on the Six Gaming Podcast where we talk all about gaming.

Seems like I'm getting back to my roots these days. That could be a sign of some wonderful times to come.

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roncli.com Blog
This is my blog where I give my thoughts and opinions on various topics and share my creative endeavors with the world. I run two personal blogs, but combine them here for ease of access.

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Social Media
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

@solitha New rule: cat tax. For every pun you post or repost, you're now required to pay the tax of posting one cute cat video.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Today was a special day. I scored 1,016,221 points in classic NES Tetris, the first time I broke the 999,999 maxout barrier.

With that maxout, I became the oldest person to get their first ever maxout at 46 years 319 days.

After I scored that, I learned that today would have been 7-time Tetris world champion Jonas Neubauer's 43rd birthday.

I am FILLED with incredible emotion tonight.

clips.twitch.tv/AverageImporta

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

"I'm Sorry, What?!" The biggest bailout in the history of Descent II! youtube.com/watch?v=GLlTk7wa59

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

β€œBART anime merch" are three words that I would not have expected to go together, but here we are. railgoods.com/bart/anime/

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Does anyone else sing the chorus to "Cherish" by Kool & The Gang to themselves whenever they play or watch streams of Balatro? Or is that just me?

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I'm fact that's what Lingo needs: a "phone" block. The clue is an incorrect autocorrected form of the answer. πŸ™ƒ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

It's like my phone knows I've been playing Lingo. I typed in "exited" and my phone was all:

⬜️ EXCITED ------
β–ͺ️
β–ͺ️

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

@arborelia Bag-les.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

A comparison of the classic Tetris and Descent communities. Not a post I write lightly, either.

roncli.com/blogger/37031578090

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martin
@luftlesen @mstdn.jp

Aptiz played #Pentis again. In the beginning you can see roncli asking in the chat for the right version. About an hour later, he broke the #PentisRankings record with 60K ! Congratulations roncli πŸ† πŸŽ‰
twitch.tv/videos/2052528360?sr

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Yeah, it's season 11. But the OTL Season 6 highlight reel is up, this time Fireball has taken the reins! Check out this video jam packed full of kills, deaths, silliness, and Sirius puns. youtube.com/watch?v=SXstLVjnaG

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Over on , someone retweeted sympathy for the people being laid off today...

...and then said that Amazon Games was hiring. You know, the one that just had layoffs in NOVEMBER.

Honestly? Tech sucks right now.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Seriously. Why is it called Sagittarius, A Star? Clearly, it's Sagittarius, A Black Hole. Silly astronomers.

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Cultural Historian: Dr. RGST
@DrRGST @mastodon.social
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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

This eslint/stylistic breakup is going to give me a headache. Don't developers have something better to do than give other developers busywork?

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Bing is so bad. otl.gg is being blocked in their search results, and Bing webmaster tools are absolutely useless, not telling me why it's being blocked.

Does anyone know of some way to get a human to look at this and see what's wrong with it?

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Olivia W'
@WLivi @retro.pizza

it's not actually common for real hackers to use two keyboards at once; that's just a stereo type.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I got my wish. πŸ€’

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Me and my wife, despite buying a house of nice size, always seem to get in each other's way, be it in the kitchen, on the stairs, it doesn't matter. She's all up in my two square feet.

I often joke that all I want for Christmas is my two square feet.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Update 2: The record that beat Blue Scuti stood for one day. Blue Scuti got it back.

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πŸŒͺ MikeMathia.com πŸ“‘
@mikemathia @ioc.exchange

#C++

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Update: This record stood for 1 day.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I got the honor and privilege of calling the NES Tetris NTSC world record today while running Classic Tetris Wars on my Twitch channel for the very first time. It was thrilling. Congratulations to Blue Scuti for his 6,609,220 level 153 performance. clips.twitch.tv/DiligentDeadGo

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Yogthos
@yogthos @mas.to
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TwistBit
@TwistBit @musicians.today

like, you used to use a phone line to access the internet

now the internet is accessible on your phone

nothing has changed actually

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Six Degrees of Sunday returns Sunday, January 7th, at twitch.tv/roncli. Cya there!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Are you ready to get Six'd Off?

Six Degrees of Sunday, my 6DoF long play Twitch series, is getting revived for 2024. Plus, I will be producing Six'd Off, a companion YouTube series showcasing each game.

Check out the announcement for the game list and more! youtube.com/watch?v=yeRbjjpQVZ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

So I started a fresh YouTube channel some time ago, and yesterday I released the first real video to it.

Check out highlights from Argus Industrial Moons' run to the OTL Season 10 Best of the Rest title! youtube.com/watch?v=Z2x-GGW9FY

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I guess that qualifies as a "log"...

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

People at work are calling Kubernetes K8, and I hate it. It's not "Kubernete"!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Want a preview of what CTWC will be like next weekend from a gameplay perspective? CTL Season 22 finals starting now.

twitch.tv/classictetrisleague

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

No airport hell this morning, but you know that lady that talks about security at literally every airport? I just realized, she sounds old AF.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

If this security line posted signs "5 minutes from this point", "10 minutes...", etc., They'd have to post them every foot.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I'm sorry, what?

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Robin Ward
@eviltrout @carpdiem.online
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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Did I miss Elon making another purchase? twitter.com/unity/status/17016

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Konstantinos Dimopoulos
@konstantinosd @mastodon.gamedev.place

That's a lovely free bundle of books for people interested in getting into games programming: fanatical.com/en/bundle/intern

#gamedev #book #free #programming

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Use TypeScript they said. It'll be better they said.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

If you know, you know.

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