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.

Blogger - My oldest blog using the Blogger platform contains posts full of opinions, gaming, and code.

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

It's my swan song!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Is that... T-Pain?

Take a good hard look at the mother fucking float.

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CatSalad🐈πŸ₯— (D.Burch) :blobcatrainbow:
@catsalad @infosec.exchange

Did you know that Pavlov's hair was famously soft and silky?
It's because he conditioned it. :ablobcatlurk:

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

"People suck. Don't be people." -roncli, 2019. πŸ™ƒ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

And when the groundhog saw its shadow, the people declared:

"FOUR MORE YEARS OF STRESS EATING!"

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I told you, son!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Boss: "We need to come up with a number of hours it will take to do this super big project."

Me: "Do you want that number written out, or can I use exponential form?"

πŸ™ƒ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I guess you CAN'T do it with True Value. cnn.com/2024/10/14/business/tr

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Former 2 time world champion DogPlayingTetris becomes the first player to ever rollover the level counter in NES Tetris, performing what's known in the community as "Rebirth". Final score: 29,486,164, 4216 lines, level 347 (256 + 91)... all huge world records.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Back row... Mother with screaming infant, 300 lb linebacker, and me. Or what's left of me.

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Solitha
@solitha @mastodon.social

🚨 James McGovern 🚨

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I'd also love a 6 hour layover overnight instead of taking the red eye I was going to take and be 7 hours later getting into Cleveland than I wanted, why do you ask?

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Why yes, I'd love to leave at 4:40 to get to the airport at 6:20 for an 8:20 flight that got delayed to 9:05 which is too late for my connection so now I'm on a 10:20 flight instead. Why do you ask?

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Twitch getting SOMETHING right for once...

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

You may just be a po'boy, but I love you. β™₯️

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I've never had as much fun on comms for a Tetris match as I did tonight with NinjaOfNinjas for the silver bracket semis and finals. What a show!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Logan Paul didn't qual for silver unfortunately. πŸ™ƒ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I'm not done! I'll be casting the later rounds of the silver bracket today at 6:30 PM Pacific at twitch.tv/classictetris3. Cya there!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I'll be live casting qualifiers today for CTWC at twitch.tv/classictetris2 at 1 PM Pacific and twitch.tv/classictetris3 at 3:30 PM Pacific. This year's CTWC is the craziest yet so don't miss it!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Public restrooms are funny.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

The golden state, more like the blackened state. πŸ”₯

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Just a note to everyone out there who still believes 2020 hasn't ended that today is Unquinquaginember 21st, 2020.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Burritos can be used for bribing if necessary. 🌯 :)

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

@shanselman Who at Microsoft do I have to bribe to fix ADO so that those of us on dark mode who copy/paste text from one task to another can do so without our friends on light mode seeing dark text on a dark background?

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I updated the blog post with a statement from Revival. While I'm not particularly happy with Revival's decision, I understand their motives. It's just a shame that it was someone from Interplay that had to go and do this. "By games for gamers" my ass.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Damn, got another Tetris world record! This time in the arcade variant developed by Atari. 6,008,005 points, 5,386 lines, round 363. Be warned, it's nearly FIVE HOURS. twitch.tv/videos/2131759212

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I certainly didn't have "Overload but with web3 features" on my 2024 bingo card. WTF did Revival Productions just do?

roncli.com/blogger/39495275106

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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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