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qrush

2,472 karma · joined February 5, 2009

A short, sturdy creature fond of drink and industry. Director of Platform Engineering @ Wistia. Started Rubygems.org a while back. Still writing Ruby today!

https://quaran.to

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qrush··on A Staff Engineer's Guide to Inventing Work
Agreed. A better framing would be "defining work".
qrush··on 13 Months Sober (2025)
Going on almost 2 years sober here and I don't regret it. I have an NA beer or alcohol-removed wine maybe 1x/every other week or so and it's a much healthier relationship overall, totally agree with the sentiment of "mornings under control"...and just every more so!
qrush··on An overview of how our family is prepared
I barely am able to plan groceries for a few days to a week ahead, especially with two middle schoolers eating everything in sight. While I would agree with the sentiment (definitely something will disrupt heat/water/food access), I struggle with actually executing on doing anything other than having some real basics around. 30 days of spare food feels like such an enormous amount of space and material.
qrush··on Kusama Yayoi has died
My avatar on GitHub has been of one of her Infinity Rooms for years.

https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/12610?v=4

I never felt like I had enough time to spend in these spaces. To imagine creating them from scratch…incredible.

qrush··on Being ambitious and being a dad
Love this thinking and wish we'd see more content like this on HN.
qrush··on Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?
I got an "it is unacceptable" from their CPO on 8/7, and that they are "working around the clock on it".

https://x.com/mariorod1/status/2085800861469495465

I really think something deeper is going wrong there, and they're not being honest with their paying customers (and enterprises) about it.

qrush··on Ruby Central's Destructive Legacy
I'm still heartbroken by how this has turned out, and it doesn't feel like things have gotten better over the last 9-10 months. I really feel in 10-20 years we will look back at these events as a dark time for this community. I hope to still be writing Ruby in that future. I hope the wounds here, both personal and professional, actually get healed.
qrush··on Show HN: How far do I have to go to run into 100k people?
It's rough not having Canada's population in here. There's way more than 100k people in all directions north from Buffalo and it doesn't feel accurate.
qrush··on An old patent inspired the new "Y-zipper", a three-sided fastener
Direct link to video. These are some freaking cool zippers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWig98GVIno
qrush··on VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide
In case you need a real example that's not just gaming or concerts, join me and thousands of others watching Sumo live hosted by MidnightSumo (he's not a cat)

https://twitch.tv/midnightsumo

qrush··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
Still working on wordtrak’s daily mode. Would love your feedback!

https://wordtrak.com/daily

qrush··on An American Privacy Emergency
This post's call to action is talking to your legislators, but it's missing a link to do so. Find yours here: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
qrush··on RubyLLM: A Ruby framework for all major AI providers
We've used RubyLLM for ~6+ months and it's been mostly OK. The API/Dev UX is good but we have seen little success with engaging the maintainer on PRs, and have noticed a lot of vibe coded PRs being merged (including some rewrites of PRs we submitted) - I suspect an minimal API compatible gem with similar heuristics would do well.
qrush··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On?
Still working on WORDTRAK, a Scrabble/Wordle esque game. I’ve got 25-30 people playing the daily game and trying to grow it!

I wrote about how I built the game’s dictionary and how hard the problem is: https://wordtrak.com/blog/2026-06-05-how-i-built-a-new-dicti...

The most surprising thing from the last month has been building a Discord app/activity has driven the most amount of engagement. Once it’s in your chat it tends to become a daily habit!

Give it a shot here: https://wordtrak.com/daily

qrush··on I built a new dictionary for pedantic word game players
Dang or others, please ignore this - I had a bad URL slug and updated a few things! I can't figure out how to delete my own post...
qrush··on 12,060 piece, $799.99, Sagrada Família is the largest Lego building set to date
It seems like this Lego set should also take 150+ years to build
qrush··on Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
We should grab coffee sometime, neighbor!
qrush··on Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
I’m around 8 miles west of Boston. I was playing on the floor with my daughter and had my ear to the ground- suddenly heard all of the windows shaking, the floor rumbled and an explosion louder than I’ve ever heard before.

Honestly what spooked me the most was seeing nothing on the horizon to help explain it! I am shocked and grateful it didn’t break any windows or cause further damage.

qrush··on GitHub Copilot App
More evidence that GitHub is chasing features over stability of their platform.
qrush··on Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?
I've been dipping my toes back in after nearly 10 years away from native development.

I finally just got an Android app shipped to the Play Store for https://wordtrak.com, after several weeks of back and forth with what I am assuming are mostly robots managing the Google side of this. I was stunned to see how far Android distribution has come (and especially that all changes are now reviewed).

What I was most surprised by though, was all of the ridiculous red tape around the actual process of getting an app listed. Best example: I had to confirm I didn't change the outcome of the Korean War in order to list on Play Store in Korea.

In any case I got most of this done with Claude and expo.dev - it was a huge relief to let Claude Code churn through this and not have to worry about spending months re-learning frameworks and ecosystems.

qrush··on eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible
I backed into my garage stupidly and broke my RAV4's side mirror. I found a guy in Japan who was selling the exact part I needed (the cover for the mirror matching my paint color), OEM for $50. It's like Craigslist but global on eBay. Never change.
qrush··on eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible
I was selling NES/SNES games + boxes. After ~2 years of sporadic sales, I ended up just offloading them to a guy who has a huge used games outpost at a flea market.

I buy a mix of things: clothes, watches, and usually tiles from my favorite pottery in Michigan: Pewabic.

qrush··on eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible
As a avid eBay customer I am pretty relieved. I buy 2-3 items a month and was selling for the last 2 years on the platform. It's come such a long way and is really a great, streamlined experience. Of course I'm sure folks that make their living off their stores & sales will have different opinions, but I'd say as a routine customer and seller it doesn't need an external company's takeover pressure on it.
qrush··on I want to live like Costco people
I just got (at 38) a Costco membership this year, thanks to my in-laws gifting us a membership. There's another huge discount retailer here in Boston (BJs) that I have gone to for years, but Costco is another 10+ min drive away so I've resisted thus far. I will say... I'm still adjusting.

- No aisle signs or labels anywhere. I understand the retail strategy here but the lack of efficiency in MY experience kills me. Clearly they can't move the bakery, or meat department. But after ~5 visits I still have no idea where some basic products can be found.

- Who is buying a kayak, or shed while shopping for groceries?

- I continually make the mistake of going during the weekend when it is the most packed store on Earth. There were no less than 3 Cybertrucks in the parking lot.

I don't have the "must-buy" item yet, but every time I go, I feel like I need to take a nap after.

qrush··on Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
Thanks!!! I'd love ideas on sharing the end results...I went a bit overboard with the video recaps but that's not the best for simple text messages.
qrush··on Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
I was thinking about this too, especially since there's a literal "race" condition for who swaps first. Perhaps it would be fairest given the async nature to give each player their own bag. Great suggestion!
qrush··on Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
I’ll check it out on Firefox. I just got an Android around a week ago so haven’t tested it much there yet.
qrush··on Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
Thank you!!
qrush··on Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
Fair point! You can just play against the CPU and I had that as the default mode when signed out (you can still get to it after the daily game). I’ll think more on this!
qrush··on Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
One fun thing I learned here is that advertisers won’t even consider a site or game that’s not launched yet…not even Google AdSense would approve me. I am tracking this though and obviously want to make number go up.
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