Andrew Rich — writing about software, Spokane, and whatever else.https://projectinsomnia.com/en-ushttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/gmail-filter-character-limit/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/gmail-filter-character-limit/Gmail caps the length of a filter's from: field, and mine was full at 698 characters across 24 senders. Combining what I could bought back 61 characters. The real fix was a Google Apps Script that reads senders from a Sheet, so adding a newsletter means tagging one message instead of editing a string. Plus the Gmail query injection I found in my own address parsing, and the production bug 49 passing tests could not have caught.Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/torrent-frozen-at-99-percent-dead-swarm/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/torrent-frozen-at-99-percent-dead-swarm/A torrent stuck at 99.2% for two weeks with zero seeders isn't slow, it's dead: the missing piece was never distributed to anyone alive. How to confirm that in five minutes with transmission-remote, why adding trackers won't save you, and the two yt-dlp plugin bugs I hit routing around it (relative imports, and the *IE class-name gotcha that crashes the URL matcher).Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/five-races/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/five-races/One finish, then five races I didn't complete. Why I'm retiring from long-course triathlon, and how a race in 2023 shaped the two years that followed.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/virgin-voyages-review/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/virgin-voyages-review/After 11 Disney cruises over 20 years, we tried Virgin Voyages' Brilliant Lady for an 8-night Pacific Coast run from LA to Vancouver. It changed how we think about cruising.Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/i-didnt-ship-anything-this-week/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/i-didnt-ship-anything-this-week/160 PRs across two GitHub orgs, every one green, exactly zero of them a feature. A week of plumbing — Claude review workflow v3, a Dependabot trusted-namespace policy, CI security hardening, and a tech-debt scheduler that finally finishes the night.Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/unlocking-login-keychain-over-ssh-headless-mac/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/unlocking-login-keychain-over-ssh-headless-mac/macOS locks the login keychain when there's no GUI login, which quietly breaks Claude Code, git credential helpers, and anything that calls SecKeychainFindGenericPassword. The fix: 1Password on the client, ssh connection multiplexing, and `security -i` on the remote — no password in argv, on disk, or in env on either side.Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/1password-claude-credentials/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/1password-claude-credentials/Migrating Claude Code and Claude Desktop off on-disk secrets and onto 1Password service accounts: one vault, one token in Keychain, no plaintext anywhere. Plus a macOS TCC database detour.Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/ssh-anywhere-home-lab-vpn/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/ssh-anywhere-home-lab-vpn/OpenVPN on TCP/443 through a Synology NAS, with DNS tricks to make .local hostnames work over the tunnel. A practical guide to remote access that survives hostile networks.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/building-website-for-someone-who-uses-it/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/building-website-for-someone-who-uses-it/A cleaning business runs on Thumbtack at $30 per contact. I built a static site on Netlify to filter leads, cut costs, and give the owner a web presence she can edit herself.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/nightowlstudio-scroll-driven-redesign/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/nightowlstudio-scroll-driven-redesign/Redesigning nightowlstudio.us with pure CSS scroll-driven animations: a forest that transitions from afternoon to night as you scroll, an owl that blinks, and one important accessibility bug I almost shipped.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/solo-building-observability-platform/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/solo-building-observability-platform/How one sentence of requirements became a full-stack data platform — Python, FastAPI, Streamlit, SQLite, Kubernetes — built solo over 5 months at Oracle Health. Then 30,000 of us got the same email.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/ios-simulator-external-volume/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/ios-simulator-external-volume/iOS simulator runtimes can't live on external storage. macOS TCC silently blocks CoreSimulatorService from writing to removable volumes, and there's no supported workaround.Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/synergy-multi-monitor-rabbit-hole/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/synergy-multi-monitor-rabbit-hole/Synergy flattens all monitors into one virtual screen. When your displays aren't the same height, edge transitions break. Here's why and how to fix it.Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/baumgartner-must-go/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/baumgartner-must-go/Rep. Baumgartner on Federal Agent ViolenceSat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/2025-in-live-music-and-comedy/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/2025-in-live-music-and-comedy/My 2025 live music/comedy recap!Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/when-your-mac-admin-password-isnt-accepted-until-you-reset-securetoken/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/when-your-mac-admin-password-isnt-accepted-until-you-reset-securetoken/On macOS, there’s nothing more frustrating than typing your known admin password into a system dialog — only to have it rejected, over and…Wed, 24 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/automating-macos-security-dialogs-a-tale-of-yak-shaving-and-applescript/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/automating-macos-security-dialogs-a-tale-of-yak-shaving-and-applescript/TL;DR: Created an AppleScript to click “Allow” on recurring nginx security prompts automatically.Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/2024-in-live-music/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/2024-in-live-music/In 2024, I attended nine live music performances, including 14 artists — here’s a wrap-up!Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/my-2023-in-live-music/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/my-2023-in-live-music/It's a bit late, but here is my 2023 live music wrap-up!Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-remove-unwanted-items-from-plexs-recently-added-sections/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-remove-unwanted-items-from-plexs-recently-added-sections/I added a movie in 2019 but it’s showing as Recently Added. Annoying!Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-corporate/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-corporate/put the bad news on blue slides, because blue = calmingFri, 12 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/my-2022-in-live-music/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/my-2022-in-live-music/My setlist.fm stats tell the story: I love live music. And after a dreary nearly three years of pandemic cancellations, live music is back…Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-build-a-great-company-culture/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-build-a-great-company-culture/Want to build a great company culture? Here are your four essential components.Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-get-your-peloton-rides-into-ironman-vr-club/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/how-to-get-your-peloton-rides-into-ironman-vr-club/SportHeroes’ application security failures impact IRONMAN VR Club participantsSat, 18 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/hallway/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/hallway/I wrote this for a Narration class last weekend, based on an extemporaneous speech about “my favorite room”; the homework assignment was to…Mon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/an-incomplete-list-of-everything-reset-all-settings-actually-resets/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/an-incomplete-list-of-everything-reset-all-settings-actually-resets/In troubleshooting a strange Apple Pay problem (the iPhone helpfully tells me to “Hold near reader to pay” even when the phone is literally…Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/syncing-garmin-forerunner-920xt-triathlon-activities-to-strava-and-runkeeper/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/syncing-garmin-forerunner-920xt-triathlon-activities-to-strava-and-runkeeper/The Garmin Forerunner 920XT is a terrific triathlon watch, and I really like the tri mode — where you just hit the Lap key in between…Thu, 16 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/never-too-early/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/never-too-early/…to start thinking about my athletic goals for 2017.Wed, 07 Sep 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/good-news-comes-in-threes/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/good-news-comes-in-threes/A huge personal athletic achievement: I broke two hours in the half marathon last weekend, at Brazen Racing’s Summer Breeze race in San…Tue, 09 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://projectinsomnia.com/blog/athletic-self-assessment/https://projectinsomnia.com/blog/athletic-self-assessment/Watching the Olympics brings to mind how I roughly approximate and rate my performance in any given athletic endeavor. I figure that if I’m…Sun, 07 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT