Ivo Sandoval

EXPLAIN ANALYZE has never lied to me

A support query that took 13.8 seconds, a report that timed out at 300, and a fix that turned out to be statistics rather than an index. Real plans, Postgres 18.2.

Justified text on the web is a lie we agreed to

A browser fills one line and forgets it, then pays for the mistake in word spaces. Worked examples, what hyphens and text-wrap pretty really buy, and what I set.

The cash was in the Philippines, allegedly

Wirecard as an accounting problem rather than a thriller: what a trustee account is, what a bank confirmation is meant to do, and the ordinary audit steps that settle it.

218 hours on one galaxy

Three winters on NGC 891 from a Bortle 4 backyard. Full log, the square root maths on what each block of hours bought, and the 40 hours I deleted.

the chord i keep coming back to

the four note stack i keep using, written as frequency ratios, with the cent values and how far the tempered version sits from each one.

Sea slugs are the best argument against design

Stolen harpoons, stolen chloroplasts, disposable genitals, and a slug that throws away its own body and grows another. None of it looks planned.

My sky is not dark and I have the numbers

Two years of SQM-L readings from one hole in my lawn, the night a floodlight went up next door, and what 0.33 mag/arcsec^2 costs in hours.

Rust removal, five methods, one winner

I sheared a rusty belt guard into five coupons and gave each one a different treatment. Times, costs, mass loss, and what each did to the metal underneath.

The five sentences in every fraudulent management letter

Five sentence archetypes I keep finding in letters management writes to auditors and boards, what each one is doing, and which one I circle in red.

A supplement checklist for people who walk

A fork of Ines Kruger's method, rewritten for people who walk all day, because half the trail forums are now shops selling electrolyte powder.

Your pack is four kilos heavier than you think

How to weigh a pack honestly, bin bag and wet tent included, and the point where cutting grams stops buying you speed and starts costing you sleep.