Yesterday was a good day. I was able to start easing into my routine, accomplished more than I have in a while, and had baked ham for dinner. I'm especially happy about the ham, because I haven't had a properly roasted/baked *anything* in a couple of years.
I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a proper kitchen with a grown-up-sized fridge.
Anyway, to top it all off, I had a very good night of sleep. Went to bed stupid-early, fell asleep by about six, and only woke up a couple of times before getting up for real about three-thirty. Bliss.
Today is going to be more of the same, but better. At least that's the plan, anyway. I'm looking at two days where I have no outside commitments, and no one to interrupt my flow. If I can manage to scrape together even four hours of Brain today and tomorrow, I'll be back on track. And after literally weeks of doing nothing but putting out fires and being exhausted, just the thought of that feels amazing.
In other news, there is no other news. I'm very boring.
Grinding
Got a fair bit done, yesterday. Not nearly as much as I'd like, but enough to say I've officially restarted the "grind."
Among other things, I've started diving into Rust, which is something I've put off for a while, now. Even after a day of learning it, I have some thoughts, but I won't share them quite yet.
I will, however, share some thoughts about the state of computer hardware in this, the Year of Our Void 2025...
In my quest to find and/or build a computer which only runs FOSS---even at the lowest levels---I have learned/verified that everything is terrible. For instance, if you are running an Intel chipset manufactured in the last, oh, say, fifteen years, you are running MINIX.
This is because Intel's chipsets include something called the "Intel Management Engine," which is described as an "autonomous subsystem." It runs a tweaked variant of the MINIX 3 operating system, but it's largely an obfuscated binary blob which hasn't really been effectively reverse-engineered.
Essentially, it's a proprietary, "secret" OS which your "real" OS can't see and can't do anything about. And pretty much every privacy and security organization you've ever heard of has been saying it's terrible. Words like "rootkit" and "backdoor" flow freely.
Well, if you dig deeper, you'll find that every major chipset by every major manufacturer has something similar. So, if you'd like to mitigate the risk of being surveilled by your hardware, you're basically fucked unless you're willing to use a computer old enough to vote.
And this is before we even get to things like modern GPUs, video decoders, and wireless chipsets, which almost universally require undocumented binary blobs in order to work.
So, yeah, I'm kind of disappointed. Not surprised, of course, but frustrated that the answer to "How do I run only FOSS" is basically "Hahahahahahahha!"
Still, I'm not willing to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or even the enemy of slightly better. There are ways to minimize one's "proprietary footprint" and risk, so my research into all of this ongoing.
I plan to write it all up once I've dug deeper.
"I feel so relaxed!"
That's a Good Place reference in the title, because I'm sitting here with my phone fully charged. Also? It's the new phone!
The upgrade process was only slightly less terrible than I feared. I didn't have to talk to a human, but I did have to scream uncontrollably in rage at an inanimate object for several minutes.
The "highlight" of the experience at the point was where I was halfway through the eSIM swap, and Samsung insisted I create an account and verify my phone number before it would let me out of the setup program.
It wanted to verify this number via a text, immediately, despite me not having a phone at that moment which could actually receive a text.
The "fix" for this was to bail all the way back out of the setup process and not let the phone connect to Wi-Fi. Apparently, if you don't have an Internet connection, setup shits itself in just the right way that it'll consent to let you out. Then you can manually connect to Wi-Fi, grab your eSIM, and you're golden.
Some people's children.
Anyway, I got my phone mostly working the way I want it, then I went to the grocery store.
According to my plans, I would have spent the rest of the day getting some work done on my computer and goofing off.
Things did not go according to plan.
I ended up making a big batch of Hungarian goulash, then a friend called about getting Linux running on an ancient laptop he had kicking around. I invited him over for dinner and technofuckery.
Then another friend texted that he had the day off and was in town, so I invited him over too.
Why did I decide to use my day "off" to entertain friends and fight with computers? I don't know, but I actually enjoyed it, so everything's cool.
Sadly, we couldn't get Ubuntu 24.04 to install on the machine. The laptop was an HP thing, at least a decade old. On paper, it just barely satisfied the minimum requirements for a desktop installation. In practice, it had a non-functional battery, at least one bad USB port, and I suspect either some kind of drive or controller issue.
The installer kept crashing, drives kept unmounting and remounting, and syslog was so full of random errors it actually apologized at one point. (I swear I'm not making that last part up.)
So, the laptop is heading to the recycling center, and I'm going to see about hooking my friend up with some kind of Linux-based mini-PC.
Today? I'm hiding in my room.
Joy of joys
It looks like I might have something approaching a "normal" day ahead of me. And that trend might continue through the weekend!
I need to do grocery shopping today, and I also need to set up my new phone. Other than these two things, I should be able to focus on my projects, and might even make a little progress on the pile of moving-related clutter.
I'm still a little sore and grumpy, and I'm really not looking foward to going outside in this cold, but at least my list of annoyances is mercifully short today.
Sore and grumpy
Various random thoughts...
Surprising no one, all of the muscles are stiff and sore today.
A neighbor/relative came over with their super beefy snowblower and cleaned up the rest of the driveway and yard yesterday afternoon. That was very awesome of them, because it means I don't have to poke around outside today and risk further injury.
Last night, UPS consented to deliver my new phone. I think it was about eight, but I'm not sure. I went to bed almost immediately after the hand-off.
I've been kind of a grumpy old fart these last few days. I should probably work on that.
Owie
It has been 0 days since I injured myself shoveling snow.
Apparently, we got around two inches of slushy, wet snow and sleet last night. And apparently when the plow when by they decided to put most of what landed in the street right at the end of my driveway.
And, of course, it froze.
So, instead of popping out to do a quick grocery store run and working on something productive, I spent two and a half hours hacking a wall of ice apart with a plastic shovel.
Reader, I hurt.
And I never made it to the store, because I was totally out of fucks to give once I got done with the yard.
Limbo
I ordered my new phone on the thirteenth. I did this before two in the afternoon, which according to my carrier means my phone shipped that day and would be here two days after that.
My carrier happily reports that my phone shipped. UPS happily reports that a label for the phone was indeed printed, but they haven't even picked it up yet.
It is now the sixteenth, and I have a sneaking suspicious I'll have to talk to a human tomorrow.
In other news, it's snowing. I think we're going to luck out on the snow accumulation, but they're predicting an absolute shit-ton of freezing rain and icing. Which means I'm probably going to spend most of the day worrying about power failures and car crashes.
Oh, and we're going to have high winds with strong gusts all day tomorrow, so yeah, probably saying hello to my old friend, Darkness.
I'm not unaware of the synchronicity in moving back to a town I didn't want to be in, and the weather being just absolute shit for my first couple of weeks here.
It's like I'm a cartoon character walking around with person storm-cloud hoving over his head.
There is some good news, though. The spaghetti I made last night was astounding.
Churning
My digestive woes have continued unabated. Also? I got a terrible night of next-to-no sleep, mostly due to stress and anxiety dreams. Also? We could be getting a foot of snow tomorrow night.
So that's neat!
As predicted, I spent most of my Brain yesterday going over lists and sorting out my priorities. I've got things mostly figured out, and I think I have my time realistically scheduled. Of course, I won't know if these things are true until I've spent three or four days working on all of it.
Which, of course, means I need the weather and my guts to calm the fuck down and, you know, actually let me work.
I did get one Big Thing checked off my list yesterday: I ordered a new phone to replace the five-year-old potato I've been carrying around.
It's not an open, unlocked, FOSS phone like I wanted, but there's little I can do with a budget of $300 or less. I'll update my setup page when I receive it and get it working.
And let me just add here that the vendor, carrier, and software lock-in situation for phones these days is an utter catastrophe.
Anyway, today I have to go to the grocery store and do actual food shopping, instead of the piece-meal "just get enough to get by" trips I've been doing since I moved.
Beyond that, it's trying my best to follow the Schedule, and trying to get as much work done as I can.
Whew
Had breakfast with friends at a local diner I haven't been to in forever.
Pancakes were good, sausage was passable, but the home fries? Just awful. Like, when I was eating them, I kept thinking "These are really unimpressive." Over the next few hours, though, I continued to taste them every time I burped.
"Huh, those homefries sucked, actually."
This morning? Let's just say I've been awake for less than an hour and already made three trips to the bathroom.
But enough about pooping.
I spent the better part of yesterday and last night thinking about the long list of projects and side-quests I've taken on over the last few months. I also thought about the schedule I was trying to keep up with the week before I had to move.
Surprising no one---least of all me---I need to pare down the list. By, like, half.
In order to make progress on everything on my list, every day, I need something like twelve hours of Brain. On a good day? I have maybe six hours of Brain.
I knew about this limitation. I've known it for a while. I've known it for years, actually.
Why do I do this to myself? No idea. But I do it a lot.
I've lost count of how many people I know who have the same issue. They have far too many interests, take on far to many projects, and end up in a crying heap on the floor once or twice a year, fully overwhelmed.
You probably know the same kinds of people. Or maybe you are that person. Either way, let me out myself as one of them.
I'm going to take a couple of hours today paring down my list and trying to regain at least some kind of focus. The intention here is to pick One Project, Two Side-Quests, and plan to work on them four-to-six hours each day.
And yes, I wrote the above more for my benefit than yours. Maybe if I shout loudly enough into the void, I'll hear a faint echo when I inevitably start going off the rails again.
Anyway, time to poop!
Ugh
As predicted, I did a whole lot of nothing yesterday.
Today, I'm meeting a couple of friends for breakfast, then I should probably hit a couple of stores. Don't really want to do either of these things.
Seeing my friends will be nice. Being surrounded by people in a busy diner will be less nice.
At least there will be pancakes.
This is NOT what peak performance looks like
I'm gassed.
I can count on one hand the number of hours I've spent on my various projects since the move. Instead of making progress on the things I want, I've been dealing with moving-related shenanigans, running too many errands to too many stores, and cleaning out the yard from back-to-back snowstorms.
And we're getting another storm on Wednesday night. And maybe another one this weekend. And I have to spend another half-a-day doing errands somewhere in between.
I'm at my best when I have a routine, and can perform said routine uninterrupted for days on end.
Reader, I am not at my best.
Today is an island of tranquility---a day I'm being left alone, with no calls on my attention, or demands on my time---and all I want to do is just melt into the couch and tune out.
Instead, I'm going to spend it desperately trying to claw out some progress on a couple of projects, I'm sure it'll be fruitless, and I'll give up long before lunch, but I'm hoping pure spite will give me at least a little headway.
Hey, Body, could you not?
Yesterday, my body decided it had had enough, and shut down. Nausea, chills, headache---a trifecta of ickiness that kept me under a blanket for most of the morning.
I figured something like this was going to be in the cards. A week of contant physical and mental stress,combined with a lot of poor food and beverage choices, virtually guarantees a crash, and this week was no exception.
I checked my email, but other than that I was glued to the loveseat and the television.
This morning I feel a lot better, and I would be excited for a day full of Doing All The Things, but it's snowing again. The forecast says we might have eight or ten inches out there by the time the sun comes up.
Hoping we get lucky again and don't get nearly that much. Expecting quite the opposite.
If I manage to cross anything off my list today it'll be a miracle.
Delays
I didn't make much progress on the moving-related stuff yesterday. There's stuff still scattered about the place, waiting to find its forever home in whichever drawer or shelf I decide to put it. I also need to move a couple pieces of furniture, but that's a project for Future Jeff---Present Jeff's back hurts. I had to shovel snow yesterday. Not a lot of snow, but enough to remind me that I spent several days lifting and carrying boxes.
Yesterday was good, though. I got up when I at 2am, got some work done, took care of the snow in the yard, and basically chilled until I went to bed 6pm. If that sounds like an insane sleep schedule, that's because it is, but it's what I like.
I love getting up at Stupid O'Clock, hours before anyone else is awake, and settlig into my day. I drink coffee, get my eyes open, and can work withou interruption or incident. Years of experience have taught me that I'm at my most productive and alert during the first three or four hours that I'm awake. Given that, getting up at two feels like I'm getting away with something.
Of course, my friends all laugh at me when I start nodding off at five, so that's a trade-off.
Anyway, today I'm doing errands and going to breakfast with my Dad, so I've got the feelng my stuff'll still be sitting around for me to deal with tomorrow. I had hoped to be done with everything by yesterday at the latest, but that was probably not a realistic goal to begin with.
I blame the weather.
Clutter
I've unpacked nearly everything and moved things into at least the general vicinity of where they need to be. I still have to find homes for some of my crafting tools and materials, and I still need to sort out the enormous amount of letters and assorted paperwork I've been accumulating and ignoring, but...progress!
I spent most of yesterday running around doing errands. Buying things I need but didn't pack, or otherwise just getting in a little "retail therapy" to get that sweet, sweet dopamine.
Of course, this errand running meant I spent a lot of time climbing into and out of a car, which my body did not enjoy. Thankfully I won't have to do that again today.
I'll just have to deal with three-to-five inches of snow.
Anyway, work progresses on the technology front. The "beefy" laptop is mostly how I want it, and the "dodgy" laptop has been relegated to the closet until I figure out what I want to do with it. (Which means it'll be in the closet forever.)
Most of what remains to do is installing software I use, but not on a daily basis. Things like LibreOffice, for example. I've done most of the config diddling I need, and can safely leave the rest to adjust as the need arises.
The biggest remaining bit, I think is to see if I can get GNOMEBoxes running how I want it. I've been using VirtualBox to spin up machines since pretty much forever, but now I no longer want to have anything to do with Oracle. I asked around on Mastodon for FOSS alternatives and libvirt + GNOMEBoxes looks the closest to what I want.
Like I said, progress.
Oh, I also wrote a rant about why I use Linux, in case you're interested in that sort of thing.
Owie
Phase Two of the move is complete. And by "Phase Two" I mean that I retrieved the last of my stuff from the old place and moved it to the new place. And by "moved it" I mean that I spent three hours crammed into the back seat of a pickup truck, punctuated by packing and carrying heavy totes down stairs and across icy sidewalks and driveways.
Reader, I am sore.
I ended up wilfully leaving some stuff behind, including basically all of my kitchen gear like my cast iron pans and a dehydrator. This is partly due to the fact that I've barely used them in the past two years, and partly due to the fact that even the thought of humping that bulky and heavy shit out to the truck made me wince in agony by the time I got the rest of my stuff out there.
If you call that "laziness," I wouldn't put up much of a fight. Mostly because my body is in such a shambles this morning that it hurts to blink.
The good news, though, is the hard part's over. All that's left now is the puttering---setting up my work tables, connecting electronic bits, and putting books and sundries on shelves or in drawers.
In my self-imposed schedule, I'm giving myself today and tomorrow to finishing unpacking and settling in. Somewhere in there I'm going to try to get some work done on my various other projects, but mostly the in-between time will be spent recovering from yesterday.
The week of hell continues
The move proceeds. I spent some time yesterday unpacking things, but mostly I spent a lot of time looking at the space I have now and how I can best use it. I see some possibilities, but mostly I see a need to build a large bonfire, and to slowly push all my possessions into it while quietly giggling to myself and the neighbors.
I made good on my threat to replace Windows with Linux and reclaim my "beefier" laptop as my main machine. That was harder than I would have liked, but it's done and there was much rejoicing.
I still don't have my desk here, so I've been bouncing between a sofa and the kitchen table. It's been a while since I used a laptop like an actual laptop. I'm kind of digging it, although I miss having the screen real estate that a second monitor provides.
Today is going to be a lot more moving-focused, though. I'm getting the rest of my stuff tomorrow, which means I absolutely have to have the space ready to receive it.
I also have to decide whether or not to bite the bullet and rent a storage unit. That's been on my Someday Maybe list for a while, and now kinda seems like the time I should get on with that.
I'd like to get to the point where I can realistically live out of a backpack, with periodic trips to the storage unit as the need arises. Don't know if that's in the cards yet, economically. The place I was living in was a lot cheaper than my current place.
This move really sucks, in case I didn't make that clear before. I moved back to the town of my birth, and I really wanted to not be here anymore. The fact that I've been pulled back is weighing heavily on me.
That said, I got pizza last night from my favorite place. This was very intentionally a choice to celebrate the little things.
Phase one complete
Got the essentials moved into the new place yesterday, and slept here last night. It was rough, not gonna lie. I got more sleep last night than the night before, only because I was utterly exhausted. It felt less like "sleep" and more like a "shutdown."
Today is going to be divided roughly into three clumps of activities: follow more normal routine as closely as possible; clean, unpack, and organize my space; try to decompress from the incredible stress all of this is causing. So far, so good.
Except I'm pretty sure I'm going to be wiping Windows off my other machine today and getting Ubuntu on it. It's quite honestly the exact sort of task I need to take my mind off the moving-related bullshit. Also? Monday and Tuesday are going to be filled with a flurry of activity and I don't want to be running on the dodgy box any longer than I have to be.
It's sort of like hitting yourself in the groin to distract you from a headache.
Well this sucks
So, I'm moving house.
It's unexpected, unavoidable, and I have to be done with it in eight days.
There's a long story behind this, obviously, but I'm not going to go into it. What I am going to go into is how I still have crap I haven't unpacked from the last time I moved a little over a year ago.
In comparison to other people, I don't have a lot of stuff. Most of my possessions can fit comfortably into a relatively small room. That said, the ratio of "Things I Use" to "Stuff I Wouldn't Notice If It Disappeared" is extraordinarily lopsided.
As this blog suggests, I've started a digital housecleaning that began with turning to Linux as my primary OS, and will hopefully end with my running only FOSS using devices and storage totally under my control.
I'm trying to take this sudden relocation as a sign to not only continue that housecleaning, but to carry it to the rest of my possessions. Another chance to de-clutter and move toward a future where I'm free from garbage and dead weight.
Moving still sucks, though.
Forward marching
I'm getting closer to wiping Windows off my other laptop, which means I'm also getting closer to leaving the dodgy laptop behind. It came fresh from the factory with some kind of hardware issue (video card flakiness), and it's just grown worse over time (random Bluetooth, USB, and wi-fi disconnects).
I should have immediately called Dell when I first noticed the problem, but since that would require talking to people, I never did. Now it's years out of warranty, so...yeah.
The only things I have to do to prepare for this move are to cancel my subscription to Office 365 (or whatever they're calling it these days) and back up the Linux machine I'm working on now to ensure I can copy those files over. I already did a back up of the files on the Windows machine, and haven't touched it since, so I'm good there.
I'm not doing the actual wipe of Windows and install of Linux until Tuesday, though.
See, I've been here before. Many, many times I have grow so sick and disgusted by Windows that I've said "Never Again!" and blew the system away in favor of a FOSS operating system. Usually Linux, but I've done FreeBSD back in the day.
Then, days, weeks, or even month later, I regretted this decision and went back to Windows.
This time, I've never been more sure that I'm just done with Microsoft. If I'm honest with myself, though, I've said that before as well.
All of which is a long way to say that I gave myself a two-week "cooling off" period that I intend to stick with. As frustrated and angry as I am with Windows, I'm just leaving the system in the corner until the clock runs out.
So far, I've stuck with the plan. But also in the interest of honesty, I'm pretty much just one more news story away from nuking the machine immediately.
Endless crap
I woke up inexplicably grumpy this morning. Then I got a headache. Then my computer did the thing where it loses its mind and forgets it has USB and Bluetooth. This machine had some kind of hardware issue when I first bought it, but executive dysfunction kept me from calling and complaining when it was still under warranty.
Anyway, I had to reboot while I was in the middle of working on something, and then I had to do a Zoom meeting and Zoom is really flaky under this Linux install. It keeps throwing up errors which say it's crashed, but then it never actually crashes---it just stops letting me right-click on things.
I really hate having to deal with this shit. Migrating to FOSS always feels like a never-ending stream of minor annoyances, interruptions, and delays. And I'm only putting myself through this because the alternative (corporate-controlled, proprietary spyware like Windows) comes with trade-offs I can no longer accept.
At least I'm still having fun putting this new site together, and getting the rust out of my front-end skills.
First!
It's a start.
I actually started working on the "new" version of this site back in November, but I have the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel.