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THENATHE's Musings

My dad was pretty cool part 1

There is a snowstorm coming in tonight according to all major weather services, and it looks like it's gonna be a big one. I don't normally really care about winter weather because my job is very accepting of working from home, but this time I am a little more conscious of it because a girl I am sweet on might be able to hang out, but I would have to drive in the snow to give her a ride (drats!). Prescott has a history of really overplaying weather (or underplaying / no-playing ???) seemingly at random, so I wanted to go check the NWS radar to be sure. I look at this thing and have little to no idea what is going on. Like, there is a large blob over LA, and there is a REALLY large but presumably not very bad blob (due to the colors?) over the area between Havasu and Prescott. I really have no idea what I am looking at. But my dad would have!

Forgetting the nuance of what I am thinking

I have put in my server setup description how I created this site and my workflow for uploading documents. The shorthand is that I use VSCode as a "FTPSSH" where I can text edit and automatically upload, then run a command to build the website. In order to keep track of what I want to write about, I have a file where I jot my ideas with 1-2 sentences of what I mean. I constantly do this, and I usually come back a couple days or weeks later to finish my thought. The problem with this is that I regularly have an idea about what I want to say and how I want to say it, but when I go to revisit it, it has lost all of the nuance, or even that it has changed significantly because it makes more sense in my head.

I really feel upset about this because in my head I really am the smartest man in the world, but on paper I think I am the dumbest. If only they could see what is inside my head!

What makes work stressful (and why my job is more stressful than my father's, despite being far easier)

The other day I got to thinking: why are jobs difficult, and, more importantly, what makes jobs stressful? Stress means different things for different people, with some being stressed about social interaction, some stressed about the moral or societal implications of their job, others with the amount of effort and time they need to spend, etc. but I would like to propose an interesting personal comparison: my father's job as a California Forester, and my job as an IT/Tech Support/Web Design Grunt.

A Timber Tom-n't Christmas

This is the second Christmas that I spent without my dad, and it was A LOT harder than the first. The first Christmas I was more "in shock" so to speak, like the whole concept of my dad not being there was so foreign that I literally half expected him to show up and say "sorry I'm late, my truck wouldn't start" or something like that. The second Christmas, however, was a lot different. It was really hard to care about Christmas. I had all of these fun memories of when me and mom and dad would do all of the gifts all wrapped all nice and pretty, how I would play games in my room on my Xbox and my dad would yell "I need a finger in here" and I would put down my game and sprint into the dining room to put my finger on the spot where he would tie the ribbon around the present to get it nice and tight. Looking back, he definitely didn't need me as it is quite easy to do by yourself, but he wanted to keep the tradition alive.

  • in tech
  • 3 min read

Linux, the Steam Deck, consoles, and other tech gripes

I really love the idea of Linux taking off. It would not only be the beginning of lightweight operating systems in modern day as a gaming system, but also would start a "we don't like megacorporations" movement that may save the free and open internet. It would mean that people would hypothetically start developing and/or improving personal cloud programs, meaning more selfhosting. All of these things that are a wet dream for tech-lovers would start to occur or at least become more common. As a tech professional, it would also give me a LOT more work. The Steam deck is even moving this into the mainstream, with Linux now being on AT LEAST 1m new devices basically overnight (I even bought one for myself, thanks Dad!)

I damaged my truck and now I can't stop thinking about object impermanence

Info

This post was a voice recording transcribed by my Pixel 8 Pro, then cleaned up, proofread, and formatted by ChatGPT. It has been carefully scrutinized to make sure that it still accurately conveys my original message, and is less than 2% different outside of grammatical changes

I was driving home today and I started thinking about the impermanence of objects. I damaged the fuck out of the right side of my car today – or my dad's truck. I hit the tree on the top of my driveway, and, pissed off, I ended up cutting it down. There's a huge dent and scrape on the right side of the truck. It's bad. It's not something that can't be fixed with some touch-up paint, but it made me think.

No matter how hard I try to keep this truck perfect, or how much effort I put into it, it's still going to eventually break down. I could keep this truck better than anyone has ever kept a truck, but eventually, even if it hits 400,000 miles, the engine will blow up. Or something unavoidable will happen, like I'll get hit head-on or t-boned, and the truck will be ruined. No matter how good care you take, something's eventually just going to break.

Kicking the can down the road

Reddit thread discussed in this post, or rather, the idea for this post (hopefully it doesn't disappear!)

Dear readers, I ask you a question: do you know who controls you? Most will say the government, some of the funny ones will say a wife/girlfriend, others might say something like an addiction or money (an object or goal), but as far as the tech world is concerned, it really comes down to conglomerate entities, and there isn't really a way to get around it.

I had a fear some time ago about my google account arbitrarily getting banned because of reading a post about how the creator of the hit game Terraria had his google account deleted for no reason, and lost a ton of stuff like his steam library, all of his email, a ton of services like netflix and whatnot, and most importantly, a lot of his game development stuff like servers and licenses. Why was his account banned? Actually no reason. "This could happen to me!" So as a kneejerk reaction, I moved all of my email over to a zero-trust provider, in this case ProtonMail, and purchased a custom domain because it's cool.

I don't really understand journaling

Before and during taking care of my dad while he had cancer, I started to journal. I am not 100% sure why, though, and that fact has been bugging me lately. It didn't really feel good or relieve any stress, I didn't share it with anyone (not like that would have helped anyway), and I still cannot bear to look back at it due to the sad feelings it reminds me of. Maybe one day I will look back at it, but I doubt it. I guess the point of this is that I do not fully understand the point of journaling or diaries. Like, do people write down the mundanities of their life and then just never look at it again? What benefit does that provide?

I could understand that it would be for documenting what was going on at the time, or like life lessons and teachings that were imparted at the time. But I guess it is a little late for me to try and document anything about my dad at this point. Too late to cry over spilled milk, though.

This site isn't as good as it's inspiration

I made this site after I saw my dad's old site because I already had the domain and thought it would be cool to try and recreate something that my dad did in my own way, as sort of an homage to him. However, I just had the realization that I didn't really make any of this. My dad posting my baby pictures comes to mind: he would put a banner at the top of the page to show everyone, but how would I do that with this ready made solution? Is the creation of something unique and personal and greater accomplishment and constructing than the retrofitting of something to work for your own purposes? My dad made his site by scratch, and while it is a lot more basic in functionality and technologies than my site, it is more personal and unique? I sure wish I could ask my dad his thoughts about this, but knowing him it would be something along the lines of "Who cares? Just have fun with it."

I guess I care, but I don't really know why...

Google is probably evil (and I don't really care)

Has any of you readers ever tried to use Bing? What about Apple maps? Aren't they just fucking awful? What about iCloud for windows? 🤮

I use Google not because I think they are moralistic and wholesome but because there isn't another choice without significantly gimping myself. There two backup services for windows are one drive and Google drive. The only worthwhile maps service is Google maps. The only worthwhile review service is Google reviews. The only worthwhile search engines are Google and DuckDuckGo. The only email that is any different is proton mail. The best assistant is Google.

Google makes the best stuff. But they are also a shitty company that loves to chip away at society's privacy. Don't even get me started on phone->app and phone->pc integration: Apple devices are fucking awful for using outside of other Apple devices. So until Apple makes gaming on mac good, or until kagi gets their shit together an releases the rest of the suite and a phone, or until a privacy focused linux ecosystem competitor comes along, I'm just gonna stick with a domain email as a failsafe and hope my Google account never gets banned for no reason, and assume that Google wont know anything I actually care about.

Bad solution, but best solution. I really wish Mozilla had email, phone OS, search, maps, reviews, notes, and cloud storage solutions, because I really like their browser.