obsolete.computer

Microblog

This is my own private microblog where I post one- or two-sentence thoughts, spur of the moment, with no context. Think Twitter, but instead of the whole internet's poison concentrated in one place, it's just my own. Proceed with caution. (Newest posts are on top.)

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 at 01:56:32 AM (EDT)

VM snapshots are quick! Rolling them back, not so much.

Wednesday, October 02, 2024 at 10:11:38 AM (EDT)

I guess I will never buy anything from Corsair ever again.

Wednesday, October 02, 2024 at 12:15:55 AM (EDT)

Likely within my lifetime, and definitely within my son's, AI will be able to generate anything you want to see in real time. This will, without exaggeration, destroy humanity. We're talking actual Matrix type stuff. Or... maybe we're already in it.

Tuesday, October 01, 2024 at 01:30:53 PM (EDT)

Me talking to my son in 20 years: "It's simple. The proprietary robots are not to be trusted, and the GPL'd robots are generally ok but always check their kernels for blobs."

Tuesday, October 01, 2024 at 09:48:12 AM (EDT)

Also also me: What's the point of growing up and getting a well-paying job if you don't spend thousands of dollars on a PC that you'll never have time to actually play games on?

Tuesday, October 01, 2024 at 09:45:06 AM (EDT)

Me: I think I'll more than double the RAM on my next PC build, to 96GB. Also me: My desktop environment is so bloated... it's using more than a GB of RAM when it first starts up now.

Friday, September 27, 2024 at 08:38:32 AM (EDT)

You want to move to Texas because they seem to be free. I want to move to New Hampshire because they are actually free. We are not the same. (Also, I will never move away from my family, even if the US keeps becoming a communist hell hole. But I might try to take them with me.)

Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 11:37:44 AM (EDT)

Deceit has many names, Truth has only one.

Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 08:55:20 AM (EDT)

...but I'm not letting that tiny shred of hope stop me from designing and building a cool bugout truck.

Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 08:52:05 AM (EDT)

It may seem like an oversimplification, but the more I think about it, the more I believe the decline of the west really is just the disappearance of Christianity. Powerful people who were raised in and shaped by a culture of Christian values have rejected Christ, and are therefore left with empty passions for half-truths. Now those powerful people are shaping the future of the west and the rest of the world with burning conviction to infest the world with complete nonsense which has many names. The good part about all of this is that Christ does not stay hidden for long... see: Argentina, El Salvador, and -- while I'm not a Trump fan because he's simply not libertarian nor even conservative enough -- the broader culture of restoring America that he's helped to reignite does give me hope that all is not lost just yet.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at 02:57:42 PM (EDT)

One great way to avoid being surveilled by an intelligence agency is to simply not be important enough.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at 08:50:05 AM (EDT)

There's just something deeply soothing and calming, like a resonant overtone for my soul, about buying Commodore 64 parts on eBay.

Friday, September 20, 2024 at 10:18:09 AM (EDT)

I am not a negotiator, and it's because I'm too logical. Negotiation is a purely emotional exercise, and I just don't have the patience or emotional understanding to do it correctly.

Friday, September 20, 2024 at 08:37:17 AM (EDT)

Expectation: on Linux, you rarely have to reboot your machine. Reality: On Linux, any time you install a piece of software, you have to do a full system upgrade, which usually means you have to reboot your machine because there is a new kernel. (Rolling release distros, at least.)

Wednesday, September 11, 2024 at 11:31:38 AM (EDT)

I don't believe anywhere in Revelation it says we could stop these events from happening if we voted hard enough.

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 at 08:25:55 PM (EDT)

Some time recently, and somewhat dishearteningly, I realized that every single piece of code I've ever written has been inconsequential.

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 at 10:57:26 AM (EDT)

What if those on the Asberger's spectrum are the normal people, and those outside of it are just jealous?

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 at 10:07:13 AM (EDT)

Once again, I find myself plugin-hopping in the Wordpress ecosystem, trying to find a single plugin that doesn't suck.

Wednesday, August 21, 2024 at 11:07:29 AM (EDT)

If you have every power of two up to 2^16 memorized because you used to write C64 games as a kid, we could probably be friends

Sunday, August 18, 2024 at 08:08:54 PM (EDT)

I'm afraid we may have to go through a Maduro to get to a Milei

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 at 08:29:25 AM (EDT)

A younger me would be amazed at how poorly a fortysomething can sleep.

Thursday, August 08, 2024 at 10:01:15 AM (EDT)

Hope is a scarce resource.

Monday, July 29, 2024 at 09:58:12 PM (EDT)

If you ever get the feeling that God doesn't love you, just ponder the fact that every subatomic particle can be described by a Fourier series, and each series contains an infinite number of coefficients. It should become obvious that God loves you because he calculates each coefficient with a pencil and paper, an unfathomable amount of work, one Planck time's worth in each sitting, over and over with painstakimgly infinite patience and care, just so you can exist.

Friday, July 26, 2024 at 08:56:55 AM (EDT)

Often, people seem to find a contradiction between the Misesian perspective, and their own gut feelings about localism. I think the reconciliation between the two can be found by, in Austrian fashion, realizing that economic value is subjective, and also economics is about human action rather than just money. In other words, it's ok to value your own community and family, and the quality of the goods you buy more than boiling everything down to your bottom line. Also... the Fed coupled with labor regulations and the minimum wage intensify the need for companies to make everything cheaper and eventually outsource to Chinese factories where labor is still affordable (for now). All that's to say: you don't have to buy cheap garbage goods, or even anything at all, from Wal-Mart if you're a capitalist.

Friday, July 26, 2024 at 08:39:14 AM (EDT)

If we're not already there, we'll soon be at a point in history where choosing open-source will liberate humanity, whereas choosing intellectual property will enslave it. I am not hopeful that we will choose corectly.

Monday, July 22, 2024 at 09:02:46 AM (EDT)

I've noticed that people who frequently ask for things to be done for them rarely offer to help.

Thursday, July 18, 2024 at 09:00:53 AM (EDT)

I realized just now that I actually look forward to my job (at least one of them). I wonder what changed?

Wednesday, July 17, 2024 at 11:19:51 AM (EDT)

Slow people and impatient people don't mix. (i.e., me and the rest of the world.)

Wednesday, July 17, 2024 at 10:05:38 AM (EDT)

Social media is the opposite of "doing your good deeds in secret."

Monday, July 15, 2024 at 01:51:14 AM (EDT)

We live in a time when if I were to refuse to allow a quarter of my income to be stolen and be used to bomb children in the middle east, I'm the one who would go to jail

Wednesday, July 03, 2024 at 08:48:45 AM (EDT)

The fact that Windows uses the backslash as both path separator and escape character should tell you everything you need to know

Monday, July 01, 2024 at 10:02:04 AM (EDT)

"Apps" should be free and open source. "Services" should be paid. The end.

Wednesday, June 19, 2024 at 12:57:16 PM (EDT)

Cash as a gift is a bit weird, if you think about it. It's like, here, I got you this loan from the Federal Reserve.

Tuesday, June 18, 2024 at 09:00:20 AM (EDT)

If your web site depends on Google in any way, it is broken.

Thursday, June 13, 2024 at 09:37:45 AM (EDT)

Reject modernity, embrace ncurses-based OS installers

Thursday, June 13, 2024 at 07:29:49 AM (EDT)

I finally figured out how to become a morning person: have kids.

Friday, June 07, 2024 at 04:38:48 PM (EDT)

Another realization I've had recently: People my age get all nostalgic when they hear 90's alternative rock, but I didn't really like it then and it turns out I don't really like it now either. Except Soundgarden, which is awesome.

Friday, June 07, 2024 at 02:07:40 PM (EDT)

There is some sort of bias in online reviews that goes something like: average review scores tend to be pushed lower than they should be, because dumb people are both more likely to leave a review and more likely to leave a bad one.

Thursday, June 06, 2024 at 09:10:30 AM (EDT)

Starting a new diet plan called "carnivore with pickles"

Tuesday, June 04, 2024 at 08:15:17 PM (EDT)

I figured out why God made it so that unlike some other species, human babies are completely defenseless and unable to survive on their own for the first handful of years of life, thus requiring parents to make huge sacrifices to not just keep them alive, but raise them all the way into functional adults. It's because it's awesome.

Tuesday, June 04, 2024 at 04:49:43 PM (EDT)

House shoppers in the 2020s must think to themselves, "This seems like a good place to hunker down for the end of the world"

Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 11:09:13 PM (EDT)

Why choose between strong messaging and electable candidates, when you can have neither? #LNC2024

Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 06:54:06 PM (EDT)

And what's more, is that his existence is certainly falsifiable: we would know that God didn't exist if there were no atheists.

Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 06:49:43 PM (EDT)

For example, the common twitter atheist who states that they can't believe in God because his existence is not falsifiable. Which, as we enlightened ones know, is itself a non falsifiable belief.

Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 06:47:27 PM (EDT)

Atheists are generally really good at playing their hand early, revealing that they haven't wrestled with any sort of real philosophy at all.

Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 01:52:52 PM (EDT)

I have an admission to make: I don't think I've ever liked a Quentin Tarentino movie. Not one.

Monday, May 20, 2024 at 09:12:21 AM (EDT)

Is it just me, or is posting videos of yourself working out kind of like doing your good deeds in public? That kind of thing should be kept private and humble, with only God looking on in approval, in my opinion. (Or disapproval, in my case)

Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 12:36:47 AM (EDT)

We already carry the mark of the beast around with us... it's the US Dollar.

Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 08:41:47 AM (EDT)

An important thing for web/UX developers to realize is that it's not that your web site is bad, it's that people are retarded. The point is really driven home if you spend any amount of time working in retail.

Tuesday, May 14, 2024 at 08:44:04 AM (EDT)

Perhaps it's not that we weren't given a burning bush type sign... but that we weren't willing to see it.

Wednesday, May 08, 2024 at 08:10:52 PM (EDT)

Why is it that when I drive my 30 year old diesel pickup truck on a country road with the windows down on a beautiful day, I get the urge to take off my seatbelt and crack open a beer?

Tuesday, May 07, 2024 at 10:42:35 AM (EDT)

Maybe the ability to forget is a blessing.

Tuesday, May 07, 2024 at 10:41:25 AM (EDT)

Maybe the ability to forget is a blessing.

Thursday, May 02, 2024 at 05:46:34 PM (EDT)

Unless you really love pulling your hair out, just get a VLAN-aware switch and use it to distribute your VLANs instead of the built-in 'switch' ports on your pfsense appliance.

Wednesday, May 01, 2024 at 11:19:56 AM (EDT)

April showers bring... well, May showers.

Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 03:22:01 AM (EDT)

We have officially reached the point with computers where we are all forced to decide between our devices not sucking and being able to participate in society. On a related note: Google is still evil.

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 at 04:42:29 PM (EDT)

At this point, I just assume everything on the internet is fake. Which is probably exactly what the CIA wants me to think.

Thursday, April 11, 2024 at 12:24:28 PM (EDT)

I guess setting a static IP in a text file was too archaic for the Ubuntu server devs, so they decided to make you put your configuration in a different text file, which is managed by a service, using an annoying file format, which overwrites the text file you would usually edit.

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 at 12:13:36 PM (EDT)

Aaaand now we're at the "looking through lists of compatible motnerboards" portion of installing an M.2 NVMe drive.

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 at 12:03:50 PM (EDT)

I wonder who the person was who decided OpenGL should be required for the interactive portion of an antivirus software installer, and if they enjoy flipping burgers at their new job.

Monday, April 08, 2024 at 11:22:29 AM (EDT)

Just realized that my virtualization cluster's uptime is older than my son. No specific significance, just an odd thing to realize.

Saturday, April 06, 2024 at 03:34:37 AM (EDT)

Just as Christ is fully God and also fully man, so too is the IRS fully stupid and fully evil. In fact, the only possible explanation for its continued existence is that the government wishes to make small business owners gradually, or perhaps quickly, become suicidal.

Friday, April 05, 2024 at 11:55:41 AM (EDT)

Fiddling with finicky M.2 drives makes me nostalgic for the NES days. Unfortunately, blowing on the drive pins doesn't seem to help.

Thursday, April 04, 2024 at 04:04:27 PM (EDT)

I don't personally believe in indulgences, but if it were possible to purchase the eternal salvation of the GNU team, in particular the developer/maintaniner(s) of ddrescue, I'd definitely consider cashing out my life insurnace policy for their sake.

Wednesday, April 03, 2024 at 11:58:36 AM (EDT)

The sweet irony of your home partition M.2 failing the first time you run a backup job

Tuesday, April 02, 2024 at 05:11:24 PM (EDT)

A great way to find the motivation to clean up your hard drive is to watch your backup script running.

Monday, March 25, 2024 at 05:15:00 PM (EDT)

The web ruined the beauty of unix. JSON, schmason. XML, schmecksemel. YAML, schmammel. Gimme stdio.h and a flat text file and I'll move mountains.

Sunday, March 24, 2024 at 11:21:35 PM (EDT)

I wouldn't go as far as to say that Jesus is a libertarian. But what I will say is that if he were here today, his opinions would be treated with as much disdain as the average libertarian's opinions.

Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 04:32:44 AM (EDT)

"To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and from him that taketh away thy cloak withhold not thy coat also." But what if he is going to use my cloak and coat to bomb children in the middle east?

Monday, March 18, 2024 at 05:23:45 AM (EDT)

There comes a point in every parent's life when you can finally get back to being unable to sleep for you own reasons and not because of your child, and that's pretty refreshing.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 12:18:08 AM (EDT)

Always remember this one fact: this life is not about being happy, it is about being saved.

Monday, March 11, 2024 at 10:10:22 AM (EDT)

If you're looking for a great business partner, look no further than that semi-autistic pushover nerd with strong moral convictions that you went to high school with. When the business can't pay its bills, he'll be the first one to give up his pay and continue to volunteer his time, even going as far as lending the business tens of thousands of dollars, while the other partners think about when they'll get their next raise. He'll also be enough of a loser to be ok with handling all the business's taxes, bookkeeping, insurance, IT needs and other things that everyone else hates. Oh and he'll do it all while trying to keep his marriage together and toddler alive, without being able to actually support either of them financially. And to top it all off, he's such a moron that he'll never complain about any of this, though he may post about it on some passive agressive blog that no one reads.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024 at 05:20:31 PM (EST)

There seems to still be this lingering superstition in the IT industry that Microsoft is some sort of legitimate company, whatever that means. Double standards die hard.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024 at 08:43:49 PM (EST)

We live in this strange time when 99 percent of the shows on TV (including youtube etc) are worse than anything that's ever been on TV... but the 1 percent that is good is better than anything that's ever been on TV.

Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 10:50:23 PM (EST)

Come on Arch, I just wanted to edit a spreadsheet, not go down a rabbit hole about how laptop backlight subsystems work...

Wednesday, February 28, 2024 at 06:31:59 AM (EST)

Ah, the sweet sweet relief of having one's skull flattened intantly by a 10 ton industrial press (why yes, I do have a toddler who won't sleep through the night, how did you guess)

Sunday, February 25, 2024 at 03:17:45 PM (EST)

I grew up loving computers and technology. But they have been so badly mismanaged in my lifetime that I no longer want any part of them. Or at the very least, my use of them must be strictly limited to solutions which are up to my quality standards... and the few such examples that remain appear to be quickly declining or disappearing. And so, with them, my own inevitavle personal descent into obsolescence accelerates toward a sort of singularity.

Sunday, February 25, 2024 at 11:34:41 AM (EST)

Quick and easy way to offend both Trump supporters and Democrats: remind them that Trump is an old Democrat.

Friday, February 23, 2024 at 06:51:53 PM (EST)

I have finally made up my mind about bitcoin, or more accurately, pinpointed why I've never been that crazy about it: if the Amish can't use it, it's not real money.

Monday, February 19, 2024 at 06:15:13 PM (EST)

What is the most libertarian Christian movie of all time, and why is it Disney's Robin Hood?

Thursday, February 15, 2024 at 02:05:49 PM (EST)

Sometimes I think about how much easier life would be as a narcissist. Acknowledging the existence of others can really make life a challenge at times.

Monday, February 12, 2024 at 12:01:52 AM (EST)

A fact that every parent must come to firm grips with is this: there is absolutely nothing in the universe more important than your kids.

Tuesday, February 06, 2024 at 10:21:29 AM (EST)

Trying to be a good person is apparently the same thing as letting everyone take advantage of you.

Monday, January 08, 2024 at 12:07:07 PM (EST)

In the Microsoft and Apple worlds, there are no true fixes, just workarounds. I think that might be at the heart of what drives me to use Linux, as imperfect as it is.

See posts from 2023