Not music, but the movie Fight Club is very much a pre-9/11 feel… specifically when Tyler is talking about how his generation has ‘no great war or struggle’. That line hit hard the first time I heard it, then after 9/11 it felt very nostalgic of as time when shit wasn’t so crazy.

It’s not so much the that drinking soda caused kidney disease as the lack of ever drinking water.

I attribute the sugar from the soda as helping to cause the diabetes though.

I was raised drinking soda as the default… water was never something we’d willingly drink. In middle school I noticed that every day I’d get home from school with a splitting headache and I’d take a couple of aspirin and wash it down with a Coke and the headache would go away. My parents realized that it was likely caffeine withdrawal… so instead of cutting out soda, they started getting me caffeine free soda.

It wasn’t until my older brother was in his late 30s and experienced kidney failure and required a transplant that I realized I needed to make a change. I switched over to water and unsweet tea as my defaults. Even after his transplant my brother still would only drink soda… he didn’t survive Covid. And today my mom routinely has kidney issues but still refuses to drink water.

Everyone in my family, except for me, has diabetes and kidney issues. I’m sure my 30+ years of daily soda drinking will catch up to me, but I do credit cutting soda out of my diet as having a major positive impact on my overall health.

Such is the life of a pirate… morning is permanent and all good things will come to an end.

It’s always good to have alternatives and ensure you’re keeping up with them.

I’ve been using The Cursed Clock from Nine Inch Nails Ghosts: Locust album.

It starts out soft and low, but slowly builds.

I’ve been using this for years and it’s about as perfect of an alarm as I’ve ever found.

LLMs are okay at writing code, but not good at software architecture

This is very much the case. I have a local LLM that does a fairly good job of writing code for quick and easy apps that I might need - for instance, last week I wanted to create a simple floor plan of my house and couldn’t find exactly what I wanted online, so I had my machine create a web based app to do it. But, when I tried to use it to create a fairly large and complex text based adventure game when it reached a certain size my LLM just couldn’t handle it any longer. That project stalled for a bit until a couple of weeks ago when Fable 5 was released… as a test I pointed Fable at that code base and in about 45 minutes it had completed the entire game engine.

I really don’t like the idea of corporate owned LLMs, but I am very impressed with Fable and can’t wait until the Local LLM community is able to replicate its functionality.

And this is why iOS gets progressive web apps from me. It isn’t that I can’t afford $100, it’s more fuck Apple for demanding tribute from my work.

What are the chances that visiting Steven Hawking is the most interesting/fun thing you can do, if you could freely time travel? I’d much rather go look at dinosaurs, or visit the construction of the pyramids, or go listen to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech.

I would counter that if you have a time machine then you literally have all the time in the world and you can do all of those things, and more.

Last year I was trying to get a new job and I wish I’d had your convictions to end the process when it was clear things weren’t going well. Instead I let them string me along for a total of 6 onsite interviews (on 6 different days) with around 20 different people. When I had an interview with the CIO I was certain that the job was mine… only to be told the next day they were going with someone else.

After the 3rd interview I was already thinking that it was excessive and when they asked me at the last minute to come in for the last interview a voice in my head told me that I need to tell them to either make me an offer or fuck off. Instead I showed just exactly how desperate I was, and ended up hating myself for it.

Pride doesn’t feed a family, but you should hold your head high for this decision.

Hardee’s used to have a chilli cheeseburger that was amazing. It’s been close to 20 years and I still think of that burger.

But, the best was at Swenson’s outside of Cleveland at 1 am after a NIИ concert.

The catch is it’ll be enshittified as soon as it can.

Southern Florida shows us that the only way to defeat them is with alligators.

“We know how to take them out, General. Spread the word.”

Good point.

I also want my smart glasses to shine an IR light on my face to help protect my identity from others recording me.

I would love a pair of smart glasses to augment what I’m seeing… Give me context, keep me informed, allow me to monitor things closely, yet passively, and let me do it all inconspicuously and unobtrusively! Even better if it has eye tracking navigation.

Oh, and make sure the hardware and software are open source and self-hosted. If it has all of that I’m in, 100%.

I’m not who you were replying to, and I’m by no means a beginner… but I just got the Framework Desktop with the AMD Strix Halo APU and I initially installed Fedora and could not get games to run through Steam. I eventually installed Nobara, and overall I don’t like it, but it played every game I tried without any fuss.

I worked with a guy who had a doctorate in mathematics… He wrote documentation for the software the company produced.

The kid is 1.5 months old and you don’t have time? Once that kid gets mobile you’ll really not have time! And I don’t mean crawling or walking, I mean rolling and scooting.

When my kid figured out how to get places by rolling I had gotten up with her early on a Saturday morning and was letting my wife sleep in… I went to the basement and turned on the Xbox to pay some Rocket League and in the middle of a game she started to roll out of the room. I put the controller down and went to pick her up… 4 years later that controller was exactly where I had put it. She’s now almost 9 and is a great gaming partner, and is getting into robotics, 3D printing, and is interested in programming, so I get to jump right back into my old hobbies, and pick up some new ones.

All that to say, Linux is only going to get better and Windows will continue to get worse, but there’s more important things for you to have to worry about in the very near future than troubleshooting an OS that you’re not familiar with, stick with Win 10 for as long as you can and some day you’ll sit down at your desk and realize you have time to look back in at Linux and you’ll find that it isn’t nearly as difficult to use as you remember. Congratulations on the kid, it can be an incredible journey watching, and helping, a person emerge.

Oooh, I’ll have to keep that in mind. I had to go on the hunt for a USB dock with Ethernet and my phone was right there the whole time.

I just installed Pop!OS on my 2012 MacBook Pro and it’s amazing. No matter which distro you go with, you will likely need to manually update and install the WiFi drivers. You’ll need an Ethernet connection, which might mean you’ll need an adapter.