Strange experiments took place in the storage sector. Weird bubbling foaming ooze keeps breaking out of the test tubes.
Discombobulation of the indexing functions means storing test tubes further away from blobs next time.
Research continues..
The days are becoming warmer and the nights becoming more mild. Most nights I get to sleep with the ambience of my neighborhood lulling me about.
The sound of wind passing through the house, carrying with it some chirp or ruffle from the outside world.
The distant yawn of some far away freight train blasting its horn through a neighborhood, the occasional growl or two of a speed demons racing on the interstate.
The curious sound of a neighbor shuffling into their home late at night. The smell of a damp fire in the distance.
The feeling of my dog adjusting at my feet.
..The sense of being alive.
The peace of knowing I'm exactly where I need to be, and the gratitude for my senses and being able to experience this wonderful existence.
Cool Links No. 3
https://www.alexselimov.com/posts/menwhostareatwalls/ A short blog post that inspired me to make more time for practicing meditation.
https://nbailey.ca/post/router/ “How to turn anything into a router” — considering the recent ban on offshore manufactured consimer routers, this might be good information to share.
https://guifi.net/en/whatisguifinet “Free, open and neutral telecommunications network”, a home brew internet provider mainly operating in Catalonia Spain that is free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#history Just a link to the History section of the Linux article on Wikipedia, and a feeling like history is repeating itself.
Reflecting on the previous week
As I come to the end of another Monday back to the grind, I think back to the previous week.
I easily put another ~1200 miles on the car, which does not show any signs of wear. My body on the other hand was pretty sore. However we did stop many times.
Got to drive through some pretty challenging interchanges, some roads with beautiful views of mountains overlooking farmside, some really boring roads with not much to look at, and some old familiar roads that brought me a lot of joy. On the other hand I did not drive through much traffic, which was a nice surprise.
Stopped for food and restrooms when the body called for it, and when our body or minds began to feel restless we stopped for some views, some skate parks, and some gas, but most often we stopped for a short walk on an unfamiliar trail.
The digital camera came along too, so I took a couple hundred photos. Many of these photos are blurry or with horribly wrong exposure settings, but there are a bunch that turned out pretty cool.
Family time was great as well, and long due all around. It was the purpose of the adventure, and I’m very grateful for the short time we spent together. And am really looking forward to future plans.
It was overall a pretty good week, but I’m very happy to be home and off the road.
Back to regularly scheduled programming..
Cool Links No. 2
https://sounds.spriters-resource.com/ Collection of sounds from various older games and systems.
https://kagi.com/smallweb/ Was a cool indie web index, ~~now it’s an ad for kagi~~ and now it’s back again.
https://taylor.town/succession-000 Explains how to not pay taxes by jumping through a series of hoops and using specific language
https://mervi.art/blog/make-time-for-art Encourages the reader to be creative, even when it seems impossible.
Recent Observations
Sometimes when you do what appears to be the right thing, it ends up feeling like you only made things worse. Ignore this and double down on what’s right, the outcome is often far better than you could have imagined.
Also
Sometimes you put effort into a project to show a client what you might do, and they might like your work but want something completely different. But that means you successfully convinced them that they want your work.
Cool Links No. 1
https://ooh.directory/ Collection of blogs written by individuals by category.
https://securityinabox.org/ Practical information and guides to privacy and security on a surveillance forward internet.
https://hitarththummar.xyz/posts/puddles Short entry about unavoidable mistakes that are made along the journey in life.
https://www.casualoptimist.com/blog/2026/02/26/book-covers-of-note-february-2026/ Collection of book cover designs by a particular artist.
https://archive.org/.../The.Other.Way.1975.FilmReel.AAC2.0.x264-archive.ia.mp4 A PBS Nova Documentary about the emerging energy crisis from 50 years ago.
Javier
A lifetime ago I had a job for a short period of time in a local computer repair shop. Whatever you've just imagined about this job is probably wrong. This computer repair shop existed in a sliver of a storefront wedged between two failing businesses. The staff consisted of a lady who owned the place, who spoke with a very thick Spanish accent. I don't know her country or origin, but what I do know is that English was not her first language.
A bit more context: This was in a town that touted it's bounds in diversity, also self segregated its various communities into the different areas of the town. That in and of itself is an interesting topic that I might write about in the future. Going against the grain that is the status quo of this community, the shop was set up in an area of town that was for being designated as a Hispanic area.
Just to clarify, the concept of "Hispanic Area", "Black Area", "White Area", etc. in this town went back several decades to the Civil Rights movement era. The town was a boiling pot for racial inclusion as well as racial conflict. Needless to say, it was quite an interesting area to grow up in. My point in saying this is, I did not come up with the terms for these areas.
So here I was, maybe 18 years old. My only real job prior to this was working in a restaurant as a "bus boy" as they are called (the person who clears and sets the tables for the guests). While I enjoyed the little bits of money coming in, I also felt like I was draining a part of me away. The part that wanted to be passionate about the work that I do. That being said, I decided to look for jobs elsewhere, in hopes to find something that jived with my passions a bit more.
The outcome of this quest was a job at Best Buy, which gave me the experience needed to later work for a technology company. But that's not what this entry is about.
This entry is about a man who's name I don't remember. Let's call him Javier, as that's what my memory recalls his name was, but again this was a lifetime ago and my memory is a bit hazy on the details.
This man was the power house workhorse of the computer repair shop. A customer would come in, and explain their issues to the woman who owned the store. That lady would then translate the problem to Javier, and he would either say "yeah we can do it" or "nope, we can't do that". Javier was this companies secret weapons. This man did not speak a lick of English, and there were times when it was just myself and Javier in the shop. We would use google translate to communicate with each other. While this meant that the depth of our relationship was somewhat limited, I feel like we got along pretty well within the limited scope that we could.
In the event that the customer brought in a repair that they could work on in shop, which was the majority of the time, Javier would take the computer to the back of the shop and begin working. How could you work on repairing technology when the vast majority of documentation is written in a language you do not understand?
It's simple really. Youtube. One of the methods that Javier used to determine whether or not the computer could be fixed was, typing the model number of the device in youtube. If there was a video showing how to disassemble and reassemble the device, he would give the green light. Without reliably knowing how to understand or speak English, he would put a video on, mute the audio, pop in some earphones, and get to work.
Laptop after laptop, phone after phone, desktop after desktop, printer after printer, this guy was just pumping out repaired devices. Each and every step along the way, he would reference the video, watch what is demonstrated, perform that step. Rinse, and repeat.
Some time ago this experience re-entered my mind. Sometimes it feels like you've bitten off more than you can chew in life. Sometimes imposter syndrome hits hard and you wonder if you're even qualified to do whatever it is you do.
But just remind yourself that those thoughts do no service to you. Javier surely felt like an imposter at times, living in a country who's language he did not understand, struggling to find understanding of a system through visual demonstration, etc. But he kept going. I have no idea where he is today, but I hope this man has found himself a place where he can lean into and embrace this incredible skill in a way that leads him to great successes.
Dice
Driving past the light of
promises once made,
as the dreams so
distant begin to fade.
Memories of looking into
the future once full of
hope now seem so naive.
When will destiny roll her dice again
and where will they land?
or when do i get to
play my hand?
Not much
Today is the first day in 3 months that I've considered writing a blog entry.
I haven't had much to say since then, but I'm hopeful that will soon change.
I don't even have much to say today, but going through the motions of writing an entry on here might change that.
Some times you have a lot to say, other times you don't.
It's a flip of a coin, random happenstance.
Some days I have more to say than other days.