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2025-12-27: Family went home yesterday morning. After getting laundry going to wash up their bedding and getting stuff back in order, I took a longer-than-intended nap in the afternoon. Then, after going to bed late, woke up later than expected. I've spent most of today finishing up that laundry and tidying up, getting my Christmas decor put away early, and otherwise not doing a whole lot.

I found myself close to crying a couple different times listening to/watching youtube. One was talking about the rescue efforts a pilot made after an air disaster, while the other was about some of the emotional push-and-pull of Chappel Roan's music and career.

I think I'm in need of a good, cathartic cry.

Basically all my spoons got used up in the process of planning for Christmas, so I'm sitting on the other side and anticipating New Years with zero plans. I really don't wanna spend it sitting at home alone, but a lot of stuff in the metro is charing like, 100 dollar cover charges. Not that I'm the sort of person to ring in the new year at a dance club or anything, but that cost-of-entry is enough to hose any prior ideas I had. A jazz bar I checked out last year has a cover charge of nearly 70 dollars, which isn't as bad as I've seen, but still, no. Not this year, with moving costs around the corner.

Turns out, there's a New Years Eve event going on at a board game/card game shop near me! That sounds much more my speed, and they're not charging an arm and a leg to get in either. I may put the invitation out to some of my other friends close by to join me.

Maybe tomorrow though. I'm in enough of a funky place emotionally tonight.

2025-12-25: Merry Christmas, everyone!

I have already decided on my big, overarching goal for 2026: Taking Initiative. That comprises two areas of my life where I have let survival-mode thinking keep me from pursuing them: Housing and dating

For the former, I have been wanting to move out of my current spot for at least a couple years. The current maintenence issues and stuff notwithstanding, I also stayed put until I figured out if life was taking me somewhere new. Since it looks like I am staying put career- and community-wise, I should really make the effort to get to a situation where I'm more comfortable.

Then there's the latter. I haven't been on a real date since, like, the first half of 2023. I was pretty devastated after a nearly 3-year relationship crashed and burned, and I spent a while licking my wounds. I took another swing talking with an old crush in the latter months of 2024, but they turned out to be just as flakey and noncommital as they were years ago when those feelings first started. I'm too old for all that. Then, last year, I spent a good chunk of my time waiting for the other shoe to drop on *gestures broadly* everything that had been happening. Things probably will get worse before they get better in a lot of ways, but shrinking into my shell for another ~5 years in the hopes that whatever historical moment we're in passes, probably isn't the move.

So, I am aiming to get moved and settled into a new home, and to make an effort to put myself out there and go on at least one (1) date. Who knows what'll come from that, but you have to take a first swing before anything else will grow from it!

I'm going to see if that goal is achievable without delving back into online dating. I have friends involved with a local club sport, and I have also connected with a little monthly meet-and-greet group. I figure, if you're socially active and meeting people where they are, surely something can grow from that.

If all else fails on that front, I hope to make at least one new friend in the process. Sometimes, you meet people who you enjoy and appreciate, but for whom a romantic relationship just isn't in the cards. There's a whole constellation of meaningful relationships beyond romantic ones.

Anyways, I'm headed to bed! I hope to cherish this family time as best as I can. Y'all take care now.

2025-12-24: I doubt I will be online much today or tomorrow, on account of hosting family for the holidays. I wish an early Merry Christmas to those who partake!

Home is picked up, floors are vacuumed/swept/mopped, laundry and bedding are washed and ready, dishes are in the dishwasher as I write, and I got groceries for Christmas dinner (and for my dad to make breakfast and cookies), so we should be good to go!

2025-12-22: I learned to make my first shell script! I basically just set a couple up to install the core programs I use on my computers. I am back to using Debian everywhere. It's the Toyota Corolla of Linux distros. It's not all that exciting or flashy, but it works and works well.

Otherwise, I spent most of the weekend getting my apartment ready for hosting family for Christmas. Bedding is washed, floors are vacuumed, swept and mopped, and spaces are picked up! I will finish up by cleaning the bathrooms and getting groceries tomorrow.

To my Indie Web buddies, I hope you travel safely and enjoy your holidays. For whom the holidays are difficult, either because of family strife or grieving those lost, I hope this season is kind to you this year.

2025-12-19: Finishing up my final work day before an extended holiday break. Other staff are out early, so I am holding down the fort. I reached a stopping point on all my projects, so I've got a yule log and Christmas music on as I hold down the fort.

I am taking another swing at using Linux Mint, after the success I saw introducing one of my interns to it. It's far, far from the most bleeding-edge Linux distribution out there, and I have to do a bit of finagling to get some things the way I want it, but it's the project I align with most ideologically for sure. It's also designed from the ground up to be easy to use for computer savvy users and folks with limited tech literacy alike. If it's the thing I recommend to new users, I feel like I should be using it enough to be ready to help if something wonky happens!

It's also the first Free and Open Source Software project I ever monetarily supported. The Mint team is doing great work, and they give users like me an invaluable starting point for introducing friends and family to life away from Windows. I have the beta of the newest version installed on a couple machines, and I may see about doing some basic bug reporting. This is a project I'd like to both support and get involved with, especially knowing this is a lot of peoples' first point of contact with Linux now.

One friend, in particular, is wanting to try Linux soon. She's a digital artist who has become concerned about Window's AI integration and whether her works could be getting siphoned into Copilot's training data. But, after over a decade of using specific software, she's struggling with the idea of moving to a FOSS alternative. I am going to take a swing at getting some trial versions of her software of choice working, so I can at least verify whether they can work. Here's hoping for the best.

Edit: Unfortunately, neither the current version nor the new beta are well-suited to my needs on my living room multimedia mini PC. I won't get into the details, but one downside to Mint's conservative development style is that they are way, way behind on supporting modern display-driving backend stuff. Getting things to run at 4k and 60 frames per second on their legacy display software doesn't work, and kicking it down to 1440p introduces funky screen tearing. The current standard is still in an experimental phase right now, and video slows to a crawl if i try to use it.

It's a shame too. Everything short of that has been great. They build all their stuff off of the long-term service version of Ubuntu, which updates next year. Mint 23 might have some improvements on that front, but they don't expect that to be fully implemented for a long time. I'm abandoning this endeavor and going back to Debian, where everything I need works across multiple machines asked to do multiple things. Here's hoping Mint pushes that boat out enough on polishing up Wayland support that I can come back to it!

I hope to plug away at a couple different aspects of my site in the coming days. I have a couple weeks off work and no travel plans. I'm also trying to avoid going out, both to avoid illness ripping through my neck of the woods, and to save money in anticipation of moving. Apart from hosting family for a couple days, I should have plenty of time!

2025-12-13: Currently sitting in on my first DnD session. This group hasn't met in a long, long time and it's been a bit messy getting started, but they seem to be having fun!

I also just finished my rewatch of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and it hit me way differently than my last viewing. The show's handling of grief and being fully present in the moment both struck me. I'll probably be reviewing it soon.

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2025-12-11: Welp, there's a good chance that I'll have to go through the moving process next month. I've been anticipating some weirdness with my current landlord, who has been dodging communications for a couple months in the wake of some maintenance issues. I pre-emptively got an application in at a good apartment complext near me, got approved, and was given a tour of a unit. I let them know that I wanted to give my landlord an opportunity to try and set things right before I commit to move out.

With a fallback option figured out, I started pressing a bit more for a concrete day and time for some needed work, or some sense of where their priorities might be. The response I got, to paraphrase, was that they were unsure what they've got in the budget to take care of or when that would get done, and that they would need to raise my rent since they hadn't since I moved in, and that it's currently below market value.

On one hand, yeah, it has been low relative to my area. I've been fortunate for that. They initially offered a lower price than they initially sought for the sake of helping me out when I got this job and moved back. I've appreciated that and, that, alone, wouldn't be that huge of a deal if we agreed to the new rate.

However, the lack of commitment to some clear and obvious repairs that have been waiting between 4 months and 2 years, including water damage and an electrical issues, is beyond the pale. I am not about to pay more per month to still not have anything fixed. I'd been patient about the situation, knowing that my current rent is low enough that I'd struggle to find anything remotely the same quality for the money. If they raise it, they're suddenly in competition for a much wider breadth of options.

After dropping that on me Monday, they have yet to give any further indication as to the new rate either. So there's no telling.

That same day, I informed the management office at my prospective new home that it looked like I would need to start planning on moving, and that I would aim for a mid-January move-in date. They said they'll have something lined up, and that we will settle on the specific unit after the new year.

The situation has been frustrating, but I don't think they're acting out of outright malice. My neighborhood was affected by a natural disaster not too long ago, and upkeep on this unit and the surrounding community has been a beast to deal with. I would not be too shocked if they outright sold and cut their losses once I'm out of here. It had been a good arrangement for a while, since I have been a conscientious tenant worth taking a bit less a month from, knowing the place wasn't getting thrashed. But, with the challenges after the disaster, my quality of life here has been pretty poor, and they've not been in any position to tackle needed improvements. It's probably best for both parties that we accept this arrangement ran its course and end it now, rather than let it drag out.

On the plus side, I look forward to living somewhere with maintenance that live on-site, who are available 24/7 for emergencies, and who can usually have non-emergency jobs done within one or two business days.

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2025-12-07: Trying to limit unnecessary AI nonsense in your regular life can feel like death by a thousand cuts. Calling home a bit ago, I noticed a notice under my dad's number saying that the call was "enhanced" by Google's AI.

Can you not? I didn't ask for our conversation to get filtered for clarity by Gemini's black box.

I'm not against entirely against generative or analytical AI in principle. It's a technology I was intensely interested in ~8 years ago, and it is reaching capabilities well beyond anything I could have never imagined. BUT, the ethics around it, and around the companies crowbarring it into every possible nook and cranny to make a quarterly report look more substantial, is maddening.

One of my interns carries around a flip-phone. I think he might be onto something, limiting vector points for dumb bullshit. He also seems to have an EMP field surrounding him, to where novel "I've never seen this before" tech issues are a regular occurance. But even still, I would consider trying a feature-phone for a bit, just to see how that affects my daily life.

Other than whinging about the current state of tech, it's been a good weekend. I finally made progress towards getting my home page to a state that I would like. The current format made it awkward to try and add site buttons to the sidebar, and I don't feel like trying to adjust it. It's fine. I'll just have a handful of buttons instead of ~80 lol.

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2025-12-06: I've got the energy and motivation to make meaningful improvements to my site for the first time in like, two months! Yay!

I am collecting buttons from as many of the 100+ pages I currently follow as I can. I wanna have that section full to bursting. I am also going to work on making one for myself.

I also have potato and parsnip soup in the slow-cooker. Tis the season for good, hearty soup. I've got soup cooking, basketball on tv, and my living room is lit with the gentle light of a Christmas tree. Tonight, life feels simple and good.

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2025-12-02: Two cross-state trips and 4 attempts to get my paperwork submitted at the DMV later, my Forester is finally registered! It has been an actual nightmare. Basically, the order-of-operations got all jacked up because my parents didn't get a bill of sale for the electronic title. Without that, and without a physical, paper title in-hand, the DMV had no documentation showing the purchase price. That would have been easy enough to resolve if I got a direct explanation, but I got conflicting information at my usual location that didn't help at all. I had to go elsewhere to actually get what I needed.

On that first trip, the clerk looked at me in confusion and asked if I was trying to register a travel trailer??? Excuse me??? I sensed I was going to get the runaround right then and there.

After making a several-hour round-trip, it finally got resolved today. Here's hoping that's the last time I have to deal with this for a while!

In other news, I am finally working on reworking my website's home page. I am adding a separate CSS file for it to add sidebars. I really don't need them on my other pages, but I want to add blinkies/stickers/buttons.

Also, my intern only needed my budget linux laptop for a couple days. Turns out, her computer's issue was due to a button combination that disabled her touchpad. I have no idea what troubleshooting she was trying to do initially, but I am sure final paper and exam stress wasn't helping. Glad it helped her in the meantime though!

There's a 50/50 chance that I'll either be much more active during the holiday season, or totally radio-silent. Approximately zero of my holiday travel/family plans have solidified, so we'll see what happens. In the meantime, I hope to use the end of this year to reorient and refocus. I entered 2025 forlorn at the state of [gestures broadly] but, I have found hope and joy in friends, family, the young folks I get to mentor, and seeking out new connections here and IRL.

I also have some reviews I wanna put out there, but I'll let those come when I feel up to it.