Blog
2026-06-28: Had a great birthday. Went to that carshow, got a nice dinner, and weather cooperated so we could go to that baseball game! It's well after midnight here and I'm zonked and zooted. Gonna go to bed and head back home tomorrow morning.
Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!
-----
2026-06-27: Happy birthday to me, honk honk honk!
I am visiting family. We initially planned on camping, but weather is not cooperating. Headed to an (indoor) car show and maybe a baseball game if the weather lets up!
One year further from 30 and closer to 40.
-----
2026-06-21:Waow. I've not been on in a while. Intern got sick, then I got sick. So I've been bleh.
On the plus side, when I've been upright, I've been able to make some headway on some games. I'm like, roughly halfway through Grandia 2 and just finished Ghost of Tsushima. What a game! It's really like being an active participant in an Akira Kurasawa movie. If you're remotely familiar with samurai stories (or, frankly, the original Star Wars trilogy, which borrowed a ton from Kurasawa,) it probably won't surprise you. Still, it's remarkably well done. It feels like every major scene was pulled straight from a painting. One of the most beautiful pieces of media I've had the pleasure of experiencing in a long time.
In other news, early last week, I received a request for information about Linux from an unexpected place: one of my friend's moms! She has apparently become more privacy and security concious and wanted to know more.
In service of helping her (and others in my life who I believe might want to make that switch in the future) I am testing an operating system that, if successful, will take a ton of guess work out of getting folks set up. It's called an atomic distribution, whereby the core of the OS is completely managed by your distro provider and unchangable by the user. There are some workarounds for layering programs onto your core system, but it's a pain and it slows things down. Instead, you are expected to operate entirely out of containerized programs like Flatpaks.
This would be a massive headache for a lot of experienced Linux users who want the freedom to do whatever they want with their systems. A lot of folks in this space dislike atomic distro setups because they feel like it goes against the modularity that Unix was built for, whose lineage Linux is a part of. There's also questions of ownership and control with this sort of setup that rubs the FOSS and Libre communities the wrong way.
Still, there are people in my life who could use an alternative path forward with the tech in their lives, and this may be a good option. Especially knowing the vast majority of people need a web browser, office productivity suite, multimedia playback, and a handful of media apps for most of their computer use, that's more than doable. Getting that functionality while keeping the onboarding and first-six-month experience as frictionless as possible would be awesome too.
So, I'm currently using the Aurora operating system. It's a part of the Universal Blue OS family. Bazzite, one of the most popular gaming distributions out there, is the crowning achievement of the Universal Blue team, while Aurora and Bluefin are the normal everyday OSes they support. This is basically supposed to be the easiest out-of-the-box experience using the KDE Plasma desktop, which has a similar look and feel to modern Windows (but less sucky!)
It also does its updates in the background and applies them on reboot. Handy for folks who feel badgered by constant and intrusive updates. It's screwed with my usual ritual of checking for updates before doing stuff on my computer, but I am adjusting.
I'm not thinking much about my operating system, which is probably a good thing! It hasn't done anything weird or funky now that it's up and running, and I just get on and do stuff. It reminds me of my first ~6 months using Kubuntu in a good way, where I didn't really think to try anything else because it was just doing what I wanted it to do. Whether that holds true and is the best longterm fit for my needs, time will tell. In the very least, I hope that it will be a good "set it and forget it" option for the folks in my life who don't have the time, technical knowledge, nor patience to fight their computers as a hobby.
-----
2026-06-14: Howdy howdy!
I am in the process of building a Greatest Hists playlist for some retro handhelds. I am looking for my top 25 or so games across multiple consoles, from the Atari 2600 to the Gameboy Advance, trying to get the playlist down to ~64 GB. Doing this for two reasons: 1) I want to get all these onto a lower capacity card to cut down on cost. and 2) to avoid choice paralysis for the recepient. If you haven't palyed a Gameboy Advance in 20 years, a four-figure library is going to be overwhelming. Much better to give them a top-25 to choose from, and help them seek things out down the road!
I have a handheld on the way that I plan on eventually stocking up on if it passes its sea trials. It's the BattleXP G350, an ultra-budget handheld capable of playing up through the Playstation 1 on home consoles, and up through the GBA for handhelds. If you time it right, you can get it on AliExpress for less than forty bucks. It's also (allegedly) made by the same folks who make the Anbernic line of handhelds. I have two of those, and they're both great! Not massively greater performance, but more bells and whistles for around 20 bucks more a piece.
Once I get this stuff sorted, I plan on doing a little review/guide thing for retro handhelds. I'll point towards some youtube channels and sites that provide more exhuastive information, alongside my own experiences.
If you have any retro games that you think would be criminal not to include, email me or comment on my neocities profile and let me know! My perspective outside the Sega Genesis and Dreamcast, PSX and PS2 is pretty limited, and as someone who only recently beat my first JRPG, I definitely have some glaring blind spots.
-----
2026-06-12: Juneteenth is not just a celebration. Juneteenth is an audit.
My community hosted a Juneteenth event this evening. It was renewing to be a part of, as they celebrated past teachers and leaders, gave flowers to the oldest in the community, and uplifted the blossoming talent and leadership growing among their youth. It was also a combined effort by local Black and Native American leadership, as it has been for nearly a decade. The local tribe's chief went to great lengths to explain to those gathered the shared history of those celebrating today, shared suffering and how Native folks also contributed to Black suffering too. We shared music and food and listened to some phenomenal speakers.
One moment stood out to me. It came from the keynote speaker, a prominent leader in my region, who highlighted Juneteenth as a celebration of freedom that was promised on paper but took fighting and bravery to deliver. Freedom that came incomplete and further stripped bare by white supremacy, that took another century to push back against, and one that feels tattered and fragile today, being ripped away from people without due process. As we face further backslide, as a lot of people sleepwalk through this moment and watch civil and human rights erode, it's a potent reminder of how liberty is easy to talk about in platitudes, but damned hard to fight for.
As our hosting of the World Cup commences and our 250 year anniversary as a country approaches, I have been enveloped in shame. Shame in the way we've elevated our very worst into leadership. Shame in the way we are backsliding into the worst version of ourself. Shame in the geopolitical might-makes-right that has defined my entire life here, with no signs of stopping. Shame in how powerless I feel in the face of it all.
But tonight, I feel a renewed hope. On top of so many other burdens Black America has carried, they have also been a mirror into the soul of this country. Often times, they've revealed our absolute worst. Other times, through their strength, fortitude, wisdom and foresight, they have won victories for the sake of liberty, bringing us closer to resolving our contradictions as a country that worships freedom but is so quick to strip it away.
If you, like me, feel listless and powerless, I recommend leaning into that feeling and seeking out your local Juneteenth celebrations. As bad and scary as things feel right now, Black America has endured the darkest nights this country has ever seen, and always emerges vibrant and strong. If July 4 isn't something you feel is worthy of celebration right now, look into what's going on next weekend, the weekend of Friday, June 19th. Celebrate a historic victory against the bondage of slavery, those who continued that fight over many generations, and those who you can stand alongside today.
One thing mentioned tonight is how our local celebrations are remarkably diverse, and our black community counts it as a blessing and sign of things going right. In their eyes, Juneteenth is greatest when it represents unity. It's not just about black folks getting released from slavery, but the promise that we can build something greater together.
A local pastor said a closing prayer, giving thanksgiving for us being born into this moment in history, and lifting up the hope that we may rise to the moment. I cannot say that I felt that way walking in, but I hope to carry that conviction going out.
-----
2026-06-07: Spent most of Saturday gathering PSP and PSX games for my handheld, and getting things configured. Looks like we should be good to go now!
-----
2026-06-04: I have had an outrageously crappy week. Turns out, a possum got wedged in the crawl space under my house and died under my guest bedroom. The rest of the house is downwind of where it passed, so the stench of decay wafted throughout and was inescapable. Thankfully maintenance folks were able to get to it yesterday, but I had like 3 really, really bad days from it. I probably slept less than 6 hours across that span, and my mental state was getting pretty rough between the miasma and lack of rest.
The place still needs a couple days to air out, so I decided to spend the night at a nearby hotel. I conked out shortly after dinner and a nice hot bath, and woke up a while ago. I'll probably lay back down shortly, but I'm snacking and writing a bit first.
A clean room, getting washed up without having to worry about flies by the dozen, and some proper rest is helping reset my brain.
I'm taking a vacation day today to continue resting and unwinding. I am going to open every window I can and run fans to air things out further. Here's hoping it's back to normal this weekend.