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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: November 20th, 2025

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  • Travel. Ignore him. I’ve had the pleasure visiting 7 countries, 5 non English native. Top of the list are Italy, Sweden, Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Canada (Montreal). I’d travel more if I had more money and time to. It’s been one of the most impactful things on me as a human.

    The US has no national language by design. We’re a melting pot; a country of immigrants. That is our greatest strength. Taking the often humble, mixing it, mutating it, and making it our own.

    I don’t speak any other languages, but I try. Only on very rare occasions was language a barrier. I understand I’m a guest in other people’s countries so I mind my p’s & q’s. You’re representing your country, so be kind. Approach other cultures with genuine curiosity. At least learn basic phrases like hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and anything else you can manage, but you don’t need to fluent.

    IMO, US born tourist are the worst. Loud, entitled, obnoxious, ignorant. They expect everywhere to be just perfect for them and how they like to live, like it’s Disney World. Those people won’t get a whole lot out of travel and just make us look worse than we already do on the international stage. Oh and the “influencers”… In Venice, they were like locusts.

    I’ve also traveled all over the US and it can be beautiful, but you live here; you’ll get much more of a perspective shift going somewhere completely different. Also, by comparison of other countries, the US is pretty mid. Traveling help you see the US for what it is, not for what we’re told it is.

    Definitely go with your instinct here. Foster that curiosity. I promise it will pay dividends you can’t imagine now.




  • I migrated openaw from docker running on my raspberry pi to an old nuc I had lying around. Backed it with mainly models off of OpenRouter or my local Ollama instance. For very difficult tasks it uses anthropic. Added it to my GitHub repo and implemented Plane for task management. Added a subagent for coding and have it work on touch up or research tasks I don’t have personal time to do. Made an sdlc document that it follows so I can review all of its work. Added a cron so it checks for work every hour. It ran out of tasks in five days. Work quality: C+, but it’s a hell of a lot better than having nothing.

    It helped research and implement SilverBullet for personal notes management in one shot.

    I also migrated all of my services’ DNS resolution to CloudFlare so I get automatic TLS handoff and set up nginx with deny rules so any app I don’t want exposed don’t get proxied.

    This weekend I’m resurrecting my HomeAssistant build.




  • Most of the corporate world runs mixed operating system environments. If you plan on working at a company, and will use a computer, chances are it’ll be Windows. Being able to use both is an advantage. In my 25 year IT career across all spectrum of industry, more Windows is used and Linux is niche. But the Linux users typically really know their shit. There’s a lot of skills carryover between the two operating systems. I could get into specifics if desired.





  • “A Splendid Torch” by George Bernard Shaw

    This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

    I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

    I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.


  • Exactly this. If I had to chose between hundreds of third party websites having my ID and my phone, I’ll take my phone.

    We already have very sophisticated ways of validating payment and passport information with our devices. Validating age could be as simple as a registration procedure between the device and the identity issuer , validating the device is held by a person “of age” and then that’s it. If that user successfully completes a biometric challenge, then allow the activity.

    So web browsing goes from “I’m John Doe and here’s my ID proving it” to every site (which has HUUUUUGE PRIVACY ISSUES) to “This anonymous user is over 18; this one is over 21, this one’s not”.

    Also, if this behavior of forcing websites to ID you continues, it will enable a renaissance in data mining. Right now companies see “actor is in ZIP code 90210; rain in the forecast “ and put the two together to show “maybe they need a new slicker”. That’s simplified of course, but that’s basically the trick. You can use hundreds or thousands of these data points to paint an ever clearer picture of the person, but you never know exactly who they are. These ID laws are changing this rapidly.

    This also has the potential to be used for some very dark purposes. Example: said something on Instagram critical of the US President? You don’t get to vote because of some label.

    My position is still if the site or service requires my ID, then I don’t need it that badly.


  • The book “Sapiens” does a good job framing this. Humans are social creatures. Our social groups define their own norms, mores, values, etc. To be “good” is to align with those values. Clashes happen when groups with vastly different values interact. The old adage “if you were born where they were born, and you were raised how they were raised, then you would believe what they believe” applies here, even though this isn’t always true.

    The Internet makes this problem more stark. Our groups aren’t based on location anymore; our neighborhood, our school, our church. We can find our group(s) that align with and reinforce us any time we want. It’s also upset the typical way we define our values, and our society is struggling to catch up.

    So long way of saying, good or bad relies on context and the values of those you’re close with.

    But fuck people who don’t return their shopping cart. They’re just plain bad.