Posts on CatalystND

Small Things Mean Everything

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:20:00 -0500

I am not here to claim I have unlocked some secret to happiness, or that I have found the answers that will help you find satisfaction in your daily life. What I do want to do here is just reinforce a concept I think most of us understand but often forget; Life is a series of fleeting moments, and if you fail to appreciate those small moments much of life will pass you by.

Take some time to really be thankful for some of the happy moments in your life. Hold onto your parter for an extra moment in a hug. Really taste that sip of coffee as it hits your tongue, feel it warm you after you swallow. Take your dog for a walk and watch the joy it brings them. Answer the call from your parents and tell them how your week is going, and be thankful they care enough to call.

None of these things are remarkable. Most you may often feel are boring or a chore but they are not. We have to enjoy the moments we have doing the things we enjoy, especially with those we love. Spare a few special occasions in your life, most things will be mundane, but that does not mean they are not beautiful.

I often need this reminder myself, but the days that you take time to appreciate the small moments are the days you will be the happiest.

If you are reading this and are one of the people I get to spend these small happy moments with, I love you and am thankful for having you around. My life is better for getting to spend time with you, I hope we get to spend more moments together soon.

AI Concerns

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 22:54:47 -0500

Its bad in new and exciting ways I never expected

This is what I kept saying at dinner tonight with my friend Andrew. We were out to dinner in between rounds of Undaunted Stalingrad and got on the topic of AI. It came up because our hometown favorite grocery store Wegmans stated collection biometric data in some of its stores which drew huge deserved backlash. I wanted to outline some of the concerns we discussed at that dinner.

AI Facial Recognition is Different

We are all used to cameras in stores and public areas in cities, and I am not entirely against them fully, although I do have reservations. Stores have a right to protect their goods and employees, and cameras help them identify criminals and security risks. If an incident occurs, they can go review the footage and hand it off the authorities.

When an incident happens.

Thats one of the big differences with AI facial recognition. It is constantly watching you. Before, there wasn’t someone in the back room checking how long you stared at that box of Fruit Loops before setting it back on the shelf. There wasn’t someone listening to who you were on the phone with. Or looking at who you went shopping with and linking you as friends in your file. But AI can do that, and that is different than just being recorded…

Now if I want to know everytime a certain person came to our store, I can list them all out. I could tell you how long they stay on average. Who they come in with. I can predict when they will be here again. These are all extremely problematic ideas.

First off - why do we give companies and cities the right to track us? This is not an inherent right that they have. Privacy needs to be legistlated yesterday. Walmart shouldn’t have the right to collect and sell information about me. That is my data, not Walmart’s, not Wegman’s, not Facebook’s.

Second - this is prone to abuse. Lets say someone working at a store with one of these systems is a stalker. All of a sudden, they have access to a potential victims routine and paterns. In this video researching Flock AI camera security vulnerabilities Ben does a great job going over the potential issues of this technology in the wrong hands - and to be clear it will fall into the wrong hands. If we allow this to become widspread, bad actors will use and abuse these systems.

What is the plus side?

Lets be honest, at best companies get slightly better lose prevention for this. If your local city or PD impliments it, maybe they are able to catch a few more petty crimials. But at what cost? Liberty lost is rarely taken back. Once we allow every private company and the government to track you with AI cameras, there is no taking it back.

Energy Implications

One part of the AI issue I rarely see discussed is the energy, land, and resource usage. Normally enviornmental impact is something towards the front of our minds with new technology, but for some reason the general public seems pretty quiet on the large amounts of energy, land, water, and resources used in the construction, build out, and operation of these data centers. Even today, while we are still fairly early in the AI boom, large tech companies are asking to revive long closed power plants to provide energy to their new AI focused datacenters. Not to mention the large amounts of land these massive data centers consume. The concrete to build them and the cooling systems used also consume massive amounts of water.

These datacenters are going to have massive enviornmental impacts. AI is by FAR the least efficent computing in the mainstream. By miles. Its not even close. Arguements between C and python are hilarious now that we are in the world of AI computing where we run a 100GB text model to tell you what to make for dinner tonight.

The Loss of Knowledge and Expertise

Forum usage has dropped to an all time low. People aren’t asking questions and having troubleshooting discussions where they can be indexed anymore.
This graph shows stack overflow submissions overtime. I did not validate the content of this graph, so please take it with a grain of salt. But I think we can all agree the internet has felt a lot more dead since AI started taking over.

On top of this, the jobs AI is automating today tend to be entry level jobs. It has, so far, mostly failed to replace senior technical resources (at least in IT|Cyber Securty).

This leads to a couple of problems:

Inablity to find information via web search

Have an issue that you are pretty sure is very common? Well too bad, the answer isn’t going to be on Google in a few years. If people are moving their troubleshooting conversations for technical issues to private, non-indexed AI tools search tools are going to continue to get worse (and lets be honest, they are pretty bad today). This is also an issue with Discord and Facebook groups over forums, but that is a rant I will save for another day.

A lack of juniors today is a lack of seniors tomorrow

It is looking like the tech industry is going to have a very similar issue to the issue the trades have had recently. Very few new workers are joining the workforce, and the current workers are aging out and retiring. This has lead to a shortage of workers in these industries causing increased prices and delayed timelines.

If we do not find a place for entry level workers in tech to sink in their teeth and learn then the gap between skilled seniors and the incoming juniors will continue to grow. This will lead to security issues as inexperienced workers are forced into possitions they are unqualified for with little oversight as the seniors get streched thin

A lack of ability to troubleshoot

One of the most important skills someone early in their tech career can learn is how to properly and quickly troubleshoot issues. Part of that workflow involves searching for similar issues so you do not have to reinvent the wheel. If the only spot you can find troubleshooting information is via an AI, then people will begin to fully rely on these tools and will lose many of the troubleshooting skills that are key to progressing their careers. I have already seen this trend in those entering the workforce right out of college - they more often than others will accept the output of an AI as the way things are “supposed” to work, instead of understanding that like any search tool, AI often supplies an incorrect answer or gives you a spotty explaination. You as the end user need to be able to digest that information and decide if that solution seems valid before taking it as gospel. I am going off on a tangent here, but hopefuly I made my point.

AI is coming. There is no stopping it. I wish there was.

2025 Retrospective

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 22:11:24 -0500

2025

I had a a great 2025. I got engaged to the love of my life. I went on some great trips. I enjoyed hobbies both new and old. My career continued to floursih. I have amazing friends who I get to spend tons of time with. It’s hard to complain right now!

I want to quickly list some of my favorite moments of the year, of which I am sure I will miss many

Proposing to Kim
Working on wedding planing and getting save the dates sent out
Visiting Acadia National Park for the first time
Going on family vacation in Saranac Lake
Getting to be in the wedding parties for two of my best friends
Having a blast at both of those wedding (you can’t take my bottle of Champaigne away from me)
C012 LAN party
Setting up a colo data center rack with friends
Skiing for the first time in over a decade
Bob’s holiday get together
Getting my engagement present from Kim - a Citizen Attessa watch
Visiting my parents in Florida in the spring
Talking to my parents on the phone multiple times a week
Spending time with Maple every day
The near daily walks we would take when Kim was working from home
Getting my Wyrmwood gaming table and making lots of memories around it
Seeing Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance concerts
Got an xTool D1 laser engraver which has been a blast to make projects with, along with a cricut and lots of new woodworking tools.

2026

So, looking into 2026 I don’t have a super well defined list of goals, but I do have a few things I am looking forward to this year:

Our wedding - lots of planning going into this. It will be a great day no matter what, but I want to make sure I put in all the work I can to make the day extra special.
Along with that, continuing to focus on health. I want to be healthy and happy with myself at our wedding.
Have an amazing, awesome, super memorable honeymoon after.
Skiing - continue to go and get use out of my season pass, and focus on improving my skills. I want to come out of this year a much more capable skiier than I entered it.
Game Nights - Make sure to keep having in person game nights as much as possible.
Get on the lake more this summer
Keep finding new music
Continue seperating myself from big tech as much as possible

Fall 2025 Info Dump

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:20:35 -0400

Wow Time Flies

Yeah, just like most of my journaling and writing attempts, I forgot about this for a while. Whatever, it happens don’t @ me.

Whats been happening?

A lot! Like, a lot a lot.

Our summer was jam packed, here is some of the top events:

Kim and I got engaged! News doesn’t get much better than that. I couldn’t be more excited to get married to such a wonderful woman.
Two of my best friends got married. I was the best man for one and a groomsman for the other.
We went on a wonderful vacation with my family to Lake Placid (where event #1 happened)
We saw Linkin Park on their From Zero tour and My Chemical Romance on their Black Parade reunion tour
I completed the New Hampshire Mammoth March - a one day 20 mile hike
LAN Party 2026 happened! It was a great time - there was a lot more RTS games in the rotation this year which was a huge plus to me.

What have I made

I will post more details and picture of all of these soon and link it here.

An engagement ring box made of canary wood and sapele
A cutting board as a wedding gift made of cherry and sapele
A cutting board for us made of walnut, sapele, and cherry
A set of 4 charcuterie boards as bridesmaids gifts made of black limba
A shot serving board as a gift for the host of the LAN party made of black limba
A DM screen made of old recovered red oak
A catchall tray made of black limba and purpleheart
A wallet that I hand stitched
A box made of recovered red oak
A box made of cherry and walnut for my desk
A sign for my shop made from walnut ply

Other random points

I have been getting m4ore into physical media - the concept of ownership has been top of mind for me. I have been buying more blu rays and am trying to start collecting CDs.

Wool - Silo Series

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:41:01 -0500

This book is a 10/10

Everything about this setting engrossed me. The characters are flawed in all the right ways, and the way the story is told kept me on the edge of my seat.

I will not retell much of the story as I tend to, I want to get away from that habit, but rather will talk about the parts of the story that captured me. The story definitely has a few acts, and the first one was one of my favorites.

Holston

At the top of the ramp, Holston saw the heaven into which he’d been condemned for his simple sin of hope.

The story of Holston is how we are introduced to the Silo. Holston is the Silo’s sheriff, and has been for long enough to have become a fixture of the silo, but not much longer. He is well loved by those around him - his deputy, the mayor, and at one point, his wife.

Unfortunately, Holston’s wife is no longer in the silo, for she committed the most unforgivable sins in this world, she wanted to leave. Simply saying that wish out loud is enough to send one to a cleaning. See, the silo this story takes place in is fully underground, the world having become uninhabitable long ago. How long is not clear yet, but long enough for the general populace to sometimes doubt much of what they have been told existed in the outside world. Elephants are once brought up as something that must have been made up for the children’s books, and not something that actually existed. Since the silo is fully underground, there is would be no view of the outside world, except there is. There is a sensor array outside, that provides a video feed to the silo of the outside world. However, these cameras get a film over them rather quickly due to the toxins in the air outside. The solution to this problem is an interesting one - those who are sentences to death are instead sentenced to a cleaning, where they are put into a suit to keep them alive for a period of time and sent outside to clean the sensors.

You might ask, if the person sent to cleaning has just been condemned to death by those around them, why would they do this final task for those who would kill them? This is an interesting question that I will not give away, but none the less, they always clean.

A cleaning is a holiday inside the silo. People from all levels come to the top levels to view the large screens of the outside while the view is as clear as possible. This joy and excitement is starkly contrasted by Holston’s remembrance of the day his wife was sent out to clean. He remembers being one of the only ones who was present while she actually did the cleaning - no one else cared enough about his wife to want to deal with the emotional moment where she cleaned the cameras and then wandered off to a nearby hill to die. But he was there, he watched her smiling as she did her final chore. Now every time he looks at the screens that show the outside, he can see his wife’s body hidden away in her cleaning suit, forever memorialized.

But why did she even say she wanted out if she knew it was a death sentence? Why did anyone? Many do because they can no longer take being cooped up in the silo. Something in their brain breaks and they crave the outside. Some do it as a form of suicide. Holston’s wife did it for a different reason. She had learned how to recover deleted files, and recovered some data from before the uprising, which caused much IT’s* servers to be deleted. What she found deleted on that server was a program to fake images on a screen. She determined that it must be to fake the image that the sensors of the outside show to trick people into thinking it was a desolate wasteland, when in reality it was green and lush. She wanted to go outside because she believed she could live freely there. After years of researching what his wife had found, Holston one day decided to find out for himself, and said the words that were not allowed to be said. What he found out, I will leave out for now. But on the camera feeds in the silo, there are now two bodies next to each other on that hill, forever together once again.

Artemis

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:41:01 -0500

Artemis is a quick and fun sci-fi novel by Andy Weir. I hadn’t read anything about this book going in, but after having read both The Martian and Project Hail Mary I was ready for another man surviving alone in space novel, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I got.

Artemis is the first and only city on the moon - but don’t call the locals lunies - they don’t like that. Our story follows the story of a young woman - Jazz Bashara - who has lived on Artemis since she was 6 years old. No one is born on the moon, due to the problems that come with gestating and raising a baby in 1/6G, so Jazz is the closest one can get to truly being an Artemisian, and she takes great pride in this and in her city.

Jazz has been a smuggler for most of her adult life. When she was 8 years old, she was assigned a pen pal on earth who she has stayed in contact with her whole life. This pen pal ended up becoming a load master for KSC, the space agency that handles all shipping too and from Artemis. Jazz is a porter on the moon - basically she delivers cargo from incoming ships to the people who need it. This gave them the perfect setup to import and distribute goods without anyone knowing. It takes the occasional bribe, and the local cop, Rudy, is very much so onto Jazz, but their operation pretty much runs without issue

The Big Gig

The main arch of the story follows the attempt of Jazz to assist a local billionaire in taking down a local company - Sanchez Aluminum. Why would this billionaire want to take out some local metal company on the moon? The main reason we are presented with early on is that Sanchez Aluminum has a contract with the city where so long as they supply the city with oxygen, they get free power from the city’s nuclear generator - pretty much as much as they want.

What the billionaire wants to do with this power is unclear for the first half of the book. He claims it is to make his own aluminum company but we are told that is not a profitable industry anymore, so we know he is likely lying. Either way, he offers Jazz one million slugs to do a job, that job being to stop Sanchez Aluminum from delivering the oxygen they need to in order to keep their free power contract. This will allow our billionaire to supply the city with oxygen he has been stockpiling in order to get the free electricity, then setting up his own company.

Jazz

This book, like most of Andy Weir’s books, are a first person retelling of the story. Jazz is by far the most entertaining character Andy has told a story through. She is the daughter of a highly skilled welder, who is also very devoted Muslim. This causes most of the conflicts between Jazz and her father as she begins doing petty crime in her early teens. Despite becoming a career criminal, Jazz is generally a good person. She does smuggle, but makes it clear that she tries to limit the amount of harm that can be done with what she exports - no guns, no hard drugs, limited flammables, etc. She also cares deeply about those around her, which can sometimes cause her to be an asshole to others, but for all the right reasons.

Everyone also constantly talks about Jazz’ potential. She hates when anyone brings this up, as she likes her job and the lifestyle she has - aside from the lack of money. Jazz is undeniably intelligent and street smart. She has very strong intuition for both technical topics and people, a powerful combination. Her father in particular always talks about how she could have been a master welder, or really anything she wanted to be.

Jazz is also funny. She is sarcastic as hell, quick witted, and self deprecating enough to always keep the internal dialog interesting. Her sass with both her friends and enemies is great, and keeps you engaged through the whole book. It was also nice to follow the story of a woman in a living city she loves, rather than a man alone in space.

TLDR

This book is fun, short enough to finish in a day if you were dedicated, and overall a great read. Jazz is a very engaging and fun character, and the city of Artemis is realistic and believable.

The Last of Us

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:14:46 -0400

I just now completed The Last of Us Part II, literal minutes before starting to write this. I wanted to get some of my thoughts on both this game, and the larger story of The Last of Us while it is still fresh. This is a story that does not let you emotions rest, but is truly executed masterfully.

Joel

Oh Joel, this game was brutal. First, lets talk about Joel in the first game. Joel was a broken man, all emotion stripped from him besides anger and despair after his daughter Sara was killed by a soldier at the beginning of the cordyceps outbreak. After what must have been 1-2 decades of living in a broken world with nothing to live for, Joel found an unexpected second purpose in life.

Given the task of transporting Ellie across the country in an attempt to create a cure, we see a beautiful father daughter relationship form between these two strangers who both need each other more than anything. The core of the story of The Last of Us Part I to me was hope. There was hope for a cure, there was hope for a second chance at family with Ellie, there was hope for a better life in Jackson. You wanted to fight tooth and nail to protect Ellie as Joel, not just because of the hope she offered to the world at large in the form of a cure, but to you personally to help you heal from the loss of your family.

Joel only has a soft spot for Ellie in the first game. His time alone has hardened the rest of him apart from this one vulnerability, and given how little he has in this world apart from Ellie, he would do anything to keep her safe. When you play through the defining turning point with the fireflies at the end of the first game, if you were like me you didn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done to save Ellie. Joel’s actions are clearly wrong, Ellie’s death would have meant more to the world than her life, but what does that matter to Joel? To lose a second daughter would surly be the end of Joel, and his purpose for the last months has been to keep her safe at all costs.

In the second game, we see a softer, more human Joel. I have seen many people point to this and say “How did Joel go from being such a bad ass to such a softy so quickly?” As far as Joel abilities go, he is just as capable in part 2 as the first game, however it is true that his personality is much softer. However, the interactions we are seeing are still through Ellie’s eyes, during a period where she was fighting with Joel. He is clearly distraught, and is hurting deeply about the thought of losing Ellie from his life. Through this lens, I didn’t see any inconsistency in Joel in part II. He continues to put protecting Ellie and his relationship with her above all else, and now with that that relationship in jeopardy Joel is suffering emotionally. That is displayed in vulnerability and timidness towards Ellie as he attempts to repair their relationship.

Ellie

Wow, this second game was not what I expected from Ellie. But honestly, I enjoyed it. The game shows us the strained relationship between Ellie and Joel at the beginning of the game, but once Ellie has to witness the brutal murder of Joel at the hands of Abby, we see how much she truly did still care for Joel. Seeking revenge on those who killed Joel, despite them allowing Ellie to live, does not seem optional for Ellie and Tommy.

We constantly see flashbacks to the good times Joel and Ellie had in Jackson during the time we missed between games. This is a brutal reminder of why you have to keep continuing on your hunt for Abby in Seattle, despite the physical and emotional trauma you are experiencing from your actions. As the player, I felt just as motivated to avenge Joel as Ellie did. Having played through part I right before starting part II, I personally remember how fond I was of Joel, and how when playing Joel the game instilled the “I would do anything for Ellie” into you. Now playing as Ellie, having had Joel ripped away from our story, I wanted to find Abby and end her. If only you knew how much pulling on that thread was going to hurt.

To be clear, this game only gives you time to process in the flashbacks, and even then it tends to be pretty painful. As I was going through and hunting down Abby’s friends, who as you continue in Ellie’s story you realize are not inherently evil people, I would legitimately feel despair at the situation constantly. If in Part I you were fighting for hope, in Part II you are simply trying to survive and fight off the despair. The sense of loss, hopelessness, and regret and constant and unyielding throughout the whole game. You almost never feel good, except for in a few sections with Dina, but even those are ripped away from us.

I was so happy when they allowed both Ellie and Abby to live at the end of Seattle. To see Ellie and Dina living together with their child on their farm was beautiful, and felt like a happy ending to the game - one I thought we were not going to get. I actually felt hope for Ellie again, something this game did not give us much of. And then the story took it away, as Ellie’s need for revenge sent her back after Abby. Ellie’s choosing to leave Dina to hunt for revenge again when there is no threat to her family is heart breaking. To see that she can not chose happiness, and is stuck on the despair and hatred she feels over losing Joel really did crush me. That is not to say that it is a poor story decision, in fact it drives home the feeling of helplessness more than anything else in this story did. Ellie just can’t be at peace knowing that the person who took everything from her is still out there.

The End

I am not going to focus on Abby’s story. I did enjoy it, and seeing that all of her friends are actually decent enough real people was great story telling. Showing you this only after you had massacred most of them increases that feeling of helplessness and despair. You know what is going to happen to them and despite that you still grow to like them and root for them.

The ending battle between Ellie and Abby summarizes their quarrel perfectly. These two girls who could have been good friends in another life are both on the brink of death before the fight even starts. They are prepared to get into 2 separate boats and head their separate ways. However at the last moment, Ellie’s need for revenge prevents her from moving on for the third time. You flail, trash, and beat each other to an inch of both your lives, with Ellie ultimately winning. Ellie can’t finish Abby off though. Despite this deep desire for revenge, despite all the damage Abby has done, despite the fact that she is literally holding Abby underwater, after having a flashback of one of the good times with Joel - she pulls Abby out of the water and tells her to leave. I took this as Ellie wanting to be a better person in Joel’s memory, or maybe just realizing that he wouldn’t have cared about her avenging him and losing the motivation to take another life.

I left the end of this story feeling like everything had been completed. It did not feel good, but that was the point. Not all revenge stories end with the bad guy dead, sometimes you were the bad guy all along. We are all human, we all have the capability to do terrible things, but we are redeemable. I know its fiction - but I hope Ellie finds her peace back in Jackson.

Russia, America, and the Rest of the World

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 22:50:21 -0500

Trump - Russian Ally or Copy Cat?

Russia has been our adversary since the end of WWII. The Cold War faded, but it never fully ended. Tensions have remained high, even if a hot war was no longer on the horizon. We always saw our two nations as incompatible - the values of the west and the east are like oil and water, we assumed they just wouldn’t mix.

However, all that seems to be changing now. With the war in Ukraine I always worried we were getting closer to a hot war with Russia, but now it seems we are either their best friend or are simply taking a page out of their playbook. We have stopped sending aid to Ukraine, announced we will be looking to relieve Russia of the sanctions we placed on them, criticized NATO for allowing new members, and so much more. It seems like we are simply doing the exact steps that Putin would have asked for us to do if he was in charge.

This is in stark contrast to our traditional allies, who continue to stand strong with Ukraine. We have betrayed them at every turn this administration. We have levied or threatened to levy tariffs on their goods. We have threatened their sovereignty and safety. We are considering removing ourselves from the institutions we build with them.

The only question I can think to ask is for what? The answer I have heard most commonly to answer this is that we are simply setting up for further negotiations. Negotiations to what end? We are the richest and most powerful nation in the world, what do we have to gain by shaking up the system? I have also heard that it is to display our strength. Displaying our strength would be done by furthering our support of our allies, and showing those who would threaten freedom and democracy that we will not allow it. Instead we seem so eager to bend the knee to Russia, and allow them to take what they want. Appeasement is a strategy that did not stop the second world war, nor do I expect it would stop the third.

What about inside the country?

Internally, we also appear to be taking a page out of the Russian playbook, and moving closer to oligarchy every day. Elon Musk is the most obvious and heinous example of how much power is up for sale, but there have been many smaller examples as well. One of his DOGE employees who is in charge of the US payment systems while also controlling companies with millions in government contracts. Most of Trump’s cabinet hold no qualifications to their jobs, but are simply yes men. Many in the top military leadership are being cleared out in favor of those who will carry out Trump’s wishes with little pushback.

The government programs that keep us safe and progressing are being gutted, and it is not to save you on your taxes. It is to get tax cuts for the ultra wealthy, and to privatize those businesses to continue extracting more wealth from you and your family. Trump and Elon are ultra rich and do not give a shit about the common man, and it is hard for me to understand why so much of the country think that they do when every action they take speaks to the contrary.

I plan to revisit this topic and make my thoughts more fleshed out and more coherent, but with things moving as fast as they are, I just needed to scream into the void for a bit.

Privacy and Why You Should Care

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 21:02:21 -0500

I have nothing to hide, why would I care if a company or the government is keeping track of what I do?
What are they going to see, me scrolling on my phone?

Over the years, we have come to accept such a low level of privacy that many Americans no longer seem to even care about privacy as a concept. I am going to attempt to tell you why your privacy matters, why you should care, the harm this has done, and some steps that you can take to move help restore your anonymity.

How did we get here?

Imagine the advertising landscape in America 100 years ago. To these Americans advertisements are a small excerpt in the news paper letting the local community know about a sale at the local hardware store. You might see a billboard or hear a radio ad for larger companies advertising a new product, but besides that you wouldn’t know what they were offering unless you tracked it down in a catalog. The newspaper didn’t track which articles you spent more time reading, and they didn’t worry about “engagement”. They simply put out the best version of the local news they could to earn your business over other papers. It was a different world from the one we are exist in now.

The Invasion of Our Attention

Now we are bombarded by ads from so many sources that you likely don’t realize how many you are shown per day. Your TV serves you ads before you have even selected an app, that app then shows you ads to help you pick what to watch, and then unless you pay to avoid it, ads play at the throughout your show. Your scrolling session on TikTok or Instagram reels can have up to 30% of the videos attempting to sell you something. Your email inbox has become a horde of advertisements and receipts instead of a tool to communicate with your friends. Facebook no longer shows you posts from your family, now it shovels piles of AI generated content to keep your eyes on the screen. The tools we used to use to educate, entertain, and communicate have all been coopted by corporations trying to make one more sale. Understanding the infiltration of corporate greed into all facets of our lives is key. Each day they encroached into your life just a little bit further, until it became nearly impossible to keep your eyes away from their content.

The Trade

Unless you make a concentrated effort, you likely never go for a full hour during your day without getting served an advertisement. This is not normal, but because we were trading this invasion into our lives for convenience, we took the trade without knowing what we were giving up. We wanted free video entertainment, free news, free updates from our friends and family, but it was never free - your information and attention was the price.

At first, this seemed like a pro more than a con. Instead of getting random ads like we used to on TV, you were at least seeing ads that were a little relevant to you. Some of the products you were sold even solved problems you didn’t know you had yet! Nice. However, over time these ads got better and better, and because they got better at selling to you the products they were selling were able to get worse. In the current day it is often near impossible to tell the quality of a product, even if you try to put in the effort. How often do you buy a product on Amazon from a brand like JIQLAD without looking at the reviews since the product page looks nice, just to get it and find that, surprise, its trash. This is true of other “products” as well - mainly the news. Much of the news an average American now consumes is targeted to them, aiming to get them to click. After they click, the quality of the reporting is secondary, as their ad money has already been collected. This has lead to news sites with more shocking and provoking headlines, and with near nonexistent journalism. Many of these sites are now even adopting AI to generate the articles for them.

But apart from this side effect of product and news quality declining, you were paying a bigger price. Data brokers and advertising companies like Google and Facebook were building profiles on you. They were writing down what videos you watch and for how long, so they could keep you scrolling. They were seeing which of your friends posts made you mad, which kept you on the site longer than the ones that made you happy. They showed people more content that made then angry in the quest for engagement and screen time. This anger developed into hate after enough time. We can now no longer stand our fellow man, and social media’s drive to anger us to keep us engaged was a large part of this.

The Cost

We now live in a world without nuance. A world where there is right, there is wrong, and there is no in between; except the right and wrong is not consistent and switches depending on who you speak to. We now live in a world where the far-right is pushing us to authoritarian and isolationist policies because the media has preyed on fears of the average voter - fears of losing their job, rising prices, and of wars abroad - and sold them a silver bullet. A silver bullet, which is firing thousands of government workers, and raising prices through tariffs, and increasing tensions across the globe. Yet, anyone who stands in the way is the enemy, checks and balances be damned - he has a mandate. We now live in a world where the far-left praises acts of terror carried out by Hamas since those leftists disagree with Israel’s existence and actions - therefore any action taken against Israel is justified. Many others fully ignore the tremendous loss of civilian life inflicted by Israel, and would prefer Gaza be cleared out, bulldozed, and turned into a strip mall. There is no in between - no room for nuance. One side is good, one side is evil, but many don’t agree on which one is which. We live a world where we can not talk openly about these things, because if you voice the wrong opinion to the wrong person, you are no longer their friend, but instead the enemy.

The cost of the loss of your privacy is the loss of your sanity. Many Americans can no longer think for themselves, and simply wait for the algorithm to serve them their next opinion. Until we learn to value our privacy and our attention we will continue to be driven to further extremes, we will be encouraged to spend more to get less, and we will be lulled into a false sense of security. The ads and the propaganda you see are more effective than you realize because they were tailor made for you. They know what will keep your attention. They know which types of posts have changed your behavior in the past. They know you, every search you have made, and have accounted for every minute you have spent starring at a screen. There is no escaping if you keep playing.

The Way Out

To escape the system they designed for you to never leave, the first thing you need to do is care. By simply thinking about privacy and by analyzing what you are being shown, you will begin to see the patterns - both in what opinions you are being manipulated into holding, and also the patterns of behavior that are being engrained into you.

How many times a day do you check your phone? How many hours did you spend on social media this week? What did you gain from the time spent there? If you can’t remember what Instagram reel or TikTok you watched an hour ago, why do you keep going back to scroll?

The second step is to flip the table. Currently, the only way to respect your privacy and your attention is to leave. If you can not leave these sites fully, make it more difficult for them and for yourself. Remove the social media apps from your phone at the minimum if you can not delete your accounts fully. Allow the device that is on your person 24/7 to be a tool, not a distraction. There is nothing wrong with small doses of social media for entertainment but keep it on a separate device. This limits the amount those apps are able to track your activity, as well as lowering the amount of time you will spend there.

Unsubscribe from advertisements wherever possible. Use an ad-blocker whenever possible. Google has disabled many blockers from working on Chrome, take note of this act of aggression - it has been many years since Google removed “Don’t be Evil” as their core value, and the reason why has become more pronounced. Disable their location tracking when you are not using their apps, and consider using alternatives wherever possible, including gmail and maps. Switch to Firefox or other options that prioritize security and privacy.

Move back to offline backups instead of relying on cloud storage providers. This includes iCloud and Google drive/photos. Google is already analyzing the location data from your photos to stitch where you go. Right now, the FBI is pushing to get backdoors implemented into these service’s encryption. That means that your data would be able to be accessed without your knowledge or consent. Even if these systems are designed with the best of intentions to only be used in criminal trials, they will be abused. The threat of your own data being used against you in a criminal proceeding should be enough to concern you. What if the FBI demanded your document safe’s lock was replaced with a lock similar to TSA lock, so they can always get into it just in case they need to. We wouldn’t trust the government with that key, and thieves would certainly use the master key once they figured out how. Suddenly, the amount of trust we put in safes and these locks plummets. We should treat this no differently.

When you notice a service trying to manipulate you, ask yourself why, and if the reason is malicious, do your best to separate yourself from that service. Open source alternatives exist that solve many of the problems of modern digital life, and who have no incentive to manipulate you. Adopting these options does take an investment of time, but that is a small price to pay to begin to remove the interest of corporations and billionaires from your mind. Consider alternatives to social media like Mastodon, PixelFed, and Matrix where accounts and data are not controlled by a central source. Encourage movement to communication platforms with end to end encryption, where your messages can not be read in transit such as Signal or Matrix.

The future of the internet must become distributed. To continue down the path we are going down is to hand big tech the keys to our psyche, and that is simply unacceptable.

TLDR

When you protect your privacy, you protect yourself from influence. The opinions you hold should be your own - opinions that you have spent time forming and that are based on your experiences, not from the carefully crafted campaigns carried out by companies and politicians to sway us one way or another. Do not trust your data to others, their motive is always money and power. Remember that we are all human, and that the bonds that join us are stronger than those that divide.

There is a war going on for your mind, if you are thinking, you are winning.

The Mercy of Gods

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 22:41:01 -0500

The Expanse is one of my favorite stories ever told. The characters, their relationships, and the way the universe functions are all so coherent and well written, and come together to make such an engaging and believable story of humanity venturing into the unknown. When I saw that the writers had started a new story I dove into it immediately, and expectations were high.

The Setup

The Mercy of Gods did not disappoint. The world is a bit more overwhelming when they first drop you in - we are not on Earth, instead humanity calls the planet of Anjiin its home. However, it is not where humans originate from. There are two trees of life on Anjiin, the one we are familiar with - humans, squirrels, crabs, and trees - all your normal earth life, and another native tree of life that functions completely differently. They don’t use DNA to copy their genetics, and they don’t use the same mechanisms to create and use energy. These differences are what our main cast of characters has spent their life focused on. We follow a research group whose main project has been “reconciling” these two trees of life, and allowing on to nourish the other. Humanity also knows that their tree of life is the invader on this planet, although they have no idea how this came to be. In the fossil record, one day humans and all their accompanying species just showed up, but the other life had been there for much longer.

These scientists live a fairly average life, and although there are differences like their homes being grown from “coral” from the other tree of life, they live in a fairly familiar world to what we inhabit. Technology is around the same point, give or take. Humanity has satellites and missiles, but is no where close to conquering the stars. We do use these satellites to watch into space though, and one day we noticed something abnormal in space. After Jellit, one of our main characters twin brother, was able to see through the abnormality to what was truly happening, humanity was shocked by the sight of an armada of ships headed to Anjiin.

This is where the story really kicks off. Humanity is conquered in just over a week. The aliens, a race known as the Carryx, kill 1 in 8 humans as soon as they arrive, simply to send the message that they can. This is not done via war as we know it. Rather, as soon as the Carryx arrive they set up a grid over the entire planet, that hovers in the sky stationary above the ground. These thousands of pods, then proceed to shoot the 1 in 8 people all at once with no warning. Humanity tries to fight back, the battle is lost before it has begun.

The Journey

Most of the research group ends up all aboard the same vessel which has left Anjiin for who known where. All of the prisoners were boarded onto this ship with no context, and left in a room with no instruction. The prison does have fresh water and “food” if you can call it that, but nothing else. It is always cold, there is nothing to do, and they do not now know what is happening. On the ship, we mainly follow two people, Dafyd Alkhor and Jessyn Kaul. If there is a main character in this story, you would likely say it is Dafyd. He was just the lowly research assistant in the group, not even a full fledged researcher. However, he likes people underestimating him and often uses this to his advantage.

On Anjiin, Dafyd always lusts after Else Yannin, a beautiful woman who also just happens to be his boss’s partner. However, the lead researcher Tonner is not on this ship, and if you put a bunch of stressed primates in a box for an extended period of time, they are going to do the thing primates do to release stress. So, Dafyd and Else start their relationship looking for comfort wherever they can while imprisioned traveling through non-symetrical space.

Jessyn is a skilled researcher, however privately she has always struggled with mental issues. The way it is described, I think we can best call it depression. She often eludes to having had suicidal thoughts in the past, and makes it sound like even when things were good she still had fairly dark thoughts. Jessyn is able to keep herself sane in her day to day life with the assistance on Jellit and her medication. On this ship though, there is no Jellit, and there are only a few weeks worth on pills. She often spends her days counting how many pills she has left in pocket, and worrying about what will come once she runs out. She knows that it would hard for her to keep her mind under this kind of stress even with her pills, and she is not going to have those for much longer.

The climax of this act comes as some of the humans plan violence against the guards the Carryx use. Dafyd is firmly against the violence. He has sought to understand the Carryx and the other species around him, although he has not yet figured them out. He keeps trying to put himself in their shoes and try to predict their reaction to their actions. He assumes that if the prisoners get rowdy and violent, than the Carryx will simply dispose of their unarguable cargo. However, when the violence does come, and one of the aliens are killed, there is no reprisal or violence against the prisoners. Instead, another one of the species that was killed comes out, and consumes the corpse of its dead companion.

At first Dafyd can not understand this. This ends up being his first major realization that his jailers aren’t human. Not only in the literal sense, but in their logic as well. The Carryx and all the other species we have and will encounter do not think like our characters and us. We will later learn that the Carryx often use the motto of “What is, is”. Is a Carryx or one of their soldiers was ever weak enough to get killed by a human, it didn’t deserve to live. There is no need to punish the humans for being humans.

The Takeaway

SciFi explores facets of the real world by stripping away or adding on new elements to it. The Mercy of Gods examines our humanity and our sanity. Do we remain human when we lose our family? How about after watching your partner die? When all the guards rails are removed and the rules are not the same as they have been for your whole life?

What about your mind - can you stay positive, or even stay yourself when you run out of the pharmaceuticals that keep your brain chemistry normal? What about after being placed into a cold unforgiving metal box with nothing besides water and nutrient paste for months? After you watch one of your few surviving friends get blown up?

The Mercy of Gods shows us what it means to be human and to exist in a tribe when we are pushed to our extremes.

Midst

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:50:13 -0500

Midst has a story to tell, or at least they found one to tell in the process of making it, and tells it in a very unique way. The way Midst is performed makes it feel like the narrators are organically telling you a story. It doesn’t feel like an audiobook where all the lines have been meticulously written, and it doesn’t feel like a RPG podcast where the players playing characters. Instead, it feels like hearing a grand story as a child.

The details are sometimes exaggerated to grand effect, or left extremely vague - whichever adds to the feeling and flow of the story. For example, the main mode of ground transportation in this universe are bocular vehicles. What does it mean for a vehicle to be bocular powered? Who knows, it doesn’t matter!

I am not going to give an summary of the story as a whole, but I will give a list of some highlights on my favorite concepts and moments from the story. Warning, spoilers ahead:

There is a force, or maybe things, known as terrors that happen in the fold, the “dark” part of this universe. The way the narrators explain what is happening during terrors is awesome. They keep a fast flow of crazy, cosmic horror descriptions coming at you for minutes at a time, making you feel overwhelmed and awed. Shot a gun in the fold? The light summons a swarm of pirañas in the muzzle flash. Trying to hide massive terror but it finds you? Your leg is now a man named Jacob, and your neighbors personality has been replaced by frogs.
Moc Weepe is such a cool character and I love him. His evolution from slimy business man into murderous cult leader feels natural despite how fast it happens. The evolution of his voice as the fold consumes him adds to the terror you feel when Weepe is present, especially once they have to start adding the pump sound effects in the background. It has the same vibes as a Darth Vader.
Lark trying to convince herself she doesn’t give a damn about anyone while constantly putting herself at risk every 10 minutes. A great tough on the outside, soft (but still badass) on the inside character.
Despite being unlikable on purpose (sometimes), I liked Phineas’ redemption story quite a lot. His flaws are well justified, but they shine through constantly. Phineas’ freezing when offered valor in exchange for Lark is a prime example. Of course we dislike that he even thought about betraying the other members of the breach, but it makes sense as the desire to become valorous has been burned into Phineas for his entire life.
The excitement with which they describe every creature in Midst. I would pay just to have them read off creatures they created for a few episodes. The fold whales and mirror hawks are some top examples.

28

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 20:46:37 -0400

How was 27?

I just turned 28, so lets look back and reflect on 27 - or as my grandpa would have framed it, my 28th year of life (since when you turn 1, you have experienced one year. So I am actually done with my 28th year of being alive. Confusing, I know, but true).

I feel like 27 was a year of stability and personal growth. I think 28 year old Nick is a lot more confident personally and professionally than 26 year old Nick was, and is leaps and bounds ahead of 24 year old Nick. My career has fast forwarded exponentially over the last 3 years, and although there is certainly a level of imposter syndrome, I have consistently advanced and that has improved my confidence greatly. I am also very happy with where I am interpersonally in my life. I have the best group of friends that I have ever had, an amazing supportive partner, and family who has always had my back.

27 was the first full year I spent in my own home, which has been both rewarding and challenging. I love the house, and grow more happy with it and more attached to it the more effort that I pour into it, as it becomes more and more how I want it to be. Sure, there are times where something goes wrong or where the chores that need to be done pile up and there is no one else to do them for you, but I would still take it any day over renting, and am grateful for the fact that I have the option.

Who do I want to be by 29?

I want the next year to be one where I focus on sharpening the skills that I have been cultivating, and where I take the steps I need to accomplish my goals. I want to pour more of myself into both my personal life and professional life, and do what I can to take a more active role in both. It is easy to fall into complacency in our day to day lives, and to have the weeks slip by without doing much of note. I think that in the past few years I have made a lot of progress on this front, but I want to make sure that I keep moving forward.

By 29, I want to be who I am today, but more even more competent, capable, and motivated.

How did I celebrate my birthday?

For my birthday, my girlfriend Kim got me tickets for a Twenty One Pilots concert in Brooklyn. She is from Long Island, so we also took the opportunity to visit with her family, who I have gotten pretty close to. It was an interesting trip, since I haven’t been to NYC since I was a kid, and I didn’t see much when I was there.

The Trip there and Back

We decided to take my Tacoma to Kim’s parents. Since it is still new and I really didn’t want to get in a fender bender I wasn’t willing to take it to the city proper. So, we took the Bridgeport, CT to Port Jefferson Ferry. I liked this route a lot better than how we went the time before this, where we took the George Washington bridge through the city, to Long Island. The drive this way mainly went through rural Massachusetts, which was more scenic than I expected it to be. The only stressful part about the ferry was loading and unloading the truck onto the boat since it is very tight inside, but everything went well.

Kim’s parents dropped us off at a train stop for the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). It was about an hour train ride to Penn Station in Manhattan. We took a quick break before transferring to the subway, and walked around the city for a few minutes and got some lunch. Some notes on this - its a wild feeling being surrounded by such tall buildings and such large moving crowds when you work from home in rural upstate New York. I did live in Buffalo for quite a few years, but still big cities are like a different universe. You can barely see the sky due to the giant pillars of concrete and glass all around you.

We then took the 3 line to the Barclay Center where the show was. This was my first time on NYC’s subway, and overall everything went well. I was a bit surprised that the trains and stations were so outdated though. The trains look like they haven’t been updated in 30+ years. There are no displays in the cars to let you know which station you are at or are approaching, and the sound system is so poor you can’t hear the announcements at all. So the only way to know what stop you are at is to look at the signs at the station when you get there, and count the stops til you get where you need to be. The other strange thing was how hot the stations were, with no ventilation or AC to be seen.

The Show

Who goes to a Twenty One Pilots concert in 2024?

Random guy on the subway

Me, I am the one who sees Twenty One Pilots in 2024. Me and like 10,000 girls who dragged their SO’s to the show. Thats okay, I don’t mind. Twenty One Pilots has always had a special place in my heart. I started listening around the release of Vessel. On our commute to the local community college me and my friend Cody would spend most of the drive singing along to all the songs. I could go years without listening to that album and still know every word to almost all the songs after how much we burned those lyrics into our heads that year.

Since then I have been “late” to most of the albums, but I always get around to listening to them and they tend to really resonate with me. A lot of their songs have a basis in anxiety and self doubt which are always things that I have struggled with, and their music has always felt so relatable.

The show itself was amazing. Tyler and Josh are both great performers, and once the show started the energy never faded away, even for a moment. They also played pretty much every song I would have asked them to play, ranging from their first self titled album all the way to their newest album. I liked that they skipped around their entire discography and it felt completely natural.

If you are a fan and have never seen them in person, I can’t recommend it enough.

N100 Unraid Build and Synology Migration

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:09:19 -0400

Parts List:

n100 motherboard
32GB DDR5 4800MHz RAM
m.2 to 6x SATA adapter
5.25" to Cooled 3.5" Adapter
Additional 2.5" Drive Tray
2x 12TB Refurbished SATA HDD
3x Assorted 6TB HDD
4x 1TB SATA SSD
1x 1TB nvme cache SSD
Old 600W EVGA Power Supply
Old Rosewell Mid-Tower Case

I recently moved my “production” homelab to an n100 based NAS I build in an old gaming computer case, from a Dell PowerEdge R630 and a Synology DS220+. It was a three step move, step one was to get the new box up and running. Step two was to transfer the data from the synology and the workload from the PowerEdge. Step 3 was to get the remaining drives out of the Synology and PowerEdge and into the new Unraid box.

The Build

It has been a bit since I have built a computer, and this was a bit of a new experience. The N100 board is a small forum factor, and already had the CPU and cooled built into the board. I have also never filled a case with so many drives. Now I didn’t add all of them until later on, but as you can see by the part list, it was ended up loaded.

It took some time to remove the old motherboard and drives. The old system was the motherboard from the first computer I ever built in 2012 - an AM3+ motherboard that started with a Phenom II x4 cpu that was later upgraded to an AMD FX-8350. I am still a sucker for the logo design on those chips.

Once I got the initial build done - n100 mounted, power and front panel headers connected, and 3 of the hard drives (2x 12TB, 1x 6TB) I was ready to get the OS installed. With Unraid, you install the OS on a USB drive. This board, being built as a NAS motherboard, had an internal USB 3.0. So I imaged a 64GB USB (which required me to manually make the USB bootable. I also only make a 20GB partition so I didn’t have to bother doing anything weird to get a FAT32 partition on it.)

Moving the data

Once everything was booted, I added a 12TB drive for parity, and the other 2 drives as data disks. It was going to take over a day to calculate parity, so I started transferring the data from the Synology. I found the best method was to setup and mount an NFS share from the Synology on the Unraid box. I added NFS to my network share and added the IP of the Unraid box as read/write.

Setup your share in unraid. In this example, the share name will be share
Mount the old servers share. Example NFS mount command bellow. Replace IP with your server’s IP, /share with the share name, and /synology/share with where you want to mount it.

mount -t nfs 10.10.0.10:/share /synology/share

Use rsync to ensure a full sync between the two devices

rsync /synology/share/ /mnt/share

This make take a long time to complete, depending on the amount of data you are moving.

Moving the Drives

I am going to skip past setting up all my docker containers, since I recreated them all and didn’t migrate. So at this point, I was able to take 4x 1TB SSD’s out of my PowerEdge since my workload had been moved to docker on the Unraid box, and 2x 6TB drives from the Synology.

I shutdown the Unraid box, and wired up the new drives. Once back in unraid, I added the SSD’s to a pool, which by default setup a mirror btrfs filesystem, which is what I wanted. So no change needed there.

I also added the 6TB drives to the array. Before it allowed me to format them, Unraid does a disk clear. This means the disk is written with all 0’s so parity is not lost and does not need to be recalculated. This is done automatically, you do not need to do anything special. Once the disk clear was done (It took somewhere between 3-6 hours, I was not keeping close track) I was able to format the drives with a file system (literally pressing the format button) and they were now part of the main protected array.

Lan Party 2024

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 22:20:35 -0400

Last weekend, I went to my first ever LAN party. I have brought my computer to friend’s houses before to play games, and we called it a LAN party, but this was the first real one. It was quite the experience, and I had a great time. The weekend was filled with great food, great games, and most importantly great people.

It was a 4 day party, from Friday to Monday. Many of us, myself included, chose to sleep in tents out in the yard. It was pretty funny with 5 tents out in the small back yard, but I slept great out there. We had all of the computers setup in the dining room, just over 10 total. In the living room there were 5 TVs setup, with a variety of PS5’s and Switch games getting played.

There was a constant flow of amazing food all weekend. The first night was spaghetti with homemade sauce meatballs. The second day there was a breakfast of bacon and eggs, followed by a dinner of brisket, ribs, and mac and cheese. The last day, there were bagels and amazing Lisi chicken wings.

The main game of the weekend ended up being Conan Exiles. I am a bit burned out on survival-craft games, but this was a pretty decent one. I ended up spending most of the time building our first house, which kept us safe until the last day where we upgraded to a much larger house.

We also played a few random games to take a break from Conan:

I am looking forward to more LAN parties in the future. It was great to spend time with some friends I don’t get to see as often, as well as make some new ones. It did bring back some of the feeling that games used to give me in childhood, gathered around the TV and participating in a group experience. Sure, I get that from other places - but its has been a long time since I got it from a game and it was nice to experience it again.

Kayak Camping

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 22:29:39 -0400

Over labor day weekend this year my girlfriend Kim, our friends Riley and Julia, and I went on a 3 day 2 night camping trip in the Adirondack mountains. We faced some adversity, namely the endless rain, but overall it was a good trip and some needed time away from the routine of everyday life.

The Plan

We have been to this camping spot before, minus Kim - it is a great primitive site off of Good Luck Lake that you can either paddle or backpack to. Last time we went in 2021, we padded in. However we only stayed one night, and this time we wanted to stay a bit longer so we would have time to actually enjoy the time in the wilderness, instead of setting up camp and then tearing it back down the next day.

So we planned on packing 4 kayaks in the back of my Tacoma and heading up early on Saturday so we could have camp ready before lunch. We would then stay Saturday night, all of Sunday, and leave after breakfast on Monday. The weather forecast looked good for the weekend, with only a few two hours of rain on Saturday. Unfortunately, the forecast is often wrong

The Trip

We packed up on Saturday morning as planned. We strapped down the kayaks and headed to a local diner for breakfast, and hit the road. We were listening to season one of Midst on the drive over (So far I am a fan, would recommend giving it a try). About an hour in, and we hit the rain. Again, there was some rain in the forecast, and we aren’t at the lake yet, so no big deal. But I start to get worried - the rain is so loud I have to pause the podcast occasionally because I can’t make out the dialogue over the pounding of the drops on the windshield.

We continue on, hoping that the rain stops, but being willing to pivot plans and still enjoy the weekend if there is no chance of getting in the kayaks. It lessens up as we get closer to the boat launch, and by the time we get there the rain has completely stopped…

It only rains when its inconvenient

…until we unload all the kayaks, then it starts again. It wasn’t very heavy rain though, so we continue on. The boat launch is right next to a bridge, so as we get the kayaks in the water one by one, the launched boats go and wait under the cover of the bridge. There are two people waiting under the bridge ending their trip, who warn us there are two beaver dams the way we are going. This is interesting, since last year there were no obstacles.

Those beavers work hard

We start to head upstream, only getting slightly wet from the rain. It actually feels rather nice at times. It doesn’t take long before we hit the first beaver dam. We all have to one by one get out of our kayaks onto a muddy path, only to launch them again about 6 feet away. Its an annoying task, but we get it done and no one falls in. There are some other kayaks going the other way who warn us that the next dam has no way around, and you basically have to go right over it, and they were right.

Its a short trip to the second dam. I go first - I paddle my kayak half onto the dam and step out onto the sticks and mud. Its surprisingly sturdy, actually. I pull my kayak up and let it float on the upper side while I help the others get across it. I manage to pull the other kayaks up so they don’t have to get out, and one of them pushes my kayak back to me so I can get back in. After another 5 or 10 minutes, we reach the lake, and are basically at the camp site.

At the site

We get to the camp site, and after getting our kayaks out of the water work on getting all of our dry bags unloaded. It is still raining pretty steady at this point, and it will be for the next few hours. We setup a tarp so we have a dry area to keep all of our gear while we wait out the rain.

One thing I love about camping is how good food tastes, and that applies double to coffee. I am sure the coffee I make while camping is much worse than what I normally make at home - but that weak percolated coffee we had waiting under that tarp after the long, cold, and wet paddle to the site was one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had. The rest of the night goes pretty uneventfully. The rain eventually calms down, we setup our tents, and we have a short fire before going to bed. The rain started up again that night, but I was able to get some decent sleep.

A Restful Day

We had no reception at all at the camp, and thats alright. Its such a break from normal day to day life, at least my life, to be untethered from the internet and electronic communication. No checking what friends are doing, no checking the weather even. It is just you, your thoughts, and whatever activities you can find to do.

Overall everyone took the day pretty slow. Hanging out in the hammocks we brought, reading books, listening to downloaded podcasts. Riley managed to build a little stool with a scotch eye and his hatchet I wish I had taken a picture of. It was a good day.

I didn’t bring any straps for my hammock, so I attached it to a tree with some rope. It seemed to hold well, and I felt pretty comfortable with the setup. Later in the day I was swinging in the hammock - I kept swinging more and more. As soon as I said “I am going to do a flip!”, the rope broke, and the hammock dropped me right on back. Honestly, even though my back still hurts from it, it was pretty hilarious. Would swing in unsecured hammock again.

The Journey Home

On the final day, we woke up and had some more amazing camp coffee. We decided to skip a big breakfast, and instead packed up camp and planned on grabbing food on the car ride home. The paddle back was much nicer, it was sunny and there was almost no bugs. Going down the beaver dams was easier than going up, and we managed to make it to the car uneventfully.

It was a pretty quiet ride home. We had Midst on again, but had a lot less discussion about in-between episodes, as pretty much everyone else was in and out of sleep while I drove us back.

We stopped at a gas station in the middle of no where, one of those local places where you feel unwelcome the whole time you are there. Apparently we accidentally went in the wrong door which went into a small restaurant area, and everyone just started at us, and when we cashed out, the cashier just gave us that look.. The look locals give out of towners when they don’t get why they are there. I never understood that attitude, but whatever.

I like this spot a lot. It has the right amount of adventure to get to it, remoteness and quietness while you are there, and lots of loons on the lake to keep you company throughout the day.

How Apple Won Me Over After a Decade in Tech

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 15:41:12 -0400

I Was a Hater

I have been working with computers for my entire adult life, and most of my adolescence as well. I have loved technology from the second I was old enough to play on my Mom’s SNES back on our giant CRT TV. I got my first laptop at 12, a terrible windows 7 Acer laptop, which had the HDD die 3 times in the first year I owned it. After I spent countless weeks troubleshooting that terrible Aspire, I was hooked, and knew I wanted to work with technology. I owned many laptops, smartphones, gaming consoles, and pretty much anything else I could get my hands on. But never, until 2023, have I ever owned a non-work issued Apple device - and now I am hooked.

Apple, for a long time to me, signaled that someone was into computing, but not computers. They didn’t appreciate hardware, not like I did. However, I have come to accept that I a lot of that was simply pride and a lack of understanding. I understood how computers work and how to fix them, so anyone who bought a computer you couldn’t repair yourself and that locks you out of so many parts of the OS must just be misinformed. Clearly Windows, Linux, and Android were the correct choices. You can install any OS you want onto the hardware, you can usually upgrade the hardware, and the prices were so much cheaper for the same hardware.

Now to be clear, I still think that Apple as a company has a lot of issues.

Apple will do everything in its power to prevent side loading apps on iOS and iPadOS because their app store cut makes them so much money
Apple only switched to USB-C on the iPhone due to the EU forcing them to
The only real way to get your Apple products repaired is in an Apple store, where they control part and labor prices
You have to use their products the way they intend, especially with iPhone and iPad
They price gouge users who need more storage or RAM to a comical level

However, Apple is Getting Their Shit Together

It may be because of pressure from EU legislation, or a drive to be competitive on features instead of only marketing, but Apple is doing a lot of things right at the moment.

Apple left the mac lineup neglected for quite some time after the mobile boom they experienced with the iPhone. macOS got updates, but many of the features people had wanted for years never came, and the hardware was the same thing you could get in any other computer, but at an extreme markup. Recent updates in the last few years are addressing both the hardware and software of the mac.

x86 is dead, long live x86

While it may be many decades until we are fully rid of the instruction set of the x86-64 cores which have been around since 1999, the future of computing is moving more towards the ARM. Yes, the same ARM that has been powering most of our phones for over a decade. Even Amazon is pushing its Amazon Web Services customers to adopt ARM, offering lower server prices for ARM workloads. With the release of the M1 chip in 2020, and the 3 iterations since, Apple has performed a near flawless switch to the new CPU architecture.

These chips, while not as powerful as the top tier x86-64 chips, provide plentiful power with one very important upside - power consumption. Power consumption means more than just longer battery life, although it does certainly provide that as well. Lower TDP processors also mean less heat, which solves a problem Apple has had no solution to for a long time. How do you put a powerful processor inside a sleek, lightweight computer.

The MacBook Air

These new chips allow the MacBook Air, which suffered from overheating and noisy fans in the Intel days, is now the shining star of Apples lineup. I personally use a MacBook Air M2, with the base specifications (8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD), and it has never struggled with a single task I have thrown at it. Photo editing? No problem. 50 tabs open along with news, Spotify, multiple terminals windows, discord, and iMessage? No sweat. All of this without having a fan and with a battery that lasts me multiple days.

The Software… including ‘The Ecosystem’

macOS is, at first, a capable but unimpressive operating system. It has a good UI, great application support, and all the management utilities you need to get by. Where the magic starts, is when you have multiple Apple devices. I know, this is exactly what Apple wants you to do, get all their devices. But in a world where we all have a phone in our pocket and headphones in our ears, having those work together flawlessly is truly magical. Get a phone call while you are on your laptop? Answer it on the laptop. Need an MFA code from a text message on your iPad? It automatically fills it in for you. Start listening to a work meeting on your phone after you were listening to a video on your computer? Your airpods switch automatically. All of these small quality of life features make it a treat to work with all these devices.

Overall

My MacBook has the best battery life out of any device I have ever owned, nothing else comes close currently. This is my #1 point for a laptop.
It has the best trackpad and gesture support, which makes working off a laptop much more useable
Best microphone I have had in a laptop
Full fledged shell with zsh or bash, no WSL needed.
HDR support - more on this in the Linux section.
Time machine took me about 5 minutes to setup and gives me hourly snapshots of my files synced to my NAS
Supports all the programs I use natively besides games, which will always prevent it from being my only computer
Continuity with my iPhone is amazing, and I don’t have to switch devices for notifications, phone calls, or messages.

Why Not Windows or Linux?

Sure, macOS has improved, but that doesn’t mean its better than other operating systems. Windows has been on a downward trend lately, and while I love Linux, it still has a few quirks that prevent me from daily driving it.

Windows

There was a time I would have sworn by Windows. It was simple enough to troubleshoot easily, it did what you asked it to without fighting you, and it didn’t try to lock you into certain software. Unfortunately, all of that started to change with Windows 10, and has gotten much worse in Windows 11.

Back in the Windows 7 days, there was barely such thing as a Microsoft Account, and it certainly wasn’t needed to setup your new computer. If you wanted to change settings, there was the control panel, where you could change anything about how windows operated.

Now there is the settings app, an incomplete mess, which often sends you back to control panel to change basic settings. Except windows now plans to kill the control panel entirely. They also keep killing ways to sign into your computer without a Microsoft account. Why might this be? It is because you are the product with windows, not the other way around. Starting with windows 8 Microsoft introduced widgets into the start menu, many of which in Windows 11 are now ads. This is the same reason they continually push Microsoft Edge and Bing. They want to collect more data on you to sell to advertisers.

The Broken Windows Key that Broke the Camel’s Back

Even after I got my M2 MacBook Air I was still perfectly content daily driving my Windows gaming PC for most tasks, until one day after formatting a hard drive windows randomly gave me the terribly annoying Activate Windows watermark.

My copy of windows was genuine. I bought a Windows 8 Professional license back in college with the education discount. Since then, Microsoft allowed me to upgrade that license for free to Windows 10, and then Windows 11. I tried all the troubleshooting I could to get Windows to reactivate, but it told me my copy of windows wasn’t genuine. It wouldn’t even load the Microsoft store so I could buy a new key.

With no options left, I called Microsoft support. After ~15 minutes of troubleshooting, the level 1 tech told me my case would need to be escalated. I wait on hold for about 10 minutes, and finally someone answers. They ask for my name, and then immediately hang up on me before I answered their question.

No worries, shit happens. I call back, a little frustrated but still being nice and patient with the new tech that answers. This tech also decides, after another 15 minutes of troubleshooting, that I need to be escalated. I get sent to another level 2 tech, who proceeds to pickup but doesn’t say a word to me (I could hear them talking in the background). I stay on the line because I don’t want to go through this whole process again. After a couple minutes of nothing, they hang up on me again.

I call back a third time, being kind to the tech but letting them know I need this escalated to a manger. “How can this happen twice in a row?” I thought to myself. After another 10 minutes on hold, the tech introduces me to the manager, who apologizes, and says that they will stay on the line with me while they escalate me to another tech. They warn me though, that they will likely not be able to help me as Microsoft is no longer honoring upgraded Windows 7/8 license keys, including the license I have been using for years, on this version of Windows, without a problem. They then go to transfer me, but instead to hang up on me a 3rd time.

How a company can operate like this blew my mind. They broke my product, that I purchased from them, with no warning. After they did this, I called them confused looking for support. Instead of helping me, they hung up on me 3 separate times. It was at this moment I vowed to move off of Windows as my daily driver operating system, although I do have to at least keep it installed for gaming, for now.

Linux

Oh Linux, you are so close to being good enough. Gaming compatibility has improved leaps and bounds with Valve Proton and the Steam Deck. I have run Linux, specifically Pop!_OS - a gaming focused Ubuntu/Debian based distro - as the primary operating system on my gaming PC twice. Both times, I enjoyed it. But even though I enjoyed it, I didn’t stay. There have been two main factors that sent me back to Windows for gaming and macOS for everything else:

HDR Support - I have an OLED ultra-wide monitor and HDR is what takes that monitor from great to amazing, and Linux simply lacks HDR support, especially for Nvidia GPUs.
Games with anti-cheat lacking Linux support - Eventually, I come across a game all my friends are playing, that simply can not run on Linux. Although they are getting farther and fewer between, there is still enough of them to keep me off it.

I run plenty of linux VMs and containers for hosting applications like this website, but I have yet to have it stick as my desktop operating system. However, I am thinking about taking the plunge once again on my gaming PC, as every time I go back to windows it bothers me more and more. Maybe this time will be the time it stays for good…

Overkill PowerEdge server or Underpowered NAS board

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:02:21 -0400

Currently, I am in the process from moving from a dual xeon cpu poweredge with 128GB of RAM running Proxmox, to a N100 white-label NAS motherboard I got for $120 off AliExpress running Unraid. This may sound like a crazy proposition, but hear me out.

Power - Big enterprise hardware is meant to be used and abused. Therefore, its idle power consumption is not really a concern. This means that even though I am only using 1% of the CPU at idle, I am still using ~200 watts, and if I do start taxing it, it can easily for towards 1000 watts.
3.5" Hard Drives - All of the servers I own are 1U servers, and only have 2.5" drive bays. Although I do not need nearly as much compute as I have available on the power edge, I do want to upgrade my storage. Most of my data is kept on a Synology DS220+ with 2x 6TB Western Digital Red drives in RAID 0 (I know this is insane and want to change it, thats part of what we are doing here). The plan is to setup the N100 as my primary NAS, which will have 12 SATA ports and will be in a case large enough to handle lots of 3.5" drives. Then I can convert the Synology to RAID 1 and use it for backups.
Unraid for array expandability - My Synology could only take 2 hard drives. The big benefits of Unraid for me will be the ability to add more drives at a later date, and being able to mix drive sizes. I have a spare 6TB drive, a ton of 1TB SSDs, and two 12TB used enterprise hard drives on the way.

My main concern is that I won’t have enough computer. Sure, I can always still boot up the big servers if I have a large task I need to handle, but they can’t stay running 24/7 since the point of all this is to lower power consumption. To help this, I am going to get my RPi 5 which has been collecting dust on a shelf setup as well. Most of what I currently have running in the lab are docker containers, so it will be easy to migrate some of those workloads to the Pi. I also have an old i3 NUC from 2015 I could boot up if I need to as well, but I would rather avoid it since it needs a new drive and probably isn’t worth the investment.

I am currently still waiting for the board to come in, and I will make a post going over the new setup once it arrives!