Day 17 - Friday, April 17th, 2026: I think the future is bright?

A lot of stuff; a lot of nothing.

Next Monday will begin the 12-hour shifts. Pretty excited, but also... worried? It'll be intense! But my team will be bigger, so I'm hoping it'll be easier that way! It's temporary though, so no matter what, we'll be going back to the usual schedule anyway.

As for the Carrot Patties recipe I promised yesterday: bad news! I didn't get a comprehensive recipe. It was made by heart, not by numbers. 1 shredded carrot, egg (one?), bread crumbs, garlic, and seasonings (onion powder, salt, pepper.) Cooked in a pan on medium heat. A shame, because I'd love to recreate these! Suppose I'll have to figure out my own recipe based on that. I figured they'd make amazing sliders on some Hawaiian rolls. (For those not from the US: they're soft, very sweet little squircle-shaped breads.)

And speaking of food: since we're planning on moving, I figured now would be a good time to start going through the pantry and eating what we've got. (So we don't have to move a whole bunch of food!) Turns out, a lot of stuff is expiring very soon, so I've got my next week-ish of meals planned out! A win, in a way. But that also means I can't be getting any more groceries, and I'll miss getting little sweet treats... 🥺

Oh, and on Day 5 I mentioned moving over to my no-longer-server, as an experiment. Coming up on 2 weeks here shortly, and I think I'll move back. The 3rd screen is so nice, and I like having more RAM. But this quad-core CPU has been struggling to keep up, especially in 3D games. (Somewhat unsurprisingly!) Plus, that way I'll be able to get the desktop packed as well. Eventually I'll have to pack the gaming machine as well, and I'll have to rely on my three laptops. (Truly a first-world problem, huh?) But there's some excitement in that, as I'll be able to daily drive a Chromebook for a while. Typing, "gaming", general content consumption, etc. Really living the ChromeOS life. (For a little while, anyway.)

This weekend, I'm also planning on changing this blog's font to Comfortaa, which is my favorite font! And I'd like to look through my older posts and fix any typos I might've made.

Oh, and lastly: I've been working through my back catalog of podcasts. Some of the notes and thoughts might contain news that isn't exactly new. I know I'm late to things, and a lot of the things I bring up might seem anachronistic, since they will be, but I still want to bring them up for one reason or another!

Notes:

- ASUS has GearLink, which is a web-based piece of software to change the settings on a variety of peripherals! This is super cool! Less cool: it's pretty much only for peripherals released in 2026 (and onwards.)

- The Windows Full Screen Experience is available (for Xbox Insiders). This isn't exactly new(s), but it is something I'd like to try on my only Windows machine. I'm particularly curious about the following: "You also have the option to start the full screen experience immediately after logging in by selecting Enter full screen experience on startup. Turning this on will also optimize the performance of your device by not loading background processes that are not required by Windows when using the full screen experience."

- The ARES Conference (The International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security) will be starting on August 24th. While I'd love to attend, I won't be able to go to Sweden.

- The HONOR Robot Phone sounds so cool from a camera perspective, but so dystopian from an "AI Companion" one. I'll pass either way, but I thought it was a cool idea with a lot of promise.

- A report was published about Meta's AI glasses, and it's quite chilling. It's a long read, but I implore you to go through the whole article. Especially if you were thinking of purchasing a pair!

- Android is introducing the Registered App Store Program. From the article: "This Registered App Store program will begin outside of the US first, and we intend to bring it to the US as well, subject to court approval." I've been a big fan of F-Droid for ages, so I'm curious to see where this leads.

Thoughts:

- I want to get one of those four-color pens, so I can separate my (physical) notes, for organization's sake.

- I made some cold brew, and it's pretty tasty! (110 grams of coffee, roughly 1 liter of filtered water. In the fridge for 12-24 hours.) But I'm worried it's pretty wasteful, since that's nearly double what I use in my French press. I'll probably make some more cold brew, just to use up all the coffee I've got before the move, but I almost feel bad about it. (But they'd be wasted anyway, moving them in this heat and humidity!)

- I've noticed that when I skip breakfast*, I tend to feel "full"/"not hungry" for far longer. Usually with a twinge of queasiness. But I wonder if that's a causation vs. correlation thing, since I might have skipped breakfast since I didn't feel well/hungry to begin with?

*I don't eat right after waking up, I usually eat something right before work or "after a while", which is 2-6 hours after waking up.

- Cinco de Mayo is coming up! No plans yet, and I'll be working, unfortunately. But it's a nice reminder either way.

- I've subscribed to the Full Nerd Podcast. It sounds right up my alley, and I already know I like a bunch of the hosts!

- Burger King AI is real. 🤨 And as someone who's previously worked in the food service industry: yikes. But the name "Patty" is pretty cute. I hope this system won't be abused.

- I unsubscribed from the Cybersecurity Headlines podcast, not because it's bad (it's really good!) but because a lot of it seems... not necessary for me to know? It's not my line of work, and after a few dozen episodes, I've realized I don't really use any of the information provided. Give it a listen if that sounds interesting though, it's very well-produced and the episodes are short! (<10 minutes.)

- I watched WALL-E when it came out in theaters (nearly 2 decades ago...) But I feel like I should give it a proper re-watch, since I remember so little about it!

And as always, there's more, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow when I've got more time!

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Day 12 - April 12th, 2026: Causes and clearing out.

So first things first: I think I've figured out what makes me feel super nauseated sometimes! It'd happen occasionally in the mornings, and I always figured that maybe some leftovers I'd eaten had somehow gone bad.

Turns out: it's the Starbucks creamers I'd use occasionally in my morning coffees! Specifically, the Caramel Macchiato Inspired Creamer and Brown Sugar Shaken Espresso Inspired Creamer. And it was so difficult to figure out, because it doesn't kick in immediately. I'll have a tasty little coffee treat, and then an hour or two later I'll get these waves of nausea, incredibly bloating and cramps, and just a general feeling of malaise. (Plus some weird jitters, which I imagine is the caffeine making things worse.)

As for why... well, I'm not entirely sure. None of the ingredients stood out to me as "particularly bad". My best guess is that it's the very high amount of sugar. Roughly 1/3rd is sugar by volume. (5 grams of sugar per 15 milliliter/gram serving.) Considering I generally used 60 grams of creamer (with 100-120 milliliters of dairy-free milk and a 6-cup Moka Pot), that's 20 grams of sugar! I am known to have a sweet tooth, but generally those are foods. So the sudden (liquid) sugar rush must be triggering a "get out" response in my stomach. A shame, since I liked their taste, but wowee I feel bad right now!

Speaking of coffee: I'm finally reducing my intake, properly. No more morning and afternoon coffees. I'll save coffee as a special little treat. Perhaps the constant caffeine has left me feeling drained most days. It'll be a rough few weeks, but ultimately it'll be for the better! (Or so I hope.)

2 jars of oats standing atop and oven. The one on the left has a yellow lid, and the cocoa and peanut butter mixture looks quite brown. The jar on the right has a blue lid, and the mixture has a slight pastel blue hue to it.

And I did make two overnight oat jars. On the left is a cocoa & peanut butter one, and the blue-lidded one is simple blueberry! I don't yet know if they're any good. I'm a little worried about the cocoa & PB jar, since I think I put too much cocoa powder and made it too bitter, despite adding lots of honey. I'll have to report back, and post the recipes if they're good. I've been on a really bad "overnight oats" kick lately. Easy to make, satisfying to eat, and they help with the pastry cravings I get so often.

I've also finally gone through the tabs on my phone (60+) and will be adding them as notes and thoughts. Then, I'll be playing some Goat Simulator and try to get that BFF achievement!

Oh, and I did export my Steam wishlist (100+ games), and I'm going through them to find (and remove) games with broken achievements. I don't mind not getting 100% on some games, but I hate when games have broken/unfixed achievements! (Such as multiplayer-only achievements in a game whose servers have shut down. That's silly!)

Notes:

- Atuin. I've heard a lot of good things about this! A very straightforward install on Fedora, although it'll take a lot of using to get a good feel for it. If you're thinking of installing this too, make sure to read the installation guide! I'll be using ZSH and Alacritty. Perhaps I should write a simple blog post, too?

- Losing the Signal by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. I was never a BlackBerry user, so getting some insight into their history seems valuable! Added to my To-Read list.

- Peter Pan Syndrome. Good to know there's a term for this.

- Yaupon tea. I'd never heard of this, but it sounds intriguing! I love teas, and have been a big fan of yerba mate for a while. I'll have to try this soon! (Despite wanting to reduce my caffeine intake, haha!)

- I found this awesome (pun intended) GitHub page called "Awesome Wayland", full of nifty Wayland(-related) resources! I've bookmarked it, and I reckon I'll reference it often. (Since my machines are all pretty much Wayland-exclusive at this point.)

- OpenAlternative: A site to help you find open source alternatives to the programs you might be using currently. Another indispensable resource! It'll take me a while to comb through this (and I don't use many proprietary applications), but this is incredibly useful to anyone in the F(L)OSS world!

- Nivs' Blog, and specifically this post. Recommend giving their posts a read, there's a lot of genuinely interesting stuff there!

- The Death Clock: a clock that has a countdown timer with the (estimated) seconds you've got left to live. So incredibly morbid, but I love it! It can also be a regular clock. It's a $79.90 pre-order right now (ouch!), but this is too cool to pass up or not share.

- The SmartCard Ghost (Gen 3). A thin, card-shaped tracker that works with both Apple's Find My and Google's Find Hub. What's neat is that it charges wirelessly! It's a little pricey at $39.99 for one, but the 3-pack seems like a decent value (and would make for a good gift!) I don't use any trackers right now, and while I'm not known to lose my stuff, I'd like the extra insurance this would/could add!

This shows the terminal output of fastfetch piped into lolcat. It's rainbowy text.

- Dotacat, a Rust reimplementation of Lolcat. It makes your terminal output all rainbow-y. I love lolcat, since it makes things so much more fun! (And it's probably why I set up my blog to look similarly, haha!) Also, I adore the answer to "Why the name?"; "Because Dota is better than LoL (According to people - I play neither)"

- Taskwarrior-TUI is a super cool terminal program that allows you to manage to-dos and tasks from the terminal!

A screenshot of the terminal showing cbonsai output, which looks like a little 2D bonsai tree, in ASCII.

- And another cool terminal program: cbonsai. Perhaps less productive than the previously-mentioned program. But computing is supposed to be fun, right?

- And speaking of having fun: Chiaki-ng. It's a program that allows PlayStation Remote Play on devices that aren't a PS Portal or a smartphone. Think a laptop, so you can play PlayStation games in another room. Or more importantly; on a Steam Deck! My Wi-Fi might be too slow, but I can't wait to give this a try!

- The Reversal Icon Theme looks incredibly good. I want to install it, but it requires running a script which I'm not a big fan of. I prefer manually placing the files in the .icons folder (such as in the case of Bibata Rainbow, my current cursor!)

Thoughts:

- Attie, despite its controversy, sounded pretty interesting. I'm on the waitlist, and curious to see how it shakes out if/when I get accepted. Attie seems very much hated by the Bluesky community, and is one of the most-blocked accounts on the platform... Ouch!

- Randomly remembered PushBullet from my long-gone Android days. Seems like it's still around, but in maintenance mode. I suppose between LocalSend, KDE Connect, Edge Drop, and Blip, there hasn't been much reason to stick to PushBullet.

- I should get the CCNP certification. Not having any certifications (or code) is severely hurting my ability to get into IT. And I have to start somewhere, right? (If you're looking for a junior sysadmin with Linux experience, let me know!)

- I seriously need to get a YubiKey! For both added security and convenience. Despite using 2FA everywhere I can (and have done so for ages), I've never gotten a key like this before. Perhaps this'd make a good Christmas gift? (Wink wink, nudge nudge!)

- I ran across BB, which from what I understand, is a program that visualizes audio output. (Yes, yes, I'll mention Cava shortly!) What caught me off-guard was the "Requirements" section: "This demo requires computer at least as fast as 486/33 with coprocesor [sic]. But speed of 486/66 or pentium is highly recomended [sic] (especially for hight [sic] resolution SVGA modes). " Can I make this run on a modern machine? Sounds like a fun project!

A screenshot of Cava, an audio visualizer. It displays orange bars (corresponding to the frequencies). In this case, the background is dark grey, and the bars themselves are orange.

- Naturally this requires a shout-out to Cava!

- And speaking of audio, I'm swapping back to Spotify for a while. Two main reasons:

1) My YouTube Premium trial is running out. The individual cost was raised to $15.99, and that's more than I'm willing to spend at this time. I'll likely set up a Family plan, since that'll help alleviate the cost a bit.

2) YouTube Music can be oddly buggy when it has no access to internet. On my 1-hour long commute, I drive through several areas with no cell service. YouTube Music will often "forget" my like/thumbs-up when disconnecting and reconnecting, or not save it at all when the connection is too spotty. I've "lost" some songs this way, unfortunately. And despite playing from the "Downloads" section, it seems like it prefers to phone home when it can. I had no such issues on Spotify when I used it. (Although Spotify will show/hide the "Start Radio" button when connecting/disconnecting, causing the UI [and more critically, the Like/+ Button] to jump around wildly.)

- Speaking of Taskwarrior-TUI, a challenge I've been wanting to try for ages: GUI-less computing! I want to try running a terminal-only setup for a month or so. Relying only on the command line!

- I need to join Ubuntu Pro and, essentially, "figure out what it's about." I know Ubuntu is massive in the server/commercial space, and while I've used Ubuntu a lot over the years, I've never used Ubuntu Pro.

- And lastly, I should probably also join Coursera. If anything, just to hone my skills.

As always, none of these links/programs are sponsored! I like to highlight things I find interesting. And no affiliate links, either. Just clean, direct-to-item links.

Phew, another huge post. On to Goat Simulator!