Day 20 - Monday, 04/20/2026: A hazy world and a long shift ahead.

A close up photograph shows a grey, textured metal railing. Bright teal marker has been used to hand-write the words "Happy 420". Directly underneath the words, the date 4/20/2025 is written. The text is slanted and runs vertically along the length of the metal rail. There are small dark specks and scratches visible on the metallic surface. (Graffiti is not mine!)

Starting off with this photo I took that's perfect for today. (While I took the photo, the graffiti itself is not mine.)

Today was a pretty eventful day, "funny" date aside. Most of it was spent going through everything; prepping for the move. It's surprising how much stuff one can accumulate over the years. I reckon I'll be spending most of my weekends packing, unfortunately. But the future is bright!

I made some delightful cold brew, discovered my new favorite muffins (banana nut mini muffins), found some exciting playlists, set up MyNetDiary, purchased the Moment Pro Camera II app, finished setting up both my Windows and ChromeOS laptops, and managed to get caught up on various other things.

But that's where the "Wait!" part comes in: I'll be starting my 12-hour shifts. On one hand, I'll be getting three-day weekends. On the other, my working days will be beyond busy. 12-hour shifts, paired with a one-hour commute (that'll be during the busiest hours), will allow me very little time. It's a good thing I've had nearly three weeks to get used to writing daily blogs, as I'll need to get my thoughts "on paper" as quickly as possible. Let's see if I've managed to streamline the process! However, I did mention I'll likely be writing slightly shorter posts during the working days, and really go over my thoughts during the weekend.

I did not listen to any podcasts, so there'll be fewer notes today. I did sign up for several news websites and their respective newsletters; these should help supplement the interesting finds I struggle to capture during the podcast-less days. I'm really excited about The Verge in particular. I'm now also on Awful.Systems. (Which is hosted on a decentralized, Reddit-like platform called Lemmy.) Feel free to say "Hi!"

And that's not all for social media; one of my posts gained a lot of traction. On Threads, of all places! As of writing, the post got 864 likes, 23 comments, 2 reposts, and over 167,000 views. That's a significant amount (to me, anyway). And my profile, with a mere 5 followers, sits at 102K recent views.

The post was an off-hand remark about how Samsung doesn't allow the term "admin" in email addresses. Not the one I thought would gain a lot of traction, that's for sure!

So for the Notes & Thoughts:

Notes:

- There's an ARM64 build of Steam for Linux! I'd been using FEX to run Steam on a Raspberry Pi 5, but this should perform much better. Thoroughly testing this will be next weekend's project.

Thoughts:

- The Gemini App for Windows opens insanely quickly. Nearly instantly, which is impressive given that even the start menu takes longer to show up.

- Spotify still hasn't generated my Discover Weekly. Apparently it can take up to two weeks though, so I'm not too worried about it.

- I discovered that the Google Drive app for Android and iOS allows you to scan documents directly into Drive. I've been saving all my user manuals in Apple Notes, and it's taking up almost 3 GB now. Can't wait to give this a try and see if it can replace Apple Notes in that regard.

- Remember Pix'n Love Rush? This had completely faded from my memory, until I saw someone's old Android home screen setup. I played this so much on my PSP Go, ages ago.

- I'll be trying out both TickTick and Todoist. I have my qualms with both Apple Reminders and Google Tasks. Maybe one of those programs can convince me to switch away from the old mainstays... We'll see!

- I'm also going to be giving Notion a try. I was going to go with Obsidian, but the sync system is not something I'm willing to spend money on before being able to give it a try. (And while I know you can self-host a vault, that's a bit more trouble than I'm willing to go through just to find out whether or not I'll even like the software.) Google Keep is a little too simplistic, Google Docs doesn't quite fit my needs for quicker notes, and Apple Notes is horrendously slow on web. OneNote is also too complex for my needs. I want to use a platform that allows me to both quickly jot down notes, as well as write down lengthier thoughts. (Think blog post drafts, recipes, installation instructions, things like that.) Google Keep is so close to being perfect, but it lacks just a few too many features!

- My favorite coffee place has also officially closed. I'll miss their Banana Crème lattes...

- Both PowerToys and Raycast are installed. PowerToys is up and running, but I haven't messed with Raycast yet. And I'm looking to install DaVinci Resolve soon, too!

- I'm officially on the Windows 11 Pro Beta channel now. I'll wear this string of characters as a badge of honor.

I suppose it's more of a "Note & Thoughts" section, as there's only one Note today! But that's all for today. Wish me luck with the long shifts, I'll need it.

Comments

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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!