Day 42 - Tuesday, May 12th, 2026: Lethargy… ?

Today’s post will be another one of those short, poorly-formatted phone posts. Apologies in advance! I take pride in my work, but today was… rough? It both dragged on and flew by, with a consistent feeling of lethargy. Perhaps I’m simply tired, so I’ll try to get some extra rest tonight!

For lunch, I brought with me a “faux burrito bowl” that ended up being amazing! It heavily relies on the seasoning I used, however, so I’m hesitant to post the recipe. (It’s nothing special.) The smoothies I made came out great also, but a little too thick for the tumblers and cups I use, which is a good problem to have.

While I did take a lot of notes today, I don’t have the time (or frankly, the energy) to post them today. They’ll likely have to wait until this weekend. 😔

Tomorrow will be… challenging also, I believe. But we’ll see how it goes! I won’t be able to take my usual half-dozen naps, and I’m already pre-exhausted by that thought, haha!

I’ve also gone ahead and ordered a new USB C to 3.5mm adapter, hopefully it’ll help with some of the quirks I’ve been experiencing. (Especially Siri popping up every time I plug in the current dongle. It doesn’t happen instantly, there’s a three second delay that’s incredibly frustrating!)

I’m probably missing a lot of things I wanted to mention… But for now I simply have to go to sleep! 😴

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Day 1 - April 1st, 2026: New Beginnings!

The first official post! Day 1, April Fools', but not a joke.

And it's been a big day! Went to work, but had to leave early. However, I did manage to snap this beautiful cloud during the sunrise:

An image of a bright cloud in front of a bright blue sky, surrounded by darker clouds.

So bright and vibrant, but surrounded by dark clouds... There's a clever metaphor in there somewhere, I'm sure!

I went and looked at a new house today, and it seems promising. It's much smaller than our current place, but it's quite comfy. In the middle of nowhere, too, so it's quiet! I'm looking forward to the (possible) move, and hope everything goes smoothly.

Then I had a pretty nice breakfast. More treats than food!

A picture of the Belgian Boys crêpes box.

An image of a plate with a fork, fufu, a grilled gouda pita, and a half-eaten meat pie.

These Belgian Boys crêpes were truly delightful! A little thicker than ideal, but their taste was perfect! And the convenience factor of being frozen can't be overstated!

For "main food" I made a Gouda grilled pita. Like a grilled cheese, but more leftover-y. I also had a little meat pie, and fufu. As you can tell, I'm not used to taking a picture of my food before digging in!

A picture of 3 crêpe halves. One with brown sugar, one with molten chocolate chips, and one with honey.

But the crêpes! Oh so delightful. One half plain, one half with dark chocolate chips, one half with brown sugar, and one half with honey.

Brown sugar is definitely my favorite way to eat these! (Also, the chocolate and honey ones were so messy! Crêpes generally have holes, so you can imagine the mess these made...)

A picture of the cross-section of a Reese's Oreo cup, resting on top of its packaging. An unopened Reese's Oreo cup can be seen in the background.

And finally: Reese's Oreo cups! I love both of those things separately, and unsurprisingly these are truly delightful combined! I had a whole bag of these...

And here are some things I looked into today:

(I'm thinking of calling this section "Notes", but I'm not sure how fitting that would be...)

- Netflix getting another price increase.

- Rumors of a new Amazon phone. I missed out on the first one, and I'm not sure if I'm excited about this one. But it's interesting, if anything!

- The Canon Cat! An old 80s PC I'd never heard of before. No arrow keys, but it does have "Leap" keys. Curious little machine!

- Two old Apple ads. The famous "1984" ad, and the infamous "Lemmings" ad. I watched these ages ago, but it's nice to revisit them.

- I learned LocalSend is available on Windows! Never thought about that, I suppose, but it sure is convenient!

- Windows Insider, and if I should join it on my "extra" laptop. There seems to be an issue with KB5079391, but I think I'll join when I have the time. I love messing around with beta software!

- I got curious whether Ubuntu could resize a BitLocker-encrypted disk. Searching online yields mixed results, so this is something I'll have to try on the weekend!

- Super Meat Boy 3D is out! Undecided on what platform I'll get it, but it's really high on my wishlist either way. I loved the original Super Meat Boy. (Despite being terrible at the game!)

- Thinking of joining eBay, just to purchase one of those silicon wafers. They look so cool! Even if they'd be nothing more than a neat piece of wall decoration.

- I found out that there's a desktop program for Google Drive on Windows. Probably not news to most, but that'd also be very convenient! (ChromeOS has spoiled me, in that regard.)

On a related note: GNOME 50 dropped support for Google Drive in Nautilus. This is a bummer as it broke in KDE some time in 2025.

- I discovered the Machines & More YouTube channel. It's mainly about computers and computer parts; right up my alley!

- I've been eyeing one of these beautiful SHARGE power banks. Translucent, with a display, and on sale! But spending $109 on something I'd use infrequently is hard to justify.

- Updating an Xbox 360 via USB should be possible. My 360 stopped connecting to the internet for some reason. I couldn't find any reports about it online, and I know my internet works (on that Xbox). So I'll have to test that this weekend also!

- MSI sells prebuilt PCs. I suppose it makes sense, but discovering this blew my mind. I'd always opt to build my own machine, but hey... it's convenient!

- Dolphin. The emulator! It's not currently installed, but that's something I want to get up and running this weekend also!

- Gmail now allows you to change your username. Huge news for those with..."older" Gmails.

- ntfy, which will come in handy for all my little homelab-related things!

- Niri and PaperWM. Two window managers I've been really wanting to try! I love KDE, but these look so... functional? Unique? How could I not?

- RustDesk, to pair with noVNC. Remote sessions have been a pain in the past, so I'm hoping this combination will resolve my remote computing woes.

- I've been wanting to take a look at LXD. I'm comfortable with Docker, but LXD's promises are tempting! This is likely a long way off, but I'm sure I'll come around to looking into moving my handful of Docker instances over at some point...

Lots of topics to look into, thanks to all the podcasts I've been listening to! A lot of these were inspired by the latest episode of the Version History podcast: Macintosh: All in one.

And speaking of listening, I'm almost through my "Temp Listens" playlists. A collection of songs/albums I've been meaning to listen to. I've got some additional albums saved as well, but those were prioritized. Once I'm through my playlist, I'm planning on going through deadmau5' entire discography. (Or at least what's available on YouTube Music!)

This is a large first entry! The next few will probably be a little smaller. (Or maybe not?)

Day 0: What is this, exactly?

Sysadmin Riley here! I will be undertaking a massive challenge: writing a blog post a day! The premise is simple, but I'm finding it hard to verbalize exactly what I'll be doing. Writing a blog post every day, of course. Generally just highlighting things that happened, new facts I've learned, interesting food I've eaten, topics I've dug into, things like that. These posts will likely vary wildly in size, from short one-liners on days when I might be sleeping off a cold all day, to huge walls of text when I finally fix some Linux issue that's been bothering me.

It'll be like a journal of sorts, but one that the whole world can see! I imagine that over time, my writing style and general layout will refine itself, so these first few posts may seem a bit... "scattered".

The project will officially kick off on April 1st, 2026. (That's not a joke!) Month 4 of 2026; I've procrastinated long enough! 😅 (On a somewhat-related note, I'm not sure if I'll be using emojis or not. On the one hand, that's part of my current writing style. On the other, they seem kind of... "wrong" to put into writing like this? Well, I suppose I'll find out what I prefer long-term!)

Ideally, this'll run forever! But I'm setting the realistic goal of 1 year. Come April 2027, I hope I won't be disappointed in myself! Skipping a day seems almost inevitable, but I'll try hard not to ruin my streak. "Perfect is the enemy of good", after all. In ~365 days, we'll see some stats! I'll try to accumulate all my posts, all the words I've written, longest & shortest streaks, that sort of data. I love me some analytics!

That's the introduction post for now; I'm sure this'll make more sense over time!

Day 13 - April 13th, 2026: Long days and short nights.

So tired once again! And very few notes. Went to bed early last night, so I didn't do anything too interesting. Although I did manage to get the BFF achievement in Goat Simulator. (And it was a downright pain!)

I did have to work today also, which was unfortunate. But on the bright side, it wasn't a full 8-hour shift! So I got to go home early. But, somewhat unfortunately, I've got a doctor's appointment, so I can't do a whole bunch of stuff. (Since I don't want to be late.) I might just take a little nap... 😴

Notes:

- There's been a leak of a potential OnePlus "Gaming" phone/device/handheld. I didn't bring it up initially because I didn't think it was too interesting. I used to love OnePlus, but haven't felt any connection since 2015-ish. But then another chip-related rumor came out, and it piqued my interest! Perhaps there's some hope this'll be a good (and real) device?

- The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu sounds so interesting! Diagonal to my usual interests, I reckon this is one I should read anyway.

Thoughts:

- The Sony Xperia 1 VIII was leaked, and most people talk about the new colorways and the redesign (particularly of the camera area.) I have no strong opinion on it one way or another (I suppose the colors are nice?) but I'm bringing it up, because it brought me down a "memory lane rabbit hole". Remember the Xperia P? Or the Xperia S? With their super cool translucent bottom bars. What about the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro? The SK17i is a favorite of mine! How about SmartTags? I could browse old Android reviews and forums forever... 🥹

- PWM dimming! Apparently some people are sensitive to this, which I wasn't aware of.

- Another nostalgia-fueled thought: Zoo Keeper for the Nintendo DS. I miss the DS era. Reading reviews, carefully picking games, and just... having fun! Yes, yes, my rose-colored glasses are very visible. But I think I'll get the DS Lite out again and play some old favorites (and hopefully discover some new ones, too!) especially once I'm done with Goat Simulator. Tetris DS, Mario Kart DS, New Super Mario Bros, Pokémon Black & White, Super Mario 64 DS, WarioWare: Touched!, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story & Partners in Time, Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Space Invaders Extreme, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Picross DS... Gosh, I can't wait to revisit these!

- And speaking of the DS: the Anbernic RG DS seems really interesting, given how I've been on a retro kick lately. Roughly $100, I might... I might not... I suppose we'll see!

A shorter post since it was a shorter day. Nap time, then visit time!

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!