2025-06-22 12:00:00
3 weeks on the dole. Boredom is becoming an issue. I did take some serious steps towards self-employment this week. I formed my legal business entity, got my Federal ID number, opened a business checking account, set up an email account for the business, and built a website. I also submitted a million dollar proposal to the State of Virginia. I'd put our chances of winning at about 2%, but wouldn't it be amazing if my first win was a 7 figure contract?
The website was interesting. I spent about an hour looking at dozens of open-source templates for single page sites, and I hated them all. So I described what I wanted to Google Gemini, and it spit out the site you see. All I had to do was replace the filler content and tweak a couple of minor things. I could have built that site myself. It would have been an all day project. I feel like the people that can use AI effectively are the people that don't actually need it most of the time.
I took Friday off from being unemployed. I refused to set up any calls and just ignored my issues. There is a new dinosaur exhibit at the science museum that I want to see. However, I got confused and went to the state history museum, which was fine. It's a great museum, and I always learn something interesting when visiting. Then yesterday we made the 70-minute drive east for a day of saltwater therapy. I read 1/2 of a book while sitting under the sunshade in the pleasant ocean breeze. We need to do that more often.
This very long blog post is an interesting look at what life is like for an indie musician doing a short 2-week tour in 2025.
From 2003. The most dramatic finding from the survey was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. . The golden age of blogging was marked my the majority of blogs being dormant. Maybe the IndieWeb is doing okay!
Field Notes, like many cool things, started out as a side project.
I'll take jobs I would never, ever, ever do for $2000, Ken.
Do not depend on ChatGPT for wilderness routing. In related news, the popular hiking app AllTrails just added an AI tool to route hikes. Someone will die before the end of the year when AI leads them into a very dangerous situation. The kind of people that would use an AI routing tool are the same people that would blindly follow the directions into danger.
I'll end with the forecast for the week. Ugh.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
2025-06-15 12:00:00
Week two of unemployment is in the books. It was characterized mostly by the growing realization that if I want a job, I'm going to have to make my own. My industry is a shitshow, and at my age, nobody outside my niche is going to even talk to me about a job. So I spent the week dutifully applying to jobs I won't even get interviewed for, while working my network for consulting opportunities to kick off self-employment. That latter option was far more productive this week. In addition, I have been learning all about forming an LLC, self-employment taxes, insurance needs, the Virginia Healthcare Marketplace, etc. I was very busy for a guy with no job.
Yesterday was hair appointment day for my wife, so we got up early to make the 60-mile trek to Fredericksburg. While she was doing the hair thing, I had coffee with a friend. I successfully avoided walking into the awesome used bookstore there because I have far too many books from previous visits that I have not read yet. Of course, we brought a cooler filled with ice so that we could stop by Carl's for a treat, as well as get a quart of custard home without it melting.
The No Kings protests across the nation, across the world really, have really uplifted me. 10 million+ people turned out in 1000 different locations to collectively tell the fascist regime to go fuck itself. Combined with the laughable turnout for Tangerine Palpatine's birthday parade, the events of today are a clear victory for the good guys. But now is not the time to get complacent. A rabid animal backed into a corner is dangerous, and his Trumpiness must be very pissed about how bad the optics were on his big day.
In other news, I dominated family game night last night, winning decisively in both Sagrada and Trekking Through History.
Today is Father's Day in the US. We have no plans, just doing the usual thing. On Sunday mornings, the usual thing is grocery shopping and other errands. Then I'm making my Puerto Rican inspired chicken and rice for dinner. Yes, I am cooking on Father's Day.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Links
Given that it is Father's Day, the very unlikely combination of events that led to me meeting my wife is worth revisiting.
I posted a bunch of photos from our afternoon at the botanical gardens last week.
This directory of abandoned blogs is quite the trip down memory lane.
This 12-minute video about how phones have caused us to neglect our real-world relationships is worth watching.
The Small Web is Beautiful. One thought I had reading this is how almost nobody that I know IRL reads my blog. It used to bother me a little. But I've come to realize that the IndieWeb is not for everybody. It requires a little more work, a little more bravery in putting yourself out there, and a little more caring about other people. I'd rather spend my time with the kind of people that feel comfortable on the IndieWeb.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
2025-06-07 12:00:00
Happy weekend to both of you reading this :) Actually, Tiny Analytics recently informed me that I'm averaging over 1000 visits a month, which exceeds the free account threshold, and that they would like me to start paying. I never thought site traffic would build back up like that. I'll probably just remove the analytics because I really don't care about the stats.
I spent the week looking for a job. It's bleak out there. I've also spent a lot of time this week thinking, researching, and playing with cash flow spreadsheets for being self-employed. Right now its 50/50 which way I go. If my options at the end of this month are take a job I'm not excited about or go solo, I think I'll go solo. Maybe. This decision is more complicated than it needs to be in the US because of of the lack of a social safety net. I'll have to buy my own health insurance, which will be my second largest monthly expense after my mortgage. And even with that hefty premium, I'm still looking at needing thousands of upfront cash to get by deductibles. It could actually cost more than my mortgage on an annual basis. Imagine needing two mortgages just to get by. It fucking sucks. Basically, only live in the US if you rolled a 20 on your Constitution roll during character creation.
You'd think not working would mean I have lots of links for you, but I don't. I'm not sure if that is related to how focused I was on looking for a job, or maybe my mood was shit all week and nothing seemed good to me.
You should use /tmp more argues that we should get in the habit of puttting any temporary downloads in /tmp, so we always know they can just be deleted later. When I think about all the time I spend deciding what in my downloads folder I need versus what can go, this seems like a very good idea.
This 15 minute video argues that the hyper growth of the last 150 years is a complete outlier that has to end. We spent millions and maybe billions of years building up fossil fuels in the earth, and we are going to use up all that stored energy in 200 years.
If confronted by the police, can you prove you are a US Citizen? Unless you are carrying your birth certificate or passport around with you 24 x 7, your answer is nope. Scalzi makes a very strong case for getting a passport card and keeping it in your wallet, not for crossing into Canada or Mexico on a regular basis, but to avoid getting sent to El Salvador if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
AI is an important technology, but LLMs are likely to kill us all before we master the power of the technology. LLMs are basically very expensive Mad Libs. It's not crafting answers to your prompts, it's filling in the blanks, often totally devoid of context.
Keep writing and publishing, especially if nobody is reading. It's the only way you'll get better.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
2025-06-07 12:00:00
We headed over to Lewis Ginter this morning to exercise our membership. The flowers were blooming, and we got 25 bird species too. I saw an agitated Blue Jay in a tree and when I took a look with my bins I saw why he was so agitated. There was a Barred Owl in the tree. The Blue Jay successfully chased the owl out of the tree, unfortunately while I was trying to focus on the owl with my camera. We followed the owl to get another look, as did the Blue Jay. We did not find the owl again, but we did find a Red Shouldered Hawk that was getting the business from that same Blue Jay. I did manage to get a photo of the hawk.
That is one bad ass Blue Jay. 2-0 against an owl and a hawk in a 5-minute period. I saw two Blue jays in that tree where the owl is, so I'm wondering if it was protecting a nest.
Also, after never seeing an owl in 4 or 5 years of birding we've gotten two in the last few weeks.
2025-05-31 12:00:00
2025 continues to suck in the most suckiest ways possible. I was let go from my job yesterday after only 5 months. It was the most productive opening 5 months I've ever had at a new job. In 2025, that gets you fired, I guess.
Anyway, enough of that. This week I wrote a couple of things.
I talked about our Memorial Day weekend camping trip.
I added a couple more entries into the Revisiting my MP3 Collection series.
Stuff I read, or at least saved with the intention of reading.
Why Gen Z loves 1990s Casio watches. I'm GenX and I have two old school digital Casio watches.
Video of Purdue student's robot solving a Rubik's Cube in a tenth of a second. That's faster than the time it takes you to blink once.
People used to sweep their yards to control pests, and eliminate tinder that could lead to a fire.
Profile of a guy that takes personal privacy to an extreme.
Apparently life in the US is now similar to life in cold war era Russia, in that normal day to day stuff that government does simply doesn't work, yet the citizens soldier on trying to live normal lives.
A collection of summer reading lists.
An argument that SpaceX's Starship rocket was doomed from the start, and that it will never work. Of course, I'm sure NASA will keep funding it.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
2025-05-28 12:00:00
This is an ongoing series in which I dig into the dark corners of my MP3 folder and revisit some long neglected music.
Tyketto - Dig in Deep
Tyketto - Don't Come Easy
Tyketto - Reach
Tyketto - Strength in Numbers Live
I discovered Tyketto on the side stage at the M3 Metal Festival in 2015. I had never heard of them and I was blown away by their short set. They released their first album in 1991, just in time for the entire genre to get steamrolled by grunge. Musically they are in the Bon Jovi or Night Ranger neighborhood of hard rock bands. They ended up with a bit of a following in Europe and the lead singer Danny Vaughn is still active in Europe both as a solo artist and with Tyketto. I think that 2015 festival show was the last time they played in the US.
Forever Young is the closest they got to a hit. It has over 9 million streams on YT Music, which appears to be more than the rest of their catalog combined.
Here's Hoping it Hurts is off their 2012 album, and is my favorite Tyketto tune. It hasn't made it to 10K streams on YT Music.
