Lucky and I had a moment on the back patio yesterday afternoon.
Dolly.
I just love this classic performance of “Here You Come Again” by Dolly Parton. The backing track is recorded but Dolly’s vocals are all live here.
Dolly is a goddess and the world is a better place with her presence.
Take The Small Victories.
I’m a fan of the Apple EarPods that were once included with your iPhone purchase. I’m not really a fan of noise, in-ear AirPods or equivalent, as they always end up giving me a headache. The older style, wired EarPods are pretty great quality and don’t make me feel like I have my ears clogged up.
One of the robovacs sucked up the EarPods I’ve used for many years at work, primarily for my work calls. It was time to order a new pair of EarPods, and since Apple no longer includes these nifty little devices with a new iPhone purchase, I set out to find some traditional EarPods with a 3.5mm jack online. I ended up finding what I was looking for at a reasonable price on Amazon. I placed the order.
This morning a package arrived. While I ordered and paid for one pair of EarPods for $16.99, Amazon shipped me a case of EarPods. I’m cool with that.
Jeff and Tim can work out the financials.
Security Just Works.
I didn’t travel with my laptop during my extended time away from home earlier this month. Since my original intention was to be “off the grid”, which in this instance actually means disconnected from the online world, there was little reason to bring along the laptop. If I was in the mood to write, this can easily be accomplished using my iPad Pro and keyboard. With the unexpected turn of events extending my time away, I made do with the iPad Pro setup and found myself not missing my laptop as much as I thought I would.
In mid-August I installed Omarchy on my ThinkPad T460s. Based on Arch Linux, Omarchy is an easy to install desktop environment that provides a “tiling” window manager, easier configuration, and tries to be a “just work” approach to Arch Linux. Still very much a work in progress, I found the experience to be quite snappy on this old laptop and it works quite well for me.
Omarchy is geared for a single user environment. When the laptop is powered up, Omarchy automatically logs into the user’s desktop. There’s no prompting for a username or password.
This makes me very uncomfortable.
When the Omarchy goes to screensaver, a password is required to unlock the screen, the way most screensaver programs work. However, if someone wanted to break into your stuff, you can simply force power off the computer and turn it back on and you’re logged in.
My paranoid brain simply can not handle this.
I don’t have the mental bandwidth right now to dance with setting up a new Linux desktop on this most awesome laptop, so I’ve been continuing to use my iPad Pro for most of my mobile computing needs. I have the device, and while it’s a bit banged up with a chip missing out of the lower right hand corner, it still does what I need it to do quite well and I am pleased. After all, when it comes to video editing and the like, I have my video editing M2 Pro Mac mini to handle those tasks.
When I talk about mental bandwidth not being able to handle setting up another Linux distro on my ThinkPad, it’s because I’m really in the mood for things to just work. Apple fails quite a bit in this regard as well these days, but my setup, right now, is working for me and that’s what I need. Honestly, that’s what 99% of the computing population needs. Admittedly, I would not be comfortable using my iPad Pro is the main computing arena if it wasn’t for the Debian Linux server I have running on a 2011 Mac mini back home picking up some of the more technical chores and there’s absolutely no way I could exclusively use this M1 iPad Pro for my daily computing needs. Right here, right now, I’m good.
I hope Omarchy reconsiders the whole approach to auto login. Security in the computing space is super important, and giving someone such easy to a system seems a little questionable.
But then of course, ‘tis the time to be paranoid.
Impressive.
Mother Nature continues to be impressive. What’s not captured in this photo is the raging thunderstorm to the left of this photo.
Hello.
I took this photo of the sunrise this morning. I had already been up for over 30 minutes when I decided to go for a walk, so I waited a little bit before getting some exercise. Seeing the sunrise is a great way to start the day.
I didn’t think I’d be a guy that enjoys the sunrise, let alone looking forward to it, but if I’m up and about, I want to see what Mother Nature is presenting over the Rincon Mountains to our east.
I’m still getting back on my feet after the extended time away from home, and I’m still figuring some things out in my head. Luckily, Mom’s estate and related activities was super simple, so I’m not having to deal with anything in that area.
I’m still focused on embracing the feeling I felt after being off the grid for five days, and the rush of a “need for simplicity” that came flooding in after that experience. There are times when I find myself thinking I need to check a social media feed somewhere, simply because I’m bored, but then I remind myself that being bored is perfectly natural and is OK.
Giving up frequent dopamine hits is a little more difficult than I thought it would be. It’s getting easier, though.
Empower.
As mentioned in my latest video, my mom lived with Parkinson’s for a little over five years. I highlighted an organization in Central New York that is empowering those living with Parkinson’s. The organization is called Empower Parkinson, and Mom was looking forward to getting back to activities with them.
If you would like to make a donation, they can be found at this website.
Rural.
This is a picture of Grandma and Grandpa Country’s farm, or at least part of it.
That’s my dad standing in the middle of the driveway. In the back you can see one of the horses, Sue, peeking around from the corner of the barn. There was a family gathering in progress, as evidenced by the cars in the driveway.
The barns were originally used for the egg farm. The egg farm was brought to an end and replaced by a beef farm. The cattle resided in the first floor of the four story barn way in the back and the hen house to the right of the green barn.
My dad and I did chores every night after he got home from the family’s contractor business, lumber yard, and hardware store. At the time of this photo, the house was just being finished across the street, and we lived next door (off the left side of the photo) in a 50×10 trailer with an 40×8 addition built in 1970 or so, right around my sister’s arrival.
Looking at this photo, taken in 1977, I can feel the comfort I felt as a kid back in these rural days of my life. When I was a teenager and discovering my sexuality, I thought I would need to live in a bigger city to be as honest as I could be about who I was. I always enjoyed living in this rural part of Upstate New York, but I didn’t know if I would ever really belong.
When I go storm chasing, one of the things I love about the experience is the rural landscape, the small towns, and the general vibe of “Americana”, or whatever is left of that vibe. Things have changed a lot in the nearly 50 years this photo was taken. I still find signs of the “hometown vibe” that others may be experiencing and it makes me smile.
No matter where I’ve lived in the United States, I’m still a rural guy at heart. I can fit in anywhere, but there’s just something special about open land, some barns here and there, and an occasional horse peeking around the corner, staring at the camera.
Video: The Peaceful Hike.
After all that’s happened the past couple of weeks, I was grateful to get out into Mother Nature for some hiking in Saguaro National Park East on Saturday. I put this video together, basically focusing on the beauty around us and some rambling on my part. If you know anyone that would be interested in following along with the video, please feel free to share the link with them. I appreciate the support.
I’ve warned Earl that the forecast may be shaping up for some storm chasing end of this week into the weekend. I’m ready for a bit of feisty Mother Nature!
Slow Down.
Truman sat down and watched some videos on YouTube with me this morning.
He was very interested in the content on the TV. It find it soothing to observe his interest; I’m happy our TV can present vivid enough images to grab his attention. The hooting owl in the video probably got his attention in the first place.
Since my time off the grid at the end of August, I have been looking for ways to simplify my life and more importantly, reduce the amount of chaos consumption I experience on a daily basis. I know I’ve talked about this on the blog for a long time, but spending five days mostly disconnected from the world was the kick my brain needed.
For the past 10 years or so, and especially since the pandemic, too much of my online activity has been the consumption of what basically boils down to some low quality, off brand, fast food version of online content. This, when coupled with the constant outrage coming from all sides of the political spectrum, has really taken a toll on my mental health.
My mental health deserves better. I deserve better. We all deserve better.
When the family was together last week for my mother’s memorial service, we got to talking about politics a little bit. While the political views of my cousins cover a bit of a spectrum, we all agreed that there’s just way too much shouting, too much outrage, and that we don’t know what news we can trust anymore.
This is probably the most frustrating aspect of the whole news and political discourse discussion these days: I don’t know who to trust. Everyone news channel is vying for eyeballs and clicks to build revenue, and the vast majority of these services are entertainment outlets, not news information sources.
When coupled with social media posts from all sorts of folks that seem to be gasping for breath every other minute from using their exclamation points and caps lock key all the time, well, I find the whole affair completely taxing, depressing, and exhausting.
I deserve better. We all deserve better.
I’m starting to adopt the phrase, “Not My Alamo” when assessing situations I’m presented with. I’m striving to simplify my life and minimize my digital consumption, especially the ‘fast food’ variety of digital garbage and AI slop infesting the Internet faster than the most aggressive of cancers that attack the human body.
I’d like to say that I’m stepping completely away from social media and going to live out in the woods in the middle of nowhere in a solar powered cabin, with just a laptop and an Internet connection to keep my day job. My husband would never go for this, and in reality, it’s not realistic at this point of my life. When you live 2500+ miles away from most of your relatives and you have friends and other family scattered all over the planet, you need to use socially accepted mechanisms to maintain connections with them. Sometimes this means using Facebook and Instagram, because honestly, I can’t get anyone to switch to any of the alternate, more responsible platforms like Mastodon. So I allow myself five minutes a day on Facebook, and only from a web browser; no apps on the devices.
I’m also striving to find quality, inspiring content on YouTube. More specifically, I’m looking for content that is free of AI slop and seems to be genuine, real content. If there’s exclamation points or YouTube content creator face in the thumbnail, I’m likely to pass it by.
The video Truman and I just watched together was by a channel that I stumbled upon a few months ago. I had added the video to my “Watch Later” queue in YouTube, something I use judiciously.
In this video, the creator goes in the woods for a few days to a solar powered cabin, completely off the grid. She seems to have a beautiful, enlightening experience.
I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did.
