Just a few stray thoughts. We’ve had our EV (a 2024 Chevy Equinox) for almost a month at this point. It’s lovely. We have a charger that can use 120V for slow charging (about 1.4kW/hr), or 240V for fast charging (I think like 11-12kW/hr, so much faster). We don’t have the 240V outlet yet, though, and would need to get a new breaker box for that to be possible, and it won’t be cheap. So for right now we’ve had to charge the EV for a couple of days to get it back up to 80%, where we ideally want it to be.

CWs: holidays, alcohol, food

I expected it to be super cold today. It will be cold tonight (probably in the 20s or so), but today has been almost 50F. I haven’t been outside much today, mainly to grab something from the shed out back and to take the trash and recycling out to the cans on our back porch. If you’re celebrating, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah!; if not, I hope you’re enjoying your day. We celebrate Christmas in pretty much the most secular way possible: it’s just a day to hang out with family (and kitties!) and a day off from work. I grew up celebrating Christmas with my family, though, and it was a big deal as a kid especially. Christmas Eve is when we had our big blowout dinner, and opened at least one present, saving the rest for Christmas proper. I realized today that I haven’t spent Christmas with my family in Oregon since 2013. Wow, that’s been a long time. In 2014-15 I spent Christmas with my spouse’s family, which was lovely, but definitely different being in the Florida sun and heat. Christmas at 75-80F is not ideal for me, ugh. It was still nice to be able to spend it with family.

I’m excited we’re almost at the start of Winter proper (we are, as of the time of writing, 8 days out from the winter solstice). My spouse is happy after the solstice passes, mostly because the days start getting longer again. I love it since it’s the shortest and darkest day of the year. Bring on the cold and gloom! I feel like the colder months pass too quickly, and just by the time I get used to having them around, we go back to warmer, then hot, days, and the bugs come back, ugh.

CWs: food, drink

Our garage smells like tires. It’s a clean smell, but a strange one. Reminds me of when my dad kindly gifted me his Cadillac Escalade, which I kept for awhile, and he had a new set of special snow tires that he threw in with it. We kept those tires in the closet at our tiny 1-bedroom apartment, and the whole closet smelled like rubber. That was kinda unpleasant. But this is different.

I’ve been wanting to do a writeup on this for a bit now. I had a pesky IPv6 issue with my server, and thought, hey, why not just nuke the whole thing and restart from scratch? I first opened this server in August 2020, and installed YunoHost back then, so the installation has been around for awhile. As a result, lots of cruft built up over time, and somehow things went south with my IPv6 configuration, to the point where YunoHost kept throwing warnings about non-functioning IPv6. As I couldn’t figure out the issue, despite loads of attempts, I thought I’d rebuild everything and reinstall.

CWs: food

I’ve been thinking about trains lately in general. When I was a kid, we used to take the train from my hometown (Eugene, OR) to Seattle right around Christmastime, and did so for a number of years on and off. I don’t know how that particular tradition started, but I always enjoyed it. The corresponding drive is probably 6-7 hours, but the train trip took considerably longer, mostly since trains go a little slower, and unfortunately aren’t the only users of the tracks; as a result, passenger rail needs to yield to freight trains. I’ve never understood why this is, but I suppose that’s the downside of shared tracks for both kinds of train travel. We usually went with my mom, my sister, and often my grandparents; I think my dad sometimes joined us and sometimes didn’t.

CWs: US politics, gloom

It’s been a rough week. We’re exactly a week out from the US election today. It’s been a rough week, and as I mentioned before, I’m not someone who will be particularly affected by the turn for the worse (white, cis, able-bodied), but I am very concerned about many others who will be affected. I’m still wrapping my head around it. The Democrats have been coasting and doing the bare minimum for ages, and I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising, but it still sucks. I wish we didn’t have a two-party system where both choices suck, but the Democrats suck, at least on paper, a bit less. I wish we had strict term limits at all levels of government. Not that I want to lose institutional knowledge, but there’s gotta be room for new people. I wish we didn’t have a constant election cycle where people are gearing up for the next election instead of governing like they were elected to do. You’d think the Republicans would be all about Teddy Roosevelt’s “Duties of American Citizenship”, a speech made in 1883 decrying, inter alia, career politicians and advocates for term limits, but nope. Career politicians are only a problem when it’s not our guy. Got it. I don’t like the “GOP” designation; there is nothing “grand” about the Republican party.

CWs: US politics, mental health, death mention

nolite timere, imo resistite! (“do not be afraid, nay rather, resist!”)

I cribbed the first part from what is said to have been the delightful poet Seamus Heaney’s final words, sent in a text to his wife (noli timere, “do not be afraid”). Thank you for that, o vates.

It’s been a rough week and it’s barely halfway through. The US election had a predictably terrible result, and Trump won, somehow, again. And apparently, according to reports, won the popular vote. My mom texted me saying she was “dumbfounded” by this decision. Intellectually I get it, but at the same time, it’s not a surprise. America is working as designed. The cruelty is the point. Ad nauseam.

CWs: food, alcohol

I was thinking about writing this while I was in the shower earlier, and was reminded of “Slide Show” parts 1 & 2 on the Final Fantasy VIII OSV. I haven’t written in a little while, aside from my little treatise on the encrypted backup procedure recently. It’s been kind of a blurry few weeks honestly, with a lot going on.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a pumpkin patch in town and bought pumpkins for carving; we bought four, but have only carved two. I’m not sure if we’re going to carve the other two unfortunately. I just haven’t had the desire to deal with it. About a week and a half ago, we got together with our friends and carved pumpkins; I did a “vampire Mickey” and my spouse did a Goomba! They turned out really well. Sadly, they didn’t last that long on the front porch; the temps were up and down, which I think didn’t help. We had about a week with the before they got moldy and gross, and on Sunday we took them to the recycling center and dropped them off. But it was nice while it lasted.

This started as a little document to get down my thoughts, but I figured I’d Markdownize it and make it into a blog post, where it can be not only a reference for me, but also for everyone else!

I like to think I have a pretty decent backup system in place. I have a 2Tb USB-C HDD that hangs out in my office and effectively mirrors my laptop. I also have a lot of older material on it; my previous laptop, as well as my desktop from years past, makes up a stratum or two on there. And I try to remember to do a full backup once a month or so, but I don’t always remember, which is not great. I like to know my files are safe, just in case my laptop blows up or something. Putting /home on its own partition is always a good practice, so then / (your system files, the OS, &c.) can be wiped and reinstalled without touching your important files. But that’s not enough, and that’s where backups come into play.