Notes

    I just bought the domain name worksucks.me. I think I’m going to start working on a silly little thing like Fesshole only instead of random confessions you can anonymously submit a post bitching about your job. No idea if it’ll ever come to fruition but I need something to tinker with. And before you say there’s already Glassdoor - that’s a professional website where you can actually find a job. Mine does nothing and brings absolutely nothing to the table aside from a stream of posts from strangers who hate their job.

    Indie web escapism

    Back in 2016 I didn’t have this community. I had Twitter and I think Tumblr? And definitely Facebook.

    Facebook is already a shitshow. People fighting and ending lifetime friendships, a few Trump supporters being schooled on what tariffs actually are even though it’s a little too late now.

    I’m glad I have a nice place to go and escape the noise and general insanity of the impending fascist regime, even if I am coming here to bitch about it.

    I don’t know most of you very well but I’m glad we’re all here.

    I wasn’t able to make it in for early voting because of work but the other half took our daughter and her girlfriend yesterday. There were MAGA people waving signs around and passing out flyers showing you how to vote for Trump and all the other conservative nonsense on the ballot. Fucking wild. I honestly don’t even know what to expect tomorrow at the normal polling place here. I just wanna get it over with 😬

    USPol: Election woes

    I’ve been pretty quiet across social media and my blog the last few days. This close to the election, nothing else seems very significant. A week from now could be the beginning of the end or a new beginning entirely. I’ve never been so nervous about an election in my life.

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    Take two: giving Kagi another shot

    A while back I tried out Kagi Search for a few months. It was a nice change of pace from Google, which is almost completely useless these days, and DuckDuckGo which is essentially privacy enhanced Bing.

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    We need each other

    People, I mean.

    I’ve always considered myself a bit of a loner. Definitely an introvert; I love hanging out with friends but I love coming home and decompressing while watching some TV or spinning a few records even more. My nights of staying at the bar until 2am and passing out at a buddy’s house are long behind me.

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    Recurring Strangers

    So far, I’ve lived most of my life in a small town. My graduating class was about 120 people; it’s definitely one of those communities where everyone knows everyone else. It’s the kind of place where you feel like you’re in a decent sized city for about five minutes and then, next thing you know, you’re completely surrounded by cornfields and it feels like you’re about to star in the reality TV adaptation of Deliverance.

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    Mini rant about Meta, staying in touch

    It’s annoying that Facebook is the only way for anyone to get in touch with extended family or old friends. Idk of any other platform where literally everyone has an account.

    I log into the mobile web version every few weeks and it notifies me of new messages but then it makes me install Messenger to even see who it was. Then I catch up, uninstall it and reinstall it in another month or so.

    I wish there was a less shitty platform for staying in touch. Or at least some kind of open protocol that can talk to stuff like Messenger but isn’t tied to any single huge mega corporation.

    Warm take on federated social media

    The stuff you’ve already heard a million times

    Mastodon is a decentralized social network, meaning anyone can download it and run their own instance. Each instance can federate with each other, so it still feels like one massive social network. The benefit is that there’s no single point of failure, but that’s only relative to the entire Fediverse. People recommend joining the smallest instances or running your own because it’s better for decentralization - and it is. If you’re on a server with 15 other people and it gets wiped off the face of the internet for whatever reason, only you and 14 other people are affected. If Twitter goes down, everyone with an account is affected.

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    Putting yourself out there: on self doubt, persistence

    Being any kind of creator is mentally taxing at times. Publicly posting a story, a song, or a video you recorded is a double edged sword. It can be the biggest reward or the biggest source of anxiety. Sometimes it’s a little of both. It’s nerve racking putting yourself out there.

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    What makes WP Engine different from Bluehost?

    This might sound dumb but I don’t get the difference between something like WP Engine and other hosts that specialize in Wordpress, like Bluehost which literally refers to itself as a Wordpress Hosting Platform and Dreamhost, both of which are recommended by Automattic?

    I get that they have “WP” in their name; that makes sense for being easily mistakable for an official part of Wordpress, but the revision history thing just doesn’t seem like it’s as big a deal as Mullenweg is making it out to be. I know he criticized them for not contributing enough to Wordpress.org development but isn’t that kind of arbitrary? Like what is enough?

    I do think being owned by a private equity firm is a little greasy for a company that offers hosting for open source software but Bluehost is owned by one too.

    Is it just a matter of how big they are? Is it just a personal thing between two rich guys? I feel like it’s probably that.

    What's valuable to you?

    I was just reading this Reddit thread about a blogging platform that launched a few years ago. It's grown into a successful space with a thriving community by now, but the comments were kind of cracking me up.

    The #1 thing people were focused on back then was how to monetize it.

    There's no built-in advertising options and it's really not even set up to run something like Google ads. SEO, maximizing engagement and clicks are not baked in. It's simply a place where indie bloggers can go to share their stories and hang out with other bloggers.

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    Why even come out if you're bi or pan?

    I've heard that a lot. Why would I even come out of the closet when I can pass for a straight guy? Just date girls and spank it to gay porn or something; don't do this shit in public.

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    Seasonal euphoria

    I'm wired backwards--or at least my seasonal depression is. I'm at my best when it's 20°F and everything's covered with a fluffy blanket of glimmering snow. I can sleep under a comforter without waking up soaked in sweat. I can actually enjoy a hot shower and it doesn't take me three hours to cool down. I can wear my long sleeve Oxfords to work without sweating my ass off all day.

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    Progress in the middle of nowhere, Ohio

    I just re-watched this old video of someone driving around filming my hometown with a camcorder in the 80's. It's unbelievable how much it's changed even since the first time I watched it a decade ago.

    I want to record my own.

    Intel and a few other big tech companies are setting up shop about 15 miles down the road and they project 1,000,000+ people moving to central Ohio in the next few years. We're one of those towns just outside of the city and they're already expanding highways and announcing plans to build a big downtown area. Things are about to drastically change.

    Imagine recording a tape of this little town no one's ever heard of, saving it for 30 years and finally pulling it out of an old broken down box in the basement so you can upload it to YouTube. Time goes by so fast, next thing you know we'll blink and it'll be 2050. I'll scroll through miles of photos and videos in my iCloud drive, find the one I recorded 2024 and marvel at how different things were back then.

    The saddest advice I've ever gotten

    When we were in our teen years my cousin and I started writing a bunch of music. He'd been playing guitar since he was like five years old so he was kind of a prodigy at that point. He's one of those people who can hear something and immediately tell you what tuning it's in and then start playing it perfectly.

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    Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

    Zelda 3, or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has been my favorite installment in the Zelda series for as long as I can remember.

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    Currently cheking out omg.lol

    It’s super cute. It feels a lot like Micro.blog in a lot of ways but less of a tech blogger or dev platform imo. I like the Mastodon integration. I blogged about quitting social media last month but I already re-activated my Bluesky account a week ago anyway. I’m kind of excited to get back on the fediverse! I’m bad at quitting things…

    It’s a cool little online hub kinda thing though! The blog and Mastodon combo feel a lot like Micro.blog… but… cuter.

    Way less customization though. I like having free reign over my blog’s design and functionality here. A lot. I feel like I fit in better over there, but I don’t think I’ll be leaving Micro.blog any time soon. I did that once and came running back after a month lol.

    Plus you can never have too many blogs anyway. I love having different little corners of the internet where I can hang out depending on my mood or what I want to publish. The emojis there are absolutely adorable there, as a bonus. Well worth $20 a year. You cannot beat that.

    The Bravery of Being Out of Range

    Reading about the invasion of Lebanon today immediately made me hear Roger Waters' The Bravery of Being Out of Range in the back of my mind:

    Hey bartender - over here! Two more shots and two more beers. Sir, turn up the TV sound, the war has started on the ground! Just love those laser-guided bombs, they’re really great at righting wrongs. You hit the target and win the game, from bars 3,000 miles away

    The whole record Amused to Death paints a perfect picture of the Western world constantly fueling the war machine while we’re all amusing ourselves to death from the safety of our homes. And that was in ‘92; now we have a whole computer in our pocket so we can tune out from reality whenever we want, or maybe tune in to some war every now and again to see which team has scored the most points so far.

    I broke up with my weed dealer

    When the first dispensaries opened up shop for recreational sales in Ohio, I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Then I looked at the prices.

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