February 24, 2025 10:02 PM
It's aliiiiive
So, I recently put my food blog up on github, and I decided to create a new repo for it. I had cleaned some stuff up, and I wanted to make sure all of the files I included in the new repo would work on the web server. But as I tried to re-install all the perl modules, it kept failing trying to install the sqlite driver for perl.
I still don't know why that was failing. I think it hit some sort of OOM while trying to compile some C code? But as I was digging through things, I noticed that my server had been running for over 1600 days, and it was running Debian 10, which stopped being supported in June 2024. As I mentioned in a previous entry, when something is really outdated, I know that I should probably update it.
I knew this would require some downtime for my sites because I would have to reboot the system, and I thought about doing this crazy thing where I redirected all my domains to a github io page that displayed a maintenance message. Then I read that DNS changes could take up to 48 hours to propagate (not to mention this is exactly the wrong way to go about maintenance), and I gave up on that idea.
Aaaand, just like my BIOS upgrade, I had to upgrade Debian twice, because I can't just jump directly from 10 to 12. So I used this incredibly detailed guide, and I didn't understand most of it, and when I was done upgrading to Debian 11, my sites stopped working 😬
I spent a few hours of googling and looking at various files on my computer before I gave up and decided to revert my box back to a backup that I had from last week. But then when I powered it on and started up my web apps, they still weren't working!
I suddenly realized that my firewall rules weren't configured correctly, and then I had this deja vu moment, and I remembered that I ran into this exact same issue years ago. Well, at least this time it only took me hours rather than days. I suppose I need to solve the same problem several times before it actually sticks.
So today, I had to redo the upgrade to Debian 11 (which went smoothly), and then I made sure the websites were still working, and then I upgraded to Debian 12 (which went a little less smoothly).
Okay, it actually wasn't too bad, and the only issue I ran into was that it kept telling me that "initramfs-tools" kept erroring. I had never even heard of this tool before, but it seemed important. I found a few different threads on reddit and stackoverflow questions that were mostly unhelpful, but I did find someone that hit the same exact issue three months ago! And it looks like they solved their own problem, so thanks internet stranger. I'm glad I didn't try this more than three months ago :P
February 10, 2025 11:45 PM
One month in
How's retirement?
I don't think I ever mentioned this earlier, but there was one morning late last year where my right eye started twitching. I was pretty upset the night before and I had been crying, so I figured it was just a side effect of that. But even after a few days, the twitching did not go away. My right eye would twitch many times every day for over a month. And I think that my left eye would twitch occasionally as well.
Well, I realized a couple of weeks ago that my eye stopped twitching. I think it's because I have more sleep and less stress.
And less coffee! I've noticed in the past that if I have a day where I don't drink any coffee, there's a very good chance that I'll get a headache that just lasts all day. So I wanted to slowly remove my dependence on caffeine. I did get a few headaches this past month, but I think I'm actually past the withdrawal headaches now. I'm currently drinking it every other day-ish, and man, I can really feel the difference. I didn't realize how big of an effect caffeine had on my system, and it affects me all day. When I don't have it, it's like I never truly wake up.
Don't get me wrong, I love coffee. But I just want it to be a nice treat and not some habit that my life depends on.
So to wake up every day, I've been trying to have a really solid morning routine. I make sure to put on moisturizer (with SPF!) every morning (even on cloudy days!). I'll leisurely make myself breakfast (by that I mean a real balanced breakfast with vegetables and protein). And I'll either read a book or the paper (yeah, I get the neighborhood paper delivered).
And then if I have time, I'll try to write a journal entry. Not a blog entry, but a handwritten page in a physical journal. Of course I've been trying to blog more as well. I've already written so many food blog entries this year! I'm happy about that, but I already feel like I might be adding them (as well as cooking) at an unsustainable pace. So I'm trying to figure out the right balance for that. Oddly enough, mixing blogging with doing more technical updates makes it a lot more enjoyable. I'm currently working on getting all my active projects on github!
Right now my focus is mainly food and finances, but I'm also trying to make sure that I socialize with others. (I really feel like this was lacking for me all of last year.) It's been really good to be able to eat out or cook with a friend, to attend game nights, and to talk to people at meetups. I'm still pretty quiet most of the time, but even the smallest interaction with someone makes a big difference to me.
I definitely have some down days and sometimes it's hard to get myself to do the more "productive" things that I planned to do. So I'm also trying to be kind to myself. I know I don't have to cook every day. It's okay if I waste an hour (or more) watching youtube or browsing social media.
And so last night, after I had spent a couple of hours watching highlights of the Super Bowl and reading reactions on Reddit, I decided to make myself some hot chocolate and play some Stardew Valley. It was already past midnight, but I knew I didn't have to wake up early the next day, and I had a pretty cozy time just rearranging my farm.
January 30, 2025 5:52 PM
Orion and the Dark
Last year while I was visiting my family and we were flipping through different movies on Netflix, my six year old niece chimed in and said "I like this movie!" It was Orion and the Dark, and the rest of us had never seen it before so we decided to watch it.
The movie started off really strong, with Orion talking about his anxiety and his fears in a really creative way. He illustrates his fears in a journal and the movie does a great job animating his drawings. His biggest fear is the dark, and Orion meets a character that represents the dark itself.
.---. .====. .' '. / 00 \ : ; |`~~~~'| O '. .' _,.' '.\|/ `---` .' // `. / \ , . | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (() ()) ; ; .___________________.
Dark is actually a pretty cool character. The movie gives him a real personality, and he just wants to be understood. Later we also meet the "night entities", which kind of felt like Inside Out-lite to me. It turns into your typical adventure of overcoming fear and gaining a new friendship, but then at the end the movie gets kind of zany and there's a flying turtle and even time travel?!
We paused the movie at one point and saw that it was written by Charlie Kaufman, and we were like "of course".
Overall, I liked the movie. I thought that it spent way too much time on the night entities (I'm also not really a fan of Inside Out), and I got a little bored in the middle, but I thought the wackiness at the end was great.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After I watched the movie, I googled it, and I stumbled upon a copy of Kaufman's first draft of the script. I was curious how this compared to the final movie, so I read the whole thing.
I definitely laughed a lot more while reading this than when I watched the movie. Here, Orion is a huge movie buff and there are a lot of movie references. (I can totally see why that was mostly cut out of the final script though)
The night entities have a completely different vibe too. They're kind of weird, and they're a lot more interesting than how the movie portrays them. It felt like Kaufman's original vision for the entities was lost in the final script, which is a little disappointing.
The endings were also very different, but in this case, I actually prefer the way the movie ended. They are both a little zany, but the movie really honed in on Orion and Dark's friendship, while the original script was much more focused just on Orion at the end.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But this wasn't an original story by Kaufman. His script is actually based on a picture book with the same name. And I love picture books, so I had to read it.
__ _ / \ |/_) *** __ | )| \ /| / \ |/\ \__/ | \/ :,\__/ | V _ _ s '*~., AND THE ,.~*' s ### ## ### # # # # # # # # #_# # # #==# ### # # ### # # # # # #
And it is such a well crafted picture book. There really isn't much to the story itself (no night entities, just the dark!) But the book absolutely shines with its illustrations and the way that the words are laid out. There is so much detail, and I made sure to pause and really look at all the parts of each page.
I also really like the way that color is used. Sometimes I just like looking at the pages with different shades of the night sky.
.-~--. .' `. . . . * * . . ) .., . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' .-*-. ' . ._.' .'.-~-.`.' ,. . : ^_^ ;(_,' . __ , '.___.'// | | | . /, \ | | | . //( *** / C___.' C___/ ^ lm lm
While the movie is enjoyable enough, if I'm going to recommend anything in this post, I'd say that you should read the book. I think it would make a great bedtime story.
January 23, 2025 1:56 PM
Sequence
I first played the game Sequence when I was in...high school maybe? I don't really remember when it was, but I remember that it was my aunt (on my dad's side) that introduced me to the game. We were having a little family board game night, and Sequence was nice because you could play it with a lot of people and it only took a few minutes to explain the rules.
Everyone is dealt a hand of cards, and on your turn you 1) put a card down, 2) place a chip on a spot on the board that corresponds to your card, and 3) pick up another card. You ultimately just have to get five chips in a row. If you have more than three players involved, it becomes a team game, but there's a twist. You don't know what cards your teammates have, and there is no table talk allowed.
.-~-. .' _ `. : )_( ; .-~-. '.___.' .' _ `. : )_( ; .-~-. '.___.' .' _ `. : )_( ; '.___.' The game comes with blue, green, and red chips
After we played it a few times, I was convinced that I wanted to buy myself a copy of the game, and I ended up bringing it with me to college. During my sophomore year, the school received a whole bunch of bomb threats and we were frequently evacuated from buildings. There was one night where I got evacuated from my dorm building, and I decided to bring my copy of Sequence to the other building that we had to go to. It was a good idea, because we were stuck there for at least an hour and my friends and I had a great time playing it.
I also have very fond memories of the night that I played round after round of Sequence with a boy that I had recently met. It was the night before I had a final math paper due, and I literally stayed up all night just playing Sequence with him! I ended up writing that paper the next morning and turning it in shortly before the 5pm deadline. I got a C+ in that class, and I had never felt so relieved just to pass a class.
,^. /\ _ _ _ / \ / \ _( )_ ( `V' ) (_, ._) \ / (_. ._) `. .' /_\ \/ /_\ " It also includes a double deck of playing cards
Along with introducing the game to friends, I also introduced it to my mom's family. And my mom was even more hooked than I was. We taught my grandma how to play, which was easy to do because it doesn't matter what language you speak. All you have to do is be able to identify playing cards on a board. My mom ended up buying several copies of the game, and she brought it with her on a trip to Germany to introduce it to even more relatives, and they all loved it too!
Sequence became my family's go-to game to play. We love to joke around and yell "No cahoot-ing!" at each other. We like it so much that we've bought different versions of the game, and we'll usually play with our set of Jumbo Sequence (which is honestly less jumbo than you'd think, compared to the size of the container it comes in). I think we've bought at least 10 copies of this game between all the different family members.
_______________________________ | ___________SEQUENCE__________ | ||@@|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|@@|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|()|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|()|__|()|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|()|()|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|()|__|__|()|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||@@|__|__|__|__|__|__|()|()|@@|| |____________SEQUENCE___________| And a board! Each spot on the board has a card on it, but I can't really add all that in the ascii art
There was definitely a time in my life where I would have said that Sequence was my favorite board game. But as the years have gone by, that enjoyment has definitely waned. It's not really a game that has too much strategy involved. It really is mostly luck based. And after playing so much Sequence, I hit a point where I was just all Sequence'd out.
So every time I go home to visit family, there's a pretty good chance that we'll play Sequence at least once. At this point, it's something that the older family members enjoy a lot more. For us "kids", it's less about playing a fun game, and more about spending time with the rest of the family. So I'll still join for a few rounds, but I'm usually the one that has to tap out early.
I still have a copy of Sequence on my shelf. It mostly collects dust nowadays, but I don't think I could ever get rid of it. I don't think I'll ever be the one to suggest playing it, but it's good to have, just in case my mom is visiting and she really wants to play.
January 20, 2025 4:25 PM
One week in
In the first week of my sabbatical, I made sure to squeeze in as much as I possibly could. I only had two months, and I wanted to make the most of it. But this is different. I have as much time as I want, so I'm taking things more slowly.
So how does it feel to be retired?
It's a little weird to hear it out loud. When I first decided that I wanted to retire early, I told lots of people. It seemed like such a cool thing to do, but it also seemed so far away. I had big dreams! It's easy to tell people that you have big dreams. Even if they don't understand, they just shrug it off and figure your plans will change over time.
Now that it's real, I just tell people that I'm taking a break from working. It's still true! I just don't know how long the break will be. A year? A few years? Forever? I don't know, and that's okay.
So to answer the question, I don't think it's fully sunk in. I still feel anxious about money. I am very diligently tracking all of my spending. I think I will keep doing that at least through the end of the year.
But there's also a new sense of calm. I still think about the next seven meals that I'm going to have, but I'm no longer so worried about it. I have time to cook. I don't have to worry about making sure that I have something that's easy for me to heat up for lunch the next day because I need to wedge it into my busy workday.
Dan and I went to a DDR tournament this past weekend, and it was snowing quite a lot on Sunday. In the past, the snow would have been something that would probably make me anxious. What if we got stranded at Penn State?
Well, I suppose that wouldn't be so bad. I took Dan's hand and we walked in the snow to get some lunch and it was nice to just enjoy the scenery and the people around us.
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