January 16, 2025 8:18 PM
Thoughts on my Framework laptop
I wasn't planning on making this blog post today. I was actually in the middle of writing a different blog post when my laptop froze on me. It's been doing this a lot lately. The screen will freeze and the only way I can get it to un-freeze is if I put the computer to sleep by closing the lid. Now this would tend to happen when I was viewing a really intensive website, like a food blog. Or LinkedIn. I also started seeing a lot issues when I had Steam running. Yesterday, I had Steam open and it was completely unresponsive to any mouse clicks. I couldn't even hit the X in the corner to close the window. But for the most part working on my blogs was fine!
Until it wasn't. At this point, the only thing that hasn't caused my computer to freeze is Stardew Valley.
So I got this computer in spring of 2022. My old chromebook (which was still running perfectly) no longer had supported updates, so I figured it was time to find a new laptop. I guess I chose a Framework because it seemed like a good company, and it looked cool to put together, and I liked that I could easily replace parts of it (I haven't replaced a single part yet).
I ended up getting a
- Framework 13
- with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor
- with 16 gigs of RAM
- and 500 gigs of space
- and I installed Ubuntu on it
People have asked me if I like the laptop. Before I hit all the screen freezing issues, it was fine. I feel like I don't use it to its full potential. The battery life is not great. I can't ever put this laptop to sleep for extended periods of time with it unplugged. I always have to fully power off. The lid opens to a much larger angle than any other laptop I've ever used, and I don't know of any reason why that's useful.
Sometimes I think, why did I choose this laptop? Why did I choose Linux? I don't understand how any of this works! I had to google how to update Discord so many times before it stuck in my memory.
But here I was, with this laptop that was freezing a lot. And I know enough that if your electronic thing is having issues, you should see if it's up to date. It turns out that I was on version 3.07 of the BIOS, and the latest is 3.20. That's so old that I can't even update it to the latest version at once. And before I could even do that, I had to be cautious and back up all the important things on this laptop, so I ended up putting this off for several months.
And I probably would have kept putting it off even longer, but if I can't even reliably write a blog post, then things are pretty dire. So today was the day. I made sure to back up whatever important things I thought I had on this computer, and then I went through the process of finding a flash drive, reformatting it, getting version 3.17 on it, booting it up, then downloading version 3.20 on it, and booting that up. And once I was done that, I figured I would upgrade to the latest LTS version of Ubuntu. This all took a few hours or so, but it was actually really easy!
So after I finally got my stuff up to date, I went to start up a sandbox for my blog, and then I got this error
ListUtil.c: loadable library and perl binaries are mismatched (got handshake key 0xdb00080, needed 0xdb80080)
😱
I did a bunch of googling and trying things from Stack Overflow, but nothing seemed to be working. One person suggested using a certain perl module to copy over existing installed perl modules to a new folder. I was sitting on the couch trying that out, and I was watching the text scroll by as it re-installed a bunch of modules, and then next thing you know, I'm asleep with my laptop on my lap.
I woke up in a very confused state, and when I woke up the laptop, I saw all the perl module installation output and I decided that I needed to shut down the laptop and deal with this another time. I walked over to a local meetup space and talked to some people for a couple of hours, which was nice. I think that little break was good for my brain, because when I got home, I realized that I just needed to clear out the local/ folder in my repos and re-install all the perl modules using carton.
So here I am, writing this blog post, and so far, the screen has not frozen yet. But it's only been hours, so 🤞
January 11, 2025 8:52 PM
The Day the Crayons Quit
Lately I've found that most books written for adults are just not that interesting to me. Picture books are where it's at. Because there are fewer words on each page, I feel like every word is so carefully crafted. Even the placement of the words is important. And the pictures matter. With a novel, you often have one place to potentially add an illustration and most of them have the most uninspired covers. So I wanted to make a blog post with a list of my favorite picture books, but I think that each book deserves its own post, so this will be the first of a new series of posts.
And because I quit my job yesterday, I thought it would be fitting to re-read one of my favorite books, The Day the Crayons Quit. I instantly loved this book when I first read it, and I love it every single time I re-read it. The words are hand written, and each crayon has a different personality.
\__/ __/ \__ \__/ / \ /\ /\ /\ /\ |==| |==| |==| |==| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | /\ | | | | | | | | |--| | | | | | | | | | | | | |AA| |AA| |AA| |AA| |AA| '--' '--' '--' '--' '--' Blue is stubby because he gets used a lot
I think my favorite characters are the orange and yellow crayons. They both think they're the color of the sun, but I personally like to include both colors in my sun.
And don't worry, the colors do come back in the sequel. I highly recommend that as well!
January 5, 2025 3:07 PM
Baba Is You
I played Baba Is You for the first time a few years ago with Dan. He's really into The Witness and some people had recommended Baba Is You to him because it's also a fun puzzle game. I think I like puzzle games well enough. Unlike The Witness, I liked that the Baba Is You puzzles were just presented to you. I didn't have to go looking for them. The first several puzzles were easy enough and it was a nice, fun game, but it quickly got pretty hard. At some point, I think it was too much for Dan and he wanted to stop. But I didn't. I started a puzzle and I wanted to solve it.
I ended up buying Baba Is You for my own laptop, and then later I bought it again so I had something to play on my phone during plane rides.
_ _ | \ | \ __,....' \_' \_ .' _`. / _ (_) \ | (_) | ' ; \ / '. _ _____ _ .' / / | | | | \ \ ,,,,,,'_',,'_',,,,,'_',,'_',,,,,
Just a warning that this is incredibly long (well, not as long as the last entry) and there are potential spoilers ahead, but please continue if you want to read about my journey
December 23, 2024 4:20 AM
to make my cup a little emptier
It's 4 a.m., and I'm wide awake. No, I'm not playing Scrabble. I'm just unable to sleep. I just have a lot of thoughts swimming in my head, and I've had a lot of thoughts swimming in my head all year. This would probably be a good time to write in my diary, but let's be honest, these days I can write maybe three sentences on paper before my hand starts to hurt.
November 10, 2024 7:43 PM
I'm in my granny phase
On February 25, I went into a Half Priced Books store with my sister, and I impulsively bought the Unofficial Make Your Own Harry Styles crochet kit. I looked at it thinking, this would be a great white elephant gift! And it was half off! I had never crocheted before, but by the time we walked out of the store I had decided that I was going to make Harry Styles. My sister had been going through a tough time, so I told her "If you're ever feeling sad, just remember, Harry Styles is waiting for you".
When I finally opened the box, I realized that this crochet kit was absolutely NOT for beginners. It was like reading a whole different language. Everything is abbreviated! sc, dc2tog, blo, right side, wrong side, magic circle??? But I had already made the silly decision to buy a crochet kit, so I was going to learn how to crochet. I knew about this thing called The Woobles because my aunt had done it, so I looked it up, and I ordered the absolute easiest wooble possible: Kiki the chick. It was $35, which is more than twice the amount I paid for soon-to-be-Harry Styles.
The label on the Woobles bag said that this was estimated to take 3-8 hours to crochet. It took me weeks. Crocheting is all about counting. If you lose count, you end up with the wrong number of stitches and your amigurumi ends up looking real wonky. So I would try to stitch one row of stitches, and I would check my work and realize I counted wrong, and then I would start all over, and I would do this over and over. But I did it, and Kiki did not turn out too bad at all. Kiki is the easiest wooble to make though, so I figured I would try something a little harder and I ordered a shark kit along with some accessories.
Somewhere along in this process, things just clicked and I was really enjoying myself. I ended up buying even more woobles! I must have spent like $200 on these Woobles! But I needed to graduate from buying really expensive crochet kits. I wanted to take the next step in my crocheting journey, and I bought my own yarn. I paid like, $2 for the cheapest skein of yarn that I could get at Michael's. And then I made an octopus from it. Turns out this crocheting hobby is actually pretty affordable if you buy your own yarn. I also made a strawberry and a uterus, which was a special request from my sister!
I was finally at the point where I had learned a few different crochet techniques and I could read patterns on my own. So a few weeks ago, I finally opened the Harry Styles box. Harry Styles was definitely much harder than all the other things I crocheted. And the yarn that came in this kit was pretty terrible and the colors didn't match the picture. I didn't have very high hopes for myself, especially after looking at other peoples' attempts at this on Tiktok.
But I just took this one piece at a time. First the arms, then the legs, then stitching the legs together, then the torso...it was coming along! I would sit on the couch and crochet Harry Styles while also listening to Harry Styles. And I did it! Yeah, I messed up a few times. One of the shoes is coming loose and the top of the pants is a little janky and the butterfly tattoo is...not great. But I'm pretty freaking proud of myself. I thought this was going to be this huge project that I would slog over for months, but I actually just made steady progress over the course of a few weeks.
And now that I'm finally done with Harry Styles, I don't want to stop crocheting. I've got lots of ideas in my head for more things I want to try and make (from patterns. I don't know how to create my own patterns, but maybe one day). I didn't expect to have such a life changing moment from going into a Half Priced Books store, but I'm so glad for Harry Styles and so excited about my new hobby.
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