< Notes...

Last year we placed a bowl full on candies, and left the porch light on, as an indication that Halloween was “happening”. Not a single kid, or adult, showed up. All candies were donated to work. This year there will be no candies, and light will remain off. Halloween is off.

So far having a fairly bad experience while trying to get a PAP machine ordered after having gone through a sleep study. I received an email from them stating the order was sent, while neglecting to send it. At square one now, a month after receiving the email. Ugh!

It is 2025, and most Linux distributions do not ship exclusively i386 ISOs. Yet, people get their amd64 machines, and straight they go to install packages—and their libraries—within the i386 architecture. Currently adding around 1TiB of i386 to our mirrors. 🤦‍♂️

I have a notification on GitHub that I can’t clear out. Someone mentioned me on a repository for which I have no access, or it has since been deleted, or something else. The only “solution” that I have found involves installing and using gh. Why? I don’t want to!

I want to go back to start using email more, like I used to. I am looking into participating more on mailing lists, and overall using email more for communication for which I have been using non-asynchronous apps. I prefer to use the apps provided by the OS, as I have mentioned it before. The thing is, macOS mail app has a couple of things that the “email perfectionist” in me dislikes. A lot. I am one of those, yes. Let’s see:

• No strict threading, that is, using in-reply-to and message-id to properly create threads. It seems that the iOS/macOS Mail app will not exclusively use those, often using subjects to group emails.
• No way to set quoted text to start with the venerable > Internet “standard”. Apple Mail insists on using their colored |.

So, that’s the pickle, my pickle. Will I dust off mutt, or Thunderbird? Ugh, I don’t want to, but…

My most used, and only, filters on the Fediverse are “#wordle” and “wordle”. They work great. I cannot begin to describe how much I dislike those silly “bragging” squares people post, over and over. Ugh!

I remember reading that Jesus said: “Fear everyone, expel the stranger, blame the poor, feed the rich, ignore the sick, sacrifice the young, love only thyself, trust only Caesar, throw lots of stones.” Right? 🙄

With the release of iOS 26, it is iOS 7 all over again. It is also Mac OS X, “the re-run”, with the release of macOS 26. Complain we must, it matters not.

“The new iOS 7 is horrible. It looks like something grade schoolers designed. The colors are too bright. It is very distracting when you have to squint looking at different apps due to the harshness […]. There is no point in keeping something that is so horrible to use.”

“Just “up"graded my iPhone to iOS 26 and I absolutely hate it. It’s visually the ugliest iOS Apple has ever produced […]. It’s so ugly I’m thinking of cancelling my iPhone Air order and looking at Samsung options.”

I cannot stand Steam. Their webpage is shoddy, just as is their app. The games you “own” in their platform you really don’t. I made the mistake of “buying” Diablo IV and Last Epoch for desktop computers because they entised me with a great price, but never, ever, again. You get what you pay for.

I really cannot stress this enough. Please, don’t say “I have a question”, just ask the question. From “No Hello, here are some examples:

• “Hey man, what’s up? also, any idea when that thing’s due?”
• “Hi there! Hope you’re well. I’m after the latest deck, when you get a sec :)”
• “Hey, if you’re not busy, could you update those NFRs?”
• “Etc.”

There are “other me” (that is, people with the same first and lastname as me) in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Spain, all using first.lastname@gmail.com (which is mine) on all sort of things: bank accounts, mobile services, soccer clubs, social media, you name it! Is it that they are so non-technically saavy that they provide an email they don’t own, or is it that companies are assuming—as default—their email address is first and lastname, at gmail.com? Truly mind blowing.

Having used Matrix in the past, and even self-hosted my own Matrix “homeserver”, I can categorically say—in my (own) very, very humble opinion—that it sucks eggs.

Always point the finger at you first. “Is the issue at my end?” “What did I do that caused this?” Only after analising everything, and when the level of certainty has reached a 95% (your number may vary) that it isn’t your fault, your issue, then you look elsewhere (aka “pointing fingers at others”). That is, you know, “everything is my fault” first.

Why having any illness (flu, COVID, headaches and fever, stomach bug, etc.) gets no challenge when requesting a sick day from work, but being mentally overwhelmed, or overworked, does?

“What do you think about coming to office on Wednesdays?” — “We would rather not, no. Not a good idea.” — “OK, let’s start coming to office on Wednesdays as well, so three days a week onsite.”

Why to ask then?!

Call me old school, boomer, curmudgeon, whatever! I, for one, have absolutely no interest, no desire, to carry a foldable mobile device, of any kind. OK, moving on now.

Taco Bell wants you to use their self purchasing machines. They are a mess. No search function, so it is next to impossible to find what you want, especially if you are not a regular.

At the one at 7853 Colonial Drive, Orlando, FL, waiting to order at the counter takes an eternity. They keep servicing their drive through, and kind of ignore you. Once you have successfully placed your order, and it arrives, make sure to check it carefully. It will be wrong 98% of the time. Mine was, and I realised too late, when I was already at home.

That Taco Bell sucks.

We wouldn’t need ad blockers if your ads weren’t obnoxius, privacy invasive, and tasteless. Now you want us to subscribe, or stop using ad blockers (or both!), so that you can be supported. See the cycle you have created? If I were to condone ads, I would for sure pick Carbon Ads.

The State of Florida is backwards in many ways. One of the many things, trash bins. The one for garbage has a green lid, while the one for recycle has a blue lid. Doesn’t make sense, right?

Got invited to a warband raid yesterday, in Diablo Immortal. Afterwards got an invite to their clan. Upon joining, a warm welcome instructed encouraged me to join their Discord channel. Then, and only then, they started to lose me. There is no other technology I dislike more than Discord. Also, it is a game, to entertain me a little, not a job.

As I paid almost three times more for a tiny grocery shopping this evening, I felt grateful that at least they were harvested, and made by real, patriotic, heterosexual, white, christian, American workers, and not illegal immigrants. 🇺🇸

If a company follows what other company is doing, and uses that other company as a template almost to the dot, they are no “leaders”. They can’t flaunt innovation. They are followers, who imitate, and copy.

I noted this because, as someone who has to constantly spell his surname, it makes it harder when the listener is expecting a bastardisation of something that has been accepted and adopted as a standard. Anyway, enough of it, I just had to take it off my chest. LOL.

At the risk of being labeled a boomer—something kids already do, anyway—I have to say that the music from the 80s and 90s beats the one from the 2000s, and the 2010s, so far. It reminds me what my mum and dad used to say about the music of their time. Every generation, pretty much the same.

Really wishing more services on Ubuntu were made in Golang, or good old C/C++. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Python, and it certainly is widely used, multiplatform, etc., etc. Now having almost everything Python comes across as sheer laziness. That’s it. Ubuntu, and Python </rant>.

Why would Microsoft offer releases of their Edit CLI editor for Linux, and compress them using zstd? What’s wrong with tar.gz? Why the added complication? What is there to gain?

There shouldn’t be “do-not-reply” email “addresses” (between quotes, because if they can’t be replied to, they aren’t email addresses). If an email goes out, and it’s delivered to someone, or something, it should—must—be replyable. Unattended mailbox my foot. Don’t do that!

This has been one of my pet peeves for many, many years. “Hi”, they say. “Hi there!”, I reply politely. “Can I ask you a question?” “Sure”, big silent sigh. “What’s my username?”. Grrrr. Correct way? “Hi, could you tell me what’s my username?” ❤️

I wish Hacker News would give us the ability to remove entries from specific domains from timeline. Sort of a domain block ability. The very first ones on my list would be: “x.com”, “twitter.com”, “medium.com”, and “substack.com”.

Publix “whole milk” isn’t whole. It is a sham. I am going to be getting TG Lee’s this weekend to compare. Why Publix’s one is a sham? When you boil whole milk, and get next to none milk skin, that ain’t whole. Publix’s whole milk renders something as thick as a spider’s web.

The trend for application developers to make each and every single app a subscription based one is a complete show stopper for me. If I want, or need the app, I will buy it. I will, of course, pay for upgrades on every major iOS version too, maybe? Otherwise, I am sure to find ways not to want, nor need it.

“I believe that I should have been informed of all anticipated expenses upfront. Withholding such a significant portion of the total cost until after the key was already cut when I was at the dealership feels, at best, like extremely poor customer service and, at worst, borderline deceptive. This lack of transparency is unacceptable and has caused me considerable frustration and inconvenience.”

Letter I have written to AutoNation Acura, regarding our recent interaction with their Parts and Service department, which expect to mail tomorrow.

No, I am not going to disable my ad-blocker for your website. No, I am not going to make an exception by adding your website to an allow list, to let the adverts you are running go through. Yes, I care about independent journalism, but I can’t donate to everyone, nor donate multiple times a month to the same news site.

When forced to chose between allowing ads, or not being allowed to your content, I will simply browse away.

There is no way in hell—figuratively speaking, of course—that I would find myself installing Microsoft Edge on my Mac. I’ll die with Safari. I am a vanillist—that is, I prefer and use the OS default apps.

Similarly, if you ever see me using Google Chrome—or any other browser, but Safari—on my Mac, kindly ask me to give you $1,000 (USD). You have my word.

No long ago I noted purchasing a fob key for wife’s car. Today she goes to pick it up, and the dealership (AutoNation Acura in Sanford) wants $265 to “program” it. Nobody told us about that extra cost when we ordered it! Not even the slight mention of it!

Imagine going to the hospital to have a pacemaker implanted, and receiving it in nicely wrapped box to take home. WTH?! What good is car key that doesn’t do anything?

Anyway, I found someone we trust that will program it for $100. I think I am going to be sending my complain, and feedback, via certified mail (with a copy via email).

“We came here because of what America stands for: freedom of speech, academic freedom, a vibrant intellectual community,” Mr Gerdén said of his international classmates. “And now Trump is threatening all those values.”

This cannot be allowed to continue. It is a personal grudge against Harvard, and goes against everything American stands for—which is sadly, and slowly, being no more.

“I went to a show in November of last year (it’s May right now) and ever since, I have tinnitus. I don’t recommend it.”

I do, too. And I, too, do not recommend it. I don’t know what it feels to be in silence. I have gotten used to my “new” silence, and learned how to enjoy it, but it is nothing like the silence I experienced before tinnitus started.

Talking about price tags, $77,000 for one fibre channel switch, with zero return policy, and a minimum of six weeks lead time is a first timer to me. Tariffs anyone?

I know it happens, of course, but still stumping to me: how in the world someone manages to bankrupt a casino? Furthermore, who trusts a “businessman” with a history of bankrupcies? What to do? Ah, yes, you elect him president of the country, of course. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I just paid $283.71 for a key fob for wife’s 16 years old car. This is a need; it is either paying for it, or having a 2 tons vehicle sitting on the driveway. Of course that’s not an option, she also needs it for work. Because, unlike on other cities, public transportation here doesn’t truly exists.