When I first used the Internet, way back in the mid-90s, it wasn’t really a thing people thought about. It wasn’t a big deal, because most people didn’t even have it. If you wanted to use the Internet, if you even had a reason to do so, you had to go somewhere else to do it. The library or your school. It wasn’t until 2001 or 2002 that I finally got dial up at my house. And I know that my experiences there aren’t all that unusual. You can look up the stats if you want, but the saturation of Internet in private households didn’t take off until the mid-00s.

I know a lot of you follow me over on The Linux Cast, but for those of you who don’t, it’s probably odd to hear me say that I’ve hopped to a different distro. What’s a distro? What’s Linux?

Well, that’s fine if you don’t know what those are, it’s really not the point of today’s ramble. Instead, I want to discuss change and how hard that can be.

I have used the same distro for the last two years. This was a challenge I set myself in 2023, hoping to curb my distro-hopping addiction. And it worked spectacularly well. I love openSUSE.

I don’t vibe code. I’m pretty proud of that fact. I like to create my own code, even though I’m painfully aware of how bad at it I am. I’m not a developer and I never will be. I can put out the simplest of things and be happy about that. It’s more than some people can do, so there’s no real need to feel bad about it.

Because I’m not a great coder, I have to constantly look things up online. I’m a long time user of the Google-it-always method of coding. The issue is, I’m doing that less and less and going to AI instead. And it is a serious problem. I can feel myself getting dumber every time I use “AI” for some menial task or question. Things I would usually go figure out myself by reading through other’s solutions on random forum 133, I now copy and paste from ChatGPT. Sure the AI bot will tell me what the code does and how it should work, but I don’t read that shit. I just take the code and if it works, GREAT! If it doesn’t work, I go back to AI, tell it that it didn’t work and ask it to try again.

Back in college and a little after, I worked the third shift stocking shelves at Kroger. I did that for about 10 years. It was a good job, and allowed me to make friends and be able to go to school during the day. I stopped working there in 2012. That’s 13 years ago, which just makes me wonder where the time has gone.

But what really gets me, is that even after all that time, my sleeping schedule still has not recovered. I’m still a work until 5AM kind of guy. If you’re on my Discord, you’ll often find me there chatting until the wee hours of the morning. And often times, I don’t get up and about until 10 or 11 in the morning, sometimes later.

I talked just a few days ago about how I’ve been in a severe reading slump lately. That same day, I picked up Apocalypse Gates: Book 1: Rapture" by Daniel Shinhofen. Amazon Link The book’s summary was interesting enough. Guy wakes up after his brain is basically stolen by mega Corp Inc and uploaded to a video game. I love me some LitRPG, so I figured this would be a fun little romp. I really didn’t expect to get into it as much as I did. This book is pretty good in a lot of places. It’s also really bad in some places, so much so that it kind of ruins it, but we’ll get to that later.

I’m a writer by trade. I don’t think I’m HG Wells or Arthur Conan Doyle or anything, nor do I proclaim to have perfect grammar or spelling. But I can thread a few words together and have them sound at least somewhat coherent for those reading.

I’m also a reader. I read a ton, and I always have. I was reading “chapter books” when I was 5 years old. Mostly because I wanted big books since those were more impressive than the picture books my friends were reading. I was reading Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Stephen King in 5th grade. Maybe not the best thing for a kid, but I liked them and spent a lot of time in the library.

I can’t believe we’re half way through this year already. It is insane. The worst part is that hardly any of the things I wanted to do have been done. I have done other things, but still. I should make a list and see what I can do about getting some of those goals marked off.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I’ve become a bit obsessed with this blog. I haven’t had this much fun since I switched to Linux in 2017. From the writing to learning new things about Hugo, it has been a blast.

First I added comments, then I added comment counts. That was fun. These last couple of days I’ve been messing around with file structure (Hugo calls it taxonomy), and the RSS feed. I’m actually writing this post to test out my RSS feed changes as well as test some additions to the script I talked about the other day.

This was supposed to be a great year for reading. I planned on 40 new books and 40 rereads, which is slightly better than last year. But so far I’m at 12 books and we’re already half way through the year. It’s worse though, because I haven’t finished a book since mid-May. I’ve hopped from one to another, constantly picking up something new, and just cannot for the life of me get interested.

I mostly stay out of politics. I’m of the mind that there are effin’ morons on both sides of the political spectrum, and moderate action is the only thing that can truly help all of us. The far extremities of the current political atmosphere only drives further division. Honestly, the lack of empathy on both sides is just sad to see.

But, I’m not here to talk about my political views or yours. If you’re a die-hard Trumper or you wish Kamala had won, I don’t care. I really don’t, so don’t @ me. Instead, I’d like to talk about FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. One thing you can’t deny is that MAGA has riled people up unlike any movement in recent memory. The news, commentators, and TikTok-ers are alight with the most dire of predictions. And that’s not just those on the left. The right does it too. Nobody is safe, the world is ending if the ‘others’ get power, and so on. First, y’all need to go outside a bit more. Things have a tendency to be less scary after you’ve touched grass or walked your dog. Second, y’all just be exhausting for the rest of us to watch.