Okay, so I haven’t done one of these in almost two months. But it’s time to get back on the wagon.

Work⌗

Yes. Work. I got a job. Well, I’m hired at least. I don’t actually start until this summer, but it’s a done deal. I start some online training in early March. What is the gig?

I’m going to be a teacher?

Yeah, it’s crazy. I’m going to be teaching two online courses at a local community college. One centering around Latin America during the Cold War and one general American History.

I’ll be honest, I only got the interview because I know a couple people who work in the social science department. But I guess it is always “who you know”. I know a couple of my online friends recommended I look into teaching, but I didn’t say anything about already having done so since I had little hope of actually getting the gig.

Anyway, it will be fun. Or it won’t, and I’ll hate it. I guess we’ll see. I don’t know how much longevity it will have. I’m happy I get to mostly work from home still, so I can maintain my hermit lifestyle.

I’m also going to be picking up some freelance gigs to get me through these next few months.

Scripting⌗

I wrote my favorite script of the year already. I’m a big fan of BTRFS and snapper, and I miss that functionality on NixOS. Yes, NixOS can be rolled back (and pretty easily if you don’t use flakes), but if you do use flakes, it’s a little more involved than BTRFS.

So I wrote a rollback script. It will ask you what generation you want to go back to, it will roll you back, roll your git repo back, and then force the commit back to that generation. It’s pretty nifty, and it works like a charm.

Gaming⌗

I’ve been gaming a lot more. My nephew and I continue to have our weekly game nights, and that has been nice. We’ve been playing Halo 3 and Smite 2. I don’t care for Smite all that much, but he enjoys it.

I’ve also spent quite a bit of money on gaming since my last newsletter. I bought a OLED Switch on eBay. I like it, and I’ve been playing a lot of N64 games on it lately. This week I’ve been continuing to play Mario64.

I also bit the bullet and bought myself a XBox Series One. Also used, but it was still not the best decision financially. But I enjoy our game nights, and we’re pretty limited on what games we can play because of cross play limitations. Now we’ll both have an Xbox and we can play Madden, which I’ve wanted to play again for a long while.

Music⌗

I’ve discovered a couple new artists this week in my quest to listen to 500 new artists by the end of the year.

  • Nate Smith - Very modern country. Has some great songs, though. My favorite is Whiskey on You.
  • Tyler Brader - Basically Luke Combs but not as popular. He sounds the same. But still a couple really good songs. My favorite is DEVIL YOU KNOW, which is a man’s song.

I’ve been back into country a lot lately. I had left it behind for almost 25 years, but it’s actually pretty good. I listen to a lot of old stuff, but some of the new artists have a few good tunes too.

Potpourri⌗

  • I discovered that FreshRSS allows you to set labels, which is seriously going to help my organization when it comes to things I want to save. It’s going to be awesome. Before this, they were all just saved in my starred list, which was huge.

  • I’ve switched back and forth between the Pixel 10 Fold and my Galaxy 25 Ultra. I like the Ultra a lot more. I thought I’d like stock Android, but it is a buggy mess. Samsung’s software may be bloated, but it doesn’t flash and crash all the time. I also still have no use for a tablet sized screen. I don’t multitask on my phone, so the foldable nature of the Fold is just useless. I’m grateful I didn’t pay for the Fold. I’ll probably end up selling it since I just don’t like it.

  • I installed Plasma for a few hours the other day. I didn’t really want to use it, I just wanted to test my rollback script. The script worked great, Plasma was still buggy. But I did have fun configuring Plasma with home manager.

  • It has been fucking cold here for almost a month. I mean, it’s always cold in the winter in Michigan, but I’m talking Alaska cold. Canada cold. I’m tired of winter.

  • I bought a couple new fountain pens. I’ll write up an article about them eventually. Needless to say, I have a problem.

Reading⌗

January was a spectacular month reading. I read 6 books, 5 of them new. I don’t think February will be as good, since I’m starting my reread of The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton, and that is huge. It’ll take a bit.

  • The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England - Brandon Sanderson 4 Stars (technically started this one in December)
  • The Lonely Hearts Book Club (reread) - Lucy Gilmore - 4 Stars
  • The Martian - Andy Weir - 3 stars
  • My Fae Valentine - Leon West - 3 Stars
  • Three Mages and a Margarita - Annette Marie - 3.5 Stars
  • Dark Arts and a Daiquiri - Annette Marie - 3 Stars

Goals for This Week⌗

  • Finish Pandora’s Star.
  • Record 3 videos for TLC and actually post more than one.
  • Clean up my syncthing folders. They’re a mess due to my device switching.
  • Avoid buying anything new. Except for Madden.