I\’m trying. Really, I am. But it\’s like it\’s fighting me. I tried a bunch of stuff to get my graphics card to quit toasting my leg (laptop) in Xubuntu 19.04, and somehow utterly broke apt. Blah.

After trying various things to fix it, I\’m punting. Trying 18.04 again.

Gotta love it when your IDE or language tells you how to do hello world. Seems kind of pathetic, but there it is:

I don\’t rightly know if this is the IDE (Spyder) or Python itself doing it, but it\’s still funny.

I have a love-hate relationship with Linux. Or maybe hate-love. Well, probably love-hate. Yeah. It\’s complicated.

On the one hand, I \”use\” Linux daily a lot. My cell phone runs Android–a variant of Linux. The primary product I work on for my company runs a version of Linux. Linux is everywhere.

But when I try to run it myself I hate life. I\’m on it at the moment, Xubuntu 18.04. But it\’s always painful. Always.

The mouse was the pain point today. And the display driver. But the mouse was the catastrophic problem. I installed a driver for it, rebooted, and my keyboard quit working in Xubuntu. That was a new one on me. Google rescued me, but still, it was a pain. And the mouse behavior is still very lame.

Not sure what to think. There\’s a part of me that feels like freedom is at hand. I\’ve learned to be content in my job, I\’ve learned to work hard at it (I think), and I can see how I\’m valuable at it in many ways. But reading about entrepreneurship again makes me wistful. There\’s definitely a part of me that would love to have my own business.

Can I make it happen? I don\’t know. I\’m going to think about it. There you go.

Ideas that come to mind: I\’m not disclosing.

It was, indeed, a good week.

Finished 6 lessons of math.
Was productive at work.
Got taxes filed.
Fixed leaking tub.
Submitted kids\’ financial application for school.
Avoided time-wasters for the most part.

First, why isn\’t \”strategizing\” a word? COME ON? I can guarantee it\’s on 60% of LinkedIn profiles. Then again… Anyway, moving on….

A habit I\’ve gotten into (and kept up, mostly), is sending my wife a list of goals for each month. It\’s more doable than saying \”I\’m gonna do this crazy thing for a year.\” This month, I decided to try something a little different. I\’ve struggled with wasting time on the Internet (shock!). Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, news sites, even good ol\’ Wikipedia. And most of the time wasting is done on my phone or my Chromebook. Rather than saying, \”None of this stuff at all,\” which is kind of like saying \”No alcohol ever,\” I decided to try this: Fun sites *only* on my home desktop computer. Not on my phone, not on my work computer, not on this here Chromebook. It\’s been surprisingly effective already. Yesterday, a Saturday, I finished my flashcards on my phone. Then I read some of a book I\’ve been wanting to read on my Kindle instead of wasting 1 hour on Facebook. But I\’ve not abandoned Facebook or Twitter entirely; I\’ve gone on each a few times Friday, yesterday, and today. But way less than normal.

Anyway, Mark Zuckerberg would probably not approve, but it\’s using his tool/toy in a space more appropriate to its actual usefulness. So far, I like it. I hope I will keep it up.

The baby is here, Christmas is over now, the new year is upon us, we seem to be getting over whatever sickness has ailed us, and I have a car that I will probably keep for a long time again. Time to get back at it.

Had my first run in a while today. Well, I guess I had one about 1.5 weeks ago, but somehow this one felt more real. And more necessary.

First lesson of math finished since December 20th today. Yesterday, I cracked the book for the first time in, well, since then, but I only did one question before getting distracted. Today, I made myself go downstairs to the lunchroom. Doing so allowed me to finish the 6 problems left in the lesson. Haha. Baby steps. Somehow going somewhere else helps. I felt inept and stupid trying to remember stuff from less than a month ago, but still, I made progress.

Tomorrow is my last day of \”freedom\” regarding alcohol. I haven\’t set any goals regarding it, so I\’ve basically been doing whatever I want (within reason). Friday is the start of a new \”week\” as far as how I track alcohol consumption. Needs to happen. Don\’t want to, but I don\’t want to drink more than I should every day for the rest of my life.

I also had a rather productive day at work. It felt good. It feels like things are slowly getting back to normal.

So, apparently you can mess up access to Gallium OS by simply hitting the space key at the bootup screen. Oops. I had no idea. I\’m guessing that I did or maybe one of my kids did.

Anyway, it makes it so that you can\’t get back into it. I did after a bit of mucking around and wanted to write down my steps as best as I can recall.

1. Get back into Developer Mode.
2. Open a terminal (control shift T, I believe).
3. Your root password won\’t work here. You\’ve got to get to another shell. Hit control alt forward arrow (what would be F2).
4. There, enter \”root\” and whatever password you set previously.
5. Then enable legacy boot again: sudo crossystem dev_boot_legacy=1

That should be it. You should be able to reboot and do the control L shortcut to get back into Gallium.

I\’m not sure if that\’s the write string of text to refer to what I mean. But it\’s what I mean. Basically, I want the ability to easily add handwritten images to my flashcards. Ultimately, I want to be able to do that on Anki. But so far, this has eluded me (but has not alluded me).

Anyway, if Anki could add this feature, that\’d be greeeeat. But so far, they haven\’t.

My shoulder has been hurting. That definitely wasn\’t the reason for taking up \”pen,\” but it came to mind when I started typing. Oh well.

I\’m kind of anonymous here. I don\’t know if I\’ve mentioned that. I used to have a blog that included both my first and last name. When I was promoted to supervise other people, I suddenly had to become public (albeit very slightly) while seeking to hire someone. It freaked me out when a guy I was interviewing mentioned several things about my background he had found out online. I suddenly felt vulnerable. This Private Life I live online was…n\’t. I think I killed that blog that day.

But, some of my favorite engineers were famous people. How would I handle that? People I think of as famous, even, that really aren\’t in the grand scheme of things, are more vulnerable. Engineers I see at work are doubtless googled regularly (I\’ve done it multiple times on at least two that come to mind). As I mature as a professional, that will happen to me–I hope…I guess.

Other thought: Flashcards. I really like them, at least in theory. But I am having a hard time incorporating them in a meaningful way into my daily life. When I was working to go from technician to engineer, I studied religiously. I made new cards constantly. I rarely went to the bathroom without studying. I learned a lot. But I have not kept it up. It reminds me of a diet. You think, \”Gosh, I feel great, and not eating donuts feels outstanding. I\’ll never go back to eating junk!\” But then something happens. You have that one donut because you had a dentist appointment (or whatever), then a snack at work, then, then, then… And all of a sudden you\’re grabbing a couple of donuts on the way back to work from some unusual events. It\’s a small slide from there to going for a donut every day–or two.

That was supposed to be about flashcards, but it ended up being about donuts. Donuts…mmmmm…

Whiskey is another interesting thing. Or, more broadly, alcohol. I really like whisky (giving equal opportunity to the two spellings I know of). I used to drink Scotch, but I\’ve developed a taste for bourbon and it\’s cheaper, so that\’s what I go for now. Evan Williams, at present, which is kind of funny since I didn\’t like it almost at all when I first tried it.

Anyway, I bring it up because I\’ve got a pattern going with it that I find intriguing. I\’ve committed to drinking 17 shots a week (note that Evan Williams is 43% alcohol, so this is technically more than 17, but that\’s an aside). I start my \”alcohol week\” on Friday. This is voluntary, so I can make whatever rules that are helpful for me. I want to have drink available Friday, so that\’s what I do at present. My wife thinks 5 is too many to have in a single night (even at my size), so I\’ve silently chosen 4.5 shots as my max per evening (I\’m 3.5 in at the moment). What, lately, has ended up happening is that I have 4.5 Friday night, 4 or 4.5 Saturday night, 4 Sunday night, and 4 or 4.5 Monday night.  Then I\’m totally dry Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It\’s kind of a weird bargain. I *want* to drink those other nights, too, but I\’ve found that if I let myself drink as much as I want (under 5 shots), I quickly enjoy it less. Diminishing returns and all that. Doing this, I still want it the other nights, but I say \”no.\”

Anyway, that\’s what\’s been on my mind.