8/22/2023
It rained this afternoon.
That was the first rain to reach the ground here since mid-May. It’s normally dry here, but not this dry. That made the day feel a bit surreal. Everyone seemed to be aware that there was a chance of rain, but almost afraid to speak of it for fear of jinxing it.
And then, suddenly, the sky opened up, and we got a month’s worth of precipitation in an hour. Joy mixed with fear. The weather had been so hot and so dry that trees were dying. We had a branch, a full foot in diameter, fall between our car and our neighbor’s house on Monday. The wind was suddenly tropical, and the rain was ripping the leaves off of the trees.
And then it stopped. The sky was still, the air was full, but there would be no more rain. Still, it was enough. If you’ve ever seen nature specials about the desert, then you’ve seen how the plants reacted. Dry stalks came back to life and turned green so fast you didn’t need time-lapse photography to see it.
Today didn’t feel real. I love days like this.
I’m trying an experiment. I’m trying to repurpose a decade-old Dell laptop. It’s worthless as a Windows computer even with a fresh install. I’ve got another old laptop I’m running MX on and, it’s fine, but I thought it’d be interesting to try something different. I put ChromeOS Flex on this machine to see how it would work.
The answer is “shockingly well.” It’s essentially just a Chrome browser running on top of a Linux kernel, so it’s fast as all get out (I live in Texas; I’m allowed to use phrases like that). Now, this being my old work computer, it’s a pretty standard hardware setup and it’s on the “ChromeOS Flex-compatible” list, so my experience may not be universal. My experience, so far, has been excellent. It turns out that an old business-grade laptop runs rings around the hardware that’s used for most Chromebooks.
The setup was nothing. Download the installer, copy it to a thumb drive, boot it to the thumb drive, and click “install.” So long as you don’t have any kind of boot protection on your machine, you can legitimately be fully up and running in 15-30 minutes. That’s kind of ridiculous.
Now, this only makes sense if you’re a Google user and there are ample reasons to avoid having anything to do with them. I’m phasing them out as we speak. But, for an office stuck with a bunch of hardware that’s in good condition but out of support? It seems like a pretty attractive option.
The ironic part here is that I’m using an old Windows laptop to replace my Chromebook because…my Chromebook is too old to receive updates. Funny old world, innit?
8/28/2023
Well, I lost momentum really quickly there, didn’t I? I’m struggling to do anything beyond “get through the day” at this point. The world feels broken. The weather has gone back to impossibly hot. In my youth, I reveled in weather like this, but that was many years and about a hundred pounds ago. Now it just drains me. Work is, well, it’s work. It feels worse than normal right now, but I can’t be sure this isn’t recency bias. We have never been, shall we say, a process-driven operation and there seems to be no enthusiasm for changing this. Same as it ever was.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you just how surreal the whole national scene is right now. The governor of my state has made cruelty the number one priority. Whether it’s tossing children into a river filled with sawblades, replacing school libraries with detention centers, taking the governing functions of cities that vote against his party, denying needed medical care for vulnerable populations, or just trying to ensure that there are as many mass shootings as possible, it’s depressing. It doesn’t help that the attorney general is openly corrupt and has been under indictment his entire term.
Oh, and COVID is back with a vengeance and we seem to have learned less than nothing.
Of course, the fact that a man who openly tried to overthrow the government is a leading contender to be the next President is just incredible. I don’t think anyone genuinely doubts that this man is absolutely steeped in criminal activity, not even his supporters. That’s the bit that’s depressing. It’s not that evil people exist, it’s that their evil acts increase their popularity with a frightening number of people. Yeah, it’s so “Homelander” that I’m not even going to link it. It literally hurts me to try to wrap my head around it.
This fills me with a sense of “what’s the point.” Let’s ask grumpy mustache man:
I just found that a friend had posted on exactly this subject two weeks ago and I just saw it. I need to clean up my RSS so it’s just shit I care about. I’m also transitioning away from the Google-sphere and I’m missing stuff, so if need to call something to my attention, please don’t hesitate to blow me up on every channel.
Side note: I need fewer channels.
Second side note: The concept of “friend” is so fucking weird now, isn’t it?
Anyway, yeah, I’m feeling a lot of “what’s the fucking point.” I love hanging out with my wife, cooking with her, playing games, and petting cats, but outside of that, I’m a bit paralyzed but the awfulness of…everything. My therapist would kick me for saying that, but that’s where I am. Unfortunately, I reckon I’m the only one who can restart this motor, so…let’s see what we can do. Sorry I don’t have a hugely optimistic wrap-up, but, as you may have guessed, I’m not feeling hugely optimistic right now.
-RK