toynbee

Who is he?

Fedora is absolutely my favorite distro that I’ve used to date. I have it both on my desktop (mostly used for gaming) and my laptop (mostly used for web browsing or anything I might have to do while traveling) and have for many years.

I never get crashes or anything, but on both systems the mouse (USB for desktop, track pad for laptop) will occasionally just stop working. Sometimes clicks still work, sometimes not, but universally the cursor just stops moving. On my desktop I just unplug and plug back in the mouse, but on the laptop I either have to wait it out or reboot using the keyboard.

The desktop also has issues with Bluetooth. (As does the laptop, but they’re much more intermittent.) I even got an external dongle in case hardware or placement were the problem, but that changed nothing. I know both the internal and external work because, when I search, they find my TV, my HASS unit, etc.; but for the things I actually want to connect, like a keyboard or headset, it either doesn’t see them at all, or does, but they disappear when I try to connect or pair them (and don’t show during the next search unless I wait a while).

I haven’t really looked into the mouse issue, but I have reviewed various logs for Bluetooth and not yet found anything that looks relevant.

Other than those issues, I love Fedora. Other problems I’ve had in the past have resolved themselves, presumably through the efforts of the developers, so though I’ve had these issues through several releases, I’ll probably just wait them out.

I better carve a shiv for protection.

The most concerning sensory deprivation I’ve ever encountered was when Katrina happened. I wasn’t in any of the disaster areas, but it still hit hard where I lived.

When I woke up, I literally couldn’t see anything. The power had gone out and I guess the weather was still cloudy enough that no sunlight penetrated my blinds. Also, it was intensely quiet; I was still young at the time so I didn’t have real servers, just always-on towers, but my stuff was on UPS’ so I was accustomed to at least hearing their beeps if it was out long enough for them to notice.

In this situation, I suppose it had been out long enough to drain their batteries and I had slept deeply enough that the beeps didn’t disturb me.

Also, the house had central HVAC and I was used to hearing it run much of the time. Between that, the lack of system fans, the lack of beeping, and not being able to tell whether my eyes were open, it was a disorienting way to wake up.

My ISP charges $15/mo for gigabit. I don’t really anticipate beating that.

They charge another $15/mo for a static IP, which they apparently require to allow port forwarding, but if I called annually about it they’d probably catch on. They already know me by name because, despite being several states away, they provide internet access exclusively to my city in my state and I’m apparently the only person here who wants port forwarding.

… What do you look like?

Almost a really, really stupid show.

A long time ago, before car keys with buttons were common, I had a car with one key with buttons. They didn’t work well, so I went to the relevant dealership to get another key.

They charged me $80 and gave me another key, which admittedly did have functional buttons, but in so doing they further broke the original key - the buttons no longer worked at all. They then told me that I should not have expected to pay $80 and come out with more than I’d brought in.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. The first time I went to that dealership, I asked to test drive one of their cars … The salesperson to whom I spoke claimed that they didn’t have any license plates to spare while visibly holding one in his hands.

When did mermaids get involved?

As much as I’m mildly technically competent, I tend to interact with my email from a browser. Generally speaking, it’s not that easy to alter headers in that environment.

The biggest issue I have with it is that I have Linux on all my personal systems and OSX on my work laptop and sometimes switch rapidly between them.

My fingers don’t seem to adapt as quickly, though, and I often press the wrong combination between them.

I remember a while ago - when, like in your anecdote, I mostly coded in bash - I had a dream that I found out people were invoking my scripts in a manner that essentially overrode settings that might (or, in my case, might not) have been set at the beginning of the script.

This never (AFAIK) happened in waking hours, but I was very offended in the dream.

A fact that I like to share from my personal history: I took four years to graduate from a two year college because I was taking every computer class they offered … Except that I skipped “intro to Unix” because when was I ever going to use that?

My entire career has been largely based on knowing how to use Linux.

Wow, haven’t seen your thorns in a while.

I liked vimwiki for this, except that it set expandtab and I could never find where.

Pretty much the one and only good thing about work forcing us to switch from Linux laptops to Macbooks.

DNS ad blocking doesn’t work on YouTube.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kwfA1UB2Je0

edit: Yes, I realize the irony of linking YouTube here.

My previous house apparently only existed because the neighbor of the building in the lot before it objected to the sexuality of the owners of said building and threw a molotov cocktail at it.

There was only one casualty of that event. Sadly, it was a cat.

I don’t know how to respond to that.

Maybe you’re my old co-worker.

Regardless, I appreciate the detail! Thank you for elaborating.