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On Friday morning September 27th 2024, Hurricane Helene introduced itself to the Southeastern United States. A few short hours later, nobody was sorry to see it go away but nearly everybody in it’s path had been effected in some significant way. It was a time that few of us will live long enough to forget. First off let me just say, Annette and I got off relatively easy. While so many that we know have lost irreplaceable things and continue to suffer as a result of the storm, things here went rather well. We lost power and internet for only a day and a half and we happened to have a lot of items lying around like a camping propane stove, some propane tanks, lots of candles, battery powered flashlights and a battery powered AM/FM radio that really helped. We also had solar rechargeable power bank which proved helpful as our smartphones and their associated, not to mention overloaded, cellular networks were basically our only way to talk with others during the actual storm. ...

Well after nearly 23 years of largely uninterrupted and admirable service, the time has come to officially retire the custom Content Management System that has powered it all: Presentation Engine. I originally created and deployed the first version of PEngine back in late 2001 when I first created this blog before I registered the domain name in October of 2001. Back then it was nothing more than a shoddily put together classic ASP application with an Access DB driving it that I threw together in a hurry. Until today, some variation upon that original codebase has been delivering content to my readers despite the fact it has advanced significantly over the years. ...

So it’s that time of year and I spent last weekend at SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) 2024 in Charlotte, NC. This was my second year of attending and it absolutely lived up to the lofty expectations set by my first trip last year. This year was less about the sessions for me and more about the people. Which is interesting to say because if I’m being honest about my visit last year, it was also similar. ...

As some of you may have noticed, I have been rather quiet over the last few months. There are a lot of reasons for my silence. The more observant among you may have even noticed that content has disappeared and reappeared from this site several times over the same time period. Long story short: The nature of this site and how and when I use it to express myself is changing. This change is long overdue. ...

So as most of you know, I tend to take the last few weeks of every year off. Primarily I use this time to celebrate the year and reflect on its events. I also use this time to tie up any tech loose ends that I have… and boy did I have a few this year. My biggest piece of in-home tech debt was definitely my camera system. For years I have run a hodge podge front door camera which basically amounted to an indoor web cam mounted in my front window which was pointed at the foot door area of the porch. The web cam was hooked up a to Raspberry Pi 4 running an RPI distribution called MotionEyeOS. Sadly this software hasn’t been updated since mid 2020 as the maintainer had stepped away and nobody has stepped up to maintain it since. ...

Yesterday I almost died. At least I came as close to dying as I have ever come over the course of my life. I hadn’t been feeling well since Monday morning. I was experiencing quite a bit of abdominal pain and bloating. It only got worse as time progressed on Monday and that evening I just wasn’t able to sleep. No matter what position I got in, I just couldn’t get to sleep due to the aches and pains. Finally right before 3 am on Tuesday the 14th I woke Annette and she convinced me to let her take me to the emergency room. ...

Today’s post is about a subject near and dear to my heart: Laptops with Linux preinstalled. Sadly this is not a happy post, but rather one in which I share my recent angst about the state of Linux Laptop hardware and how I have maneuvered myself into a very neglected corner. So as regular readers know, I have largely only purchased laptops with Linux preinstalled for quite a few years. This is because as a person living within a capitalistic society, I am ethically compelled to vote with my dollar as it is the only vote I have which actually seems to matter. To make a long story short: I do not wish to reward Microsoft for their ongoing objectionable behaviors relating to Windows and I really don’t much care for MacOS so Linux is my de-facto operating system of choice. ...

While most of my readers probably think of me as being some kind of massive die hard Linux loving Penguin, the reality is that outside of servers, laptops and desktops I don’t use Linux very much. The purpose of today’s post is to detail the reasons and the journey of how I have basically become an Apple Fanboi nearly everywhere else. Let’s start with a disclaimer: If you want to email me or send me a message on Mastodon telling me how stupid I am for trusting Apple, well, okay. So be it. While I wholeheartedly agree that trusting any form of proprietary software in this day and age is a foolish choice that will eventually bite everybody in their ass, the flip side is that sometimes you just need convenient tech to rely upon in certain scenarios. ...

As some of you undoubtedly have heard Unity, the company behind one of the most prolific game engines of our time called Unity Engine, recently announced some changes to their pricing. On the surface this may sound like quite a big nothing burger if you aren’t familiar with the process of how software is made, let me assure you: This announcement is rocking the entire gaming world. Note: This post is a follow-up to my 2019 post “My Modern Gaming Escape Plan”. If you haven’t read it or have gasp had the audacity to forget it over the last four years, I strongly advise you to read it (again) first. ...

As regular readers know, I have long questioned the value of social media and I have struggled with the question of how involved I should be with it. This morning I decided to quit Bluesky permanently because the bulk of the community there seems hellbent on ostracizing and ejecting anybody who doesn’t fully subscribe to their specific brand of group think. I wish there was a kinder way to put it. But there isn’t. When I first arrived on Bluesky back on June the 1st, I was pretty hopeful about it’s prospects. It was elite (due to being invite only), largely liberal and seemed like a relatively decent enough place at first glance. As is often the case in life, the first look was deceiving. ...