Get Out

Although I have screwed up on the job plenty, I have never been fired.

Even when I was going through a very messy breakdown of my marriage, divorce, and the aftermath of that, the community theater let me do all 4 of the shows I auditioned for and got parts in.

Over the years, I have acted harmfully in many ways, but my family of origin never once said, "We are done with you. You need to move on."

I was young and stupid during the years I volunteered for Greyhound Pets of America, but they appreciated me and let me do whatever I was willing and able to do.

My best Vegas friend, Adrienne, and my sister, Sarah, have both walked with me through a bunch of hot mess express action, lending nothing but support in the moment, even if they admitted later, "I could not believe you were doing that."

But you know what? I've been "invited" to leave two Christian churches.

The first, when I was going through my divorce. The invitation to leave was framed as the fact that coming to church seemed to be traumatic for me. It was true that I broke down most church services; music has the ability to open up places in your heart that you've tried to lock shut. I was going through a lot. It was presented to me as a mercy, but I know why they wanted me gone because they'd told me as much: They saw my struggle with the church leaders through my divorce as "divisive." They monitored my social media and blog to make sure I wasn't making them look bad. They had people express concern that I was being used as an example, since I was so visible in the congregation. They were worried that, in trying to show that the church really supported marriage, they were scapegoating me and hurting me as an individual. 

Several years after I left, most of the people I was close to there left and started their own church, a kind of reboot of the church we'd attended together. I hope it works for them.

The second time I was told, "If you won't submit to our shepherding in this, I'm not sure what we have for you here." It was because I was marrying James, who isn't a Christian. Unequally yoked and all of that. I stayed at that church for another 3 good years. I wonder now why.

This week, I got kicked out of my third organization, this time before I ever even showed up.

There is a homeschool group that has been meeting weekly in Lago Vista. It's been on Wednesday, when we already have a weekly event, but they recently changed it to Monday, so I was excited to take Mal. They have free play for one hour (outdoors usually, but not now during the five months of climate change hell that is Austin in the spring and summer), and then an organized activity like art or a science project. And someone usually reads aloud. It sounded really cool.

Last week, someone had asked a question and I mentioned something about being "an LGBT family" and how sometimes that means we're not welcome in some homeschooling spaces (which I can usually sniff out and avoid). No one responded in any way to my particular comment, so no biggie. But yesterday, I received a notice that said, "Since the group is growing so quickly recently" -- I'd been a part of it for probably 6 months -- "I just wanted to remind you that we are a Christian group. We are so fortunate to meet at *XYZ church* and we have agreed to them not to say or do anything in the building or on this page that is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ." Um, okay? So what exactly IS contrary to the gospel of Christ? Like what are the rules? I mean, I 100% know how my son will respond if he's asked if he has any brothers or sisters. And it's simple. He'll say, "I have a sibling." Does this make the baby Jesus cry?

So, anyway, short story is we are out of the group.

I have concerns about this "keeping the group pure from messiness" and avoiding addressing the realities of the world in which we live. When the ancient Israelites were in captivity, God told them to live their full lives and work for the flourishing of the country around them. I feel like Christianity has more of a "circle the wagons" mentality than a "throw the doors open, you'll be at home here" ethos. It is not difficult for me to understand why church attendance has declined precipitously over the years. There's no place for people who are perceived as "dangerous" because their lives don't align to a pretty Puritanical lived experience that many families and communities want to cultivate. "Protect the children" only applies to THEIR children. If the heathens' children have to suffer, well, I guess the Holy Spirit will take care of it? 

I think that a lot of church-going folk interpret "They will know we are Christians by our love" as love for each other, for the ones who look and think like they do. For the people who don't challenge what they think they know about what the Bible says or means. For people who are easy, who don't have messes out in the open, and for the ones who don't drink, smoke, or cuss. I'm pretty sure Jesus loved everyone. He surely hung out with everyone. 

And, honestly, I don't care at this point. I don't care what those "Christians" think about anything or whether they're right or wrong. I had a very comfortable home in the christian culture when I was naturally just doing stuff that the church liked (like not having sex when I was in high school... which was 100% about self-preservation on my side, but it looked "pure" or "holy" or whatever). When that's not how you live, christianity is quite ostracizing, othering, and unwelcoming. So I'm not wasting my time worrying about it anymore.

Melting Down

Yesterday was Father's Day. In the morning, we'd gotten out our "ironing bead" set for Mal to make something for James.

Mal used the beads to make this all by himself in December 2020. It's the universe.

He'd decided to make a heart, but was having a difficult time actually shaping a heart. So I told him that I would do the outline, and he could fill it in and decorate the rest of the form; then I would iron it, of course.

He added about a half-dozen beads, then left the project. A couple of times throughout the day, I asked him if he wanted to finish it up so I could iron it, but he said he'd do it in the break after church and before he went to the park for a play date. (Our church meets at 4 PM and his friend was going to be at the park around 8 PM... hey, it's really hot in Texas right now, and this is one of the only acceptable times to be outdoors doing movement.)

On the way home from church, Mal remembered his project. He said, "Mom, you're going to have to help me finish it." I told him I was going to iron it. He said, "No, you have to help me put the beads on. I can't do it." I said, "Sure you can. And the gift is from YOU, so you need to do it. I made Dad some tin roof sundae ice cream, and tomorrow morning, I'm making some pumpkin French toast that he wants. Those are my gifts."

Mal got very upset and said, "YOU HAVE TO HELP ME! I'd rather DIE than do it!" I told him that if he were that stressed about it, that he could just not do it and it would be fine. But he insisted that he needed to give his dad something and that it was my responsibility to make sure it got done.

When we got home, he kept bugging me about it, and said he wanted to ask his dad for his opinion. James was outside working on the back lot, but when he got back in, Mal quietly mentioned that he wanted me to finish this project, and wasn't James on his side?

Mal was both surprised and disappointed that James didn't agree with him. But he decided to start on adding more beads. He was complaining to me that he couldn't find any more pink beads. Then he said that he thought the heart was misshapen and he could take 3 beads off of the top of one of the halves and it would look better. After he did that, he realized that it looked very lopsided. So his fix for that was to start over. He dumped the tray off, throwing the beads back into the box. Making the heart in the first place hadn't been easy, and I guess my face conveyed the shock I felt.

He started yelling, "That was YOUR FAULT! All you had to do was say yes you'd help me. But you said no, so YOU ARE THE ONE WHO DID THAT!" 

Mal has this thing about blaming other people for situations he's in. We talk to him about it a lot, and it's very difficult for him. Sometimes, he tries. Sometimes, he'll say, "I want to take responsibility for my actions, so that was my fault." But it has to be low stakes. If it's important to him, negative occurrences are never because of his own decisions.

While he was complaining, James came back into the room. Again, Mal mentioned that he'd rather die than do the thing alone. As I had before, James calmly told him that if he was that stressed about it, he just shouldn't do it and it would be fine. Mal screamed, "But I want to give you something for Father's Day!"

Mal cried, then he kept repeating, "Mom, this is all because of YOU. You were being so mean, and you wouldn't help me, and YOU are the reason that we have to start all over!"

He said it so many times, and I was so tired for him and for me, that I said, "Mal, you need to stop talking about it."

Something snapped. He started shaking and yelled through clenched teeth, "YOU. MAKE. ME. SO. MAD!" He got up from the table and started for his room. "That's it! I am so mad right now, I want to hurt you! You don't care about me, and I don't care about you! I regret every time I told you I love you! I'm going to slam my door, and I'm going to lock it!"

He did slam his door and lock it. Then he yelled from inside, "I'm not even sorry I did that!" A moment later, he opened his door and said, "I am sorry, God, for saying this, but Mom, I hate you! I hate you so much and I am NEVER going to deal with you again!" Then he slammed it again.

He was in there for about 10 minutes and came back out. He was crying and yelling. I tried to go hug him, but he pushed me away and said, "NO! I don't want you!" But then he just started crying like a baby again. I approached him to hug him, and this time, he leaned in and hugged me back. Then he went back in his room and would issue a scathing diatribe every few minutes. 

Fortunately, James took him to the park pretty soon after, and I put the beads away so it wouldn't be a visual reminder.

When they got home, I told Mal that I was very glad he felt free to express his feelings when he was mad. But I also told him that no matter how much he might want to hurt someone when he's mad, he can't do it. I told him not only was is just a bad thing but that it was assault and against the law. He was all breezy and saying, "Oh, of course not. I'm not stupid!" 

It was so intense, and I feel out of my depth for how to help him handle those big feelings. He cries almost every day about SOMETHING, and he often gets SO mad at me for what he thinks are injustices I enact upon him. James and I both try to let him know that we love him no matter what, and in calmer times try to explain to him why the way he's operating isn't sustainable... but, man... parenting is HARD, y'all.

The EnvironmentTM

Can I be grumpy for a moment? 

There are times when I'm throwing away some shipping filler and feel very very guilty about how much trash we generate. We try. We have made a bunch of small and also some huge life changes to try to adjust downwardly our family's affect on the environment. We try to minimize our consumption of products that have a high carbon footprint, or are non-renewable resources.

And I feel guilty and overwhelmed about it. A lot.

We have already committed not to flying or cruising until they figure out a more environmentally-friendly way to do that. We buy lots of cleaning and soap products that are concentrated so we refill glass or metal containers instead of buying plastic cartons of detergent, all-purpose cleaners, and other household items. Now that electric cars are old enough to be in the $15,000 range, we plan to buy those next time we need vehicles (but we'll drive ours into the ground, first; environmentally-friendly, yes... but also cheapskate). We try to run bulk errands and stay home as much as possible. I try only to buy clothes second-hand, for myself and for the kids. We keep our a/c at 76 (we'd leave it at 78 but the house is drafty) and our heater at 67. We are trying to build a smaller, more well-insulated home using recycled or low-impact materials, like the 18 cypress beams James bought from a 200-year-old home that was dismantled; or cob that is made from straw, dirt, and water...

Then I drive around and see these 5000-square-foot houses being built just up the road from us. They pull down every tree and pave everything. (Click here if you want to read an alarming article about concrete. We're going to try to do a rock foundation, or a combination of rocks and bags filled with road base.) Then they build houses using stick-framing, and make them much larger than most people actually need. Why do 4 people need hundreds of square feet each? Even if you entertain occasionally? I don't get it.

Why do businesses continue to pack things in plastic? We try to separate for recycling, but only 9% of it actually is recycled. 

Why do I, personally, feel such a strong responsibility to care for the environment in the face of increased catastrophic weather events, knowing that the poorest of our fellow earth-dwellers are losing their homes and dying while the rest of us are temporarily spared the greatest impact... but people in our government still yell, "But jobs!" when faced with our imploring to DO SOMETHING? Who cares about the jobs you save if everyone drowns in 30 years?

It is tempting just to keep going as per usual and not worry about it, since I can't affect real change. It's tempting to decide not to think or worry about it. But I know that's not the answer either. I'm not sure what else we should be doing to encourage big polluters to stop. I HATE that people are demanding remote workers go back into overly-cooled offices, driving more and adding more carbon to the atmosphere. It's all just so... overwhelming. And it feels hopeless when over-consumption is still de rigueur.

Then there's the whole thing where housing is too expensive, but no one wants to change building codes to allow for higher-density affordable housing. And some people own two or three or more homes, just for vacations... It's just such a callous treatment of the limited resources we have available to us. And I'm pissed about it, but I also feel impotent. Anyone else??

Installing Linux on a Dell 8940

This post probably won't interest anyone who normally reads this blog. If I still had a tech blog, I'd post it there.

TL;DR:

Dell seems to have made this deliberately difficult.

You really need to understand UEFI boot partitions to make this work. You can probably convert the built-in SSD to AHCI mode using Windows (Google it), especially if you want a dual boot system.

That conversion is the key. I recommend googling the instructions and using Windows to do it first.

I did it the hard way. I learned a lot, but it wasn't fun.

Personal Background

I started using Linux in 1995. I vividly remember installing Slackware from a big stack of floppy disks onto a laptop in my grandmother's living room. I used a physical book as a guide, because I did not have internet access. (Sidenote: when I did get internet access, gopher was still more popular and usable than the recent "world wide web" fad).

I'd decided back then that Windows was a shoddy product, Bill Gates is a terrible person, and Microsoft is evil enough that I never want anything to do with them. I haven't seen anything since then to change my mind about any of that (though I was starting to think that Bill had changed his ways after he retired, until his divorce doubled down on it all).

Sometime in November, we had a power outage. It did something that fried the firmware on my main computer's motherboard.

If you don't care about the personal details, skip to the next section (Dealing with Windows).

When I started this, I didn't realize it was going to be "Choose Your Own Adventure."

I built that computer from parts, while I was living in Dallas. Laura had caught my eye, moved to Austin, and then connected me with one of her friends who got me a job that saved me from starvation.

The job was a terrible fit, and it didn't last long, but it paid well enough that I had nearly $1000 to spare to build that PC. And the job was a nice bridge to following Laura to Austin to get married and have all sorts of wonderful changes in my life. So it was a positive experience.

Building the PC was not. It was awful. I kept slicing myself open on all the sharp edges of the case. My eyes were starting to get old enough that I needed glasses, so all the fine detail stuff was blurry, but I didn't realize it yet. I had her promise me that, next time, I'd just buy one.

So, after 7 or 8 years, that computer got fried. It had had problems in the meantime. I'd done things like adding another hard drive, replacing the power supply, and beefing up the RAM. Overall, I'm really happy with how well it held up.

Chip Shortages

Once it was time to replace that computer, I discovered that is no longer economically viable to build your own.

That used to be a good way to get exactly what you wanted, assuming you had a clue what you wanted, and you had the knowledge to put it together. It wouldn't necessarily be cheaper, but you could probably pick middle-of-the-road components that you could replace easily so it would last longer.

Right now, that isn't really an option.

Thanks to COVID, there's a world-wide shortage of a lot of things. Maybe especially computer chips.

Every system that I tried to design wound up costing at least $3500.

In a lot of ways, this means that Moore's law has at least sort-of failed for consumers. For something like 75 years, you were consistently able to purchase a better, faster computer for less money than you'd paid for the last one.

I remember reading articles a few years ago speculating about the fact that it's over because logic circuits can't get any smaller because they're running into the limits imposed by the uncertainty of quantum mechanics.

I doubt that anyone who wrote those articles could have visualized where we are today.

Either way, every option I looked at was far more expensive than last time.

Luckily, I was shopping right around the Black Friday time-frame. Or maybe Cyber Monday. One of those disgusting shopping days where merchants drop their prices ridiculously to suck you into buying crap you don't need because it's supor cheap.

I try to avoid those sorts of sales at all costs. But I felt like I actually needed this one.

And Dell had a deal that looked amazing.

I still have a semi-viable laptop (also a Dell...we found it on a clearance rack a few years ago, and it's been fine), but it isn't something I can use long-term. I could have tried to wait out the global chip shortage, but it isn't getting better in the near future.

So I bought the stupid Dell.

Wait

And then I waited.

It was supposed to get delivered around the end of December. About that time, I got a notification that let me know it had been delayed by a couple of months. Did I still want it?

I spent a lot of time considering that point. In the end, I could not find a decent video card that sold as cheaply as this entire computer.

Most of the alternatives I found would take at least another 2 months to get decent a video card.

And I'd already waited about that long.

So I told them to go ahead and ship it whenever they get one.

Lo and behold, it landed on my doorstep just a couple of days later.

Angels Sang

(image source)

Dealing with Windows

If you've ever dealt with computer boot issues, you know that they all start the same way. Turn the computer on. When some logo flashes, you press some magic key. It takes you to the low-level BIOS management interface that lets you do things like specify that you want to boot from a LiveCD (well, DVD, now...and even those are getting more rare).

That was the first problem with this computer. It went straight to the Windows logo and then booted into a preliminary "Agree to these license agreements" screen so it can finalize the Windows installation.

This is where I ran into my first problems.

They present the Dell EULA right next to the Windows EULA. You have to accept them both.

Since I bought I Dell, I was fine with agreeing to that one. Since I'd reluctantly also paid for Windows, and have absolutely no use for it, I did not agree to it.

I suspect that my life would have been much easier if I had. I could have booted it up as-designed, configured Windows with a local user account, made the registry adjustments about the way the drive gets read at the firmware level, rebooted, and then installed Linux. At least, I think that would have been the easy approach. A few weeks later, I'm skeptical that it would have turned out any easier.

I could be totally wrong about the easy approach working. If you want to run Linux on this system, you may have to do it the hard way. But you might save yourself a lot of time and pain if you at least try the easy way first.

I spent a lot of time booting the system up, trying to find a way to get to the Dell logo instead of going straight into Windows.

I finally called tech support. They couldn't help me, insisting that this isn't a hardware problem. They offered to sell me the option to talk to their advanced tech support (which charges around $100). At this point, I was angry enough about their stupid design that I just wanted to send it back and start over. The tech forwarded me to customer service. CS forwarded me to some sort of RMA department.

Magical Breakthrough

Before I got a Return Merchandise Authorization, that tech had me:

1. Turn the computer off
2. Unplug both the power and monitor cables
3. Hold the power button for 20-30 seconds
4. Plug it back in
5. Boot it back up

In their computer guide, this is the process to drain the "flea" power out of the system so it's safe to work with the internal electronic components.

I don't have any idea why this was the magical incantation to get into the BIOS setup. Maybe they ship it with some capacitor that's charged up to bypass the actual boot pieces and go directly into Windows?

Whatever the reason was, after I did this, I saw the Dell logo when I booted, and I was able to get into the BIOS setup and tell it that I want it to boot from its built-in DVD.

That let me boot into Linux! Finally!

Life seemed good. I played around with the LiveCD a bit to be sure that everything works fine. There was one problem, where the xfce4-screensaver made the UI look unresponsive. I was able to switch virtual terminals and kill the process to fix that problem. I can't remember now whether I had to use sudo or not. If not, that seems like a major security hole. I just made it a point to disable it. (I'm a big fan of xscreensaver, but I haven't gotten around to making the switch).

I couldn't see anything that looked like the actual hard drive under /dev.

I saw a few things that looked close. When I tried running fdisk on them, they failed for various reasons.

The problem was that the system couldn't see the actual disk (which, in this case, is /dev/nvm0).

When I finally decided to pull the trigger and do the install, it failed with an error. I forgot to write it down. Googling for the problem, I think it may have been "This computer uses Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology). You need to turn off RST before installing Ubuntu. For instructions, open this page: help.ubuntu.com/rst." This basically means that the drive has been configured in Intel's broken RST mode, which sort of halfway mimics a RAID. It's a ridiculous thing to do when you only have a single drive. Apparently it makes it easier to set up at the factory, for when they do ship machines with multiple drives, or something like that. The mode itself is apparently broken enough that the linux kernel developers have refused to allow patches that support it into the kernel. This proceeded to make my life really difficult.

Dealing with RST

RST has been a problem for a long time:

And also: RST is deliberately not supported.

tobestool March 27, 2012 at 9:38 pm | Permalink As far as I know, RST isn’t directly supported under Linux. As I believe that some of the processing is done in the Windows driver (much like many of the “Fakeraid” systems), I doubt it will be easy to support under Linux (though no doubt possible if it becomes popular enough). Question: The bootup message is that no bootable partition is found. Somehow, it managed to find the bootable USB key when I was doing the Linux install, so that works. Looking at the partitions with fdisk shows no Windows residue. Going into advanced mode gives a warning message about first partition not starting on a physical secor boundary!?!? If nothing else, is it possible to edit UEFI to pick up the first Linux partition an boot off of it?

It probably never will be. There's a person at my day job who spends hackathons optimizing Linux kernel internals. He was surprised that anyone is still using RST, because it's such garbage.

The top answer I found on google (many apologies, I've lost the source):

fdisk doesn't read GPT-partitioned drives correctly and typically gives that error message. You may need to use parted or gparted to partition this drive and start over. Lots of discussions about this error and Linux on the net so Google...

I did find lots of discussions, but nothing in the way of resolution.

Update BIOS

This part didn't take a lot of effort. Go back into the BIOS config. Go to the System Config and the SATA Configuration tab. Switch it from "RAID On (Rapid Restore Tech)" to AHCI.

But then it wouldn't boot at all. It just acted like there were no drives in the system.

Completely disabled the option to boot from the hard disk. This caused the system to really freak out. It led to a scary screen with lots of red, insisting that I need to contact Dell tech support immediately. 

I tried disabling secure boot. That didn't help, so I turned it back on.

At this point I was desperate enough to try accepting the Windows EULA so I could change the bot mode. But it wouldn't boot either. It recommended downloading an update.

Fiddle with Hardware

I removed the SSD. The Live DVD booted without a glitch.

I added a couple of hard drives from my dead computer. I was all set up to hate the case also, but I was actually really impressed with the way they've engineered that part.

That was also fine.

But I really want to use the SSD for the Operating System. And I was really nervous about installing a new OS on top of either of the OSes I already had installed on those drives. Assuming that I could have made that work at all.

So I bought an external enclosure for that SSD so I could manage it from my laptop. They're cheap and easy.

At some point, I got onto the Dell Community forums to ask for help/advice. They pointed me to a bunch of the official Dell documents that basically all agree this should just work. I'm pretty sure those documents pre-date their decision to switch RST mode on by default.

I deleted the Windows partition completely. There's also a UEFI partition. I didn't touch that one.

Then I reinstalled it into my new desktop.

It still refused to boot.

I tried turning secure boot mode back off. Nope.

Moved the SSD back to my laptop and, out of desperation, deleted the UEFI partition. That didn't help.

So I installed linux from my laptop. As many times as I've done this install, this variation was pretty terrifying for me. I've never deliberately installed onto another disk. My terror was that I'd type something wrong and overwrite my existing system. It went as flawlessly as I could hope.

Supposedly, you can boot from a USB drive. So I tried a couple of variations of that. I started with the SSD in its external drive enclosure. I also tried a thumb drive that I've used for temporary boots for years. None of them worked. Dell recently disabled support for USB 1 drives, which is probably the problem here.

I also tried with Secure Boot mode off, just to be sure.

I reinstalled the SSD. Nope. 

I tried re-enabling "Raid-On" mode. Nope.

Breakthrough

But now, in the BIOS, I could see the Linux /boot partition. I couldn't find anything bootable, but I could browse it.

My theory is that, no matter what, the system was relying on that disk's UEFI partition. As long as the disk was physically in the system, it was looking for that. At first, that was configured to boot from the Windows partition.

When I disabled RST mode in the BIOS, it could no longer read that partition at all (because it had been created in RST mode). Instead of doing the sensible thing and booting from the disk I had told it to use, it broke.

This was a terrible design decision, and I really hope that enough people scream to Dell about it to convince them to change. Then again, the Linux community is small enough that I doubt they'd notice.

Back to the external drive enclosure and my laptop yet again.

Google led me to this command:

> grub-install --target=x86-64-efi --efi-directory=/mnt/esp --bootloader-id=GRUB --boot-directory=/mnt/root/boot --removable

(I had the drive mounted a /mnt).

That added a bootable piece to the UEFI partition.

After I moved the drive back into my desktop, I was able to

• go back into the BIOS
• go to the "Boot Sequence"
• select that partition
• choose /EFI/Boot/BootX64.efi

Final Steps

That let me get to a GRUB menu.

I chose Ubuntu.

It took me into recovery mode, in ash based on the "initramfs recovery." This is back into the realm of things I don't really know much about. 

It didn't see the SSD.

I went back into the BIOS and switched it back to AHCI mode.

And everything has worked flawlessly ever since.

Conclusion

I've always been extremely happy with Dell, before this.

Will I ever buy another Dell product after this experience? I really don't know. It took me weeks to figure out the magical incantation that worked.

Apparently a lot of this pain was caused by pressure from Microsoft. Dell caving in to that pressure doesn't make them look any better. And, really, their tech support people should know far more about these details than I do now.

Particularly those little details about things like the way the flea power is configured, the way UEFI works, and how to switch the disk out of RST mode.

We're experiencing a world-wide chip shortage. The pandemic broke the supply chain. Almost all electronics get manufactured in China, which is still locking down pretty hard. The Suez Canal got blocked for weeks. Ports are working 24/7 to unload the arriving ships. We're experiencing grocery shortages again (baby formula is a major problem: one manufacturer recalled a bunch due to possible bacterial infection. The FDA told them to send it back, because starvation is more dangerous).

Dell has a much bigger buffer than most computer manufacturers. This computer was basically half the price I would have paid for a similar system from a company that actually does support Linux. That's really messed up: you have to pay a lot more for something that's free. And even then, I'm not sure how long I would have been forced to wait for a decent graphics card. (Thanks to crypto-currency, there's a chronic shortage of those).

I just don't know. My Dell laptop from 2013 or 2014 installed Linux without a problem. I dual-booted Windows 10 on there for a while, until I got fed up with it forcing me to reboot so often. It still works great.

Linux works great on this desktop. I've been running it for about 3 months now without any problems.

But that initial installation was so painful. This was much worse than the first time I installed Slackware.

Or even Gentoo.

I really miss running Gentoo, but I just don't have the time it takes.

Lollipop buddies

Once again, I got to spend some time with Kona and Mal last week, and they were a hoot, as usual.

 

In this picture (yes, I need to have my car's headliner reattached), Kona had just taken a selfie of her and Mal, and was asking him how to spell "lollipop buddies" as a caption for the photo. I was super impressed that Mal was able to spell it slowly, aloud, without seeing it in writing. 

We were taking Kona home, but I had to run by Trader Joe's first. I didn't hear the conversation leading up to it, but when we got out at the store, Kona was saying, "You know how sometimes you don't want to talk to a friend about your best friend because you don't want to hurt their feelings?" Mal said, "Yeah. But who IS your best friend?" Kona kind of smiled and looked at me, then Mal. Mal, full of the unearned confidence endemic to white guys, said, "I know it's me. I see how you looked at me." Read the room, dude. Fortunately, he was distracted by a guitar and Kona was out of the hot seat.

The last time Mal was at Kona's house, she recorded him for 23 minutes while he sang through every song he knows from the Encanto soundtrack. Kona's mom said that as soon as they were finished making the video, Kona asked, "Can we watch it now?" That's a good friend, even if it's not a best friend.

Unlearning Bigotry

This morning, I was listening to an interview on NPR. It was their morning news program, and they were talking with a (possibly retired) brigadier general about the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. To the first question, the general began responding and had a prominent speech impediment. It wasn't a stutter per se, but it was a pretty overt frequent verbal pause "uh, um, um, uhhh..." to get from one part of a sentence to where he was going. For a fraction of a moment, I tensed up; then I reminded myself to listen to what he was actually saying, and for the rest of the interview, I heard HIM and his message and was able to completely filter out the tic.

My initial catch was an ablist left-over from growing up both with an educator (grammar is important) and a broadcaster (professional presentation is important, even better if it can be flawless; and nothing is a cardinal sin like dead air). 20 years ago, I might have entertained the thought, "Why would they pick this guy to put on the radio answering questions?" because of how I had to adjust my ear to truly listen to him. The answer is, of course, that he's brilliant at what he does and is an extremely accomplished military leader. That is THE important factor in the equation.

In truth, I adore that everyone on the radio isn't expected to sound like Dan Rather or Walter Cronkite anymore (my dad does, though). That expectation is elitist, sexist, racist, nationalist, and a whole host of other "ist"s. That humans can report news or interview notable people competently while still retaining their own natural speech is refreshing.

But when you have grown up with a certain expectation, it takes some self-reflection and discipline to unlearn and stop mentally trying to enforce those arbitrary rules.

Recent Deaths

I was recently just thinking about how lucky I've been that I haven't really been personally impacted by COVID. Except in the positive "I get to work from home now" kind of way. It wasn't like anyone I knew had died. And then Lanny Ashley died. And I learned that so has Eric Bass, which just crushes my soul. Now I have gunk in my throat, which leads to a cough, which terrifies me. I got onto facebook today, even though I try to avoid it like it's the plague. I'm not taking the plague seriously enough. I went to a movie last night, and I didn't wear a mask. I am acting as if the pandemic's over, and I know that it is not. It may have mutated enough that it is getting close to "not a big deal." People who actually care about their neighbors may have gotten a vaccination or three. This is still a deadly virus that's killing people. The last time we had a virus like this back around 1917, it spread, then spread again. and then again. Because people were too stupid to toxu basic safety precautions to stop spreading it. I just went to a big-bang movie where it's very likely that I caought it. I have gunk in my throat. My sense of smell still works as well as it ever has (which isn't much). I feel like I have a fever. Hopefully, my innoculations mean my immune system can fight it off properly.Assuming that it's what I think.