The Asus Transformer Prime.

It was an Android tablet circa 2011, right at that time they were actually making 10" Android tablets. I bought one as soon as Android Honeycomb launched which had an improved UI and lot of new tablet focused features. I bought the optional keyboard/battery attachment and planned for it to be my tiny laptop replacement that could also play emulators and be used for reading comics. I wanted to like it so bad.

It never really panned out though, a large majority of which was because of the faulty Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. Awful performance issues, terrible wireless connectivity, overheating, battery drain and nonexistant software updates from Asus. I ran custom ROMs trying to squeeze it as much as I could but that meant I was constantly tinkering with it and having yet more problems. Eventually I even broke the screen (my fault) and painstakingly went through a whole botched screen replacement before finally deciding that it had been a huge waste of time and money and sent it to it’s grave.

At one point I triple booted my laptop with Ubuntu, Windows 7 and OSX mostly just to prove I could. Weird times, a lot has changed since then.

Yes, resolution is not the only factor. Bitrate is equally if not more important.

It’s kind of crazy how off the rails this series got later down the line.

Everything’s a drum!

Me, dead, deleting all my social media to make it a big mystery or something.

Rimworld! Probably my favorite game ever actually.

I use Ansible playbooks to keep my config in sync. It’s great but there is a bit of a learning curve. Makes it easy to deploy config changes.

Zsh on workstations. Bash on servers.

GOG is fantastic but Steam keeps getting my business because of all the extras I really depend on like cloud saves, game library sharing, proton, Big picture and controller mapping.

Well in a way he’s also famous for smoking.

My dog will listen but my cat starts eating faster.

That’s my data, I don’t know you!

It drives me crazy people insist they are sending a constant audio stream somewhere for nefarious purposes without any evidence. From a networking perspective this is knowable information.

I’m happy that we live in a world where therapy and seeking mental help has been mostly de-stigmatized.

That being said there is definitely something horribly toxic about people diagnosing each over social media. “You know that thing that you struggle with? It’s not a personal failing; It’s a disorder with a name, a treatment plan, and a community of weirdos to teach you a bunch of advanced psychology terms to describe your every single thought.”

LG TV’s serve ads in notifications via the same domain that distributes new firmware. I got so sick of it that I blocked my TV from being able to reach the internet but it’s still on the network so I can still use wake on LAN to turn it on/off.

Bagel bread is really good. Like a big round soft pretzel.

10 Cloverfield Lane is definitely an overall better film. Man I should watch that one again.

Also I just remembered that The Cloverfield Paradox exists which I had completely forgotten about. That one was a total mess which is a bummer because the overall premise is in my wheelhouse and I love me some good space horror. I’ll just watch Event Horizon instead.

I think on a global scale we are all dealing with unresolved trauma from the pandemic, related catastrophes and the general economic roller coaster that we all live in every day. The severity of the pandemic lessened over time but there was no definite point where it ended and we all got to go “Wasn’t that nuts? Is everyone doing okay?” Instead it was just a slow crawl back to business as usual. We feel like we shouldn’t complain because it could be a lot worse but all of the other non-pandemic problems still exist and nothing seems to indicate that things will ever get better.

It’s not just you that feels this way, but that doesn’t mean things are hopeless. There are a lot of people out there fighting tooth and nail to build a better future in spite of all the challenges. Try to find a way to improve the world in your own small way. It really goes a long way to quieting those feelings of helplessness and despair.

Should I watch Megamind?

I know nothing about it except that memes indicate people like it. I’m usually on board with a DreamWorks or Pixar movie but I’d mentally sorted this one into the ‘not for me’ category along with Minions for some reason (not intending to compare the two).