brennen @brennen@mastodon.social

a cricket is just a goth grasshopper.

sudo apt-get install oneko

today deer came into to the yard and ate the christmas-themed jack o' lanterns i'd set out last week after i realized we'd never done anything with the pumpkins at halloween, while the cat glared murder at them through the front window.

(background music: the ciiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiiife)

(their "come back to us!" spam even bragged about how much they respect my privacy. which, har har, you loathsome shitweasels.)

i finally managed to pry my number out of verizon's clutches and migrate to another carrier, moving to the gemini pda into the bargain.

it's a small bright spot, but every time i remember that i'm no longer doing business with those fuckers a little smile comes to my face. i'm sure it's a temporary refuge from the eventual total re-consolidation of the US telco situation, but it feels good right now.

i try, these days, not to be a dick about these things. and god knows i have been the developer who refuses to make a change that the users want because i'm sure the users are wrong. (and in fact, not infrequently, users _are_ wrong. there's actually lots of stuff people _should_ just stop wanting, especially in the realm of security and messaging.)

still, this is a textbook WONTFIX because-fuck-you-that's-why, and it's incredibly frustrating to run into these.

so if you use signal for messaging, and a contact uninstalls signal without unregistering their number (which, spoiler, nobody unregisters their number), messages vanish into the void. which, ok, i get it, but there's also no way to tell signal "just send plaintext sms to this person now". you have to do a long press on a button on nearly every send, which of course you forget to do.

i joined the litany of complaint on the subject here:

https://community.signalusers.org/t/remember-the-current-message-mode-sms-or-mms-for-each-contact/2382/21

hey, so thanks to a bunch of folks on here for some kind words last night.

i'm HERE, i'm ON, i'm DOING STUFF, or at least i'm IDLING A LOT RIGHT NOW

i don't know who set out to put absurdly obnoxious bright blue blinkenlights on the beaglebone black, but whoever it was, they were not fucking around. having this thing on the desktop is like keeping a tiny strobe light in the periphery of your vision at all times.

metafilter is unambiguously incredibly bad for my mental health almost every time i interact with it, just a sink of nearly-total despair and loathing, so that's one i should _definitely_ cut loose out of a basic sense of self-preservation.

mastodon / the fediverse is another thing, i guess. there's still some joy here. i still learn things and check myself on some of my bullshit. but there's still this sense that things can fall off a cliff real easy-like.

i'm thinking about giving up my last couple of public-facing identities on the web, other than a long-running blog i should probably be grateful no one reads and a handful of work accounts i can't really ditch.

i feel this weird, uncomfortable reluctance. i mean, for one thing, i'd miss a lot of y'all. but beyond that there's this sense that i'd miss things. fail to be part of some conversation. not know about the jorts.

thanks all for the feedback on this one. (further updates as events warrant.)

ok, so i think i'm going to self-host an instance of one and migrate there in line with the general idea that the fediverse should be actually-distributed.

i solicit advice. is pleroma a bad idea for this / will i find myself on the wrong side of some dimly grasped political divide that has nothing in particular to do with my technical goals? i would rather not deal with a convoluted ruby/rails application environment if i can avoid it...