I’ve been running pihole for a minute now, and I think I’ve devised a process for upgrading that’s short, sweet, and to the point. It provides quick upgrades and might even be something possibly automated.

So here goes.

First thing you need is to make a folder somewhere on the system that your compose file and config files will live in. Throw it anywhere, it’s your system with your security practices, I don’t really give a damn. That’s my warning for “do at your own risk, you assume all liability”. Once you have your compose file, start your container with:

It’s interesting to me how we continue to allow debate on already settled matters such as “your religion is not my ethical quandry” and “I don’t care how you feel about it, you’re not even involved”. If everyone understood these matters as settled, “hot topics” such as abortion would already be constitutionally protected.

Instead we suffer these absolute cunts of humans who try and govern us as if we were all members of the same church. No, that’s not reality, that’s not how it works. At some point I would like to unmask the masked asshole, to find the culprits behind this moronic “war of feelings”. I highly doubt it goes all the way to the Vatican. Not much does, to be honest. It’s all just a puppet show, publicly and behind the scenes. The real ne’er-do-wells are corporate in nature, striving to add to their golden parachutes. We all have a common enemy and he’s wearing a suit and talking about pleasing shareholders. It’s well past time we fired this douche. Eventually we need to fire them all. There are many problems in the world and firing them seems like the most fitting solution.

I’m feeling pretty indignant with the current political climate. It seems we’ve all relented and just accepted that “those who own the means and control the means” will never be held accountable for squeezing the working class dry.

So we get to see a pity party get thrown for “First Son” and “Crack Enthusiast” Hunter Biden by media pundits who honestly don’t deserve their soapboxes anymore. Wasn’t nepotism something they were critical of Trump for? The double standards on both sides reveal that both sides are not vastly dissimilar from one another. Both are just extremist silos that provide an utter vacuum for any sort of debate to exist in. So we get this deadlocked bullshit literally everywhere. No one can have anything they want. Everyone is walking on eggshells. It’s the most absurd bullshit I’ve ever seen.

My wife always likes to say, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” The takeaway being that when someone admits to you that they’re awful, you should take their word for it. Sometimes people will pop off with some random fact that describes how terrible they are, and then they’ll try to backpedal it or take it back to some extent. You really should just take it at face value, and if you can live with that then fine. If you can’t, perhaps it’s time to reconsider.

I really am so tired. I’m at an interesting junction of my career. I have developed a tool that extends a piece of software’s functionality into protecting intellectual property, but the company I work for who develops the main software package introduced a feature-breaking bug that eliminates the capabilities of my software. It also eliminates a lot of functionality of the software in general, though it’s apparent that there aren’t a lot of “power users” complaining.

It’s wild to me how so many of the 99% of people in the bottom rungs of capitalism actually play the game in good faith. They don’t lie, they don’t cheat, they don’t steal. All while the 1% at the top are essentially doing nothing other than lie, cheat, and steal. They deceive. They control. Most importantly, while they do all this, they line government pockets with their loose change in exchange for a status above everyone else. If there were checks and balances in place, which the government is supposed to be party to, then there would be some actual equity in the world. Is it likely we’ll see that in our lifetimes? Of course not. Not a snowball’s chance in Hell, honestly. I promise you there’s no hope for our species. None. Not a single fucking drop of hope for our species in general. Now, can individuals make slight differences in the lives of other individuals? Sure, but that’s literally just a fart in a hurricane. A drop of relief in an ocean of pain. Humanity fucking sucks. Capitalism is garbage. Communism would be great if humanity didn’t fucking suck.

I don’t know anymore. Honestly, I don’t think I want to know at this point. I think ignorance is probably the path forward. I can remain ignorant of things that don’t involve me, that’s fine. I don’t need people in my life who don’t want to be in my life. There’s no point in pretending to give a damn, so I don’t pretend, and I guess everyone else can just stop pretending as soon as they’re ready to put down the facade of superiority.

I will never give you money for Youtube Premium. The reason is simple: Giving you money only prevents me from seeing ads, it doesn’t prevent you from selling my data. I shouldn’t have to pay you to not sell my data. Since I can’t pay you to not sell my data and I can’t do anything except protect myself with ad blockers, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. If you make it impossible to watch videos with an ad blocker, I’m just going to switch to a different service; exactly like everyone else will. So, fuck you Google and Youtube; I will never give you money for an “ad free” experience.

Yeah, I don’t really have a rhyme or reason for the titles of these things. Haven’t in a minute, really. Nor have I posted anything technical in nature in quite a long time, which is honestly most disagreeable. I do have a song stuck in my head right now, but I don’t know how much you’re supposed to really care about that. One of these days I’m going to do a goddamn technical writeup. No, I mean it! Really! Really? Man, I dunno. We’ll fuckin see, I guess.

Finally have a remote deployment server set up that’s neutral, ie. not located under a roof I pay for. It’s also doing a lot of other stuff, but whatever. It’s not like any of the services I run are particularly iron-heavy. They’re all pretty light, and I have big iron backing me up via content delivery. Either way, it’s a cool addition to the infrastructure.

I was totally going to write something not retarded and just missed the mark. Whatever. I’ll try again later, I guess, lol.

I’ve written so much over such a long time and I have no more answers now than I began with. It’s always been a coping strategy more than anything else. Like any skill a person can develop, the more you use that ability the more you sharpen it. I don’t feel as though I’ve sharpened my communication skills much over time. It isn’t that I’m particularly bothered by it, but it signals to me that perhaps it’s always been more therapeutic than anything else. I can unload whatever baggage I’ve been shouldering for however long and finally have a break from being encumbered.

It’s wild to me how people can support Donald Trump in any way. I’ve witnessed firsthand the “Rock Star Effect” where people are just overcome by meeting famous or popular individuals. I suspect that’s largely what we’re looking at with these MAGA loons. They’re absolutely beside themselves that a billionaire would reach down from on high to glorify their values and their traditions amidst an economy that is suddenly disproportionately favoring “dual-income, no kids” households.

Google’s AI is broken because people prioritized bypassing Google’s trash-ass algorithm by specifically searching for reddit results. Well, that’s the current working theory, at least. The result is honestly hilarious. These rich assholes want us to think that anything they do is for us, when really everything they do is to line their pockets. It has fuck all to do with “us”, except that we’re the ones expected to line up and throw our money into the machine. Either our money or our time and labor. It’s asinine, really. Fuck these people. I don’t give a shit about what they’ve invented, their god awful advertising bullshit, or their personal data tracking garbage. Fuck them completely. Fuck Silicon Valley. Fuck Google, Microsoft. Fuck Apple too, really. Apple outwardly says they respect privacy, but everyone knows they’re just as bad as every other company.

Flying these days is fucking awful. It was never great, but after all the retarded 9/11 bullshit and now the current state of late stage capitalism, we’re really expected to just cope with five, six, seven hour flight delays that majorly derail our lives.

I’m honestly sick of this shit. We all know it’s a blatant cash grab. We all know it’s bullshit. It’s a way to scrape more profit from the corpse of an already fully excavated corpse. I’m just pissed. Absolutely beyond pissed. What the fucking fuck. Seriously.

Man, lots of wild stuff has happened since we’ve last had this one-sided conversation. Sean Combs is under fire for video of him beating the shit out of his girlfriend going viral. I mean, of course it went viral, it’s horrendous. Whether he learned his lesson or not barely matters. The public is absolutely horrified by the footage, as well they should be. Trump is getting reamed for all the criminal bullshit he’s been up to pre-presidency as well as post. Fuck that bloated whore, selling himself for popularity and status. What a piece of shit.

Not gonna lie, I’m really tired. The kind of tired you can’t escape with sleep. The sort of tired you feel in your bones. Honestly, there’s a lot to unpack regarding my mother. We apparently have irreconcilable differences. I’ve made attempts to reconcile, but I’ve had zero reciprocation on her end. Point in fact, I could reconcile with her today if I simply apologized and ignored the ways she would hurt my feelings. It weighs heavy on me lately. Extending hope, snuffing it out, reviving it from death, executing it, my life has been a rollercoaster because my father is dead and my mother is a narcissist. What other word is there to apply to someone who cares only about themselves? That is the canonical definition, is it not? Am I wrong for applying it? Am I the narcissist in this? But then, once I ask myself that last question, I remember that I’ve apologized for everything. I apologized to her for not expressing gratitude for the help she extended me during my divorce. Despite the fact that she told me I was no longer welcome in her presence and subsequently supported my ex wife, I did apologize to my mother for not being grateful. It just wears on me. I want to ignore her, but how do I ignore her when she’s essentially the primary caretaker of my niece? It’s hard, it’s garbage, and I am not doing well. I don’t know what to do. The situation really doesn’t have an escape hatch. There really isn’t anything to do. This time around, though, every day is a struggle moreso than in the past. I really don’t know how I struck “new normals” so many times prior. I think the thing that has me really down and out is the possibility that it’s not really over. That some dire event will shove her in my direction once again and I will be newly distressed in unique and creative ways. The only thing I can think to pre-empt this is to explicitly state that in no uncertain terms I will not even attend her funeral when she passes. I can’t really think of anything else that would force her in my direction. I’m just so done.

It always feels as though there’s never enough time. There are always things to do, things to fix, places to be, people to see. Life is about being continuously engaged. I get it, and I participate, but I also get a ton of down time in between. It’s never really consistent in either direction, just a smattering of chaos that comes and goes. I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t have a lot to write. I feel obliged to check in with this thing on occasion, though. But it sucks to push out junk that I really don’t feel any way about.

My niece’s birthday party is this weekend. She’s going to be a year old. She’s absolutely precious and I’m excited to celebrate her first birthday. At least, I’m trying to put that at the forefront of my mind. I’m trying to not allow the negativity to prevail. It’s hard when I know I’m not wanted there. My mother doesn’t want me to be there. My sister doesn’t want me to be there. I grew upset when they put their own preferences for my ex above the needs of my child and honestly that hurt my feelings more than my mom choosing my ex over me.

I know that I’ve been a cause of my relationship with my mom blowing apart, but the real sticking point and reason we’ve never been able to maintain an actual relationship is that everything is one directional with my mom. She accepts no blame, she apparently believes she’s perfect. She has never hurt anyone’s feelings or made any mistakes. People have only ever hurt her feelings and for that they have to pay. She also goes to great lengths to draw others into it. She likes to maintain control on situations. She wants to be the messenger, the middle man, anywhere she can work it out. She wants to be between her subject to control and any/all resources they may have, so that she can withdraw any and all support completely. It’s all control and games with her, and I simply don’t have the energy for it anymore. I’m not playing her games and I don’t care about her control, she can control her own chess pieces and leave me the fuck alone. I don’t care anymore, I’ve mentally and emotionally checked out. I’m not interested in reuniting with her or even pretending to continue a sham relationship. I don’t want any of it. I want out completely, and that’s what I fully intend to be; Out completely. And I’m staying out.

I have to say, I love port 22. It’s ubiquitous enough that no system administrator would dare block it, as he would be binding his own hands possibly permanently. Port 22 is the glorious port assigned to secure shell. It’s also how 99% of the internet’s heavy lifting has historically been performed. It’s great to use OpenSSH everywhere as a result, and on occasion you can even pipe traffic over SSH via dynamic port forwarding and whatnot. Good stuff.

China says banning TikTok in the US is “against fair competition”, and to that I have to issue a hardy “fuck you” to the commie scum Xi Jinping and his Parliament of cronies and criminals. Allow the Chinese people to express their views and opinions freely and then maybe we’ll talk, you fucking commie cunt.

I swear to fucking GOD I can’t stand the CCP, and I hope someone shoots Xi Jinping right in the fucking head. Fuck that tyrant piece of shit.

An improperly maintained machine can manifest some odd symptoms. Weird noises from grinding. Leaks of various fluids from lubricants to coolants and possibly anything in between, depending on the machine. Steel shavings are never something you want to see in an oil pan.

I feel like there are steel shavings in my oil pan. I’m just running on empty. I’m tired. I haven’t done anything substantial in my hobbies of choice. I’ve wasted time sitting on IRC in front of my computer, at a terminal that I’ve not messed with in several eternities. I haven’t spun up any services, I just keep going the handful of services I’ve configured.

I’ve been a PNC Bank customer on and off for two decades now. More recently I’ve relied upon them to handle my day to day because they purchased the best bank I’ve ever used; Simple. Well, that’s not entirely correct. Simple was purchased by another bank, which PNC Bank swooped in to purchase in a larger acquisition. So I’ve been pissed off at PNC for a long time, because I fucking loved Simple. They provided superior customer service, superior online access, superior banking experience, and I recommended them to everyone.

There seems to be a kind of “semi-undocumented” feature in the PAX 3 via way of the “lip presence” detection in the PAX 3. If you open the app and put the vape in “Boost” mode, then start it; watch how the temperature acts when you gently place your finger on the top button just before it clicks. You’ll notice the amount of pressure applied will cause the unit to heat to boost temperatures. I’ve noticed in the app that the presence of my actual lip doesn’t seem to do the trick for the sensor, so using my finger is a great way to maximize the effectiveness of the vape.

I have three dry herb vapes. I’ve had the Cloudious9 Atomic9 the longest, it was my first dry herb vape. When I got it I really kind of thought it was a toy. After I used it about five or so times I figured out it very much isn’t a toy. It does the job it’s built to do for basically sixty dollars. Honestly it’s a steal at the price listed. It has a full ceramic chamber, decent battery, and it has a pretty reasonable design. It’s no-frills, but decent enough. Instead of displaying temperature with a digital screen it lights LED’s along a number line on the edge of the device when you set the temperature. When I first got it, I did take a while to get used to the notion of dry herb vapes. It took me more than ten sessions to figure out that the device had to warm up past the “green light” signal. No vibration notification here, the LED just changes from red to green to let you know the chamber is up to temp. You’ll notice the first handful of rips won’t even feel like clouds. But you can definitely get decent rips. The chamber is ceramic, which I absolutely appreciate, but it’s not wildly fancy.

I’m honestly grossly dissatisfied with the way things are. As it stands, I currently make heaps of money for people “above me” in status. I personally see a small fraction of the fruits of my labor in profit. I could give a shit less about the rich assholes in charge, and if I had my way, I’d reap the entirety of the fruits of my labor.

I hear a lot about how this “land of opportunity” is just waiting to be seized by anyone entrepreneurial enough to grab hold of it. These assholes who say shit like this clearly haven’t felt the full force of someone wealthier than them levying the legal system against them. The reality is that the United States is geared to protecting elite dynasties, just like any other shitty system, even communism.