Life will sure throw curveballs. It seems like it’ll throw them every chance it gets. Sometimes those curveballs can cut you down, make you feel like less than you are. And some of those curveballs will build you up. They’ll remind you that despite your best effort, there will be no concrete plans in this crazy thing we call existence. At least, none that don’t require some “dressing” or clever maneuvers. COVID was something to blindside us all. The failed federal response to COVID, doubly surprising, and even more disappointing. Under Trump we’ve seen over 200,000 deaths that likely did not need to happen. Trump is merely an extension of “old money”, the Americans in the top one percent who regard us as cattle. I didn’t realize just how little we mean to the elite until they saw fit to throw us directly in harm’s way using their poster child, Donald J. Trump. COVID is a disaster, Trump’s response to it a complete disaster, and if he manages to squeeze out enough votes to get a second term we’ll see nothing more than more disaster with him at the helm. It wouldn’t surprise me, in all honesty.

Since the RIAA is getting Microsoft to delete the popular download utility youtube-dl from Github and every fork that exists is also being removed, I figured I’d host it myself. They haven’t stopped hosting it themselves, but I figured they could use some vocal support. Fuck the RIAA, fuck Microsoft, and fuck Github.

Download it from them or from me.

Fuck the RIAA.

I feel like there’s an air of general unease everywhere right now. You have the ultra-capitalist fruitloops regarding human lives as expendable fuel for a thriving economy, and you have individuals who just want to exist without failed leadership completely ignoring the health and welfare of the general public. Both sides are deeply carved out in how they’re voting, and polling indicates Biden has a lead, but I’m not entirely sure we can trust polling anymore after 2016. Things are insane, to say the least.

Figured I’d test out Hugo’s ability to handle utf-8 just for shits and giggles. I’m also giving WSL 2.0 a spin, checking out the subtle nuances between 1.0 and current. Not sure I’ve really noticed any difference yet, but maybe I’ll see them once I install packages. Not really sure. I looked briefly at the version comparison chart, but I don’t really remember the highlights. I just remember that overall, WSL 2.0 seemed to be a no-brainer.

I do far less with this damn thing than I either expected or wanted to do with it, and my work/life balance is really one of the largest contributors. Even beyond that I frequently find myself choosing to vegetate with Disgaea 5 on the switch, grinding away at maxing out character classes and beefing up stats rather than writing a thoughtful post or describing some tech hurdle I’ve recently overcome. It’s whatever. At some point I’m sure I’ll have a day or two off where I find myself saying, “This is a perfect opportunity to draft up {x} thing I’ve been wanting to document”. Or maybe try something new. I dunno. It’s whatever. I complain about my work/life balance, but I also don’t do anything to change it. I’m not slowing down by picking a less intensive career path or low-energy job.

You know the Trump GOP is a cult when their dear leader can downplay the danger of a disease for months and then contract the disease and the followers still say “MASKS ARE OPPRESSION”. Just so fucking stupid. These people are literally too stupid to live.
I can believe Trump contracted COVID with how stupid he’s been about wearing masks. Even when he started wearing a mask it was only for show. What I can’t believe is that he’s going to come out of it unscathed. I highly doubt he’s going to survive, and I don’t feel bad for him or his shit family. I don’t feel bad for the idiots who worship Trump, either. Their dear leader is trash. They’re dumb. No pity required. What still throws me for a loop, though, is that he can do such incredibly stupid shit and still have shitheels kissing the ground he walks on. There’s nothing redeemable about a person who doesn’t see Trump as the biggest idiot ever now that he’s contracted COVID. If you are one such person, it may be time for you to reevaluate your life. Even with the best treatment available in modern medicine, a septegenarian doesn’t have the best odds in surviving COVID. How have we fallen so far from grace? Why are there so many idiots here? How can we do better? Christ.

I had seen a video recently on “Explaining Computers” and I noticed that the Raspberry Pi 4 now supports booting from a USB drive. Considering that it also has USB 3.0 support, and you can readily find SATA/USB 3.0 adapters, I think this makes for a pretty promising Pi 4 build. I’m considering snagging another along with the necessary cabling and a SATA drive to create a reasonably decent headless server with some beefy storage and better access times than SD flash. I think I’m going to keep the existing Pi 4 that I have running as is, as a general purpose and print server, because it just works. But I really feel like I need a Pi 4 with 4 TB of storage, because why not? I’m pretty sure I can put it together relatively inexpensively and I might dabble in some NextCloud or OwnCloud crap to boot. We’ll see. I always have too damn much stuff going on, but this is the goal at least.