Day 33 of the #100DaysToOffload Series:

A few days ago, a comment went by in my timeline saying something to the effect of, “How have I not known about watch for this long?” That's not an exactly quote, but I didn't write it down at the time. Just in case there are other people out there who haven't heard of watch, let's look at it quickly.

Here's the description from the man page for watch:

watch runs command repeatedly, displaying its output and errors (the first screenfull). This allows you to watch the program output change over time. By default, command is run every 2 seconds and watch will run until interrupted.

This little app has come in so handy for me over the years. I use it at work all the time. Why? Because I'm lazy that's why.

There are a couple different things that you can do with watch that make it super handy. Here are the flags that I use the most, and what they do.

-d: This highlights the differences between the runs of the specified command. For example, if you're doing an ls and a file gets added to the directory, the new file will light up.

-n: This lets you update the interval you're running the command. The default is two seconds, but if you're not needing to do it that often to accomplish your goal, or if you need to do it more often, you can specify the interval with the -n flag. I use this the least of the flags I'm going to mention because two seconds seems pretty much perfect for me.

-b: If something changes in the output of the command, your computer beeps. This is good for if you're at your computer, but maybe looking at something else. I've used this waiting for clients to send me files. They say they're going to do it right away, but “right away” can sometimes take longer than you'd think.

-g: This exits your watch if the output changes. I've also used this one quite a bit for work because sometimes “right away” could be hours later. This one works really well for doing something inline. I have a script at work that sends a notification to my phone, and using watch -g <command>;notify_mike.ksh has saved me hours of staring at a screen. I can run that short command and go have lunch knowing I won't be surprised.

watch is a really simple little app that really saves me time and boredom. Hopefully this brief little summary of the app with a few tiny examples will give you some idea of how you can use it to help you.

Mel Gibson has made some powerfully visceral movies as a director, from The Passion of the Christ to Apocalypto to Hacksaw Ridge (for which I still owe you a write up). His announced remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is a perfect match for the filmmaker I didn't expect him to grow into.

As an actor, however, he has been on check-cashing auto-pilot mode for over a decade. He last made some effort to play a low-key homicide detective trying to find out what happened to his daughter in Martin Campbell's uneven Edge of Darkness in 2010. You'll need to look further back to find something in his filmography where he seems to be enjoying himself, though, and land in Brian Helgeland's Payback back in 1999.

(No, I still haven't seen Dragged Across Concrete. I should. S. Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk was a revelation, and his raw meanness would have been a better match for this movie, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

With that in mind, I can't tell you why I ended up watching Blood Father. I needed something grimy and raspy and bourbon-soaked, I guess. It seemed to fit the bill. It had a decent cast. It was worth a shot.

The fact that it wasn't distributed or produced by Gibson's Icon production should have been a hint.

Gibson plays John Link, an alcoholic ex-con with a history of violence written in his face. When we first see him, at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, he looks like a former biker who got pickled in formaldehyde then left out in the sun for a couple of decades. He runs a tattoo parlor called Missing Link out of his trailer home, which looks more abandoned than parked in some California dustbowl. He is keeping himself clean and mostly sane, until his missing daughter Lydia shows up looking for help.

Which of course she does, because that's the main reason for having a movie dad who looks this much like someone you don't fuck with. Particularly when you are even more of a self-destructive dumb-ass than daddy, and compound things by going at it with a teenager's energy.

Things go to shit right away when drug dealers arrive and shoot his place up. Instead of waiting for the police, surrounded by a good dozen people who would vouch for his innocence, Link instead decides to flee the scene with Lydia, for reasons that aren't entirely clear other than otherwise there wouldn't be a movie.

The movie then putters about for another hour-something, with Gibson getting exactly one scene to go nuts in before it ends in a shoot-out that plays out the exact way you'd expect. It introduces some colorful characters and background bits that could have made this more interesting, if the director was bold enough about making an exploitation film, then does nothing with them. Michael Parks phones it in as yet another Preacher. Raoul Max Trujillo's promise as a Cartel Terminator goes to waste. Miguel Sandoval seems to be having fun for all of fifteen seconds. William H. Macy is barely there.

B movies are an honest craft, folks. If you're going to make one, don't treat it like something to be ashamed of.

The blame lies six parts on the script and half a dozen on the director. When the plot has laid all its cards on the table, the way things play out makes little sense. And as for the person guiding this whole thing, I'd even forgotten director Jean-François Richet's insipid remake of Assault on Precinct 13 existed. I expect Blood Father to soon suffer the same fate.

#bloodfather #melgibson #erinmoriarty #michaelparks #williamhmacy #raoulmaxtrujillo

The Su-30M2 Flanker-F2 is one of my favorite planes in Ace Combat 7. It is beautiful and flies really well. Since it is a multi-role fighter, you can use it for air-to-air or air-to-ground missions. In this video, I'm flying it on Mission 09 of the single player campaign. It has the Erusea livery/skin on.

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Got tired of waiting for Vimeo to look into why they disabled my account. First, I created a PixelFed account. I could upload photos just fine, but for some reason it would error out when uploading videos. That was unfortunate. It's almost like Vimeo and PixelFed were pushing me to upload to YouTube instead. So, I gave YouTube a try.

Tags: #GameClips #AceCombat7

I'm not quite sure where to begin here.

Great, now that that's out of the way, let's begin.

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For years, I've felt uneasy. Deep down in the pit of my stomach, I've felt ill, the same feeling I feel when my conscious has been stricken. When I know I've done wrong and I know I need to do better. I've lived this feeling of guilt or of shame and I've struggled to articulate it and I still do. But let's try to unpack this together.

I turned 30 in June of last year and that's kicked off a season of reflection in my life. The past year, I've journaled on and off, mostly ideas I have for things I'd like to create or simply to exist. I'm longing for a freedom that eludes me. I feel as though I'm living in a waking nightmare powered by greed and amplified by apathy.

My daily life is dictated by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (#GAFAM), as likely is yours. I won't waste your time or my breath breaking down how these companies operate, but I would like to point out my experience is slightly different than the average reader. I have two personas that are impacted by these companies, and we share the personal experience innately.

My professional persona is the one that truly ails me.

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Back in 2007, I took an online class introducing me to HyperText Markup Language, the fundamental technology used by just about every website ever. The first lesson was about ethics. My digital classmates and I learned about Fair Use and Copyright infringement.

We learned about being respectful to the visitors of our yet to be built web pages. There's an inherent unequal power dynamic between a webmaster and an enduser. With that power comes responsibility.

Naively, I have assumed for too long that everyone working on the web was schooled in ethics.

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Microsoft gave me my first taste of enterprise software. As a student, I was able to apply for free software from the Dreamspark program. I downloaded everything. I was hooked, but there was a catch.

Once I was no longer a student, I would need to pay for Visual Studio at the low price of a cool grand and change. Not seeing how I was going to afford that kind of software on my pizza delivery salary—making sub-minimum wage plus tips while using my own car and gas—I swore off Microsoft for good.

I had been a student in the D.A.R.E. program and I knew, the first drugs were free, because then you were addicted and you'd need to pay. My mind linked these two as one and the same.

From then on, I was all-in on Free and Open-Source Software.

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Meanwhile, I'm actively learning and honing my skills as Facebook is growing in popularity. The same skills I'm learning power Facebook. I knew I could build Facebook or build something better. And I tried. Multiple times. And I did it. Multiple times.

Even though I succeeded, I ultimately failed. I learned a lot and the technology was there, but I was missing a key ingredient: Users.

Now understanding the Human-Computer Interaction equation required humans, I decided to lay in wait for when I had just the idea that would attract people. Until then, I'd just work hard and improve my own skills, ready to adapt when the time was right.

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Since 2014, I've worked in Silicon Valley, a long time dream of mine since seeing Pirates of the Silicon Valley in my computer repair class in 2004. My role model being Steve Wozniak, the only protagonist in that film.

For the first time in my life, I felt seen here. Saying my go-to introduction of, “I work with computers,” was met with, “yeah, no duh, what languages and tools do you use?” And I'd tell them and they understood me and I understood them.

I had found my tribe, people I could actually speak my language to and discuss all the nerdy things I had repressed during social interactions to not bore my audience.

I believed these were the golden days of open-source, every company was contributing something in some way or another. But one by one dominoes began to fall in my mind. I won't offend you with all of my Hot Takes ™, but these are the two shoes that fell for me to think, “Oh, shit. This ain't it chief.”

1. Facebook's licensing snafu with React, where they'd revoke your license if you competed with Facebook
2. Microsoft's purchase of GitHub

The second one namely being a big deal to me from my prior experience of swearing off Microsoft due to their digital drug dealing. My world ended up somewhat shattered, naively I had thought GitHub was the gold standard for FOSS.

This left me thinking, “Do I really need GitHub?”

Realistically, actually no, not at all. By the very nature of git, it's decentralized. I can pretty easily push my code up to any server, it doesn't need to be GitHub.

So why is GitHub valuable to Microsoft?

GitHub is valuable for the same reason Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft are valuable. They've got users.

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So why do I feel uneasy about all of this?

A decade ago I had a blog on Wordpress. I used RSS, I followed humans and I read their thoughts, their fears, their frustrations, and all alone in the dim light of a glowing monitor, I felt connected to them.

As a professional, I've watched the web grow into this monstrosity that is hostile towards beginners with an incredibly sharp learning curve. Colleagues strove to move fast and break things and they succeeded. “The Platform” is used as an insult. #GAFAM showers us with their blessings and the tools they've created are worshiped.

And I sat idly by as I watched the open web I knew and loved erode, happy to just be collecting my paycheck. And maybe that's okay, maybe there's nothing I could have done, but I'll never know. To quote my mother:

Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

Well, the best time to plant a tree would have been ten years ago for me. The second best time is now.

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I've known about the Fediverse, and Secure Scuttlebutt, for quite some time, but never made the switch over. I don't think I'll be able to articulate why, but with my few limited interactions here, I'm already much happier than I was on twitter, my main social media intake.

So here are a few reasons I'm happy to be here:

1. I'm interacting with humans again! I can comment on posts and get a response. People have blogs and they talk about things they care about.
2. No algorithms! Twitter enraged me daily, they have a way of finding content to irritate your pet peeves. Tell me HTML isn't a programming language to my face, you cowards!
3. Decentralization! My favorite part of git applied to to an entire network? Sign me up!

I'm pretty new to the fediverse and I'm looking for community. I'd love to be friends, if you'll accept me. All I ask is we stick together as humans.

Let's not allow ourselves be exploited by technology and the companies that control them ever again, since that is why I have felt so uneasy all these years.

I've never come so close to killing myself before. I had the means to do so tonight. Well, I've had the means to do so for a while, probably ever since I started wearing cinched clothing. But I never realized I had the means until this afternoon.

It almost feels like suicide would be the expected ending in my narrative. If my life up to now were a book, I'm certain that most readers would shrug at this ending. “I could see it coming from Chapter 4,” they would say. The part of my soul that's sensitive and pessimistic, wants to give into this ending.

I always thought the way I'd end up dying (if by suicide) was either through carbon monoxide, hanging, or a chemical concoction of sorts. I suppose what I tried tonight isn't too far off from hanging, but there was no hanging involved.

I experimented with several objects, getting close, but still able to take a breath even if I had to struggle to take it. Then I found the right setting. I felt my face get tingly, the music fade, and my vision start to blur. A part of me felt incredibly victorious that after so many years of inner turmoil, I'd found my own way out.

But then I became concerned with the nature of asphyxiation. Is death from asphyxia certain? With carbon monoxide, the levels have to be just high enough, and your oxygen source restricted just enough. I know with pills, it's always a gamble — death is never guaranteed. Even with hanging, I know it can take more than five minutes to slip into unconsciousness, depending on the circumstances.

With asphyxiation, you can lose consciousness and die within five minutes. I've never been that close.

It was odd. I didn't want to die die in that moment. I just wanted people to really know that I want to die. While I hate people looking at me for a lot of reasons, I want someone to look at me.

I want someone to look at my neck and know: “This person was serious about death.” I think that's all I've ever wanted. For someone to look at my face and not necessarily understand what I've been through, but understand living is not natural for me.

The object is inside my nightstand. Right now truthfully, I feel numb just from the fact that death is literally beside me. All my life is now is a decision. My plan is there. My death has become simple — if I take this route.

It's calming.

#Personal #Monologue

Have the day off because of a doctor's appointment in the afternoon. Woke up fine. While shaving though, I turned my body slightly to the left and somehow triggered lower back pain. It was pretty bad. It was like my whole lower back tightened up and I couldn't move. And it started to affect my breathing. I had to calm myself down to relax my back muscles. Because dude, I did not want to get stuck in the bathroom with just a towel on. Or have to call 911 for that matter because I couldn't move. But seriously, it hurt pretty bad for awhile.

I weighed 192 lbs. at the doctor's clinic. Fates!^[1] I need to work on losing weight. Anyway, my blood pressure was normal and I had blood work done. For the blood test that checks your liver and kidneys, you don't have to be fasting. For the cholesterol test though, you have to be in a fasted state.

After my doctor's appointment, we went to my Chiropractor to get my back checked. Always feels great after getting adjusted. And my back felt a lot better too. He also said my left SI joint was off, which is what was causing pain while sitting and while driving.

It was also the first time that Davin allowed himself to be adjusted. FYI, when doing adjustments on small kids, there is no popping or forced push going on. The Chiropractor applies pressure and holds it for a set amount of time. Davin was comfortable the whole time.

After the Chiropractor visit, we went to get some food at Chuy's. Davin ate a lot of the chips. Though he didn't want their delicious creamy Jalapeño sauce.

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I'm already tracking my food and weight in a separate journal/notebook. I'm thinking I should start tracking my exercises/workouts too. That way, in addition to what I ate, I can also see what exercises I did and how it affected my weight.

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Updated my 401K investments. Went with an aggressive 90% stocks and 10% bonds asset distribution. For stocks, I went with VFIAX because it is an S&P 500 index fund and has a super low 0.04% expense ratio. For bonds, I went with VBTLX because it is a total market bond index fund and also has a very low 0.05% expense ratio. The idea to go with these funds came from the book The Simple Path to Wealth, which I reviewed last March.

Note: I wrote down the entries above on my bullet journal, months ago. Had I known that a pandemic was coming and that it was going to crash the stock market, I probably would have chosen a less aggressive asset distribution. But it's done and I'm not gonna waver. If I learned anything from the “The Simple Path to Wealth” book, it's that the stock market always rises back up. I just need to be patient and ride it out.

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“Invincible Summer” by Dangerkids is a really good song. Here are the chords to play it:

Verse: Ebm - B - C#
Pre-chorus: B - C#
Chorus: F# - C# - Ebm - B
Bridge: Ebm - F# - C# - B

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[1] Fates is an expression I picked up from the book "The Shadow of What Was Lost."

Tags: #JournalEntry

i dont know what todays shit show will bring. the house is going to be listed soon and i have to start to pack up. i hate the thought of moving yet again. i am tired of moving. and i have to get rid of more stuff. i had started to get rid of things but no where to send it yet. i found out yesterday that value village is back open. so i guess it can go there. and it means i will have to start driving ready or not.

so now as i decide what to get rid of which is really hard i wonder every minute what will happen to me. seems i have been tossed aside without a second thought. i was putting things in a box and brent says i should take a picture and try and sell online. and all i am thinking is that is a ton of work over something i will probably get frustrated over and quit anyhow. and there is what do i do with the birds. do i let them go and hope for the best? or do they go to freezer camp for a guy we know who has a hawk and needs food too.....so i have no clue on what to do...i feel like i am on the shit side of the merry go round.

i am looking for an apt now. its hard. during a pandemic there is not much out there. what i want and what i get are 2 different things. what i wanted was to live in my house till i died what i got was you have to move again cause your man is a fuck up.

5.28.20 | Adventures in Illness: Comic from 2017

I recently came across this darkly-humoured comic while sorting through piles of old drawings. I sketched it 3 years ago on this very day, while dealing with the physical and emotional discomfort & precariousness of having a football-sized ovarian cyst (benign, luckily) that continued to grow while I waited for my surgery date. The nurses told me the size of it was comparable to a 6-month pregnancy— so that answers the first question in the comic! The scenario in the comic didn't actually happen to me— no, I didn't relay that disturbing response to a nosey old lady (unfortunately). However, I remembered that my mum had had a similar experience to the one in this comic when she was suffering from a large fibroid pushing on her insides: apparently, while she was out grocery shopping a lady came up to her—with a big smile, pointing at her mid-region—saying, “Oh how wonderful— when are you expecting?” I am still appalled by the fact that people actually do that sort of thing. Anyhow, you can imagine how annoying that must have been to deal with. So I think this comic was a sort of preparation of how I would respond to such a question in a way that might allow the asker to think twice next time they feel inclined to gesture at a stranger's belly.

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In our first conversation over tea, Seán and I struck chords with each other through talking about and listening to our respective past and current health challenges. I hadn't remembered talking with anyone that deeply about my health experiences before. It was both challenging and therapeutic, and once the flood gates were open, it was difficult not to go down the rabbit hole of memories, which I'm sure we each did our fair share of.

My experience with the ovarian cyst was definitely one of those that forces one to slow down in all aspects of one's life. It's easy to forget the lessons one learns through illness if one fully recovers. It's less work to just return to the default “old normal”, to get lost again in the busyness of social and work catch-up and continue old habits that were unhelpful before the illness—and that, in some cases, may have contributed to causing the illness in the first place. Reflection before, during and after recovery is essential to making healthy changes, and offers an opportunity to begin again, think about what is best for you, and create new rhythms and priorities. It's work, but it's good work. I was a little late in doing my post-recovery work, but I'm grateful that I received another opportunity to reflect in quiet stillness when I moved to the Hill.

Separate me from my own two hands, I've killed so many times But I can't save the world from the creatures that don't die.

I kinda like the way you tell me, “Baby, please come home, I need you here right now, I'm crying underwater so you don't hear the sound.“

Burst into flames Scream in the dark I'm gonna light up this place And I will be the only light I'll be the only light

Those lyrics are so good! That's why I Love Pierce The Veil.

#PierceTheVeil