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Day 884: Still computerrrrrrs (Day 22 of 100)

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I am fighting the temptation to turn this into an “Ubuntu is hard!” blog and podcast.

But Ubuntu is hard. I actually got hectored the other day for not having an intimate understanding of it when looking for help on a Plex-related issue, which was annoying, but one soldiers on.

It’s a pain, but at the same time, it’s also an education — arguably, messing around fixing Ubuntu so I can run Plex is a better use of my time than actually watching things on Plex, which is kind of ironic, when I think about it. I’m learning a ton about filesystems, how Ubuntu works, file organization, and getting a refresher on a lot of things I once knew like tarring archives, etc.

So I’m off to resolve an invalid arch-independent ELF magic error, then fill the Magic Bag, and another day at a time! Which is still going well, by the way.

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Day 883: Computerrrrrs (Day 21 of 100)

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Yesterday was a wash; the Ubuntu install on the Plex server went down with an initramfs error, and I spent over five hours bashing away at it (with some very nice folks at Ask Ubuntu helping me out); I’ve put so much work into the Plex database that I want to exhaust every option before reinstalling Ubuntu.

Not much of a “so what” to that except that NOT SNACKING IS HARD, GUYS. Maybe just for me, but the number of times I was bored/frustrated with the process and my mind wandered down to the kitchen was insane. It really is, for me, a booze-level addiction. The magic bag works wonders, but at the end of it, it really is a “one day at a time” thought process where I do have to sometimes literally white-knuckle through that urge to just eat something and fire those happy receptors in my brain.

You’d think I’d weigh 400 pounds or something; it’s almost equally interesting that this isn’t monster “eat two pizzas” urges, but the urge to just lightly graze constantly that has got me in the state I’m in now. Which isn’t, like, horrible, by North American standards, but still not where I’d like to be.

10k in 58:18 this morning, which is pretty damn good for me. Weight loss stalled, but whatever, this isn’t about burning pounds urgently, it’s about mastering the fitness and diet portions of things.

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Day 856: Technical Difficulties

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Arrgh… site infection yesterday led to my webhost (correctly) shutting my site down until I could clean it, which has now been done. But that threw me off, and required me to change a bunch of site passwords, and since Dropbox, for reasons unknown to me, is no longer syncing from work, I just discovered I don’t have the passwords to log into the site, or my FTP server, etc. 

It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it is aggravating. 

Technology! It’s a multi-edged sword. I’d say two-edged, but I can think of at least three or four edges. All of this is gratifying in a weird way, because it’s a reminder of how much STUFF I know — not exactly super useful skills, in a practical way, but there’s a chunk o’ understanding I have about how the Internet works, and websites, etc., which is proving to be more and more a life skill than I ever dreamed it would be when I was building my first HTML site way back… huh. I legitimately don’t remember what the first website I ever built was. Hm. I’d have to think about that…

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Day 845: Technical Stretch

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Even in the midst of simplifying, I’m making things complicated — a while back I ambitiously asked a friend who lives in Hong Kong to co-host my radio show on a weekend my wife works, and… it’s tomorrow. So I’m trying to figure out how exactly to get somebody to remote in while I’m in the studio and they’re literally twelve time zones away — it’s probably going to be us on Discord and piping him into the sound board, or… something. I’m not entirely sure.

It’s not quite “every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in,” but I’m definitely feeling the irony of having long-standing commitments crop up in a challenging way while I’m trying to simplify and winnow things down.

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Day 781: Technology suuuuuuucks

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Up at four this morning for cat / busy brain reasons, but got a good early start to the day intending to go back to work.

Then comes Jerkpod, and

  • no internet
  • half an hour trying to diagnose ISP problems
  • realizing the problem was the router
  • 45 minutes trying to restore and reset the router, install firmware, etc.
  • realizing the router was a lost cause
  • deciding to post from my wife’s laptop, which is plugged directly into the modem now
  • copying my password database and keyfiles so I can get to my passwords on this computer
  • updating the password database software
  • not being able to log into Jerkpod because the security plugin has gone bonkers
  • updating out of date ftp software
  • logging into ftp
  • disabling the security plugin
  • logging in here to post
  • concurrently trying to order a new router from Canada Computers
  • battling with their website, which seems to be up to date circa about 2005, so ordering something takes about eight steps more than I’m used to, including the world’s worst error delivery system when they can’t find your account information
  • involving a lot of webmail logins as I have their stuff sent to a spam account

… all this to post a post that’s under two minutes long. I’m now well over 90 minutes into a morning of tech support and faff that really doesn’t… do anything to make my life better.

Remember when technology was supposed to make our lives easier?

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Day 629: Hang On Computer

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Things are going okay! On the whole. On the podcast front I still manage to coax a podcast out every morning despite multiple crashes, but, again, there may be some gap days if more serious work is needed. I can’t quite figure out if this is even a hardware or software thing.

Busy weekend ahead, which is going to keep me from deeper diagnosis, but hopefully some repair things have helped fix it — if it’s software. The challenging thing is you don’t know until it crashes again…

 

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Day 627: Computer Dying

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I think I’m coming down with a cold — persistent headache, stuffed up noggin. The more urgent news is my computer seems to be dying; it’s freezing and restarting arbitrarily. I used to be able to troubleshoot this kind of thing, but I’m old now.

So if updates are spotty for the next few days: computer woes. I’ll try my best.