Personal Update 4-18-2021

Personal Update 4-18-2021

I sprained my back last Sunday, and had to visit the doctor to make sure it wasn’t anything more serious like a spinal issue or something. Got sent to get an x-ray, was given some strong meds, and told to stay flat in bed for a couple days. I’m feeling much better now, aside from some slight soreness, and I’ll probably begin some limited exercise next week. Unfortunately I had planned on moving a bunch of stuff around the house and reorganizing things, and all that is going to have to wait.

Related to the planned reorganizing we had a company come out and grab a few things we don’t want anymore, namely a corner desk and barstools to donate to charity, and another company is moving the upright piano to a friend’s house today.

While bedridden, I spent a lot of time on my phone, and found a game that I think will finally replace Final Fantasy Brave Exvius as the gacha of choice: AFK Arena. Easy to get heroes, an absolutely absurd amount of content, and simple to learn, difficult to master mechanics. Also, you can play multiple games on the same account, using their server system so you’re never put in a “you cannot play this game for the rest of the day because you hit a wall” like most gacha games I’ve played.

I’ve also got a solid Latin curriculum for self-learning going, with Familia Romana and Wheelock’s Latin. I’m trying to use Dowling’s method, which requires a lot of rote memorization of Noun Declensions, but I think that kind of thing is necessary for my learning style.

I’m on the fence about trying to get a short story done for a fantasy short story contest that has a due date of the end of the month. I learned of it a bit late, and I’m not sure I can have something ready and polished in time. We’ll see.

Hiking the Colorado National Monument, Day 2

Hiking the Colorado National Monument, Day 2

This is the second day of my visit to Grand Junction, Colorado, and my hike through the Colorado National Monument. Today, I had crepes at the Dream Cafe. They were light, but filling. Perfect way to start the day on a long hike.

Very strawberry. Very filling.

I chose to do the full route of the Monument Canyon Trail, which is 6 miles one way. I started on the east side and hiked in, but did not do the steep climb up to the road at the very end because I am woefully out of shape as it is and that probably would have done me in in terms of actually making it all the way back in any reasonable amount of time.

This trail is one of the most well known trails in the Park, because it has two iconic natural rock sculptures: Independence Monument and the Kissing Couple, and you walk right up to them. Below is the picture gallery for this hike. Of the two days, this was my favorite, and it was topped off by being able to see some longhorn sheep up close. I still need to figure out a way of getting that video uploaded here.


Hiking the Colorado National Monument, Day 1

Hiking the Colorado National Monument, Day 1

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Grand Junction, Colorado and then hiking around the Colorado National Monument for a couple days while my wife got a tattoo done.

I hiked the No-Throughfare trail, and the Devil’s Kitchen trail the first day, and then the entirety of the Monument Trail and back the next. I started the day at the Dream Cafe, with the largest pancakes I’ve ever seen. They were absolutely phenomenal, and the perfect thing for a long day hiking.

I mean, look at the size of those pancakes.

I encountered maybe a half dozen people on the trail the entire time, and the weather was crystal clear with highs around 60 degrees. It was absolutely perfect, and I got to see the park the way it was meant to be seen. The only sounds were the sounds of footsteps, wind, and wildlife. I hiked as far back into No-Throughfare as I could, but wound up stopping after the trail stopped being maintained. I simply didn’t have the footwear or desire to boulder somewhat dangerously a hundred or so feet in the air. So I turned around and did the Devil’s Kitchen hike, and hung out around the rocks for a while enjoying the view. Below are the pictures of the hike. I took some videos and panorama shots but I’ll have to figure a better way of uploading them to the site. I about crashed this site uploading all these…

A Thought on Government Run Systems

A Thought on Government Run Systems

I ran across a couple of posts on reddit I felt needed to be combined and shared. The post was discussing what constitutes ‘success’ in a socialized system like healthcare, and the article was this one.

“Success is determined by the existence of the system. Some post hoc measure can be found later as a justification. If it wasn’t access, they would find something else. Cost or satisfaction (in that one poll twenty years ago) or jobs provided or… it doesn’t really matter.

To people who support them, it is self-evident that government programs are good.And those who benefit from the system sink their tendrils in very deep. As soon as such a system comes into being, its purpose becomes its own survival and growth.

Teachers are heroes. They’re underpaid. Police officers, firefighters, librarians, mailmen, and on and on it goes. How often do we hear it? Somehow being employed by the state makes one a hero. Accepting a paycheck from the king makes one a selfless martyr. But it’s never enough. The king, stingy as he is, never pays these thankless servants their due.

Unlike private industry, which must serve its customers or risk losing them, these parasites are engaged in an unending propaganda war with those they claim to serve. They gain, not by the creation of wealth or the quality of their efforts, but by extending their tendrils into the minds of those they must subdue, for it is only the weakness of their host that they desire, so that they might corrupt it and feast upon it.

Theirs is not the mutualistic symbiosis of private industry, where both parties benefit. Rather, they take on the appearance of an ally, having evolved the coloration and stripes of kin, so that they might gain entrance and devour the unsuspecting.”

So You’re Suddenly Interested in Online Security and Censorship

So You’re Suddenly Interested in Online Security and Censorship

Join the club. It’s surprisingly easy and here are some steps to take if you want to dip your toes into the water but don’t want to get too deep into it.

1.) Ditch Twitter. Ditch Facebook after you’ve managed to convince everyone you care about to also ditch it. But if you really cared about not being disappeared from the internet: Mewe, Gab, Mastodon, and Diaspora are really better options. Mewe just has that friendly, easy to use interface that I really like. I am very suspicious about Parler.

2.) Get a VPN. nordVPN or ProtonVPN. I like ProtonVPN because it bundles with Protonmail, and I have used nordVPN before and really liked it. Once you have it, freaking use it.

3.) Speaking of Protonmail, get a different email address that is not associated with google, microsoft, yahoo, or other major tech conglomerate. Preferably one that focuses on privacy and security. Hence, my move to Protonmail. If you own an internet domain you can associate it with that too if you want to get fancy (most email services allow this btw).

4.) Get Firefox, Brave, or other browser built around security and privacy. Do not use IE/Edge/Chrome. Then get adblock and tracking disabling extensions for them like Ublock Origin for that additional protection.

5.) Get Signal. Seriously. Unless you actually like third parties being able to read your text messages. Telegram also works but isn’t open source. I have them both, Telegram’s groups are amazing.

6.) Don’t upload anything to ‘the cloud’ you don’t want other people to see, unless it’s a secure cloud storage. The Proton people are working on that, but it’s still in beta. I trust google and microsoft as far as I can throw them. No Google Drive, no One Drive.

7.) Ditch Google Play store (if you’re an Apple user: rofl) and use F-Droid (for open source software, which tends to be more privacy and security focused) or Aptoid (just beware what you install. It’s old school internet over there).

8.) And finally if you’re really serious about things. Get Linux. If you’re new with the whole not using Windows or Mac thing, get Ubuntu. But there’s a linux out there that fits every kind of computer knowledge capability.


Smoke, Mirrors, and Election Statistics

Smoke, Mirrors, and Election Statistics

There isn’t any concrete fraud in this election so far, but I do think there’s enough smoke to indicate some shenanigans. I’m pasting the most suspicious stuff I’m finding here, so I don’t lose it later.

Updated #4 :
https://www.scribd.com/document/488495896/Navarro-Report

Updated #3:
https://nationalfile.com/election-fraud-expert-michigans-election-results-are-physical-impossibility/

https://www.revolver.news/2020/11/explosive-new-data-from-rigorous-statistical-analysis-points-to-voter-fraud-in-montgomery-county-pa/

Update #2:
This person laid out all the suspicious they have found so far in Michigan.


Update #1:
A glitch in tabulation software used by 47 MI counties was found by a Michigan County Clerk. They hand counted votes and found the glitch caused 6,000 votes to flip from Trump to Biden.

Original:
First up, Biden being down in the major areas except where he needed it most.

Biden’s vote totals per county in Georgia.

Absentee voting advantage to Biden. Pennsylvania and Michigan are huge outliers here, but I’d like to see the rest of the states in comparison too.

There’s a lot of math being done here.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1324377988499210240.html

Quote of the Day, Oct 21

Quote of the Day, Oct 21

“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Solethanian Tavern Generator

Solethanian Tavern Generator

I have created a few generators, usually just names, for fantasy RPGs using perchance.org. I recently found out they allow embedding. This generator in particular pulls together from a few different generators I made on perchance. It’s still barebones, but functional and perfectly useable if you need a quick place for adventurers to visit. 

Trying out Foundry VTT

Trying out Foundry VTT

I stumbled across FoundryVTT while browsing the interwebs and really liked the idea of having my own instanced VTT server, and it promises to be more responsive than Roll20. The one downside so far is they don’t have licensing for any game systems yet, so I’ve been having to copy/paste from my rulebooks into the library.
I figured I’d try another go at Savage Worlds, and have been putting those rules into it. Once the rules are in there, everything works surprisingly well.

I’m going to try for a Space Opera setting a la Star Wars or Mass Effect. A bunch of random alien species, pulpy sci-fi, mysterious powers, and high tech guns.

On that note I’ve been back heavily into No Man’s Sky. I don’t know what it is but I keep coming back to it. It’s oddly relaxing, and I alternate between exploring and base building with the occasional dalliance into researching and improving my ships and gear.