posted tagged with #Life

• Reflections on elections

  2016 was the first year I was eligible to vote in a presidential election. I was away at college, so I completed an absentee ballot, and, like most, felt confident in what I thought would be the result. I was no big fan of Clinton’s — I voted for Bernie in the primaries — but the other option was laughable: I couldn’t believe that a major political party put such a clown up as their candidate, and I thought the electorate was smart enough to see him for the fraud (and fascist) he was.

  7 Nov 2024
• smooth runs the water where the brook is deep

  Write a blog post about words of wisdom your younger self would have appreciated hearing. (via blogprompts)¹

  I’m trying out doing blog prompts in an effort to populate this blog with more than just weekly round-ups and to get more comfortable writing about personal things.²

  8 Aug 2024
• Moving to a rack mount setup

  I wrote a post a few months ago cataloguing moving my home server from the old NZXT case I had leftover from my old PC into a Rosewill chassis that would let me, eventually, move to a proper rack setup. This past Prime Day, I purchased a Riveco 15U rack and then some sliding rails to go along with it, with the hope of finally moving the loud and hot NAS into the basement where it belongs.

  2 Aug 2024
• breaking silences

  Last time I updated this blog, I wrote about silences in my professional career. These past few weeks, I feel I am doing the work to break mine.

  20 Jun 2024
• Your silence will not protect you

  I’ve talked before on this blog about being a teacher and how passionate I am about my work; the time I spend with my students — which should be paramount and where all my energy goes — comes naturally. I often remark that I feel like I’m doing a stand-up comedy routine¹ while teaching because my goal is not only to instruct but to develop joy in learning, in reading, in writing.

  14 Apr 2024
• Moving my home server to a new chassis

  I have a home server (running Unraid) that I use to backup computers, as media storage, and to run various apps. It’s mostly been cobbled together from used parts I found for cheap, and it generally followed Serverbuild’s NAS Killer 4 guide. It runs like a dream, and putting it together is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. More recently, with streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, etc. cracking down on password sharing, it has become my pathway to shedding some monthly subscriptions and owning my own media.

  10 Mar 2024
• Thirteen to Know Me

  @jamesmckz shared the following challenge on X earlier this month:

  No cheating - your Quietus style Bakers Dozen. 13 albums (off the top of your head) to know you by. Not looking for a perfect list, looking for a list that you instantly regret posting because you then remember something else.

  10 Mar 2024
• Coming Out

  I read a thread online recently about bisexuality: folks were discussing use of the label compared to something like pansexual. Many folks within the LGBTQ+ umbrella argue that pansexual is a more inclusive label than bisexual, as bi- upholds a binary view of gender.

  25 Feb 2024
• hate for the island

  I was born and raised on Long Island in a hamlet that rests along the Great South Bay.¹ Known to most as a ferry town, this charming suburb lives and breathes the ocean. Most every resident has access to some kind of boat, whether through personal ownership or advantageous friendship. In the 90s, the town was voted the “friendliest town in America,” a slogan that still adorns the sign as you drive into town, by a mysterious group that awards such superlatives. That accolade, along with our yacht clubs, country clubs, lack of racial diversity, and generalized fear of anything outside the norm makes the town the near picture of 1950s suburban ideal.

  7 Jan 2024
• my year in lists

  I’m not a New Years Resolution person; listening to a lot of “My Year in Lists” by Los Campesinos! as a teen made me quite cynical about the whole thing.

  1 Jan 2024