Porter's Pebbles

My Adventures in Life(mail)

Tumblr ↗

  • My Concerns For Linux

    As a long-time Linux user,I’ve seen a huge number of changes both positive and negatives. I’ve been using Linux on and off on and off for the past 20 to 25 years and can still remember the days where you’d have to use utilities such as bw43-cutter in order to get drivers for devices that required Broad-Com chip based Ethernet and WiFi chip sets. I can also remember when you where required to enable enable the the contribute and non-free repositories in the case of Debian this was until Book-Worm when they split the free and non-free firmware packages within the archives. I’ve also used plenty of different terminal emulators ranging from gnome terminal,kitty,Xfce terminal,Konsole,UXterminal and several other terminal emulators. I’ve also used nearly every opensource productivity suite from Apache Open Office to LibreOffice and in between.

    There are multiple things that give me a lot of concern for the Linux and open source communities as a combined whole. The first and most to me are the astronomical degrees of polarization around certain topics such as the proliferation of YouTube and just regular old social media hot takes including several by massive media conglomerates like Linus Media Group and Mr. Beast. More so Mr. Beast who operate solely on driving up their channels popularity by running scams on there subscribers in order to gain financial gains for the media corporation or individual behind the channel(operation). On the other side of the coin you’ve got YouTube personalities and channels like Gamer’s Nexus or The Linux Cast that actively try to promote choice in your distributions. The other things that annoy the ever living hell out of me are the Waring factions between Desktop Environments,Window managers and purists like those who choose to strictly use the command line interpreter. The worst of the desktop environment factions are the KDE vs. Gnome user basis that are to me at least tearing each other down on a daily if not hourly basis both on YouTube and on certain Open Source Software forums that I frequent

  • My thoughts on Compuying

    I’ve been using Linux and several of it’s other Unix-Like cousins on and off for the past 24 + plus years (since 2,001). Which means I’ve been using Linux and it’s other Unix-Like cousins in particular the BSDS(Free,Net and Open) as matter of fact I can even remember when you used to be required to use utilities like b43-cutter in order to get network cards of the day in particular WiFi adapters based on Broad Com chips. This was true accessed all of the Linux distributions of the day and how big a deal it was when per-conical Ubuntu came around and simplified configuring WiFi and Video Cards(boards). My adventures with the Unix-Work a likes continued with the Net,Open and Free BSD. I started out using FreeBSD which is the reverse of how certain folks in the Unix-Like operating system space would intone that you had to start with the BSDs and then work your way back to Linux distributions such as “back in the Day” Debian and Ubuntu.

    My first experiences with interacting with a non-local Unix-Like operating system occurred the first time I logged onto a fresh user account on the Super Dimensional Fortress(SDF) back in 2001-02 while I was in middle/high school. That wasn’t the only Unix shell account that I’ve had weather at SDF where over the years I must’ve had close to a hundred or more different usernames(handles). I’ve also had a couple of different usernames on shell communities which include BShells. My current configurations are Slack Ware Linux on my Hp Z 420 workstation and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 10 which is the latest release of RHEL Workstation which has for several years now been owned by IBM(big blue). What amazes me about IBM is despite the fact that several Mainframe brands have either gone out of business or been bought and sold so many times over that we’ve most likely all lost track of the number of transactions. The remains of Digital Equipment Corporation(DEC), OpenVMS which was the assumed operating system for VAX,Alpha and Itanium quite a few other reduced instruction set computing(RISC) based processors. The Itanium platform fail to take off because of poor execution by Intel. As well as the sheer number of Intel and AMD x86 and X86_64 CISC processors based client side and server side computer systems.

    Despite the very long instruction word(VLIW) processor architecture failing spectacularly because it never actually gained traction in the market place do to the prevalence of both more economical 32 and 64 bit processors offered at the time by Intel and AMD. In addition to Complex Instruction Set Computing(CISC) processors as well as Reduced Instruction Set (RISC) CPU architectures such as PowerPC from IBM and Sun Micro Systems Sparc chips. Aplle computer would stick with Motorola RISC based processors until the migrated there products over the x86_64 based CPUs from Intel up until ,recently when they released their own in house RISC based M CPU after years of using x86_64 architecture CPU s from Intel. Dispute the fact that the desktop market has for the most part migrated back to x86_64 based CPU s from AMD and Intel IBM has still maintained their line of Power cpus in their Z/Seriers mainframes.

  • Daily writing prompt
    What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why?
    View all responses

    My favorite game is an old gambling card game known as canasta in which you try to go out before you opponents by way of making runs of seven cards known as Canastas. You can either have a pure canasta for instance one which consists solely of 7 for example or an impure canasta which might consist of say 6 eights and a wildcard. Now you can either designate Aces or ones or both or one or the other as the wild cards and this must be done prior to starting the game(hand).

    You can play with as few people as three or four all of the way up to multipule teams of 5 or six. The caveat is that you have to have one deck of cards per player so you can tmagine that after two or three players if you aren’t a very dexterous person you’d run into issues shuffling the potentially massive number of cards implied.

  • Daily writing prompt
    What’s your go-to comfort food?
    View all responses

    My all-time favorite comfort foot is lemon-ginger tea because of it’s digestive benefits. It also doesn’t carry the caffeine load of other teas like black tea or earl gray. This is especially a benefit for me because I’m quite caffeine sensitive. So I can consume Lemon-Ginger tea pretty much all day if I so please. This tea ls carries several other health benefits one such benefit is that the vitamin C in the lemon acts as an immunity booster and helps shorten the length of viral infections like the common cold and to some degrees the Flu.

  • My concerns not only GEN-Z and our Nation as well

    I’ve been listening,reading and in-general ingesting quite a bit of material related to mental health. I have come a cross several several experts from jurist prudant to psychologists right up and threw some of the worlds leading narcissism experts like doctor Ramani on via YouTube. I really find the most concerning figures as it pertains to the mental health of the generation of children born from 1995 to the current day most corning because they’re being raised by parents that are most commonly both working and thus use screens as electronic babysitters.

    This I find extremely discomforting because these children are essentially are also being raised by parental and other authority figures who coddle them to no end. I say this because over the past several years we’ve seen a extremely discomforting at least to me number of school shootings. In my opinion a key metric that is a decent indicator of why this is happening on a regular basis is the prevalence of more and more violent video game for example the Grand Theft Auto series and other title A series of PC and Console video games like the Far-Cry series.

    If you ask me my opions on how we as a society in general and on the per-person basis is by using our good judgment when the minor children in oru family structures ask for such violent content is as hard as it may seem to just say no. I’ll be the first to realize that as non-parent I’ll probably get the electronic shit kicked out of me for daring to put fourth this concept however, as a society we need to collectively come to the realization that if we’re to even attempt to stem the “never ending” tide of needless loss on our primary and secondary school campuses we must find a common starting place.

    Not only is this pathological of the next generations emotions is dangerous it’s detrimental to the overall mental health of our nation as well . This is partially do to the scope creep of including quasi mental health professionals social works,guidance counselors and school crisis counselors and lastly teachers. The last group is using emotional education/awareness as a part of their daily lesson plans. When you include holy unqualified and unlicensed professionals. Those professionals that I speak of are the mainstream and special needs educators as part and parcel of the “mental health” profession not only do you taint the over all perception of the fully-qualified mental health professionals but also their profession. Parents,grand parent and other figures of authority in the next generations home life need to stand up and push back against the invasion of emotional learning in our nations K-12 educational system.

    The other outcome of this trend that i find disturbing and upsetting is that parents aren’t standing up at their local school board meetings and saying no more. What I’m honestly find quite offensive is that the pendants on mainstream media outlets like Fox News,NBC, etc ,etc aren’t doing there jobs, thus meaning that the media is not providing the general populous of our nation with fair,balanced and unbiased information. I’m honestly disheartened to see this sad situation as a young person who grew up watching The MacNeil/Lehrer hour now the PBS News Hour nightly with my parents whom taught both my younger sister and I the value of honest,un-objective,fair,balanced and through reporting as well as freedom of press.

  • Long-term positive health effects of moving out of Florida

    I’ve been living with my parents since I came back to the Seattle metropolitan area in 2021 after extracting myself from an extremely mutually-abusive relationship with my ex-boyfriend. In the last four to five years of the aforementioned relationship we fraught nearly every-other day if not every-other hour, at times he’d use his body to block me from certain things. Forex ample one night I couldn’t fall asleep and wanted to get to the phone to call my parents but he blocked me in the hallway so that I couldn’t even get to the door of the home-office that we shared.

    Within roughly two to three months of returning home I started to notice that i was gradually loosing the excess weight that I’d accumulated over the thirteen years that I’d lived in Florida with my ex-boyfriend. I really started to see the most dramatic number of pound dropping off of my figure by roughly the fourth or fifth month that I was living here in the Seattle metropolitan area as I was getting out and therein getting progressively more weight at the point that I returned to Seattle post Florida I still weight 2036 pounds however, by the 2nd or 3rd month that I was settled here in Seattle I’d gone down a full thirty pounds to two hundred and six pounds and for a brief time I was hovering around the 190 to 105 pound mark so between 30 to as much as 40 plus pounds.

  • My feeling about president Trump

    As we are all good and darn aware the democratic cabinet for US president Kamala D. Harris lost to former president Trump. I’m quite upset by certain Trump appointees for instance the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment Linda McMahon over at the US Department of Education, who want to defund our nations public education system in favor of charter schools.

    This move to either severely cut back on or fully eliminate founding for public education hurts those whom don’t have the financial means to place their children in aforementioned charter schools. The other move that president Trump has made that I see potentially being a precursor to distributing America and setting our progress as a nation back as well.

    Furthermore, I’m really scared about Elton Musk and his Department of Government Efficacy(DOGE) might go after social security which could have the potential of causing hundreds if not thousands of Americans of all ages significant financial hardship.

  • My THOUGHTS on Americas current presidential ADMINISTRATION

    Aa we all know well and good by now president Trump has been in office for 100 days. In this short amount of time he and his cronies have gone and either completely gutted or severely reduced the number of employees in key organizational roles ac crossed several key governmental organizations. The scariest cuts are those that effect the Social Security Administration(SSA),department of education,the Department of Justice(DOJ). If you ask me I think that president Trump has taken advantage of the office of commander and chief and used it to weaponize several key departments acrossed the federal government.

    Most recently President Trump has told the civil-rights division of the DOJ to focus on combating antisemitism,the participation of transgender athletes in ladies sports and what trump and his allies have described as anti-christian bias and the democrats “woke ideology”. Now as a ardent believer in the biblical id yum treat thy neighbor as one would want to be treated. When I look at what I see as the destructive patterns of bot the first Trump administration and the current one I see some very very concerning ,alarming and frankly appalling trends between the two iterations of the Trump administration.

    The trend that I find extremely disquieting how many federal workers have been pink slipped let go and then rehired just to then not only be let go again but also loose their health care insurance. This is concerning to me because these folks went into the civil service because they where expecting to have secure jobs with witch they could pay a mortgage and raise families but now they’ve essentially been stripped of what some people would consider a part of the American dream. This is because Mr. Trumps crony Mr. Musk is heading up what I can only describe as a ruthless cut and gut of what they perceive as governmental bloat and bureaucracy without realizing that some if not all of the people who’s lives that they are essentially upending went into civil service because the wanted to server their country.

  • Economic hardship for everyone

    The current economic situation not only here in the United States but as a ripple effect from the potential economic fire and brimstone coming from the second incarnation of the Trump administration. These aren’t just scary economic times that are ahead for everyone here in America from the youngest generations to the retiree. No I’ll admit that I’m not a qualified party to spout off about the statistical figures that we’re talking about here and furthermore the views shared here in this post are only mine.

    I’ll admit that I’ve lived through some pretty darn scary economic situations for example the great recession of 2008-09. But I digress the hardships that we faced in that time of economic uncertainty and hardship are by no means as bad as the ones that we may well be staring down the barrel of in these days,months and years ahead. I knew that once President Trump and his clever happy right hand man Mr.Musk are perusing what with the formation of Department of Government Efficacy and all that’s going on in our nations capitol and else where.

    I’ll admit that I’ve struggled with budgeting my money and I’m not going to run from this fact. I’ve also struggled to evade my need to constantly felt the compulsive need to switch both Banks and Brokerage houses. At certain points I’ve even attempted to migrate to one of the reloadable cards like the green dot or one of the plethera of other reloadable financial products.

  • Intrest In health in General

    As of late I’ve been consuming quite a lot of YouTube content related to both psychical and mental health as well as listening to quite a number of audio books. I’ve also been using my downtime to work on both my drawing as well as my other writing projects. I’ve also been volunteering at a local Food Bank near my house. I feel like I’ve built a whole entire second family. Both working on my other artistic pursuits as well as volunteering at our local food bank has really done a lot to keep my mental health from becoming a absolute dumpster fire.

    As a person whom isn’t just a neuro-divergent but also a patient who’s been through not just our nations mental health care system cycling in and out of a Florida hospitals behavioral Health Unit for several times. I’ve cycled through the “traditional” wards for life threatening internal bleeds and quite a few convulsive episodes as well. Furthermore I’ve also bore witness to a family member or two cycling through specialized treatment centers like Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research hospital. This is all originating from the keyboard of a native son of Berkeley California who’s lived in Seattle,WA for a great deal of his life. I’ll also concede the Seattle is one of the several “tech hubs” within our nations boarders. This however, doesn’t mean that just because this is a truth that Seattle is completely amine from economic hard times.

    If you look at american cities such as Seattle,Sanfran Cisco and Berkeley for instance you’ll commonly notice that the over all populates is resilient to a certain amount of economic uncertainty however there is a plague effect where the ratio of losses overwhelms the gains.