Summary for April, 2024

I am now following the POTUS on Mastodon and that rules.

I am out in the desert this week, and its been a good opportunity to test out remote play on my gaming PC using Sunshine and Moonlight. It works incredibly well when my network is behaving.

That said, my network *isn’t* always behaving, which is odd. I have symmetric 2.5G fiber in LA where the PC resides, and a decent 500 Mbit connection in the desert. I think the traffic is getting routed through Tailscale…

My iPad Pro is my client at the moment, and it works, but I am limited to somewhere between 10-20 Mbps bitrate, which is bonkers. I should be able to stream in 4K60 at 150 Mbps without a hiccup. Need to investigate a bit.

I was chatting with a Trump voter today. They were expressing a desire for less divisiveness; for “us all to get along.” The issue is that they don’t really want that. Their definition of “all of us” excludes the poor, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, and women who want to protect their reproductive rights.

So, I’ve tracked down the issue with game streaming from my gaming PC in LA to my home in Palm Desert. Using iperf, I confirm slow (less than 20Mbps) speed in the connection from my Spectrum cable connection to my fiber connection in LA.

The issue is that my Spectrum speeds are fine connecting to everything else. Just connecting to my home in LA is slow. Using iperf from AWS or elsewhere, I get acceptable speed. So, its clearly an issue with Spectrum.

It is likely something upstream from me on Spectrum’s side, which means the odds of it getting resolved as a result of anything I do is basically zero. I’ve called Spectrum and their support is (understandably) completely incapable of understanding the issue.

Honestly, my biggest chance of resolving the problem is to switch to another provider. Unfortunately, there aren’t really good alternatives. Sigh.

Yeesh, Logan Sargeant…

I took my daughter to see Em Beihold live last week. One of my favorite parts was being surprised by the opening act – a South African artist named Will Linley. Joyful performer and every song is the best kind of pop. “Last Call” is S-tier pop.

Back on my bullshit outing bigots on Nextdoor. It’s amazing how many of them have “Jesus” in their profile. Pretty sure Jesus would be flipping some tables if he saw these folks using his name to justify hate.

Someone broke Charles Leclerc and I demand that they out him back together. 😂

Was not expecting that very strong race from Ferrari. Very pleased with the result, especially for Charles, who executed a masterful strategy. The car is completely changed from last year’s tire eating machine. If Charles can get the tires in the right window in qualy, look out! #F1

Finished up Jedi: Survivor while I was out in the desert. Such a fun game. I had to play streaming via Moonlight on my iPad Pro. Was a little sketchy at times due to Spectrum being a bag of turds, but I made it work.

We arrived back in LA last night late, and this evening I started playing Horizon Forbidden West. It’s absolutely stunning so far. A perfect showcase of the theater gaming rig!

Chemo infusion four of twelve today! Praying for no surprises this week🤞🏼

Can you imagine having spent $12,000 up-front for Tesla’s “full self driving” only to see it descoped to “supervised driving” and then price slashed to $99/mo? Congrats on being given the privilege of training Elon’s model for a huge fee!

Infusion four has been both predictable and challenging. We’ve had no surprises, but it’s clear that the cumulative impact of the treatment is amplifying the side effects. Lacey has been experiencing more aggressive fatigue, nausea, temperature sensitivity, difficulty eating and drinking, and hair loss. I’m impressed by her resilience, and I’m incredibly proud of the kids’ support.

I am having a really difficult time processing the tragic conflict in Gaza. I am so upset to see the death and suffering inflicted by both Hamas and Israel, but I don’t know how to be an advocate for peace. There is so much history and complexity, and while I have done my best to listen and learn, it’s just too fraught.

It’s made more challenging by the clear disconnect between the rest of the UN and the United States. Do we really feel that the rest of the member nations are wrong? I feel complicit in what is arguably a genocide and it sucks.

What a crazy sprint! I’m not generally a fan of the sprint format, but it really worked today. Three thoughts: - Lewis is going to look damn good in red - Cracks finally show up at Ferrari between Charles and Carlos - Checo gets pantsed again by Max

In spite of the strong fight by Charles and Carlos, pretty unhappy with what I saw today in the GP. The car was slower than the McLaren in both qualifying and race pace, which is puzzling given what we have seen in the first races of the season. Still, good points. #F1

Also, Lance Stroll sucks. Selfish little nepo baby. Absolutely ruined what was an exceptional weekend from Danny Ric. No apologies for a stupid crash that was entirely his fault, blaming everyone but himself. We will see if Daddy actually does anything…

I’m having a maddening issue with my internal home services that run on my Synology in docker containers. Periodically, all containers will lose access to the local network, while retaining access to WAN. The only fix I’ve found is to reboot the NAS, which I hate doing. Blurgh! One day, I’ll move all of my services to a different, purpose-built host…

Woke up this morning to see that my Rams drafted Kam Kinchens from Miami. I’m over the moon! Such a great kid, and his potential is sky high. Here’s hoping he becomes a long-term starter. 🐏 🙌🏻

Was reflecting on the American ethos last night. While I love living here, that’s a result of my privilege. When I hear politicians say “we’re better than this,” they’re wrong. Our country was founded on individual freedom by white Christian men. It shows.

The American ethos prioritizes individuals over the welfare our citizens as a whole. “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” Liberty and justice in this context means individual freedom to the vast majority of Americans.

This is why I have come to the conclusion that we don’t have a politics problem, we have a culture problem. We won’t be able to make much-needed changes like universal healthcare, universal basic income, and strict gun control unless we change the culture.

So, when I hear a politician say “we are better than this” after each and every mass shooting or medical bankruptcy, I disagree. We aren’t better than this… this is precisely who we are down to our core and it’s incredibly sad.

My heart so badly wants to see meaningful changes; for us to acknowledge and protect fundamental human rights like healthcare, housing, and safety from gun violence. My head says it will never happen, because our culture is broken and has been from the start.

After building a PoC for my digital movie poster, I’ve been enhancing it with features, including a animated multi-poster view, remote control, and a “now playing” screen for when I am watching on Apple TV, playing on my Steam PC, etc.

I am using something called `pywebview`, which was really nice to use as I developed on my MacBook Pro. Sadly, it is maddening to get working properly on Linux. I may have to completely re-engineer it. Boo.

I don't want to jinx it, but I may have figured out the issue with the containerized services on my Synology. How? Disabling IPv6 on the host entirely. I'm not entirely sure why this (seems) to work, but I am guessing that something wonky was going on with setting default gateways? I dunno.

Marques Brownlee’s reviews of the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 are strong indicators that the Overton Window for “MVP” products is shifting due to AI hype. I don’t believe in technology “gold rushes,” generally. Being first doesn’t guarantee success, especially if you ignore the “V” in “MVP.”