I hate when my family asks what I’m doing. I rarely know what I’m doing beyond a vague sense of what near future me wants.

If I’m cooking dinner, I’ll gather everything that’s edible, find whatever herbs/spice that I think might go with what I currently have and hope in the next hour or two something edible and/or tasty appears.

My sister gets angry at me whenever I answer “I don’t know” to a question about what I’m doing. I don’t understand why I need to have a reason for everything I do while simply trying to exist. Exhausting. Stop making your anxiety my problem…

I’ve always been drawn to minimalism. My happiest moments in life was backpacking with a 34 litre backpack for a number of years. The same concept can be applied to my Operating System. It’s minimal and up to me to build/create the experience I want.

The experience I wanted was to learn Linux at it’s core. There’s nothing wrong with GNU but it felt like a layer of abstraction that made learning Linux seem too distant for my personal liking.

I started using Alpine Linux as my OS for a self hosted server on a Raspberry Pi. I chose Alpine because from a security point of view it made sense. There was less surface area to target or exploit. Whatever I added was intentional, giving me a better understanding of the system I was building and using.

Eventually I decided that I want my desktop and server environment to be the same so that I am consistent in what I am learning. I didn’t want to switch between POSIX compliance/portability and GNU tools.

I don’t think it’s all that weird though. Alpine Linux provides a script that installs a variety of desktop environments. The wiki ([1][2]) also has information on how to set up all the extras like sound or graphics. Yes it’s more involved but it’s not impossible and can be rewarding.

I also found a fun (for me) hobby in writing POSIX portable scripts which is why I can spend so much time in Alpine. In the year I’ve been using Alpine, I’ve learned so much about Linux, how it works and how to work with it.

Does anyone else use Alpine Linux not in any containers?

I use it on my laptop with Sway and it’s set up for my specific usage but it’s where I spend 95% of my time. When I need to do something that just works without any hassle or thinking, I switch to old reliable Linux Mint DE.

I don’t see Alpine in memes very often so I assume most people are sane and not trying to make a workstation out of Alpine.

I’m also considering using PostmarketOS as an alternative to LMDE but I have other projects I want to finish before I want to play around with different distributions.

My server mysteriously stopped working in December. After a scheduled restart, the OS wouldn’t load so the fan was running on high for a few days while I was staying at a friends for a few days.

I checked the logs and couldn’t find anything suspicious. Loaded a previous backup that worked and still nothing loaded on startup. Tested the Pi 5 with a USB drive that had a fresh Alpine Linux install on it and everything loaded up fine so I was able to rule out any hardware issues. The HDD with the old OS mounted just fine to my laptop. I still have no idea what happened.

This happened a few days before my domain name expired and I was planning to change my domain name to something shorter. Decided to hold off on remaking my server from scratch until I finish a few other projects.

The other projects will help me manage my network connected devices so it’s all working towards a common goal. Fortunately I am getting very close to finishing those projects. I am putting the final touches on my last project and should done within a few days.

Next I’ll reinstall my Pi 4 with HomeAssistant again to fix it’s networking issue. Only the terrarium grow lights are affected and my gecko chose to hibernate outside of the terrarium this winter so she’s unaffected (heat lamps are controlled by a separate, isolated device). After that I’ll fix my Pi 5 server and this time go with Podman over Docker.

Sounds like a partially stressful vacation in South Korea. Did you get in trouble for not having the correct visa? Or was that HR’s fault?

My retirement plan is go gliding in a wing suit. I want to experience gliding like the birds do.

The short story is that I lost my mind with how I was being treated and how things were being run. I brought up my issues at a Monthly meeting.

Then I brought up even more issues with the fairness committee member which included racism, sexism, ageism, abusive managers, unfair treatment of contractors (I was a full time employee), work culture and a few other things.

That lead to a 3.5 hour meeting with the HR manager and the fairness committee member where I was basically blamed for all the company’s lack effort to do anything.

Enter more mental breakdown.

Eventually we had an employee survey where I emailed the corporate HR manager about my company’s horrible management. Made friends and gained the trust of corporate HR by proving I was able to work with corporate to change the work culture instead of seeking retribution.

My company HR terminated me. I emailed corporate HR, then got a lawyer. Nearly a year later I filed for wrongful termination (my lawyer caught covid and was delayed). One month after filing for wrongful termination, my old HR manager was forced into early retirement and she was back in her home country of Barbados before I had my meeting with the Labour Board and my old company.

Because I made friends with corporate HR, I brought a lot of attention to my old company after my termination. That place was forced to make very expensive changes and upgrades, there was a huge crackdown on safety which caused even more costs, HR became such a useless mess because the replacement HR manager inherited an absolute shit show, and management began to crumble without the old HR manager who used to hold all the corruption in place.

The cost of all the changes, upgrades, safety, external lawyers (they needed better lawyers than they had in house) and my severance came directly out of the pocket of the General Manager who was top position at that company. This place had over 300 employees and 300+ contractors over Canada, America and Mexico at the time.

That HR manager was so fucking petty. I’m not a petty person but my sister taught me everything I needed to know about pettiness. When people play petty games everyone loses. The petty person is naturally a loser and the person on the receiving end loses because they are forced to deal with the petty game bullshit. If I was going going to be petty, I had to lose before I even started.

It took me 10 months to get terminated. Early on I decided I wasn’t goint to quit silently. They were going to have to pay to get rid of me. Even if we both lost our jobs, I still feel like a winner.

When I was in my early 20’s I gave up on the idea of retirement. I was watching the environment being ruined and realized my retirement was going to be awful and stressful. I decided then to live for the moment so I could be happy.

I travelled many countries, live abroad for a number of years, met many different people, tried many different things, learned many things, slowed down to enjoy the little things and even got an HR manager fired to top off my list of personal accomplishments.

I don’t want to grow old and lately I’ve seen how awful it is to slowly die in a body you are losing control over. Too many times.

I’ve already made peace with my own death whenever it comes. My retirement plan now is extreme sports. If I’m going out, I’m doing it living in the moment.

From my perspective, it’s strange to see so many people fight to live long, to live forever or to create a legacy that persists beyond their death. Eveyone dies and everything will be forgotten. That should be something beautiful but instead it fills people with fear.

All my personal data is on encrypted partitions and drives. The only data that would be left behind is whatever I was hosting on my Raspberry Pi’s. Anyone can do what they please with that data, it doesn’t matter to me. The encrypted stuff can be easily wiped and the hardware can be reused by whoever comes after me.

That can possibly be it. I experimented with many types of music. Anything harder than punk and they’ll make themselves smaller and lower. I have mostly chill music and they’ll be relaxed but less curious.

Punk seems to hit the right spot for them to be relaxed and very animated. Also Katy Perry. One day a neighbour had a party and were blasting Katy Perry all day and the momma dove was just vibin’ the whole time.

Every year a Mourning Dove couple returns to lay eggs in one of our planters that hangs off the backyard patio railing. It’s slightly covered by the roof overhang so they are protected from rain, direct sunlight and circling prey overhead.

I usually leave a bowl of water for them nearby the planter and my dad will gently water the soil for the plants with all the birds staying put.

They generally don’t mind when people are outside on the patio as long as there are no sudden movements or loud noises.

I’ve noticed they are even more relaxed if I go outside and eat or play some music at a reasonable volume. Surprisingly they the most calm, curious and active when I play any punk music for them.

They’ve been returning for 5+ years now and I’m looking forward to seeing them again this spring.

I use Alpine Linux with Sway as my daily driver for browsing, writing scripts and to slowly customize my own work environment.

I have a Linux Mint DE partition that launchs directly to Steam for gaming. Tried Bazzite but the installer failed to find my SSD.

I also have a small partition that has an image of the LMDE .iso. It saves me from needing to grab a USB drive for when I inevitably fuck up the first two partitions and need a live USB environment to fix things.

I keep all my backups, music, work and sensitive data in a separate partition that’s encrypted so I can easily get back to work after any fuck ups. I’ve had of practice fixing my own fuck ups over the past year.

I know Alpine Linux uses IRC for development. https://alpinelinux.org/community/

I go there from time to time when I have an issue I can’t figure out myself.

It’s mature and simple which is why I believe it’s used more often by developers.

My store uses a similar tag. It points to the price of the product on the shelf to indicate the product is “Canadian.”

If you look to the right of the board, you can see the tag tucked into the shelf.

Canada

Strength sometimes takes a lot of patience to help a person fuck up in front of the wrong line of people.

That’s very much what I did. While causing noise with management, I made friends with someone who worked for corporate HR. My first email to her basically predicated what would happen if I raised a complaint to management. I gained her trust by focusing on changing the work culture and not looking for retribution.

I got terminated, lawyers got involved and in the end I got a my severance and banned from working with that international corporate. The HR manager of my company was forced into leaving the company before her retirement. If I didn’t play nice with corporate HR, the company HR manager would have probably worked until retirement like nothing happened.

I now have a new hate for bureaucracy that’s on a deep and personal level but at least I came out with some wins at the cost of some sanity.

The grey walls of the workplace somehow lost even more colour after that realization

All the things I had to do to protect myself from manipulative people.

They needed my attention. I became more independent and denied giving them any attention. They don’t like that I’m not giving them the attention they think they deserve so they try and turn everyone against me.

It happens often because I’m quiet and kind. They think that makes me easy to manipulate. I’ve become hardened to manipulators. So much to the point that physical touch with other people has become awkward or uncomfortable.

The trades are the same way, unfortunately. When the first woman apprentice showed up, all these guys started acting like they’ve never seen a woman before.

The quiet guy who I thought was one of the nicest people there told the apprentice that she belonged in an office. Others wouldn’t let her do anything “dangerous” or over explained all the simple shit to her. Others would just hang around her for uncomfortable periods of time. It was truly bizarre to witness.

She ended up only coming to me for work related questions because I was one of the few people who treated her like a person and not like a little girl. That’s how I found out all the gross and fucked up things the guys were saying to her. She didn’t last long and left for another company which already had women working there. I worked until I got terminated for bringing up issues with the work culture.

During the fight about work culture with management, the vast majority of my coworkers turned their backs on me. Treated me like an idiot and isolated me. They were all so fragile and scared they would have to change their awful ways.

I ended up quitting my apprenticeship and decided to never return to the trades. I can’t stand the culture and I no longer have the energy to fight alone.

Any woman that can remain in the trades or STEM is way stronger than I’ll ever be. I couldn’t imagine myself dealing with that shit daily for an entire life.

I was building an automation line that was going to be used to manufacture the battery tray for Hummers. When I found out in 2020 that my workplace was considered essential service during the covid lockdowns, I pretty much lost my mind. Stupidest fucking thing I ever heard.

There’s nothing essential about an electric Hummer.

I don’t work there anymore.

I don’t have any answer but I feel your pain. Years ago I wanted to learn C++ for Arduino and asking questions always seemed to have answers that talked down to me and made me feel stupid for asking.

I even tried proving that I made an effort to learn before asking. That didn’t work either. People were still rude.

I gave up.

Years later I got into into Linux and started learning POSIX scripting and self-hosting. I again tried asking questions but still received mostly rude answers but this time there were people in the mix of replies that did try to help. It was slightly better.

I tried showing off a script I was proud of but I did something wrong and people rudely let me know about my mistake. They took no effort to educate me on why it was wrong. I asked for a reason to understand what I did wrong but was left with silence.

I didn’t give up this time but I stopped asking for help and I’m still afraid to show off my projects.

It’s the exact same bullshit I experienced in the trades. I quit my apprenticeship and left the trades because people refused to understand that someone else with less experience won’t instinctively know all the basics. Starting something new is overwhelming and it’s hard to retain all that information the first time learning it all.

I feel like rudeness towards beginners is one of the biggest hypocrisies when so much of progress is built on sharing knowledge.

One lesson I learned from a this is that I either take the time to answer a question fully or don’t. I can at least feel good about the few times I spent answering a question. The people that asked the question were always appreciative of the time and effort I took to help them understand what they wanted to know.