Okay, so to start off, I just want to say that this is as much my portfolio as it is my web diary, so take from that what you will. Today I just wanted to start my time back by saying hello to Carolina if you are watching/reading, and I hope you enjoy my modernist site. If all has gone to plan, there is probably a message box on one of these pages that will be able to be used openly by anyone, so please leave a message with a signature! on the off chance that it is not there, please enjoy the other pages on the site, and I look forward to hearing from you soon!

TPM and Secure Boot

I want to take a moment to express my frustration with the new TPM and secure boot requirements for newer AAA games. To my knowledge, these requirements have not significantly deterred cheating and pose a considerable security risk, similar to leaving your keys with your address on the sidewalk. I, for one, do not want any of these large companies having access to my personal PC, regardless of whether there’s anything sensitive on it or not. This sets a very dangerous precedent moving forward, and as we have seen, these companies often create significant challenges for the average consumer. That said, I will sadly have to comply, at least until a fix or workaround is found. These games are how I spend quality time with my family, and I am not willing to give that up for a personal quest.

I went to the doc today. I can't say he was very helpful; in fact, I could probably say he was useless. Beyond putting some needles in my feet and leg and shocking me, he did nothing. He refused to answer my questions, and it makes me wonder if it was due to my marking it as a workers' compensation case that deterred him from speaking. If there is no deviation in my nerves, then what is causing my constant pain and lack of mobility? I wish this weren't just being discussed five years after the accident.

I was feeling quite down after the appointment, but luckily, I was able to spend some time with my grandpa while we played COD.

I don’t know how I could really forget, but I did start getting really into Warhammer, aside from the game Gladius. I have read a few books from the universe, and thanks to the graciousness of my family, I was able to put together a full 1000-point army. I had quite some trouble, but this week I finally found someone to play the game with me at the local club. If I happen to take any photos, they will be placed here. I really love how intricate these little guys can get. It helps me get my mind off everything, sort of the same way Legos do. I can just feel as the paint leaves the brush and covers the model, and it is sort of blissful—like watching a river flow.

I decided to go with the Tyranids, mostly because they are just FREAKIN' AWESOME, but also because their lore is quite interesting. I have never seen a hive mind portrayed in such a way, and I thought it was fascinating how large their reach is throughout the entire galaxy. It sort of hits that Lovecraftian horror that I really love to see.

So Thursday came and went, and the game was an absolute blast. It took my opponent and me roughly three hours to set up, talk, and play the game, so overall, for my first time, not too bad on the time front, though I will say it did hurt my feet a bit. Luckily, I was able to rest my bad foot; there were plenty of chairs. The game took place on a large table, nearly 2 square meters. The whole experience was truly something; I really started to get into the more nerdy aspects of it, especially after my opponent yelled out "WAAAHAHHHGHHH." It helped me enjoy seeing my model, an eighth of his model's size, destroying one of his actual characters, and I felt so much joy from that single moment.

Something that small truly was, and still is, an amazingly funny moment for me, especially considering my general luck with dice throughout the night. For a game played with so many dice, I barely managed to roll a six or two for every fifteen I rolled. Even despite that, though, I had an absolutely amazing time. It was especially nice to see that I am still social enough not to cause alarm to people. After five years of not going anywhere alone and meeting new people, it felt sort of liberating, although still quite scary. I feel like I have to really push myself to get out there when I know that before, I would have just gone. I don't know how to better put it than to say I feel like a completely different person most of the time, almost as if I have to relearn how to be the way I remember myself to have been.

Click Here

to see more

My grandpa has been working more on different projects in his shop that he has slowly been building up. This past week, he was working on a project for my grandma—some cabinet doors. Eventually, I will add the photos of them here. It turns out he had the dimensions slightly off, but still, it was good practice since he was working with some newer equipment.

After his recent surgery, most of us were pretty worried, but it actually went amazingly well. He has told me a few times how much of a difference it has made since then. I am really happy that the last surgery went well for him; it’s nice to hear how happy he gets without all of the severe pain in his back.

He is still working on models, and I will include some of those photos as well. His latest one was an older Porsche model, probably one of the most detailed yet, especially regarding the detail done inside the car, such as having actual writing on the shift knob to show the gear pattern. I want to say that maybe two days after starting a different model, he is already nearly done with it, now only needing to do assembly.

I am thinking I may need to change how I show off his cars and my Warhammer models, possibly giving them their own pages. Maybe making it "Gramps' Garage" or something like that.

Well, I can't say that I am surprised, but I am definitely a little bit infuriated. My old Debian desktop, where I was working on and storing my files for the website, is now gone, thanks to some useless help from the internet. Or perhaps it was my failure to consider every possibility. Regardless, I had to scrape the HTML for my site and redownload the pictures so that they can be put back up on the site from a different area. It’s either that or completely deleting everything and starting from scratch, which I sort of have to do with the SCSS and everything else.

For the future, I will be keeping three copies of the projects I work on and actually care about: one for my GitHub, which should be listed in my contacts but until now was not because I am a dummy; the second is the computer I am working on; and the third is an external hard drive. My main mistake for the most part was actually not updating my GitHub, because I have a very bad GitHub ethic.

Anyway, long story short, when trying to connect to a network manually, Debian was refusing to register my Ethernet connection. When using ifup, I would get the same response whenever I tried: that the adapter couldn't be found. Users beware, you’re in for a scare when upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie if you are also a gamer.