That was a crazy story yesterday, amirite? No crazy stories today, my dude.

So my sleep schedule is drifting even more. I feel mad and disgusted about it. Yesterday I pretty much spent the whole day working on getting my new phone all modded out to my liking. By the end of the day I was stressed out and exhausted, but I felt the need to just keep going. That’s addiction right there. Hours flew by as I researched Android, LineageOS, Rooting techniques, etc. etc.

Today I feel like shit. I think the cortisol or whatever the stress chemical is, really builds up in my system and causes me to feel ill.

It was a total addict moment. Saturday and Sunday both just consisted of me getting higher than a kite on Android tweaking. It’s not a good thing seeing as I dumped two whole days, three if you count friday when I repaired hardware.. And for what? For a phone that barely functions like I want to because I want more than what seems to be possible.

I want a phone that uses data only. It can make calls over wifi or data, doesn’t need an actual phone number, and I take calls through some sort of app. It’s a no-go. It’s an engineering feat that I can’t accomplish, whether it’s my shitty internet or the lack of Google Play Services, burnerapp doesn’t send me notifications when I get calls or texts.

It was a wasted two days. I really just have to get a Net10 sim or something. Tracfone… something. My hacked phone idea will result in nobody being able to contact me, and me barely being able to contact them. That’s not what I want out of a phone.

The other wasteful thing is how I spent so much money trying out various apps, subscribing to burnerapp, buying parts… I am even more in debt now!

There is one silver lining. I think I could repair phones and flip them now. I learned a lot from this repair, and I can reproduce it again with another OnePlus and probably make a decent profit.

One thing that grinds my gears is how I spent most of the day downloading apps I need and configuring things, then at the end of the day I just did a factory reset because I thought I did something wrong.

Now I have to do everything again. Silver lining there, I can skip some apps that I installed the first time which I’m not actually going to use. Like Termux. I just installed that because Elliot and Darlene use that in Mr. Robot.

So yeah. I’m pretty exhausted today. I’m calling today my cheat day, and I’m not planning on going outside to exercise today. I do have to paint today at Racom, so that will get me moving my body at least.

reheating some leftovers from dinner last night. My signature curry. It keeps getting better and better as I try new ways to spice it up. I added salsa and a pinch of cocoa this time. Can’t taste either of them but the whole mixture seems to have been taken up a notch!

Someone in the family started this weird tradition for Christmas. We eat Asian food on Christmas eve. K. said I should make curry, because I often talk about my curry. However, there is a problem with that! My curry is Indian insipred, not asian!

I don’t plan on backing down. As long as I can afford the ingredients, I have a vegan Japanese style curry recipe that I will be making.

One of my pet peeves has become cooks using those instant golden curry cubes which can be bought from the grocery stores. Those are great for a quick lunch or something, but if you are making a meal for the family, the meal needs to be made with passion!

Don’t get me wrong, Golden Curry cubes are delicious. But Golden Curry cubes are so recognizable as such! A good curry must be uniquely crafted from spices and individual ingredients, thought out and developed over months of experimentation. In this respect, I’ve already failed, since I have never made the Asian curry recipe I plan on making on Christmas eve.

There is a humorous trope in anime which follows the line of thinking I just mentioned. Curry competitions! After making curry so many times, I realize that curry is an art form. Nobody in the world makes curry like I do. My latest batch, the one I’m eating on right now, has several secret ingredients. I’ll go ahead and spoil those secrets right now. Chia seeds, sesame seeds, cocoa, salsa… In addition to the regular things you might find in an Indian curry. These aren’t secret. Paprika, Chilli powder, Chilli peppers, coriander, cumin, garlic, onion salt, sea salt, ginger, cayenne pepper, black pepper, nutritional yeast…

I couldn’t even tell you the measurements I use. It varies every time I make my curry. It’s an iterative process, where the next time I make curry, I’ll remember last curry, and intuitively pour less or more of a spice based on how I remember the last curry. Over time I have made my curry less spicy, and more flavorful. Less salty, and more rich tasting.

Making curry is truly an art form, with cooks forging their creations over and over for months or even years until they end up with a delectable masterpiece in a steamy hot sauce pan.

So this is why I do not like Golden Curry cubes. Tasty, but too generic. Flavorful, but not fulfilling. Delicious, but not a delicacy.

The build process (I’m just going to go ahead and call it that) consists of three parts. 1) Curry, 2) roux, 3) Rice. It seems a little more complicated than my standard curry method, which consists of me throwing everything in a saucepan and forgetting about it for an hour. Well, I still have the rice which cooks separately.

Seems like a doable recipe. I just gotta go out and get those ingredients! I should really try it once or twice before I do it for Christmas eve.

Oh, I just found a vegan KATSU CURRY from avantgardevegan. It calls for a BANANA?! I would love to make an avantgardevegan recipe, but his are often very challenging to make. I’m not on Gaz’ level!

Also his recipe has wheat flour and tofu. wheat flour would mean K. would not able to eat it, and I don’t have faith in my ability to cook tofu!

Gaz makes it look suuuuuuuuuper easy! Maybe it is not as hard as I imagine it would be, but because of the wheat and the complexity, I don’t think I’m going to attempt it. Sticking to the recipe shown in the vid above!

I just dove into phone modding again. It’s a trap. I can’t help myself.

I think I know why the burner app is so unreliable, and doesn’t send me notifications. It’s dependent on GSF, whatever that is. Something google.

So I really do just need a basic phone service if I want to be Google free.

Google Services Framework. So it looks like I won’t be using Burnerapp. Or the unlimited 3G AT&T card I wanted to use. burnerapp requires an actual phone number to even log in.

My dreams are crushed!

I just have to choose my battles though. I think I could find a perfect method, but it would take a LOT of work. And I don’t want to invest in this sort of thing. I want to invest in web development, because I think it’s the key to my future. Maybe there is potential in modding android phones though. I could see myself fixing screens all day and turning a profit. Maybe I should try that out a little more.

But for real. I need an actual phone number. I can always get a burner phone or use burnerapp without GSF. It’s totally doable to use burnerapp without GSF, I just won’t get text notifications or be able to take incoming calls. I’ll only see them when I open burnerapp. Maybe I could workaround this problem by using some app that will keep burnerapp running in the foreground when the phone is idle. Or maybe if I could keep it running in the background, that would be enough?

Signal deals with not having GSF by keeping itself running all the time. I’d have to test and see if Burnerapp would behave the same way.

So I have a Net10 SIM card on the way. Originally I was getting the SIM card so I could connect it to an unlimited $35 a month data plan. But that data plan doesn’t come with a phone number, so using it in a phone would not work so well. Especially considering that burnerapp REQUIRES an actual phone number to log in.

Phones are like fax machines. They’re antiquated! Get up to speed, all ya’ll phone companies!

In a few years it will probably be a lot better. Or maybe it’ll be worse, due to vendor lockin? Google and Apple I mean. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about Google. I’m running LineageOS with microG now. MicroG isn’t even associated with my google account, and I plan on keeping it that way unless there is some immediate need for an app which requires GSF.

Burnerapp and Dingtone both allow payments through their website, so I don’t even need a google account to use google wallet. Lyft I hear doesn’t work with microG, but that’s okay because there is a mobile browser version of Lyft which I can use if I need to get a ride.

This new phone and software stack have a definite learning curve associated with them. It’ll take me some time to adapt, but overall I think it will be for the better. I finally have a Google-free phone. I can do all sorts of things with it that most people can’t do.

Joe Rogan made fun of me the other day. I was giggling like a school girl when he mentioned Linux users and phone rooters. I gotta share the clip, it’s just too funny!

So yeah, I gotta go paint at 4PM. It should take a few hours then we will have a nice freshly painted white wall. I’m guessing it’ll take 4 hours. Dunno if we’ll do it all in one day though.

It’s 1:49 now. I need to put my phone away and get working on Jepurdee again. Oh I got dishes to wash. I swear, I’m a total junkie. Three days have flown by like nothing, all because of this damn phone!

This is why I shouldn’t allow myself to engineer a phone system. I get too addicted to the pursuit! And I have no resources to support myself through the experience, so my health just goes out the window.

Like I said, I gotta choose my battles. Phones are not one of them. I can pay Librem for that. Or I can have a simple rooted phone, and don’t try to root my network experience. I gotta pick one or the other! Modded network for low low fees, or modded phone for high high privacy. Both seem rather difficult to achieve at the moment.

In a few years I think there will be a lot better options.

I’ve been writing 2000 words the past few days, so I think I’ll just make that the norm. I’m at 1900 words now.

I’ll just continue this train of thought because I’m so deeply obsessed with it at the moment. I think I could have what I wanted if I had a phone with two sims. One sim could be unlimited data, the other sim could be my “actual” phone number which I could use for logging into apps and what not. That actual phone number could be via Twilio.

Oh wait, I could juse use the one sim card for unlimted data inside my phone, and create a TwiML bin to forward all texts to my burner number.

HOLY SHIT THIS IS A BREAKTHROUGH!

But the archillie’s heel in this case is GSF. No GSF means no notifications for SMS or incoming calls via burnerapp. Which makes my phone perfect in my mind LOL. Phones should not interrupt their owner all the time. They should be checked like e-mail. But if everyone did that, nobody could make calls because nobody would be notified of an incoming call!

I think it would be better. Phone calls are antiquated. I think voice messaging is a better method of comms. Voice is more expressive than text, and everybody checks their messages on their own time.

But this is quite radical. Radically good maybe, but people don’t take well to radical. I suppose it’s not far off from my current way of operating a phone. I usually leave my phone on silent 24/7 anyway.

Not really sure about this. I’ll have to think about it, but I do think I can have the best of both worlds with a little more effort!

I can’t get enough. I’m such a junkie!