Every day there seems to be some update in WordPress. Either a theme update, plugin update, or wordpress minor update. I wish they would just update themselves! It’s not like Android where I’m approving permissions that the plugin has access to. It’s simply a one-click update button that I press, after which wordpress updates the plugin. That simple operation shouldn’t need my attention! Ugh. I wonder if there’s a plugin which just keeps shit updated? That would be a nice plugin.
I woke up at 6:30 AM today, without an alarm clock. My body seems to have figured out what the sun feels like at 6:30AM, and syncronized my circadian rhythm. Pretty cool trick!
Last night I played Minecraft with B. and S. Pretty fun time. I did a lot of home improvement in Minecraft, as well as a lot of mining for ores. I’m trying to get a really good crafting setup because I think crafting is my favorite part of the game. I want to produce all sorts of potions and enchanted weapons and sell them in our local economy.
I wish away-from-keyboard life was as easy as Minecraft! I earn all sorts of riches in Minecraft from putting in the time and energy. Unfortunately, life is not that easy, but I think there are parallels to AFK life. Firstly, I can make riches if I use the right tools and craft the right kind of relationships. I think persistence in AFK life is just as important as it is in Minecraft!
I shipped out 8 cards this morning, split between 3 orders. I think I have the most sales on weekends. The sealed product has been good to me so far. It’s amazing how people will spend $50 on an out-of-print booster pack! I think I need to charge more on some of them, because they really are super rare. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m the only seller in the entire USA who has these specific booster packs in stock.
April 2020 gross sales were $1063.04! Pretty nice! That’s an improvement over March 2020 sales of $640.65.
I’m in a predicament. I have a large order at Buyee warehouse which I could pay $200 to get shipped to me via DHL. That’s the only option. Well, I suppose that’s not the only option. The other option is to pay a lot less for literal shipping (via freight ship) which can take up to 3 months and could be subject to damage. What do I do at this point? I already spent ~$350 on simply buying the product. Do I spend another $200 to get it to my house? Do I spend less, and risk damages? Or do I wait until Japan Post resumes shipments to the USA?
I’m conflicted on this decision. I was originally intending to spend $115 on EMS shipping. The weight and the value of the items are not too much to where $115 is a hard choice. EMS usually takes a week to get to me, but we’re dealing with the COVID-19 lockdowns and airplanes are flying a lot less than pre-COVID.
I mentioned to my therapist that Texas is opening back up, in a limited capacity. I expressed my hope that things will be going back to normal soon. She enlightened me to the reality that we aren’t going back to the same normal. We’re going to experience a new normal.
I think she’s right. Politico is taking advantage of the situation. I don’t know what the CARES act entails, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some nasty laws in there which are going to erode people’s civil liberties. I say “which are going to” rather than, “have,” because the way law works is by infecting people’s minds with ideas that they are losing their power. They believe that the idea is true, and therefore enact the will of the lawmaker into their daily lives. If nobody gave a shit about laws, they would have an antibody to that infectious idea. They would reserve their power for themselves.
Anyway, the antibody for bad ideas is uncommon. The infectious idea may be out there, and people haven’t been infected as of yet, because the idea has not reached them yet. It will take some time for the viral meme to propagate.
I made a new website yesterday. It was an impulse creation that took about two hours to make, and I enjoyed the process. The website is flyingdeer.org, which is a domain I intended to resell to a certain company, but that company ignored my e-mail. It’s still listed on sedo, but I figure i’ll put it to use until someone buys it!
I learned a bit more about webpack during the making of this website. I learned that webpack encourages some pretty fucking dumb ideas. I wanted to make a simple static webpage, and use webpack to streamline the assets into as few minified files as possible. I did this for network and loading time efficiency. It turns out that the prevailing opinion on loading images via webpack is to use client-side javascript to find the dynamically generated name of the loaded image, and insert it into the Document Object Model using javascript.
Javascript to load an image? That’s fucking dumb. Have they heard of the HTML <img> tag? Why should my users need Javascript to load an image? Why should I have to load the page,, wait for the document to become ready, then load the javascript which inserts the image to the DOM? That’s so fucking stupid! I really don’t understand the benefit of adding javascript into the mix for such a thing.
I could see cases with dynamically changing images or a single page application with switchable views, but I’ve got a static page with an image. Use Javascript for that? That’s reinventing the wheel, adding unnecessary complexity, and adding a potential point of failure.
I said fuck that, and I configured webpack to load the image only for optimization purposes. I used a damn <img> tag to insert the static image to the page like a sensible person.
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there’s a good reason to use JS to insert images. I’m on team static websites at the moment. I think websites which rely heavily on javascript are just going to break in the near future. Static HTML websites are resilient. The simpler they are, the better. They are easily mirrored, they don’t have dependencies which can become vulnerable to security exploits, they scale gracefully to varying screen widths. Static HTML websites are the best method for withstanding the test of time.
I’m afraid that my wordpress is incredibly vulnerable. Vulnerable to time. I already know of one central point of failure which will prevent my site from automatically posting my articles should I become incapacitated. I enforced SSL on my website via my nginx config and a strict SSL configuration. Letsencrypt requires that I update my cert every 3 months, and if I don’t, my website becomes completely inaccessible to users. Updating my cert is a manual process. If I become incapacitated, it’s game over for my blog. No post-mortem blog posts. My words will die with me.
This is just one case that I know of. There could be a thousand other cases where my blog has a technical glitch, and becomes completely inaccessible to viewers. I don’t think there’s any solution using the technology I’m employing. This software stack is a complex bohemoth of code which simply requires a maintainer.
It’s 100% unreliable in the long term. Every 3 months, the SSL cert expires and has to be renewed. I could make a cron job or a systemd timer to re-run certbot, but what if letsencrypt changes their API, and certbot has to be updated? What if mysql encounters an error and borks? What if vultr implements an emergency hypervisor patch which prevents my VM from booting without user interaction?
GAME, THE fuck, over.
I just said, "The Game." Shoutout 2010 4chan.
So the WordPress dead-man switch is implausible. Perhaps this would be a different story if I published to WordPress.com rather than my personal WordPress instance.
I’m thinking at this point that I should implement something different. Or maybe this is a fool’s errand. All this work for a potential WordPress dead-man’s switch might be silly. No, I’m 100% sure it’s 100% silly. I don’t even have enough funds loaded into Vultr to where this VPS would stay online until 2022. A wordpress deadman switch is not implausible at this point, it’s impossible.
I could take steps to make it possible. I think it might not be worth the energy though. I’m seeking vanity in that I think it would be cool to be known as the person who died but their blog posts kept coming. But what’s the point if I’m dead? It’s not like I can appreciate that for myself. I’d be leaving something behind for the people who are still here. Why not just write a paper journal which is orders of magnitude more resilient than this setup? It wouldn’t have the same audience, but what does it matter? I’d be dead, there’s nothing for me to appreciate because appreciation is something for the living!
I just had a nice 5 minute yoga session during my pomodoro technique break.
This video is pretty good, but it has a pet peeve of mine. Bloopers at the end! I don’t like bloopers at the end of youtube videos. Unless it’s a well produced comedy skit, no bloopers!
Also, another pet peeve. Video intros! We can all read the title and see the thumbnail. The meaning of the video is already clear! Amateur tip*. Waste no time– jump straight into the video content.
* I say amateur tip even though I want to say Pro Tip. But I'm not youtube video professional so I can't say that!
I’m being awfully complainey today. I think I’m not well rested. I went to sleep at around 1:30AM and woke up at 6:30. 5 hours is a bad amount. 3, 6, or 9 are better amounts. I think 1.5 hours is around the length of a sleep phase of mine, so sleep durations in multiples of 1.5 hours gives the best effect. Short circuiting those phases leave me feeling off.
Or maybe I got good sleep. I did wake up without an alarm, which perhaps suggests that I woke up after the conclusion of a sleep phase. IDK. Anyway, I could have got good sleep, but I’m suffering from aches and pains from being so active. I have been walking a lot. Even on days when I tell myself I should take a break, I end up walking. I’ve been doing a lot of yoga as well, trying really hard to stretch out my legs and improve how well I can fold over. I’ve been doing squats as well, focusing on having good form.
All this physical activity culminates in a better overall physical feeling, but there are the aches and pains that come with it. I think I’ll eventually reach a plateau where I gain a lot of strength and don’t feel the aches and pains. That is, the aches and pains that come from this beginner level of exercise. I’ll feel that pain again as soon as I level up the difficulty!
I’m taking a day today where I don’t walk. During the walk to the mailbox this morning, I felt that my knees could use a break. My left knee is making a light popping sound when I bend it. It’s similar to the popping sound my ankles made a few years back when I over trained for Bloomsday. I think it was Bloomsday training, anyway. Yeah, it must have been, because I got my vivobarefoot shoes and was eager to break them in. I trained hard every day for a week, and ended up in so much pain that I could barely walk. I didn’t give myself enough time to recover!
So I suppose I will not let that happen again. I am going to intentionally take care of myself today. I’m going to do lots of stretching, I’m going to eat well and I’m going to keep walking to a minimum. I’m going to take it easy, not get stressed out with work, and I’m going to reach out to friends.
It’s not easy being cheezy!
I have no idea why I said that
Speaking of food, I think it’s about time for breakfast! I’ll wrap this post up with some words of gratitude.
I’m grateful for my kazoo. I’m kinda desperate for things to be grateful for this morning. I have a lot to be grateful for. Food, shelter, family, heath. Those are all wonderful things and I’m fortunate to have them all. I am very wealthy in that aspect! I say I’m desperate for things to be grateful for because of the sour mood I’m in. I’m quick to complain right now, and I think that’s because I have a physical vulnerability– muscle pain! Anyway, I have a kazoo here on my desk which I keep in a little paper box labelled, “toys.” I pull the kazoo out when I’m playing video games and want to surprise people with some fun noises. “Is that a kazoo?” they ask with a laugh.
I’m grateful for supplements. Do I even need them, or is it just a marketing trick? My ancestors didn’t have supplements, and they seemed to do alright. Ohhh, is the lifespan of humans increasing because people have supplements now? Maybe I should listen to Joe Rogan, LOL. He speaks highly of vitamins, and just look at his physical condition. He’s ripped and healthy as can be! Ok then, I suppose I could use more supplements. I’m all outta my omega 3 DHA fatty acid pills.
I take a DEVA (iron free) vegan multivitamin & mineral supplement, and B12 in the form of nutritional yeast. I take omega3 DHA when I have it, but I haven’t had it for months. I think I could also use vitamin D, but that shit is expensive. It’s all expensive! I wonder what is bullshit consumer nonsense, and what is actually necessary and good for me.
I dunno. Maybe an experiment would be in order. I could take all the above on a daily basis and see if I feel any differently.
I’m grateful for experimentation! Haha, easy cop out of a thing to be grateful for. Anyway, I’m stickin’ with it because I’m a KING! I am a king and my ideas are worthwhile and I’m a good person and I like nacho cheese. But only if it’s Daiya vegan nacho cheese, of course! Ooooh, I want salty tortilla chips and olives and avocado and salsa and natcho sheez and green onion and TATER TOTS
omg I want tater tots. I’m going to have to get me some potates when I go grocery shopping on monday.
Can you tell that I’m hungry?
Oh yeah, experimentation is something to be grateful for because it’s a good way to figure out things my body enjoys and decide whether or not to incorporate that thing into my life.
96. I trust myself.
97. I will do my best with whatever comes my way.
98. I have a purpose that I am fulfilling.
Excelsior!
