I've been using this account as my primary for about a week now, and I'm think I'm settled on using it for the foreseeable future, so I guess it's time to do another #introduction post.

I'm a dad of four kids, and a web developer. I have a college degree in #Theater (or #Theatre) and had aspirations of being an actor. I kind of fell into web development as a career. It was a hobby back in high school, and I just needed to pay some bills after college, so I ended up doing this.

I always have aspirations to do other things, but for now, I'm pretty happy spending most of my time as a dad and husband.

Some day, I'd like to get back into #acting, or maybe do some #VoiceActing. I also enjoy #writing and will, from time to time, post some #MicroFiction, usually from somebody's #WritingPrompt.

I love #StarTrek, and usually watch at least one episode nearly every day. I like all #SciFi really, though, as well as #fantasy. I used to read a lot, but find I don't have as much time or mental capacity for it as I used to. I also enjoy watching #anime, and have really been enjoying the new episodes of #Bleach lately.

Feel free to follow me if you think we have similar interests, and I may follow you back, if I think likewise.

#WebDev #PHP #BackEnd #Laravel #introductions #Parenting #DadLife

Ever have one of those days, where life just beat you up, spat on you, and left you bleeding on the side of the road?

Well, around dinner time, my four-year-old came up to me and said, "Daddy, why are you being sad?"

So, yeah, one of those days, but at least it's nice to know my child has appropriate empathy for others, so that was nice.

I heard about the leaked live-action Powerpuff Girls trailer (a canceled series from The CW). The trailer is pretty bad. It looked like someone at CW was trying their formula of modernizing IPs and making them more adult/gritty (for example, Riverdale, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina [this was originally supposed to be CW], Nancy Drew, Tom Swift), but they made it really silly, because, it's the Powerpuff Girls.

Anyway, I heard about the trailer, but it took me a little bit of time to finally find it. I found it in a Reddit thread, but one of the top comments on the thread was something like "Looks like a DEI cast."

Yes, there are non-white actors in the cast. Two of the girls are played by Chloe Bennet and Yana Perrault, and Prof. Utonium was played by Donald Faison. I don't know have much to say about Chloe Bennet or Yana Perrault, but Donald Faison is a brilliant actor, and I can't imagine anybody actually complaining about him being cast in any comedic role.

But apparently if you take a cartoon character who originally appeared white, and cast anybody but a white actor, it's suddenly a DEI hire. Yeah, so, tell me you're a racist without telling me you're a racist.

I hate this world.

Five years ago today, I went to work like any other day. I arrived at the office at 8:30 AM. I got back home at 7pm.

If I slept for eight hours that day, that means I spent five and a half hours of my day for my own time (mostly family time).

Today, I sat down at my desk at 8am. I'll go downstairs for dinner at 5pm. Between those two times, I'll spend an hour having lunch with my wife and daughter, and a few five minute breaks here and there where I can chat with my wife, help around the house, and whatnot.

But, I'll also more work than I would have in the office (fewer people dropping by my desk), and I'll still spend some time collaborating with my colleagues (more effectively over Zoom, each at our own computers, than crowded around one person's).

This is why I work from home, and won't ever go back to an office.

#WFH #WorkFromHome #Telework #ReturnToOffice #RTO #Work

There's always a risk when using software that's only developed by a single person.

I've been using @[email protected], a single-user self-hosted ActivityPub server for this account for a few years now. I really like a lot about it, but especially I like that it's easy to host on my own hardware, so I'm never beholden to someone else to run my instance.

But, yesterday I finally got around to upgrading my @[email protected] box to 41 (I know, I should've done it months ago). With that upgrade came a Python version bump to 3.13.2. I always have trouble with Python every time it updates to a new version and suddenly a bunch of my stuff doesn't work anymore, but it's usually no more trouble than reinstalling everything.

Unfortunately, microblog.pub hasn't been updated for nearly two years, and many of the dependencies were pinned at versions that don't support Python 3.13.2. It took me several hours of digging through dependencies to figure out which ones I had to update to make it work again.

So, this account was offline for most of a day, and part of that was the actual Fedora upgrade, but much of it was trying to fix the broken dependencies.

And this all happened because the developer hasn't kept it up-to-date. I'm not upset at him personally. This is a part-time project, and it looks like something he doesn't personally use anymore. These things happen, and he has no obligation to me as a user of his software.

But, I've definitely learned an important lesson in all this: if I'm going to use software as an important part of my day-to-day activities, and that software is developed by a single person, then that person better be me.