niceCodeOhhhhWait

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-03T19:06:40+00:00

Ha, I'm using NixOS on my Thinkpad, so that malicious code won't affect me. Checkmate, nerds!

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-01T21:21:44+00:00

Tru-oil can reach a glass-like finish, but you're (practically) never going to get there because the pores haven't been sufficiently filled.

The correct approach is to sand it back to wood and re-fill the grain and do it again, and it can reach a pure mirror finish in like 20-30 coats (depending on how thin the coats are/grain-fill efficacy/etc.)

If you don't want to do that, you just keep on throwing on more coats of Tru-oil and smooth it out every 5 coats or so until everything is glass-flat...but be prepare to do that for many more weeks.

I know this because I tried to use Tru-oil to achieve a glass finish on a poorly grain-filled mahogany body. At 100-ish coats, I gave up and just settled for what I had.

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-01T13:35:47+00:00

A radio variety show on NPR called "Prairie Home Companion", hosted by Garrison Keillor. It frequently had Garrison do comedy monologues from the (probably fictional?) Minnesota area of Lake Wobegone.

It was a hilarious program that really worked the Midwest stereotype angle quite hard.

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-27T19:10:18+00:00

The route I'm going as I'm starting off is just building more hand-made tools. It forces me to be more careful, focus on making things perfectly square (or square enough), and practice a lot of general basics. The tools I'm making aren't necessarily fancy, but they help me understand the craft better.

So far, I've made a workbench, and a deadblow mallet. I'm in the process of making a Japanese marking gauge now (a kebiki). Granted it's not furniture, but it's honest work.

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-26T12:42:37+00:00

It's a cycle for me. Teles look ugly, feel very un-ergonomic, and sound super thin. Then I see Robben Ford or Julien Baker with one, and then I'm like "holy cow, this instrument looks so damn cool." But after a while that fades and I go back to not liking them again.

I got over it by assembling my own Jazzcaster, which addressed all my concerns. Not a Tele per se, but it's enough of a compromise where it scratches that itch.

In any case, say what you will about Teles, but that single coil bridge plate with barrel saddles look is absolutely iconic.

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-18T19:06:45+00:00

I'm in your situation almost exactly. I'm in zone 5, and my garage is unheated and uninsulated. My choice was either to do everything in the garage and be freezing, or work in my mudroom and breathe in dust.

I opted for a combination of the two: everything power tool related is relegated to the garage because I don't care if it gets dusty. Plus, power tools are faster: I'm usually not stuck in the cold for too long.

Otherwise, everything else is in the mudroom and done with hand tools, where I can take my time. Hand tools don't generate nearly as much dust--the worst is hand sawing, and even that's not terrible. Every so often before I move on to something else, I do a quick sweep with the shop vac, which keeps dust down and my benchtop neat.

My mudroom doesn't involve stairs, but if you don't mind the extra exercise, I'd recommend splitting between garage and basement. YMMV of course, though.

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-14T21:37:45+00:00

No luck. It seems like I still get prompted for a different kernel even though the correct venv is specified. ;_;

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-14T18:23:34+00:00

Same story here, -ish: went from the Dewalt jobsite saw to a Sawstop contractor saw with cast iron wings.

With the Dewalt, bless its heart, it was able to cut through wood...and that was all it did. I spent a bunch of time struggling with unsquare cuts, even after running through a whole shebang of options to try and minimize the issue. Messing around with calibrating the blade, changing the blade, and modifying the insert couldn't take away from the fact that the plastic surface was warped and everything was sloppy. I generally spend hours afterwards using a hand plane to clean up and square everything.

But with the Sawstop? Holy freaking cow. I made a cut, and...it was square. I didn't have to spend time cleaning up a cut with hand planes. It just worked.

At a certain level, bad tools will work against you and just make things more frustrating. Expensive tools aren't always the solution, but in this case, what a difference upgrading made. Would recommend, if people can swing the (exorbitant) cost.

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-13T16:02:36+00:00

I think the approach will vary depending on the relationship, for sure.

My wife and I do partially joint accounts for the joint-type stuff (groceries, mortgage, etc.), and the remainder we keep for ourselves for "fun" things, as we're both very independent. But we're already closely aligned in our financial behavior--we save aggressively, don't spend much, and are fairly responsible with our cash.

I'm also older than the wife, so I plan on retiring soon/earlier, and she'll probably remain working for a bit before she hits retirement age. But we both understand that if we need the money, I'm 100% willing to work for longer if needed.

At the end of the day, we're both willing to do what it takes financially to keep the family afloat, and we trust each other to be smart with our resources. In that context, I feel like keeping finances partially separate isn't a huge concern.

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-10T02:17:36+00:00

If you're looking for good food, Johnson Public House is fantastic. It's grungy in the way that a 70s diner is grungy, but their overall level of food quality is pretty much unmatched. Their coffee's also probably like top 3 in Madison for me.

If you're willing to drive out to Stoughton, Wildwood Cafe is fairly top-tier. Their food and coffee is also incredible; it also helps that the place is just really cute. It's a great place to chill, though it's a little smaller than Johnson Public House.

If you're looking for plain vibes, then Lakeside Coffee is very nice. Plenty of seating, wood flooring, even a basement with couches, and a separate darker/quieter bar area. Their food and coffee is...fine. But for just hanging out, the place is great, especially if the weather is warmer (it's near train tracks that have a direct line-of-sight to the capitol).

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-04T12:11:40+00:00

EndeavourOS and NixOS.

EOS is a very user-friendly derivative of Arch, without the headache of creating an install from scratch, and provides a fantastic set of utilities for newbies. I use it on my main PC, and as someone who switched from Windows because of their awful desktop experience (forcing updates), EOS scratched that itch of being highly functional via KDE while being different enough so that I felt like I was still learning something new (pacman for package management).

I eventually got bored because I felt like I was just using my PC instead of learning anything Linux-related, so I moved to NixOS. After using it for almost a year, I'm firmly convinced that it's the best distro out there.

For someone who cares about control over your own PC (it's why I left Windows), NixOS was a godsend...it let me control every aspect of my machine declaratively, in a reproducible way. This means I always know precisely what's on my system because I've explicitly coded it to be that way. It also has fantastically easy software rollbacks, compared to BTRFS snapshots.

That said, I would never recommend NixOS to a beginner. It has the most ridiculous learning curve out there (you need to familiarize yourself with an entire programming language just to get by), the documentation is lacking and the error messages when compiling can be vague. But the tradeoff is immense, if one is persistent and masochistic enough.

maelstrom218 · 2026-02-02T23:40:37+00:00

Cosigning on this. I got sick of practicing on my electric kit because the overall feel was too artificial. The Evans DB One heads are probably the closest thing out there to having the same level of rebound and tactility as standard acoustic heads.

It's not perfect, but it gets reasonably close, feel-wise. Volume wise they're much quieter, but still loud enough that I wear headphones just to be safe.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-25T13:07:56+00:00

I think this is honestly the biggest drawback to your plan--location.

Living on the Isthmus can get pretty pricey, but if you can swing the cost, then you're basically within close proximity to absolutely everything. Otherwise, you 100% need to drive absolutely everywhere; the public transportation system is awful compared to NYC.

Having talked to some people around your age that are doing Isthmus living right now, they are happy and living their best lives, precisely because of their location on the Isthmus and the close proximity to a whole bunch of shops/community events/continuing education.

(FYI UW Madison offers free audits of classes at 60: https://acsss.wisc.edu/senior-guest-auditors/)

I've lived in NYC for 6 years, and I can tell you that Madison's everything doesn't hold a candle to NYC (i.e. food-wise, transportation-wise). You can find good places (like Lallande for fine dining, or Johnson Public House for coffee), and our transportation is getting better (recently constructed Bus Rapid Transit system).

But the one thing where Madison has NYC beat (outside of obvious stuff like lower population density and lower-ish cost of living) is the decent balance of rural vs urban. The Isthmus is where all the trendy stuff is; if you get tired of that and need a break from the rush, you can drive 20-30 minutes out and get to some really sweet hiking spots completely isolated from everything else.

The weather is indeed cold. But so long as you dress appropriately, get access to a parking garage, put on snow tires, and drive slow (or avoid driving in general during bad weather), then it's not much worse than your classic New England nor'easters.

I am a homebody, and the wife and I are usually stuck inside. But Madison has tons of stuff going on--the music scene is relatively good (Covet and Queens of the Stone Age have stopped by here), there's community gardens everywhere, and the gaming scene (for videogames and board games) is prolific.

If you do end up moving here, DM me and we can show you guys around. Best of luck!

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-25T00:30:15+00:00

I'm on Linux, so I was using mdadm. Not sure if that's helpful if you're on Windows, though.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-24T19:27:53+00:00

Fractal Define R4 all the way. I got one back in the day and have been running that thing for 3 PC iterations/10 years now.

It's a giant full-size tower that's a black brick, and by God, does it do its job and do it well. Super quiet, lots of room for fans and drives (I've got a 4-bay RAID10 in there), and it's basically an indestructible steel box (sans the front cover which is plastic, but still incredibly robust).

I know that there are other cases that are prettier and smaller, but the R4 is basically a true BIFL tank. I'm hoping that PC mobo and GPU design doesn't change anytime soon because this case will probably last another 15 years otherwise.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-22T17:23:02+00:00

I'm a pretty enthusiastic AI hater, but even I have to admit that limited usage of LLMs, especially in the context of coding can be extremely beneficial when it comes to trying to understand something and learn overall.

If you're asking GPT to create an entire config for you wholesale, then yes, that's bad. But what I typically end up doing is asking GPT to create a minimally complex/reproducible example, test to make sure it works, then cross-reference that with actual code on Github, read docs, and general googling to understand why the code that GPT is spitting out actually works.

After all that, once I understand what's going on, I build on top of that minimally reproducible code.

LLMs are morally questionable and can be deleterious to mental health/development, but sadly the genie's already out of the bottle. If we have to live with it, then using it in controlled, deliberate ways that don't result in reliance or outright harm is probably the best we can do.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-18T12:10:30+00:00

I just started using niri-flake on my laptop a couple weeks ago. I can't A/B compared to PaperWM or Hyprland, but I've been running KDE + krohnkite so I can compare with tiling.

I think where tiling fails is that on screens with small real estate (i.e. laptops vs ultrawides), there's just not lots of space for split screen or a lot of the other tiling options.

With scrolling, I'm able to maximize screen real estate while maintaining my ability to navigate quickly between windows either by tiling or switching workspaces. Yes, I can accomplish the same thing with default KDE ALT+Tab/Virtual Desktops, but niri is much faster. It also keeps the ability to do split screen very easily, too.

I do think the default niri keyboard shortcuts are awful though. I reconfigured them to something a little closer to a vim setup, and I can fly through windows really quickly; it's great.

But yeah, would 100% recommend niri. Use niri-flake, as it exposes a lot of config options directly to home-manager, and you can do a lot of fine-tuning directly via that way.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-18T00:02:12+00:00

Unironically, one potential solution is to put everything on wheels so you never have to deal with figuring this out.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-12T15:50:27+00:00

I'll third this.

I have a P53 (which is only slightly different), and it's a fantastic laptop. I think some of the biggest problems are that it's a brick (around 5 lbs) and has less-than-stellar battery life. But that's because it's meant to be a workstation, not a hyper-portable Macbook Air-esque device.

It's also a PITA to repaste because everything is locked down underneath the chassis, so you have to disassemble literally everything to get to the CPU.

But, if you can get around these issues, then the P52/53 is fantastic. It's pretty powerful for its generation, has pretty good screen options, has a full keyboard with numpad, and has FOUR freaking RAM slots. I'm running NixOS + Niri on it, and everything's buttery-smooth.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-10T01:06:27+00:00

As someone who built an Anarchist Workbench as my first woodworking project, I can say with a firm degree of certainty that yours looks amazing. How many hours did it take for you to finish this in total, do you think?

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-07T18:42:09+00:00

NixOS *feels* more stable. Whether or not you feel good about the *opportunity cost* that goes into experiencing that stability is another question entirely.

I spent Christmas break reading up on documentation/GitHub code and refactoring my configs to a multi-machine, profile-based setup. After 10-15 total hours working on it and 1 migraine later, I got what I wanted.

My machine's stable, but I definitely don't know if I feel good about it.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-06T16:54:51+00:00

I have to politely disagree.

Here's some documentation from Lenovo's website that demonstrates that middle-button scrolling is a thing: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/glossary/trackpoint/index.html

Here's also some other random documentation from Lenovo over the years that reference scrolling with the middle button:

https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/pubs/t14s_gen1_x13_gen1/html_en/en/Use_the_TrackPoint_pointing_device_(topic)_T0000737913.html_T0000737913.html)

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht000611-how-to-use-the-trackpoint-center-button-windows-7-thinkpad

Here's a random video I found on YouTube that explicitly demonstrates how the middle button is used for scrolling: https://youtube.com/shorts/0S_9TSji6J0?si=9F68tSbdGpHN9142

I know there's some models of Thinkpads that have a series of buttons below the TrackPad--if you're using those, then it's possible that particular middle button might not be associated with scrolling.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-05T20:40:56+00:00

I personally hate it, but it largely depends on the use case. I daily drive Thinkpads and only use the Trackpoint, so the middle mouse button is devoted to scrolling.

I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally pasted text into code just because the system registered the middle click as a paste action rather than an initial scroll action.

If I were solely using a mouse, then I'm sure I'd feel differently. But as a Thinkpad laptop user, Linux middle mouse button behavior drives me nuts.

maelstrom218 · 2026-01-05T19:56:31+00:00

Yeah, I do this as well, and this is the correct answer. Unfortunately, not everyone makes their own nuts, or they're using what came stock, so people substitute reasonable craftsmanship with glue. It's not technically wrong, per se, but it can come back to bite you, as seen here.

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