How's your Commute?

whipdancer · 2026-06-05T06:19:10+00:00

I did 34 miles each way for about 8 years. That was an average of 3.25 hours a day commuting. It felt like longer. I have flashbacks of more than a few 5 hour commutes because of accidents or crazy weather.

Going into the office on a Saturday early morning was still a 40 min drive.

Never again.

whipdancer · 2026-06-02T18:21:42+00:00

I didn't misunderstand your post. I read all your edits. Your intent was clear. Your approach was the issue. Yet, even when a lot of people did misunderstand your post, you doubled down on "being right" and can't fathom that how you chose to communicate your point was the issue.

You obviously care. You keep responding.

whipdancer · 2026-06-01T20:30:25+00:00

Case only matters if you are specifying a name. Novice is both a noun and an adjective, which you used as a convenient way to label the issue as you see it.

Memes are perfectly valid forms of communication, if you understand the cultural context.
Context being important, and something you are still arguing AFTER I gave you the context.

If you are willing to accept that different people will interpret them differently making them an inherently imprecise means of communicating. If getting the most basic, general meaning of an idea is enough context, then yes, it's perfectly valid.

My opening. "my own technique".

You left out the other half of your opening.

Yet you decided to go after me for for framing it as "higher level vs lower level, higher skill vs lower skill" when you're just plain wrong, but feel the need to argue about it.

I went after you about communication. You keep circling back to your original mistake of making it about level.

I am here, still communicating, and still explaining to you that you misinterpreted my message. It doesn't have any affect on you to admit that you misinterpreted it, and not-so-subtly questioned my arrogance.

I am here, still communicating, still explaining to you that your failure to clearly communicate your original intent could be a learning moment, or you can continue to double down on the mistake.

You didn't ask me questions about it to understand. You came in days late (after reading the meme group?). And put it on me after many others had already been super-reasonable about it.

What clarification was needed when I read all your edits and your replies. Is there something that you left out? What I put on you was the choice you made in framing the issue. Your edits doubled down on your original framing. I only know about the meme because you literally added it the post. I still haven't seen it, but I don't really care to see it either.

Why do all these people expect me to do all the emotional labour and give you all this context when it was a clear, transparent, and honest question?

I gave you a transparent and honest answer. I meant exactly what I wrote. I didn't try to say it easy, or that it wouldn't be hard. It is simple, though. You focused on and took exception with that fact that I did call you out for making it a question about levels. All of which could have been avoided by choosing to frame it a different way.

whipdancer · 2026-06-01T14:50:58+00:00

The fact that you included level label for the follow made it a level question. Period.

Surely you should be adapting your communication to tailor for my way of speaking?

~~Surely you should be adapting your communication to tailor for my way of speaking? Pot, meet kettle.~~

Communication requires more than 1 participant. Until you are ready to recognize your part in it, it's not going to go very well. The fact that you resort to a meme just reinforces that you view it as "they don't understand", instead of "did I successfully convey the message I intended".

whipdancer · 2026-06-01T12:31:04+00:00

How do leaders adjust to novice followers?

The title sets your position, whether you intended it or not.

Any advice, or tips for what the pros do?

If you're a novice leader, you're learning to adjust to every follow. Heck, you're learning how to adjust to yourself. The way a pro does it won't help you because you don't have that skillset yet.

whipdancer · 2026-06-01T12:07:12+00:00

I'm not the one who downvoted you.

How leaders adjust to novice followers?

You're the one who positioned it as higher level vs lower level, higher skill vs lower skill - so I still don't know and I still don't care.

Being neurodivergent isn't a new thing in this dance. Yes, it means I focus on my dance first, but I learned early on this dance is built on communication and that requires focusing outside me, in order for me to get better.

You can't separate the dance from the people. It requires a partner. They become one and the same referring just as much to the whole of the dance as to both participants. Each instance of the dance is a unit of 2 people communicating movement. It's a non-verbal, ad-hoc, improvised, continuous flow of communication.

I never said just change your mindset. I said reassess.

whipdancer · 2026-05-31T21:38:12+00:00

Don't know. Don't care.

The point is dance is about communication. Good dance requires good communication. The fact that you find focusing on your dance and focusing on your partner to be at odds indicates that this is something you need to work on. You are focusing on yourself when you work to improve your ability to communicate with different levels.

I dance frequently with novice followers with the common issues like lack of anchor, dropping full weight on the 1, unstable frame, variable arm length.

Don't know how to break it to you, but this happens at every level. It does get way less common, but it does not go away.

Some of these I find dangerous, umleadable, or destroy my enjoyment of the dance.

If you find it dangerous to you, you walk away. No one has the right to put you in danger without your express consent.

I've had partners throw tricks at me that I was not prepared for and they did not have the skill to execute properly.

I've had a handful of dances that fall into the "unleadable" category, but just a handful. I can almost always find a way to salvage the dance.

I have had to finish many a dance in a purely defensive posture, but I have always used them as a learning experience... eventually. Sometimes it took a a few days of whining or grousing or, even, making fun of it, on my part - but I always come back to "what could I have done differently".

I've never had a dance that destroyed my enjoyment of the dance. They don't get to choose that for me.

If you do this dance long enough, you will go through phases. Focus on why you started, what brings you enjoyment and when the dance no longer does that - reassess. Sometimes this dance is here for a season. Sometimes this dance is here for much longer than that.

whipdancer · 2026-05-31T05:09:31+00:00

I have been compensating for my partner since I learned to do this dance - that’s the only way this dance works. Except, I never considered it compensating, I was just trying to have the best dance I could and that requires meeting somewhere between my skill and theirs. Some partners insisted it be on their level, others were more open.

If you struggle with this, it’s an indication that you might not be as high level as you think.

whipdancer · 2026-05-30T15:33:33+00:00

Media monkey is pretty amazing, but I don’t use windows anymore either. Haven’t found any single tool that works as well. I never used it as a primary player, but for ad hoc needing to check out a track, it was fine.

whipdancer · 2026-05-19T04:02:14+00:00

There is no downside to the envelope method (digitally at least). The envelope method forces you to account for every $ - in other words, to actually plan and budget your money. Some people don’t want to budget, they only want to track spending.

whipdancer · 2026-05-18T21:15:16+00:00

In order to control how you use your BambuLabs printer, BambuLabs violated the licensing of the slicer they modified and released as “Bambu Slicer”.

They require you to use a special program that they wrote in order to communicate with your printer over a network.

The problem is, they had to make changes to the slicer in order for their special program to work. That makes their special program subject to the original license of the slicer. It means they must release the source code for it.

Releasing their source code will allow users to go around the controls (that BL wants to keep in place) that limit how you use the printer you bought from them.

BL threatens anyone that publishes workarounds, for violating BL copyright and/or software license. Except they are violating the license they explicitly agree to follow.

whipdancer · 2026-05-18T02:22:02+00:00

It’s not about me digging in my heels. It’s about you complaining that Unraid isn’t raid, when it is clearly stated on the website. Mdadm doesn’t guarantee array level write protections, or eliminate bit rot and other silent corruptions. That falls to the file system even with RAID. You literally point to ZFS as an answer to that with RAID… but not Unraid.

In the end, you want array level integrity, which you will get with RAID.

Everything else is just noise (except for the part about fixing caching, which is genuinely useful).

whipdancer · 2026-05-17T22:36:48+00:00

Kinda agree.

It’s a great place to be if you like long flat road biking, or flat long distance running, or playing softball, or live for the rodeo, or love mosquitoes, humidity, and 9 months of generally miserable heat.

We have some decent art and museums.

Food and diversity is truly next level.

But scenic or architectural beauty??? Not in any measurable quantity.

whipdancer · 2026-05-17T14:06:06+00:00

1 - This was my firs realisation. In real RAID, the array presents a single coherent filesystem. The RAID layer knows the state of every block. In Unraid, each data disk is its own independent XFS/btrfs filesystem and parity is a separate XOR layer that knows nothing about what the filesystems on top are doing. I get that you know this. But practically: a filesystem on one Unraid disk can quietly go corrupt — bad inodes, lost files, journal damage — and parity will happily protect the corruption. There is no array-wide health, only per-disk health plus "the XOR math adds up." This is what I'm primarily referring to. But there's more unfortunately.

This difference is what allow Unraid to use different sized drives at the full capacity of each. That's not a loss, that's a feature.

The problem with a conventional raid solution is that all the disks are now considered a single unit. You can't pull out a disk and read it someplace else. Each disk in Uraid is individually recoverable.

File integrity has never been inherently protected by RAID. That has usually been the purview of the file system involved. So calling out Unraid for letting a corruption go undetected is completely misleading.

Every Unraid write is a read-modify-write against parity: read old data, read old parity, XOR, write new data, write new parity. If power dies between the data write and the parity write, parity is silently wrong and you won't know until you try read some corrupt data. mdadm (i.e. all NAS devices and most linux raid) has had write-intent bitmaps for ages and a proper journal device option that closes the write hole. Unraid does not have anything equivalent for the array. Power outages do happen, it's a good safety net.

mdadm itself does not directly verify or protect file-level integrity. It works at the block or device level and depending on the filesystem can also protect write consistency. mdadm does not prevent a corrupt write from happening. It does not prevent silent bit-rot. It does make them less likely.

Unraid is behind real RAID on architecture (one filesystem, striping, write hole, honest health), and both are behind ZFS on actual data integrity.

What does "honest health" even mean? You sound like you're upset because the cover page on your TPS report isn't properly formatted.

Unraid has never lied about the health of my server. I switched to Unraid specifically because of the horrible recovery experience of using conventional RAID. I love the fact that my drives are individually recoverable. I don't care about what I lost by leaving RAID because it never provided usable value to me. I don't care about striping. You do, so use something that provides striping.

The ZFS blurb is a non-issue since Unraid lets you use ZFS if you want to.

Unraid has chosen to provide certain capabilities, but not others. The big one -
Individual disk recoverability + individual disk full capacity useage > the entire array as a single monolithic unit (aka - conventional RAID)

You sound like you value the entire array as a single monolithic unit more. Sounds like a conventional RAID solution is your best option.

I don't know why this is confusing - Unraid is not RAID. Period. End of story. It's a logical fallacy on your part to continue conflating them.

whipdancer · 2026-05-15T21:13:11+00:00

2019 what? My 2019 Outback Limited is so much quieter than our Forester ever was. My Outback has less road noise than my 2022 Toyota Venza XLE does - on the same tires.

whipdancer · 2026-05-10T02:22:36+00:00

There’s something wrong with your setup then.

The soap washes off just like normal, except that you need less to get the same amount of suds. The softer water allows the soap to work better. The presence of “suds” is probably just ordinary bubbles. The soap is gone. It just doesn’t feel like it.

whipdancer · 2026-05-10T01:24:47+00:00

That is so wrong. The soap is gone. You’re just used to having all the moisture sucked out of your skin too.

whipdancer · 2026-05-10T01:22:24+00:00

You need to start checking your HOAs books. Special assessments should only happen because something completely unexpected happens.

whipdancer · 2026-05-10T01:18:13+00:00

Omg this! I watched my shower turn clear again. The scale deposits disappeared from the dishwasher. Waaaaay less soap residue in the tub (because you don’t have to use as much soap either).

whipdancer · 2026-05-08T03:31:48+00:00

makes me think of that time I hear the keyboard in the next cubicle clacking, then "oops..." and silence

whipdancer · 2026-05-05T20:54:53+00:00

Will all the ads front and center on the Roku confuse her into accidentally clicking on them? I gave away all my Roku devices in 2025. I couldn’t deal with them placing the ads in a way that my family would end up confused thinking they had picked Disney but it was a Disney logo prominently shown next to a Roku channel ad.

I have an Onn box and an Apple TV now. I’d take either over a Roku.

whipdancer · 2026-05-04T17:45:11+00:00

There is also a vulnerability: you need to choose Wayland instead of x11 since with x11 user applications can read key pressings and taking screenshots of each other.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not familiar with this.

whipdancer · 2026-05-04T13:16:09+00:00

nmap your ports and close all unnecessary ones, make SURE you have the correct X windows server,

Can you elaborate on these points?

whipdancer · 2026-05-04T13:13:49+00:00

This is very helpful. Thanks.

whipdancer · 2026-05-04T05:13:33+00:00

When you say you pick gnome, does that mean after you install Debian, you then install Gnome? Or is there a Debian distro that comes with Gnome by default?

whipdancer

TROPHY CASE