I really scored some neat stuff at the a really free flea market that was held in the parking lot of the Bellevue Community Center nearby me. This is just a way for people to get rid of things that they no longer want and benefit the community. I got some DVD-Rs, a good quality bluetooth speaker Tribit speaker, and a Logitech web cam with the Carl Zeiss lens! I made out like a bandit.

Denisse was with me and she also scored some stuff. She likes collecting squishmallows and some stuffed animals. She also spotted a great Christmas decoration and a really unique handbag labeled with Asshole and Emotional Baggage. That was hilarious and screamed her personality. We got some playing cards. In the end we filled a small cart.

I am at work now and pretty happy about it. I am at my favorite site which is a locked down building. I can relax and enjoy. It is literally collecting an easy paycheck for watching over things. I am really grateful for this gig. In an ideal world I would do double shifts here on Saturdays and Sundays because this is easy and peaceful.

My favorite distro of Linux, Arch, is really frustrating me. My desktop completely petered out after the last power failure. It corrupted a whole lot and basically I needed to rescue my system. I was able to get all of the data backed up but I need to reinstall Arch. I am okay with that because it was an old install.

I decided to work on the reasons for my failure to get Arch Linux going. So I set up a VM on my laptop and fired up the installer. It turns out that I did two things wrong: (1) I never added the lvm driver to the boot loader and (2) I used the wrong partition UUID. Both are critical for my setup to work. I use full disk encryption for my desktop stuff because I believe in the fundamental right to privacy for “digital” papers and effects.

I often write a fair amount of controversial things and I could be in the cross-hairs of the tRump Administration. Fortunately, the courts have generally ruled that someone cannot be forced to give up a decryption passphrase. However, courts have ruled that people who use devices locked with biometric data can be forced to provide that. I keep all my stuff encrypted with passphrases just for that reason.

Good golly I am tired tonight. I really want to go home but I still have 2 hours left on the clock. I really want to hit the 10:15pm 13 bus to get home for only $0.80 versus a Lyft which is easily $15-$20 on Friday night. There’s no love for the working man. Buses stop at a ridiculously early hour for route 13. I need a vehicle badly!

Yesterday I discovered 7-OH, a kratom alkaloid and that oh stands for oh my god is it good! Unfortunately, it’s made me very stoopid today but I did enjoy the opiate-like high I got. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside in much the same way that morphine did when I was given it in the past. I really do need to be cautious with this stuff because it can be highly addictive. Given that it came on quick and strong, I am not surprised. So I will wait about a week before I do it again.

Strike that! I am going to wait a lot longer than one week. According to this blurb from wikipedia, I am going to pursue this even more carefully.

7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) is a highly potent, psychoactive compound found in trace amounts within the kratom plant (Mitragyna speciosa), but in recent years, it has been isolated, concentrated, or synthesized in labs to create products that are far more powerful and dangerous than traditional raw kratom leaf. While natural kratom acts as a mild-to-moderate stimulant or sedative depending on the dose, concentrated 7-OH functions as a strong opioid-like substance with potency reported to be up to 13 times stronger than morphine.

This stuff should not be trifled with. When I read, 13 times stronger than morphine, I cringed. In fact, this is going to be something for a once-a-month-only fun time.

So I did in fact get absolutely nothing accomplished and it is a really good thing that I am working in the evening instead of the day shift because there’s no way I would’ve been good to go for an 8-4. 2nd shift is much more manageable today. I think I am going to sleep well tonight. I’m hoping to get 6-8 hours of serviceable rest.

I’m not even going to try working on a website tonight. I’m going to coast through this day.

I had another lousy night’s sleep! I will definitely need a nap at some point today. I don’t know why I am getting the nightmares at full tilt bore but it was one right after another. Despite the poor sleep, I feel okay this morning. I don’t have any grand plans to accomplish much today. Instead, I like the idea of simple, uncomplicated relaxation.

I did manage to get the boot loader repaired on my desktop yesterday morning and it was surprisingly easy. I will revisit the idea to replace the boot loader from GRUB to SystemD-Boot at a later point in time. It depends on how intent I am at breaking things only to have to repair them later. I crack myself up! There’s no pressing need to change the boot loader. I just know that GRUB is slow as hell.

I am hoping for some warmer weather in the next couple of days as I would really like to sit out on the porch and read; take in the sun and fresh air as it does wonders for the mood. I know I will have to work for the next four days and I do have an event that I am looking forward to on Saturday morning. This event is like a giant yard giveaway. It’s billed as a free market. I want to get there early enough while the pickings are good.

I’m ready to make it a good day and not the way yesterday went where I was just in an inexplicably foul mood and I had to dig deep for patience. I am going to chock yesterday up to having a day where I felt irritable and overstimulated.

I took melatonin when I did not need it and I think I actually induced a night of continuous nightmares one after another. Finally, I just got up and out of bed to start writing my daily blog entry. Despite having a lousy night, I am determined not to let that bring me down. If I need a nap later, I’ll take one. For now, it is time to write.

Yesterday, I discovered something called PressMeGPT. It is literally an AI-powered theme generator for WordPress with results that are nothing short of amazing. It looks like I will have a website up and going in time for my goal of April 15th and that pleases me. The theme is beautiful and represents exactly what I would like to project to my potential customers.

So today I need a day where I do not do anything and to simply relax. I got quite a bit achieved yesterday so I feel good about this. I also have an inexplicable craving right now for a turkey sandwich. I may have the rest of last night’s dinner which was a Cappriotti’s Bobbie. Man that is a good sandwich! Maybe it was the tryptophan mixed with the melatonin and THC that gave me a bit of a night with nightmares? I am laughing now at the poor choice I made.

So I will be watching some shows that I enjoy and do a few other things. I have to repair my desktop computer today. I screwed up the boot loader so I will have to book with an Arch Linux ISO and reinstall GRUB. It won’t take a long time and I’ll get things up and going again.

I am somewhat saddened by the fact that an electric bike might very well be a fool’s errand. I was thinking that it would be a way for me to save money and have some very basic transportation. Yeah, not so much …. It’s back to the drawing board like so many things in life. I continue to be very frustrated by life and the lack of progress I am making in it. Let’s just say I am frustrated and angry. Things feel pretty hopeless now.

I work hard and have little to nothing to show for my efforts. This makes me very sad and cynical. I know the key to some control and independence is in being a small business owner. I’ve made frustratingly little progress in that direction. I know I need a damn website and I need it sooner than later. Given I am struggling so badly, I am going to use a page builder with WordPress. I don’t really want to give Elementor the money but I need a site and I needed it yesterday. I can use it as a stop gap measure.

Maybe I’ll feel better for using Elementor if it produces something that would be good for a minimally viable launch as I am making 0 progress in that direction. I feel like my entire life has been a series of follies.

I am a bit late getting to blogging today as I slept deeply and later than usual. At the very least I feel very rested. I hope work goes okay today. Saturdays and Sundays I work the 3-11 shift and usually (knock on wood) nothing substantial happens. I am ready to try again on the web design. I have to get ideas and I need to figure out where to get these ideas from. I think looking at other websites doing the same thing that I plan on doing is a good idea.

I don’t particularly enjoy this kind of research as I usually end up overwhelmed by the sheer variety and I have difficulty making up my mind. These are totally new and uncharted territories for me. I don’t know about the different effects and their desirability. I wish I did not have such a mental block on this whole thing but I’ll ride over it.

In other news, I think I am going to save for an electric scooter to get me to and from work. The savings alone from using Lyft or Uber to get home from work will pay for itself in a month of usage. I don’t want to muck with gasoline or small engine maintenance and repair. A scooter is perfect. I can use it to get to and from the stores. An electric scooter would help.

I found one on Facebook Marketplace which is a really good candidate. I think I can get the guy down to 350.00 for it too. That would be very affordable and make transportation more feasible until I can get a car. I just came up with this idea today so I’ll spend some time researching this and see what options I have.

I have to work tonight from 3-11. For those who do not know, I work as a security guard. The site I work at is a city and county government building. I like the Saturday and Sunday 3-11 shift because I am in a locked down building. I have plenty of time to work on other things so I’ll take advantage of that.

I’m going to look for some web designs that I might like and try and modify them slightly; adopting them for my use. It’s going to be a purely educational night and I’m looking forward to the work. The plan is to figure out how to implement the design using Gutenberg.

The goal remains to have a minimally viable launch come April 15th. I have to remember that perfection is the enemy of progress. I also have to remember that good enough is perfectly acceptable here.

Hopefully I can get something up and solicit some useful feedback. There’s always going to be trolls that will tell flat out give their opinions instead of offering anything useful. I’ll ignore those.

Last night I was trying to be productive and work on a website for my business. What I thought would be a relatively easy and straightforward task turned out to be an undertaking. I have a new found respect for competent web designers. I tried to use AI to help and it was a disaster. ChatGPT and Claude are still curiosities at the moment.

So I need to take a step back and do some manual research. I have to look at other websites for ideas and examples. Then I have to figure out how the UI and UX experts implement something so eye pleasing and cohesive. My original goal was to have a minimally viable launch by April 15th and it might not happen. I’m still going to shoot for that however.

At least in this journey, I am learning how AI won’t fix a process that is broken. My current process is haphazard so I need to look at it more linear-logically versus circuitously. When it comes to design for electronic UI/UX, it can’t be done out of order. Since I cannot afford a web designer, maybe I need to look at something like Wix.

I am learning to utilize AI to help me design a website and it has been very helpful in doing so. I have the technology ability but I really don’t have design experience so I am creating this website in WordPress with the built-in Gutenberg editor. Say what you will about Gutenberg but it does lower the barriers of entry for entrepreneurs getting something up and going.

While using AI actively, I am learning how to ask questions and break down a process to small details. I am not asking AI to do everything for me. Instead I am using it to augment my own critical thinking and it’s actually helping me. ChatGPT has made recommendations for things like color palettes, design layouts, fonts, gradients, and more; ideas I would not necessarily come up with on my own.

I got it! AI is a great brainstorming tool. I balance using ChatGPT with a regular internet search engine. If I only know vaguely of what I want, ChatGPT makes the search more natural and human. If I know exactly what I want, I use an internet search engine to dial it in. Both tools help me to teach and better myself. Now that I have a strategy to build out a website, it’s only a matter of diggin in.

Tonight there should be plenty of time for me to make even more progress. I am looking forward to it.