I bought 96 gigs of DDR3 for my server in December 2022. It cost $118.76; less than $1.24 per gig.

It’s certainly odd but my wife doesn’t mind it because she just makes me operate it 😅

Finally got sick of the FireTV so I plugged a mini PC into a dumb TV. It’s kinda sad to have to use a keyboard instead of a controller, but it was a minor tradeoff for a much better experience.

I uninstalled Tik Tok almost 2 years ago and have heavily restricted my other social media usage since. Programming.dev (and the extended Lemmyverse) is the biggest cheat I permit myself. I do still waste more time scrolling than I want, but through it, I’ve been exposed to things that I feel make my life richer. And it is a lot less soul-crushing than commercial platforms that are jam packed with AI slop and are designed to be addicting.

That said, with I no longer have a way to keep up with trends and my main source of news is my wife, who is still plugged into TikTok. And honestly, I think I’m better off that way. I have way more time to read (and engage in other long-form content) and spend with my kids. I’m exposed to way less propaganda and outrage content. Looking back on days with 9+ hours spent on TikTok, it feels like I was part of a hive mind. I like being an individual again.

After reading a bunch of books about our relationship with technology, I concluded it’s probably best that I greatly reduce my reliance on my phone. A big part of how I accomplish that is just by using my laptop for things that I can’t cut out entirely, like banking, email, web browsing, etc.

Most of the time, my phone’s browser is disabled. It keeps me from using my phone too much. I understand not everyone is in a position where they can do that though.

I run Gitea on my home server, and I’m able to use my Authentik instance for SSO. I don’t use CI/CD, but I’m pretty sure it has an “actions” system similar to GitHub. I don’t know about CI/CD artifacts, but I do use package and container registries, as well as LFS, which all work well!

I really don’t know what it’s like in China because I’ve never been there. I know some people who are from China but they’ve never really talked about anything other than visiting their families. All I hear comes from the US propaganda machine, so I can’t really have an informed opinion. This is probably how it should be for like 95% of Americans. We don’t need to have an opinion about everything ffs.

I use Minimalist Phone Launcher with network access disabled. I know there are libre alternatives out there, but I didn’t like them as much, and I desperately needed a digital detox.

Having kids makes a big difference. It’s very useful to be able to shut off all the lights in the common areas and turn off the lights in their bedroom when they fall asleep. It’s also nice to be able to push a button to start a song on the speaker for musical routines (like cleaning up breakfast to Blue Danube or running to bed to Night Comes from Pikmin).

We also have a TON of lamps, and their switches are not always easily accessible (especially because our house is a perpetual mess).

The smart lock is because my wife always used to ask me if I locked the door after I got into bed, and I never remembered because ADHD.

My almost 2-year old son loves zucchini. When he sees it come out of the oven, he screams “KINI!!! KINNIHHHHHH!!!”

Aegis works perfectly. My university used Duo and then Okta, and both worked. I was unable to get Authy to work, though.

She independently discovered it haha. I sit her down on the couch next to me while I’m working, and she constantly flops over. It drives me nuts! I would let her just do her thing, but she’s got pretty bad reflux and even just a minute or two of tummy time within like 2 hours of having a bottle will make her ralph.

The other day, I had to get up for a minute or two, and I left her on the couch. My better judgment kicked in and I pushed an ottoman next to the couch to block the space she usually tries to launch into. This is what I came back to see:

I checked out Lapce and I like it a lot, but I can’t really live without my Jupyter Notebook extension 😕

That’s the main reason I jumped on them. I’ve seen an increasing trend of people selling old computers with the RAM and HDDs taken out

My wife taught my son English uppercase letters, so I’ve been teaching him Greek lowercases. I can’t help but feel proud every time he says “pi”

In the past, I’ve used Adguard Home, and I liked it. When I tried to my Adguard server as the DNS for my router, though, my WFH corporate VPN wouldn’t connect, so there’s that. Granted, I was using it to remove ads, but people seem to like it for parental controls too.

I saw a deal for a pair of mini PCs with decent specs on eBay right after I got my annual bonus, so I jumped on it because I want to do the same thing for my kids. May be jumping the gun a bit…my son just learned the alphabet (uppercase only) and my daughter just learned how to flop off the couch head-first.

When I read it, I was frustrated that it was a socialist dystopia, but I think it holds up as a valid critique of surveillance-state authoritarianism, regardless of the x-coordinate on the political compass.

I self-host Gitea! Not your server, not your data.