Hello Hello, is this thing on?

It's been awhile since I've made a proper blog post. I'm seperating my blog into three seperate ones. One for the regular blog, one for politics, and one for the bug blog. They will all still be on this site tho! To avoid dead links, I'll be keeping everything posted already under their already existing URLs.

The Work Life

If you have kept up with me and Tina's microblogs, you already know how things are going with my work life. For those who have not, Janitorial work at a huge warehouse store sucks. It's led to me having very little free time. When I do get free time, it's really hard to juggle between everything that I want to do and have to do. Still that same punk you all know, just now with an even deeper hatred for the systems that hold us all down and less time to express it.

I really want a different job. This one has been wearing me down. When I'm standing and moving (which is basically all the time at work) I've been having to wear a back brace just to be able to cope with my back problems. This job is breaking my body. The other day they had me working outside during a heat wave, I had to go home due to how badly sunburnt I was + heat exhaustion. At least I'm losing weight and getting in better shape. Aside from what it's doing to my body, the work is really mentally unstimulating. I yearn to work with my brain. Sure I can do some manual labor every so often but all the time is just not what I'm wired towards. I like being creative. I like learning. I like struggling to get something to work and the dopamine rush you get once it finally does. I like social interaction. I would love to have a job that encompases multiple if not all of those, something fulfilling, but it just doesn't seem possible right now.

Despite it not being official, I am basically the representative for my team at work. A manager of sorts without the recognition as such. I'm the only person on the team who speaks english and has a walkie-talkie so I'm having to distribute tasks and respond to calls far more then most people on the team. I took a week off earlier this month and asked a manager how things went during that time. Apparently things did not go well at all. That same person that I asked is supposed to be a manager of sorts that my team is managed by. He is supposed to know everything that my team does and train people on how to do our jobs. I've been having to teach him. I've only been there for two fucking months yet somehow I've found myself in this position where I am absolutely vital to the whole workspace functioning. Where I'm having to teach the teachers and do part of their jobs for them. At this point if I applied to that role I would probably get it but I refuse to do anything with true management responsibilities because I care too much about my fellow person to have that sort of power.

Tina keeps saying something and well, I believe it at this point. "If you quit that building would quite literally explode" I don't think thats entirely wrong. I'm trying to get a different position at the store and the hiring manager said "we will have to find someone to replace you" but I'm not entirely convinced that it's possible. Nobody really wants to work this kind of job let alone is able to do it the same way that I can. I would not expect someone else to either. I was trained by people that don't speak english. They speak spanish. I had to learn through watching them work and filling in the gaps myself. Hell, I am learning spanish just so I am able to communicate better with them. You would have to find someone who can do all that, able to coordinate with said people and basically act as their representative, and is actually willing to do the job. I think that would take far longer then the three month estimate that the hiring manager gave. Well while they do that I can keep looking for employment elsewhere.

I love Tablets, I hate Android

The name of this section is a bit misleading. I don't hate Android. I hate google. Android (AOSP) is FOSS, free and open source software. Google's proprietary version of it is not. Android is within the Linux family of OSes. If you have ever used termux, this is something you already know well. That being said, without rooting or anything similar most devices are running a very locked down version of a linux OS.

The reason that I bring this up, I've recently become obsessed with the form factor of tablets. You get a large screen relative to a phone, none (on most tablets anyways) of the cellular network baggage, and a computer. Say all you want about it but even the budget tablets that I got recently both have 6GBs of ram and 8 CPU cores. This is more then what my family PC in the early 2000s had. Combine this with the low price point, applications like termux that act as a terminal emulator and allow you to run an x11 server allowing for a proper linux desktop experience, winulator which allows you to run windows applications, and native desktop applications like krita as an example, it's hard to ignore that these are in fact portable PCs.

To drive home the point, I've entirely written up this blog entry with my 11 inch tablet. I got it a folio case that comes with a bluetooth keyboard so I am able to type with physical keys and a hub with an SD and micro SD ports, a USB A port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and media control buttons. That hub is connected via USB C. I'm able to connect a mouse to the hub and now I have keyboard and mouse for a traditional laptop style experience. If I want to free up the USB A port for other use all I would need is a bluetooth mouse. I'm able to be productive on it, game on it, and do other tasks on it like it was a PC. So by all means it IS a PC. A PC is simply a personal computer, a computer intended for personal use. To argue that tablets are not PCs is to argue that I am not a webdev simply because I am currently using neocities as a host for my websites. It's pointless argument for the sake of argument. Fullstack webdev btw.

That all being said, the functionality of my tablets might be cut short sometime within the near future. Google is trying to lock down their version of the platform which is what most android devices use. At the time of writing this, in 165 days google will be pushing a silent update without our permission that will block apps from developers who aren't registered with google. In order to be registered you have to pay google, sign a contract, and show them your government ID. I don't know about you but I like my personal computers to have the freedoms that are expected of PCs. Installing whatever applications that I want and having full control over my own device. This is why on my desktop tower PC and my laptop I have Linux based OSes installed like Debian and Arch. It's why I really want to get into Gentoo, even more control over my own device. There will still be a way to install applications without the dev being registered but it's jumping through hoops that should not be there and google could always just remove the ability to do so at a later date.

The internet has dubbed this as "Darth Android" "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further". Android used to be reguarded as a genuine way to escape Apple's locked down ecosystem with IOS on mobile devices. It used to be an open ecosystem. It used to give you choice. I can't say the same about it anymore. There are versions of Android that are not locked down like the already mentioned AOSP when GMS (Google Mobile Services) and Google Play Services are not installed. There is also other options like LineageOS and GrapheneOS. There are probably more that I'm unaware of.

If you want to read more about it, head over to keepandroidopen.org

Only somewhat relevant but fuck George Lucas, he is pro AI.