Hmm. Cal's all overclocked tonight. I guess they're all starting to miss their mother.

Protip: when smacking yourself in the mouth hard with a guitar, it's best to select from among the many that are lighter than a Les Paul.

My bad. It's Wednesday night. 6 EST.

I know I'm biased here, but I think this is a good tune. Written 20 years ago, rerecording it now as no good copies survive. One of my favorite things I've ever written. It took me way outside my comfort zone and forced me to pull the stick out of my musical ass and go loose and free.

Sometimes I think the internet makes cats bad for self esteem. Post a clip of yourself playing guitar at the literal limits of what your brain can muster? Crickets. Tell everyone your cat pulled out a power cord? "Haha, your cat did something far more valuable than you ever will, you loser fuck."

Gremlin Monday evening crime: unplugged the overhead lighting for my workbench.

Mmm...Buldak 2x...

What do people think these marks around words mean?

I recorded the sections of guitar I intended to do today and...I don't hate them? Still feels a bit too sloppy for my tastes, but some parts are probably worth keeping, others I'll probably redo. So, not perfect, but here's at least some proof I can still sort of kind of play guitar.

Gremlin has decided he wants to look at my blood. For science.

What recording guitar for this tune is like. This is the intro. I just have to do a fuckton of takes and then comp the hell out of them. I don't particularly like recording this way, but sometimes you have no choice. Don't give me "music these days" gripes--people have been doing this for decades.

Time to try recording this guitar part. Wish me luck.

Ooh! ixi's doing a NIN covers listening party tonight! I stumbled into her channel a few years back when she did this epic nearly-hour-long analysis video for Closer. She's not just about NIN; I've since discovered we (and by extension a lot of her audience) have a lot of similar musical tastes.

Me: time for bed The Algorithm: or--hear me out--or time for a 10 layer Catholic scandals and conspiracies iceberg Me: oh fuck you

I just want you to know one of my life goals is still to move to Amsterdam, get a morning shift job at their airport, and sneak into the room with the PA mic and scream "WAKE UP SCHIPHOL!" into it.

Me: why is this ride cymbal still really loud? I undid all my changes on the drum sub and brought the volume back down to normal Me: ... Me: And why does it sound like the ride is coming from outside? Me: ... Me: I think the ride cymbal I'm hearing is...a bus? IT'S NOT THAT KIND OF RIDE

Watched a reaction video to Never Tear Us Apart and it got me thinking about the fondness I have for '87-88 music. There are many other years where I think of all these great songs, but that span had so many great *albums* full of bangers. Appetite. Joshua Tree. Kick. Hysteria.

Wtf? He's harassing the fuck out of Cal again. He was being Sasha gourd boy, and now this. Last time he didn't resume his crimes ramp-up until a couple more days in.

Huh. Gremlin did another crime. This is so unlike him when S is out.

Chart update

It's weird working on a music idea, obsessing over the timing of how these pairs of notes end relative to each other at the ends of phrases, being all "yeah! this is exactly the feeling I was going for! This elevates everything in this part!" and then realizing, no one but me is ever gonna notice.

I've been thinking about sharing this for a while. It's a key detail behind how I started conservative and ended liberal that I don't really talk about. For the longest time I didn't even think it worth mentioning, but the longer I spend around liberals the more I realize how not-universal it is.

My guitar playing is sounding soooo good and I'm ready to record, just doing a little bit of tidying on a few odds and ends, like the fact that I'm being sloppy about muting an open note on this repeated part. My finger is already right there, I just need to lower it a hair to touch the string.

At the moment it's looking like one or more of these kernel param diffs is behind why I'm having PCIe resource allocation conflicts on one OS and not the other. Now to run down what the hell each of these actually mean. Wheeee!

Looking at dmesg output and "Booting paravirtualized kernel on bare hardware" has kink vibes to it. Like, I could totally see someone saying "I'm into edgeplay and paravirtualization." Oh god. I think I finally understand what edge network means.

🚨GREMLIN CRIME ALERT🚨 Caller reports Gremlin "stirring up sh*t" with Cal near the south end of the sofa. Caller also complains this Gremlin is smoking and spreading rumors.

Today's Sunday Funday activity: collating a bajillion logs, /proc files, and command outputs to drill down into nitty gritty PCIe resource allocation prioritization differences between two different linux 6.12's running on the same machine.

Confession: the main reason I haven't seen a therapist in 3 years is I haven't worked out how to have a first meeting that doesn't include "I have cognitive problems relating to bipolar. Whenever I tell a therapist that it goes into the void, so whose dick do I have to suck to get you to hear it?"

Being on cat duty this week means having to get up at the same time every day and do certain things at fixed times every day. This kind of structure and routine is really really good for managing my bipolar brain, but my bipolar brain is all "fuck this normcore bullshit, I NEED CHAOS."

I'm pleased with my decision to dump a bunch of cayenne pepper into this bag of cheesy poofs and shake shake shake.

Alright cats, which one of you was playing bouncer and keeping Floorence from entering Club Bedroom?

I've been using linux since 1992. I have a dev and sysadmin background. At this moment in time I have somewhere around 8 linux boxen running in our house spanning 4 different distros. Which is to say, I know at least a little bit about the operating system. Which is why I'm having weird feelings,

Days since last suspecting my partner might actually be a squirrel: 0

Me, 3 weeks ago: Why the hell do I have these super long Ethernet cables when I never need them? Me, tonight: why the hell don't I have a super long Ethernet cable when I need one?

He's being Sasha gourd boy while S is out of town. SASHA GOURD BOY

That feeling when you get ready to chime in deep down in some thread with your clever Fibonacci series joke, only to scroll up a bit and be like "ohhhhh, uh, I didn't realize these people are all thirsting over some dudes' penises. My wholesome math humor is kind of out of place here."

Still no Gremlin crimes, but Cal did just yeet a lamp onto me.

I was idly watching some rush hour vehicle shenanigans outside. Yet another scenario where I just want to walk up to some people and go, "you really have no fucking clue whatsoever that you're operating as part of a system here, do you?"

Wednesday: internet went out Thursday: water went out Friday: power went out On the plus side, thanks to my IT skills all of our servers and network infrastructure remain up even during a power outrage.

Straightening up the basement is all "what on earth is in this orange juice container? Oh! That's right! Spent ferric chloride" and "oh yeah I forgot I have *2* toaster ovens I repurposed for reflow soldering."

I've been working on my own take on this song (see below), and...this is the hardest cover I've approached this year. Taking a song I've had an emotional attachment to for years and trying to communicate my emotion in 2025 musical language is like painting with someone else's brushes.

I just heard a truck or bus sneeze. WHAT IS GOING ON. When S's train gets to Bawlmer, She's going to be accosted by a time-traveling crab who tells her that her trip is causing a rip in the space-time continuum and we need to fix it.

I was looking for something else and stumbled across this proof of concept treatment for Rasputin I threw together for fun months back. I should revisit this at some point and do the full cover. I did work on it more after this, but it's still a half-baked mess.

That's what I love about these wives going out of town, man. They don't drink the coffee, but the amount of coffee being made stays the same. Good thing I'm saying that before making the coffee, otherwise it'd be in all caps.

How I know I'm really almost ready to record guitar for reals this time: I've started lifting my leg, raising my shoulders, and/or making stank face when I really feel a lick. I'm serious about this. The core of this piece is three "musicians." I mean, I'm doing all the parts, but,

I just heard some sort of vehicle whose engine sounded like a metallic cow. I...don't know where to put that.

At the risk of sounding like a character from a 1950s sitcom, my wife's only been gone an hour and already I can think more clearly. It's not what you think! This is nothing to do with her and everything to do with my cognitive bullshit. Being alone = many fewer variables to keep track of.

I'm going into a deep dive with someone about all the behind the scenes gears in the realm of music in 1979. This reminds me of a video series idea I had. I think I was calling it something like ∆music? Anyway, the idea is to pick 2 years a short distance apart (e.g. 1979 and 1982),

Me: Who was that engineer who gave that extremely well known and game-changing interview about NS10 speakers? Internet: Here's his name, but as best anyone can tell that interview never actually happened and this is just 45 years of industry folklore. Ugh. Has anyone ever actually said *anything*?

Me: You might say you're...not in the habit of watching nunsploitation films? S: I might say that, but I didn't I'm going to have to go a whole week with no one in the house to make really stupid puns at.