Title: An Eager Goodbye to 2023
Date: 2023-12-28
Author: zlg

As 2023 draws to a close, I can't help but reel from the shitstorm that this
year was.

I developed tendinitis in my wrists from a job, who then fired me for some
petty reason when I sought L&I to get medical help. L&I dragged their feet on
the approval process, it was an utter ass-pain to get scheduling going, and
my last few therapy appointments were canceled because "we took too long and
now you're considered a chronic case". And they wanted me to go to Tacoma (90+
minutes away) to get steroid shots in my wrists. What I needed was more physical
therapy. I was already not being reimbursed for my mileage, and my car's not
in great repair, and the loss in earning capability this year has drained my
savings, so I guess that's what good it is to pay taxes. Thanks, Washington. I
can't imagine how y'all treat people who've lost limbs and shit if this is how
you treat tendinitis.

My mother's appendix burst without her really recognizing it... somehow? She
ended up in the hospital for a while with a case of sepsis and nearly died...
Thankfully she's on the mend from that incident, but sepsis isn't anything to
mess with, it may be months before she's feeling okay again.

Things changing at home have made things a bit more challenging for me, as well,
but that's not bad in the grand scheme of things.

The main focus of my year, aside from working to rehabilitate my wrists, has
been trying to get some gaming and programming time in. I think part of helping
my recovery was continuing to do my normal things and stopping if it started to
hurt. My movement habits at the computer are thankfully not hard on my wrists
since I float my hands above the keyboard, and avoid the mouse as much as
possible. Still, it's bothered me immensely to be less able to open, twist, and
lift things due to something a cheaply-paying agricultural job ended up doing to
me.

It hasn't been completely bad; I just hit you with the bad news first. :)

My Javascript pixel art editor is almost done. All that's left is exporting
to (uncompressed) GIF, and maybe some extra polish, before I can slap it into
a portfolio of some sort. I still don't like Javascript webdev, but it proves
I can do it when needed. There's one more webdev project I have in mind to
make before I begin shifting most, or all, of my programming attention to game
development.

VGStash is in an interesting situation. The Python packaging and distribution
story is still unclear, and the endless stream of PEPs means that Python
developers have to be more proactive in learning and following the trends or
norms within the Python community in order for their software to play nicely
with the packaging ecosystem. I haven't updated VGStash in a while, but I've
also been having some design deliberations, ideas for a website or server to
support multiple users, etc. VGStash has always been a Python program, but I've
wondered if I should consider (re)writing it in something else where the build
artifact and what you do with it is obvious. It's surprising to me that in a
programming ecosystem of "There should be one obvious way to do something", the
packaging story is so multi-faceted and confusing. Allegedly, one should be able
to distribute a wheel and that's that. I don't know, because Python's internals
are a mess and I got lost the last time I went looking into it. The simplest
use-case -- "make a binary the user can run, use this function as main()" --
should be easy!

I managed to beat *seventeen games* this year! I only bought 9 games this year
that haven't already been beaten, and most of them are rather short. I want to
keep this cadence up to some degree through 2024, so I can keep the backlog
under 100 games. The RPGs and roguelikes are beginning to pile up because I'm
pushing them back due to length or time investment needed.

I'd link you to that 12-in-12, but the last thing happened just today: hard
drive failure for zlg.space. No real data loss occurred, but I have taken it
down until I get a replacement drive. In doing so, I'm looking to replace the
OS I currently use on it, which was just slapped on there because I wanted it
online and didn't have time. I have until the new drive gets here to figure
out a new OS for it, but I'm leaning toward something super simple or super
customizable. Ubuntu server is hot garbage with its cloud-init system. Network
configuration was difficult to figure out: was I supposed to use netplan?
network-manager? systemd-networkd? I may just fall back to a reasonable Debian
testing, or even Gentoo where I know I can achieve what I want. Would be cool if
KISS had a RasPi image since that's the one I'm most interested in right now.

I'm running into the same issue on my PureOS laptop. Not my ideal choice, I
just left it at the default to give it a chance. I'll need to gather a list of
requirements for a distro running this laptop, maybe dump the kconfig so I don't
miss anything, and then start messing around with distros. I'm guessing all I'll
need is the proprietary BT/Wifi radio driver and the EC firmware. PureBoot is a
fork of CoreBoot I think, so maybe that doesn't need modification. Will need to
spend more time researching before I feel comfortable messing with it. When I
get a decent job, I'm expanding the RAM in it so I can virtualize and experiment
more.

Most everyone I know seems to have endured a similarly shitty year. I hope that
for all of us, the other side of the New Year brings a break from the torrent of
trouble this year has been. I know I could sure use a break.