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My Divorce from Microsoft is Complete

I haven't written anything in a while (really since March, when the site was having problems that I still can't figure out why. Anyways, my last dependence on the THE EMPIRE OF EVIL complete. I upgraded my o365 email after all the copilot nonsense started mining my data. I also was QUITE angry how...

13th Sep 2025

Getting windows 11 to not bork with qemu

Windows 11 started destroying itself randomly after its latest update. the 'fix' as far as I can tell, is to change the cpu type to 'qemu64' type. this seems to 'heal' windows 11. I tried everything, and with every reboot it would 'destroy' itself when passing through the native cpu type. It seems r...

13th Aug 2025

Getting windows 11 to work under qemu with virt-manager

I managed to finally get windows 11 working on my qemu and it seems reliable. Its quite an adventure. Here are the highlights that I learned

  1. Windows 11 is VERY picky about settings. I had to fiddle with them. Basically I needed to add a 'pass through' tpm chip which is 2.0 (alas you have to enab...
13th Aug 2025

Getting your daemon output to signal

I had a devil of a time getting SMTP to work like it used to. @#$@#$%#$^ at&t blocks outbound port 25 so we have to get really clever. The nice part of this is that this enables me receive daemon updates on my watch, all through the signal app. I managed to find an easier way (compiling java is a...

13th Aug 2025

Good Cooke Recipe gluten free

I came up with a nice gluten free cooke recipe this week.

  • 1 stick gf dairy free butter
  • 1/2 c. brown sugar
  • 1/2 c. turbinado sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 can pumpkin
  • 1.5c king arthur flour gf general puropose
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 4-6 oz. 85% dark chocolate bars chopped up
  • 1/3 c....
13th Aug 2025

GrapheneOS Update

Just a quick update on my graphene OS experience: I had tried it for about 6 months but then they massively made all my apps break. So alas, I am back to using 'stock' android with the Microsoft launcher. Hopefully my next phone will let me experiment with this a bit more. Sad that it didn't work ou...

13th Aug 2025

Happy With Unraid and my new nas

I have completed racking and upgrading my old faithful synology 5 bay unit (now out to pasture and retirement after 13 years) with a terramaster u8-423 (I could have gotten the u8 with the 10gbps, but didn't ordered this one by mistake). I tried the terramaster os, but it was buggy and slow. I then...

13th Aug 2025

How to add all man pages to alpine

I found this nice link which shows how to add all the man pages for all installed commands in alpine.

Here is the code for convenience:

  apk list -I |
  sed -rn '/-doc/! s/([a-z-]+[a-z]).*/\1/p' |
  awk '{ print system("apk info \""$1"-doc\" > /dev/null") == 0 ? $1 "-doc" : "" }' |
  xargs ap...
13th Aug 2025

🀯 How to deskankify suspenders 🀯

This may seem like a fairly random blog post, but I found a nice method to 'wash' suspenders (the kind with clip on non buttony things) in the washer without destroying them. Just put them in one of those bra containers and then wash in the washer. Air dry and all is well. I use one of the little zi...

13th Aug 2025

How to do virsh external snapshots with uefi images

Many of you may have had some trouble with getting virsh working with external snapshots. This is rather problematic, in that you can't get uefi images to easily be 'saved' without doing a lot of crap. this is one of the best resources I have found for doing this. I am saving this in case the origi...

13th Aug 2025

How to enable working bash completions with fish shell

I often run into programs that lack the vision to use the proper fish shell, and often have to do without fancy completions. I found a VERY nice gist that allows one to do this successfully, and have it seamlessly appear in the fish shell.

Here are some prerequisites that are necessary;

  1. Bash c...
13th Aug 2025

How to fix ubuntu 22.10 with cutom ctrl space launcher

I went through some gyrations on the operating system front. I am tired of arch destroying itself, so I decided to try an 'unstable' ubuntu. So far its nice, but it was missing a nice mac like launcher. So I found ulaunch which enables me to ctrl space and not have to use the desktop or whatnot.

...
13th Aug 2025

How to get Garuda / KDE working with 3 monitors

I was having terrible troble with sddm and kde not working nicely with my monitor. First, get the displays the way you want them. Then all you have to do is type in the below. After doing that you just need to cat the results inot Xsetup and save and reboot.

autorandr --save default
autorandr --de...
13th Aug 2025

How to get qemu guest agent working in freebsd

I had some trouble today when trying to get the qemu guest agent working in freebsd and libvirt. Here are the processes to get it working.

  1. ensure that virtio_console driver is working
  2. ensure that you have properly modified your 'channel' to include a necessary qemu channel for serial
  3. ensure...
13th Aug 2025

How to get virsh serial console working with alpine

I was having some trouble today with getting my virsh console working with my new vm. I had forgotten that its necessary to uncomment

# Put a getty on the serial port
ttyS0::respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100

The above line in order to get things working on alpine linux. Once you do that...

13th Aug 2025

How to get xscreensaver working with Manjaro Cinnamon

I really like using xscreensaver with electric sheep (getting increasingly old alas) with my computer. But !@#%$!@#% cinnamon won't let me change the screensaver. I tried systemd blah blah blah.

Easiest fix: just move cinnamon-screensaver to cinnamon-screensaver.old and symlink xscreensaver to c...

13th Aug 2025

How to make garuda-update faster

I always was annoyed with how long it took to do garuda updates. If you run garuda-update --skip-mirrorlist the system won't run the 23$@$%@#$#$%@#$@#$% rate-mirrors every time which takes 10,000 years.

13th Aug 2025

How to make git sync local branches with remote

I just figured this out, I use git to make remote branches the same as local ones, useful if I have done lots of local branches that are stale and need to be murdicated:

git fetch --prune
13th Aug 2025

How to make ipv6 only version of alpine linux

LOTS of bad info on this. Its really pretty simple. When configuring the system (assuming your isp has SLAAC setup!) simply choose 'setup' eth0 with NO ipv4 address. things should 'just work' after that. oh and be sure to put in an ipv6 dns server! Also be sure to wait a bit since SLAAC can take a...

13th Aug 2025

How to make your system mostly passwordless with yubikey

I recently bought a new yubikey and found some nice resources that show you how. The upshot is that once you have setup your yubikey with pamu2f it can serve as the ONLY source of authentication (some might not like this) w/o a password being required. For my home machine this is a nice setup, becau...

13th Aug 2025

General Updates for September equinox

This is a short blog entry this week. Basically I have finished most of the time project (accurate within 10 microseconds!), and the redo of the acme server. I have also added a lot of software to various parts of the website, so checkout the new articles, and software.

Its starting to finally be...

13th Aug 2025

Garuda Sadness and Hello Manjaro

I had a rather sad even happen. Garuda REALLY didnt' like my 3 monitor setup. So I tried to 'fix' it only to land with an unbootable system. Since I have EVERYTHING important backed up at backblaze (astonishningly my bill for 100GB is < 1usd!) I just blew it away.

I am still getting used to manjar...

13th Aug 2025