having exhausted my ability to solve a simple problem, i turn to the internet for assistance. help me, mysterious internet; you’re my only hope.

I’ve been treating my blog as if it is some kind of publication that can only push updates that have been heavily edited and carefully crafted. I’ve been doing this for a few years.

That’s been more stifling than I realized. I start to write something here, decide it’s not interesting or “worth writing a whole blog about”, and walk away. I don’t know when I let this get so precious, but I did, and it’s is YEARS overdue for a return to the early days, the Old Internet, before the Bad Place was so big and influential on how we spent time online. I also noticed that that so much of what I put into the world online is on platforms I don’t own, subject to the whims of an unaccountable, byzantine algorithm. Who am I writing for, anyway? Me? Readers? A stupid algorithm that actively works to fuck me (and not in the good way)?

So I posted this on Facebook already, since that’s where the people are, but I’m also posting it here to break this cycle of But That Isn’t Important or whatever else gets in between me and using my blog that I’ve worked so hard on for twenty years.

So with that, this post is an ask for technical support. Just a basic, straightforward, “Hey, Internet, can someone help me out here?” And before you ask, yes, I have turned it off and back on again.

Internet, I need some assistance, and I hope one of you can help me out.

I use ProtonVPN for everything (and so should you). It Just Works(tm) as far as anonymizing my connection goes, but I keep running into problems on my LAN.

The machine I’m tying on is named Bela. Bela has no trouble connecting to the Internet using the VPN. But when I try to use the printer, it can’t find it unless I turn the VPN off. Same thing if I attempt to access my NAS (though the NAS issue is greater: even with the VPN off, my Desktop (Nemo, on Linux Mint) can’t connect to the NAS.

I thought it would be simple to tell my machine “Hey, use the VPN when you talk to the Internet, but when you talk to the LAN, just ignore it.” I figured there was some way to edit a hosts file to accomplish this?

Well, this is where I have been stuck, and where I feel a little dumb. Everything I look up online solves a similar problem but not mine.

I’m sure there is some simple, three lines in a .conf file solution to this, but I can’t find it. Can anyone help me?

Here, as a thank you, I offer this trip (in every sense of the word) down memory lane:

it’s an older meme sir, but it checks out

I have over 1000 hours in NHL 22. I’ve been playing Create A Pro for three years, guiding Blaine Gretzky to the top of every record possible in the Mirror Universe NHL. He will retire with the Kraken as the greatest player of all time.

But to get there, I have to play another three or four hundred games, and Blaine Gretzky is so OP now, the games aren’t all that challenging. I’ve also become VERY aware of the bugs they never squashed. While it is tremendously satisfying competence porn, it’s become a bit rote.

So I got myself NHL 25, which gets reasonably good reviews (correcting for typical EA Sports fuckery).

Holy shit it’s so much harder to play a rookie who is constantly getting knocked down and running out of gas after 30 seconds than it is playing a veteran who scores essentially whenever he shoots the puck. And since it’s been like 930 hours since I played this game as a rookie, I have had to learn all over again how to actually play the game, rather than just running over it because I’m so OP.

Which brings me to my current pro’s rookie season. His name is Johnny Marlowe. He wears number 13. He is named after my beloved dog, and is a tribute to Johnny Hockey (may his memory be a blessing).

After a disastrous 1-7 start to the season (can we talk about the goals the computer scores against itself when I’m on the bench? And how it tends to give itself 4 goal leads that way?), things finally started to turn around and we got the team’s record up to 3-9-2 and the coach challenged Marlowe to win 2 of the next 3 games.

No problem. I’m getting the hang of the flow and demands of the game, Marlowe is getting better, and 2 of 3 seems really doable, especially since I just unlocked his first zone ability.

Game 1 is against the division rival Washington Capitals (Marlowe plays for Carolina). Marlowe scored TWO goals in the first period, before getting boarded in the second, injured, and removed from the game … which Carolina goes on to lose, after Johnny Marlowe gave them a 2 goal lead in the first.

But not to worry! He’s not on the IR, and is ready to play in the second game, against Pittsburgh. We gotta win two in a row, boys! We can do it!

Johnny Marlowe is injured and removed form the game after an open ice hit on his first shift.

And I’m like … what the fuck, NHL 25? Give me a challenge, and then ensure I can’t complete it? Are you serious?

So I reached deep into my MEMEory to mark the occasion the only way I know how:

I posted this on Facebook, where about 500,000 accounts follow me, many of them actual human beings! After several hours, there were under 200 interactions, which honestly exceeded my expectations.

And it reminded me of this philosophy I have embraced since I heard Joel Hodgson say it in the 90s: “We don’t ask ourselves ‘who is going to get this?’; we remind ourselves “the right people are going to get this.”

And real quick, before I start my Sunday: if you recognize this old meme, and especially if you’re fondly remembering the rageface comics you made in college … it’s time to schedule your colonoscopy.

nothing but bluesky is such a predictable title for this post

When it was still invite-only, I grabbed @wilw and @itswilwheaton on Bluesky, just to ensure a scumbag didn’t yoink them before I could. I’ve never used them, because after I quit Twitter — long before it was fashionable (or a fascist propaganda platform) — I realized how much better my emotional quality of life was without the endless yelling and outrage from Extremely Online People, and the systemic, deliberate refusal by the “safety” team to do anything about it. We humans are not built to have that much information poured into our souls in a nonstop stream of trauma that never ends. I do not miss it.

But I’ve lurked around on Bluesky a little bit this last week, and I keep seeing things that remind me of Twitter’s first year, before the Nazis showed up and Twitter was like “it’s just an opinion [thumbs up emoji]”. What I see on Bluesky is a deliberate, coordinated, serious effort to slam the door in the faces of those dipshits the moment they arrive. It seems that Bluesky, at least for now, takes the responsibility of shutting down hateful rightwing trolls seriously. It seems that, maybe, it could be what Twitter was and should have always been, at least until some shitbag techbro fucks it all up.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for me and my mental health to be as involved now as I was a decade ago, but as an alternative to the toxicity, chaos, and destructiveness of Twitter, it has a lot going for it.

ANYWAY. The whole point of this little post is: I’m working on the verification system, which involves editing some files at my host, which I haven’t done since the very early blogging days. So I have some calls out to My Guy (I can not oversell how great it is to have A Guy for things) to help me not break the Internet (again).

I just mention this because though I am still on a break from public life, I understand some number of people were concerned that someone was building a foundation to impersonate me, and I wanted to verify that those accounts are, indeed, mine. There is no need to report them. But thank you for looking out for me.

Okay, that’s all. Have a nice weekend. Choose to be kind (except to Nazis. Punch Nazis. Always.)

What have you done, America?

I am anguished, I am heartbroken, I am afraid of what’s coming for people I love. I am shocked that my country just gave 247 years of Democracy away over one night. We live in a different country now, than we did when we woke up, yesterday. Exactly how violent and cruel and hateful this new country is has yet to be revealed, but it’s going to be pretty terrible.

I fought hard to prevent this. We all did. But I guess there was a fundamental hurdle we just could not overcome, and we have to be real about that hurdle: this country is full of people who are just drowning in hate and fear who want nothing more than to hurt as many people as they can.

I knew they were always here, but I always believed that there were more good, kind, compassionate people who chose light over darkness. I always believed that we were the good guys, the place people come to when they are fleeing what we became this morning.

it’s just … it’s a lot.

It’s going to take me a long time to process this, and find a way to not feel despair every moment of every day until he is dead and (maybe) America comes back from this open embrace of Fascist authoritarianism.

I mentioned to some folks earlier that I believe it’s important that we allow ourselves to feel all the feelings, to honor them without judgement. For a lot of us — millions upon millions — this is the greatest betrayal by our fellow Americans we have ever experienced, and that’s going to be a LOT. At the same time, we can’t really _do_ anything about that, other than support and love and show up for the people we love.

To that end, I’m going to retreat from public life for a bit, and be with my family.

Stay safe, everyone.

The Wedding Crusher

Okay, so. I’m developing this Star Trek Lower Decks fan fiction I call The Wedding Crusher.

There’s a wedding on the Cerritos. Traveler Wesley shows up because he loves to crash Starfleet weddings. It’s kind of his thing.

When he gets there, he runs into Mariner. For the rest of the time he is on the ship, all he wants is for her to think he’s cool, because they went to academy together when he was decidedly NOT cool.

There’s a quick scene where Ransom runs into him, and is absolutely POSITIVE they know each other. Wesley says they’ve never met. Ransom says that they definitely know each other. Maybe from when they were kids?

Meanwhile, Boimler is just BESIDE himself that Wesley Freakin’ Crusher, who piloted the Enterprise, who knows and works with a lot of Boimler’s heroes, is on Boimler’s ship. So Boimler wants Wesley to think HE is cool, and we enjoy Wesley being both Boimler AND Mariner in these various interactions. But Boimler is being that delightfully exuberant dude we love, but he’s just trying too hard.

Right around the time Wesley is about to just lose it at him, Boimler nerds out REAL HARD at Wesley about some technobabble science thing, and it speaks so loudly to Wesley’s inner nerd, they end up on a major science project together that brings in Rutherford. When it’s done, they all sign it, and OF COURSE it ends up saving the Cerritos in the third act.

In the denouement, they are all in the ship’s bar, celebrating. Mariner is setting Wesley up for the thing he’s wanted so badly. She’s about to tell him how cool he is … and instead she pulls a switcheroo and just ROASTS him in the most hilarious way possible. I haven’t figured out what it is, yet.

Wesley is so severely burned, he sort of chokes on his drink, tries to do a comeback, fails, tries again, fails again, and then does this Traveler thing where he basically Men In Black’s them with an “I was never here” snap of his fingers. They have a beat together where they play most of the scene again, only this time it’s Boimler who did it with Rutherford’s help. Fade out.

CUT TO: Wesley sitting with the OG Traveler, who asks him how it went, and Wesley is like I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. The Traveler gives him a slice of wedding cake to ease his pain, and Wesley gratefully devours it. “You really gotta come with me to one of these things,” he tells him while he eats.

The final shot is the Cerritos cruising away while we hear a voice over from Boimler and Rutherford wondering how Wesley Crusher’s signature got on this thing.

THE END.