Dan Higdon

Everyone knows girls don't game.

Here's hoping 2026 goes better than 2025.

Though I'm not holding my breath.

Wow. I haven't watched Zeta yet.

The joys of using older gear - I frequently have to guess whether my old rack sampler has finally died, if my patchbay needs more de-ox-it, or if my mixer is on the blink again.

Usually it's the mixer's mute button needing to get spammed or something.

It's probably just as cool and not at all distracting as when I call out anachronistic weaponry or tactics in historical films. :)

Sounds like a fad.

Now if there was a CAT in the shop....

We've discovered that if we just leave a plate of grapes or sliced melon of some kind on the dinner table, we'll all eat it off and on over the evening or afternoon.

Stealth nutrition.

Amen. I tend to run 120% on everything these days.

Ok technically it was exim4, not true "sendmail". I know at least one of you is going to call me on that, so consider this a preemptive response.

On my newly configured Debian box, I installed the sendmail system because I'm a dork. I also asked it to forward root's emails to my account.

And what do you know, apparently systemd emails root about drives wearing out.

In other news, one of my drives is wearing out.

All of them count.

Plus, you're one of the most genuinely cool people I know. (Though maybe coming from me that's not much of a complement.)

If you can get a call-back, you'll get the job.

How the heck did I forget:

Belly (really the whole Boston alternative scene circa '90)
NiN
Simon & Garfunkel
....
And that doesn't include a host of modern bands.
You know what, this whole concept is flawed. :)

Fun, I'll play too. In the order I thought of them:

Define your music taste in eight artists:

Pink Floyd
Dire Straits
Sarah McLachlan
Tara Maclean
Pat Benatar
Enigma
Queensryche
Alice in Chains

I'm sure I'll remember some super-relevant artist once I post this, but....

Apparently, KDE and Google aren't getting along (in terms of authorization protocols), which is inconvenient for me.
So do I change desktops, or give up on Google Drive?

Kinda thinking the second one, since Google is not what they once were.

Well, I did it. I'm now typing this message on my new Debian KDE install (using btrfs, which was a bit involved set up). The install did trash my windows boot, but after a lot of googling I got that working again.

Now to live with this new system for a while to see if I made the right choice.

This might be the funniest thing to come out of DJT's need for his participation trophy.

I tried a livecd (well, "live ventoy") boot of Debian with KDE/Wayland last night, and it worked perfectly.

I could access my various audio devices and network resources, as well as my NTFS drives without any special tweaks.

Looks like a winner. Now to back up data and steel my resolve.

I liked Magic World (BRP fantasy) the handful of times I got to play it. It's the "Elric!" system with the IP filed off.

I also very much liked "Barbarians of Lemuria" that you used because it reminded me of a fantasy version of my favorite RPG, Traveller. :)

I'm intrigued by the idea of KDE Linux and other "fixed" (or whatever the term is) distros. While I like to experiment with my computers, for appliance or corporate computers it seems like a great idea.

Indeed! Though I don't have a lot of room in my "projects" room, between my main system, "mint box", and music stuff.

I was considering getting one of those paperback book sized computers for my Windows running needs. I'm a cheapskate at heart though, so that won't happen any time soon.

"The higher the character's HP, the more blood they have" explains the sword fight scene in Kill Bill.

I now accept this explanation.

My main machine is a 12-core Dell 5500 with 24gb of RAM and a passable old NVIDIA card. Many years ago it was a monster. I picked it up as "office salvage".
I should probably throw Mint at it.
We'll see what happens.

I'm running Linux Mint Debian on an old 4-core 8GB Dell, and I kind of love it. It recognized my printers, connected to my google drive, and runs Firefox and LibreOffice. I've learned so much about systemd messing with that machine.

I will likely keep this lad around, maybe to serve files.

I've only run FreeBSD in a VM on my main machine. I've tried it with MATE, XFCE, and even Gnome, with XFCE being my favorite.

FreeBSD pushes all my nostalgia buttons, as I learned Unix on Sun BSD machines. But for music and sound production use, it's not the best choice.

With the pending demise of Win10, and me stuck with a computer that doesn't support TPM-2, I've been auditioning *nix distros.

I've found that while FreeBSD makes my heart happy, and Linux Mint-Debian feels good, Debian KDE fits what I want to use this machine for the best.

The further I get from my original birth day, the lower the error percentage between (October - June) / Years becomes. Something to think about....

Any of my gamedev friends looking for some sound designers, allow me to introduce Emily.

For sure! I was pretty excited that she got the job. I know we're in good hands.

Metroid Prime 4 Beyond launches on December 4th.

Those boxes are what got me into BTech. Still have those figures, though not the boxes themselves.