Reddit -> Beehaw until I decided I didn’t like older versions of Lemmy (though it seems most things I didn’t like are better now) -> kbin.social (died) -> kbin.run (died) -> fedia.

Japan-based backend software dev and small-scale farmer.

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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: August 14th, 2024

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  • I was in Houston for hurricane Ike. We had trees down all around making the roads impassible for a few days, so having a few days of food was enough for us to get them cut and moved enough to go anywhere. 3 days is also enough to get food/water distributions or drops set up. It’s basically enough to get out of needed or to get by until distribution logistics are in place. If bombings start, your stash could go up in smoke so 3 days or 30 wouldn’t really matter as much as a go-bag with more compressed calorie bars or something.

    Ah, and yes to not relying on the grid. Now, I have a battery backup that can run my well pump or keep the fridges going and recharges with solar. We have a cannister gas stove and a charcoal grill. I have a kerosene stove and several litres of fuel around for the colder months as well, but I think some of that is hard for those in small apartments and the like.






  • As someone who speaks conversational Japanese (well, probably more since I do banking, doctor, etc. on my own, but my grammar is far from perfect), and fluent English, Google’s AI can make some… questionable choices when translating at least. My wife (fluent Japanese speaker who knows a little English) and I decided to play with its translator function when I got a pixel phone and once again a bit latter trying to come up with some English practice for her.

    Japanese is definitely a bit more difficult to work with since it’s so context-dependent and has lots of homophones (one reason translating things into Japanese and back can be interesting, particularly in the older days of Google Translate). It’s fine for short, concise, and non-complex sentences, but even certain formal grammar and honorifics can be bad with the AI translation services.




  • I used chantix back in the day, but it also required me basically not leaving the house for a month to really get there. When and where I quit for the first time (I would later start dating a smoker and relapse, then quit again), smoking was still allowed indoors and I had a huge association with drinking and smoking. Same for certain other places and situations. I basically had to do everything I could to avoid those. It got easier with time.










  • It’s not learning linux for me; I’ve worked with it professionally for over a decade at this point and started with old distros on floppy at home (with poor success; it got better once I got gentoo and broadband).

    The pain of switching is non-zero, but it’s also not high. By this I mean just the process of moving data around, settings, etc.

    Finding replacement apps can be annoying.

    There are some things that still bother me, though. Certain games still won’t work or aren’t stable. This impacts some people more than others depending upon the type of game. For me, it’s still being gun shy because updates have caused me huge headaches including requiring a reinstall even in fairly recent times. I’ve had to fix one windows update problem in that same period of years and it did not require a full reinstall.

    I have a full-time job, house/yard maintenance, and a small farming business. I require reliability with security (so not updating is not an option) and don’t have time to spend diagnosing and solving issues. I also can’t not fulfill orders, etc. because of an issue bother from a customer retention standpoint but also because when selling farm goods, those are mostly fresh produce with a limited TTL.

    I have 12 months to reassess things, but I’m not liking my current position. It doesn’t help that a lot of the software for the Japanese side of things (tax office, accounting, etc.) do not have cloud versions and require Windows to work. I’m not sure if any of those work under WINE or similar at this stage.