Alex Vranas @Alex@vran.as

Republicans: "The Second Amendment exists to protect the First Amendment"

Also Republicans: Bans books and criminalizes freedom of expression.

Returned to Reddit for some reason for the first time in years, and I'm not sure if I've just become a better person since I was last there, but the toxicity over there is just awful. Not sticking around...

I've been spending a lot of my free time learning #Blender, and I finally feel like I know enough to actually use the software. I'm still a complete beginner, but I might start posting stuff that I've made soon.

It's a really cool program, I've wanted to learn it for a long time. Really happy with a lot of the improvements over the past few years that make it easier to get started. Used to feel like I needed a degree to have a chance at making anything...

I'm always a little taken aback by some of the scam items sold on Amazon, but these faux CBD gummies with 15 MILLION milligrams (33 pounds) of "hemp" per serving might be the most absurd one I've seen so far.

To-do:

-Install Pop-OS.
-Install Drivers, software, and custom user config.
-Restore Steam library.
-Test everything to make sure things still work the way I like them.

Here's all that went wrong:

-Nvidia driver not compatible with Blender.
-Upgrade driver and lose graphics entirely.
-Downgrade driver and still have no graphics.
-Futile troubleshooting and frustrated googling.
-Try to boot from USB, MSI fastboot blocking all preboot USB.
-More googling...
-Take computer completely apart to get to BIOS battery.
-Reset BIOS
-Put computer back together.
-Turn of Windows defaults in BIOS.
-Boot to USB.
-Back up home folder to USB hard drive (ongoing)

Love it when a small project like "get Blender working with my RTX 2060" turns into an entire evening taking my PC apart, resetting the BIOS, backing up my NVMe, installing a new Distro, and reconfiguring from scratch...

To be fair, my PC has been through a lot of hacking, patching, breaking, fixing, and dist-upgrading over the past few years, this is probably a good thing that needs to happen.

Retiring Kubuntu and getting a fresh start with Pop-OS. Hopefully rendering with Cycles at the end.

Need a math tutor?

I feel like if China can fly a spy balloon over the US without the military immediately noticing, we're pretty much guaranteed to lose a war with them should that ever happen.

"The size of three buses" is more than enough to hoist a nuke over the US.

Why have ICBMs when you can hover your bombs right over their targets?

The military would basically be liked "Sir, radar has picked up som..." *BOOM*

Very proud of my fitness accomplishments.

I average 150 miles of walking per month!

One of those music recognition services that works with humming, but for 90's MIDI files so I can find a file I really liked from my childhood.

The best part about working from home is access to my kitchen.

I'm pretty proud of my ability to cook, and I live right by a grocery story, so rather than hit a local restaurant with coworkers like I used to, I can just make a quick shopping trip, throw together a recipe, and have a high-quality meal for pennies on the dollar from my old pre-2020 habits.

There are good restaurants in my neighborhood too, but it's nice to keep leveling up my culinary skills!

Amazing that Amazon has billions of dollars of computing infrastructure, is diving head-first into machine learning and AI, and yet you can search "16TB SSD" on their storefront and find countless options under $50 because they really don't give a single shit if their customers are getting scammed.