What I’m doing now

(This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one, too.)

Updated September 17th, 2024, from my home in New Zealand, where it’s the start of Spring.

“Useful Not True” is done

You can buy “Useful Not True” now at sivers.com. The paper books should be back from the printer by October. But the ebook and audiobook are ready now.

I’ve been working on this almost full-time for two years, and I’m super-happy with it. Setting up international warehouses to ship it.

output projects

After pushing aside all other projects for two years, I’m back in the mode of getting things done. It’s a big change for me, because for two years I’ve had basically one job, (finish the book), and now I have 23. Interesting side-effect is that I don’t want to learn anything new, since I just want my TO-DO list done. Lots of programming.

Feeling kind of overwhelmed with it. Lots of things I know nothing about, like choosing a septic system for some land where I’m putting a cabin, or what to do about the meniscal tear in my knee since there are no specialists available in New Zealand to look at it for the next two months.

posted /met notes

See my notes from the people I met while travelling.

meniscus tear in my knee

I pushed myself too hard on my vigorous hikes in the Wellington hills, followed my barbell back squats, with probably bad technique. So it seems I’ve torn the cartilate in my left knee and it hurts like hell most of the time. I was supposed to be going on a week-long hike with friends next month, but had to cancel. Now I’m doing pilates, calisthenics and bodyweight exercise, and whatever the “knees over toes guy” says to do. Next week I’ll get an MRI so we can see what’s really going on. On the plus side, I’ll prioritize knee health, core strength, and good technique from now on, because not being able to walk much is really a drag.

Void Linux

I like to change my operating system every year or so. Last month, while my boy was having a slumber party with friends in the next room, I erased my hard drive on both my desktop and laptop, and installed Void Linux. I love it. Snappy fast and minimalist.

It only took about an hour to install everything and copy over my settings, then back to work. Of course I’m not doing anything different than I do in OpenBSD or FreeBSD or Arch Linux before that. Exact same apps, configs, etc. I’m really just in vim in a terminal all day. But it’s nice to know that my /home/derek directory and configs and shell scripts work in different operating systems and Linux distributions. I’m still 100% OpenBSD on the server.

While I was at it, I erased my phone, too. Cleaning computer and phone feels like cleaning the house, but much easier.

cuddly pet rats

I would never have predicted this, but my boy heard from a friend that rats are wonderful pets, so a few months ago we got two twin boy rats. They just want to cuddle and sleep all the time. They’re so sweet, never bite, and don’t even smell. (They poop in a litter box!) They lick me to show affection. They fall asleep in my lap as I work. Little pocket puppies.

See this video for an example of what rats are like as pets. They’re so adorable that a local friend here in Wellington fell in love with mine, then adopted her own pet rats too. Now hers are friends with mine, so we can house them together when the other is out of town.