When I was a kid, I had a Yamaha 250cc motorcycle—rode it like a dirt bike, though it wasn’t one. I’d take it up the trails of Dictionary Mountain in Spring Valley, California. I fell often, but that never stopped me. 🤔 Well, technically it did stop me—but only briefly. I’d get right back up and off I’d go again.
I rode that motorcycle until it wouldn’t ride anymore. When it broke, that was the end of it. I didn’t have the money to fix it. By then, I’d moved north to the big city of Keyes, California, where I once got a ticket for riding it fifty feet on a road.
Years later, the lessons of that motorcycle stayed with me. Just because you can afford to buy something doesn’t mean you can afford to own it. Ownership means maintenance. It means repair. It means responsibility. That’s especially true of mechanical things—and homes. They require care over time. It’s a dilemma for folks who need a car to get to work: they may afford the purchase, but can they afford the upkeep? Or will they drive it until the engine seizes—and then what?
You know, I don’t even remember what happened to that old motorcycle. I joined the Marines in 1971 and leaned into a different life. Those things just faded into the past.
The world turns.
“Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.” - Pat Summitt
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” - Confucius
“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.” - W. Somerset Maugham
"A single petunia flower commands the foreground, its velvety petals unfurling in a rich tapestry of purple and magenta hues. The central bloom is fully open, revealing a delicate funnel shape with gently ruffled edges. Deep veins radiate from the throat of the flower, drawing the eye inward toward its reproductive structures—pale stamens dusted with pollen and a slender pistil reaching forward like a ceremonial gesture. Surrounding this focal bloom are several companion petunias, slightly blurred but still vibrant, nestled among lush green foliage that frames the scene with natural contrast. The lighting is soft yet vivid, enhancing the saturation of the petals and giving the entire composition a sense of depth and intimacy. The flower species is Petunia × hybrida, a popular ornamental hybrid known for its brilliant colors and trumpet-shaped blossoms.
This image evokes the feeling of standing in a sunlit garden, face-to-face with nature’s quiet exuberance." - Microsoft Copilot
Dear Internet, what do tires look like when they are "bald" and should have been replaced two months ago (but you are just willing them to Oct 1 so you can swap to the winters) 🛞
Answer: This.
The front tires especially (first two pics) have been SO noisy since August. Have been worried about driving over anything abnormal for fear of a blowout!
But made it to today. Tire change day! M&S/ ❄️ restrictions start Oct 1 here on my daily commute route.
When I was just starting out, I had a '68 Mustang for a while. Cool car. The trouble came not long after I got it in California—I was rear-ended, which left a dent in the back. To complicate things, the driver who hit me was a migrant worker without insurance. This was around ’73 or ’74, during that liminal stretch after I left the Marines but before I joined the Army.
The good news? I had full coverage. The bad news? The deductible was $200—a lofty figure back then, when the federal minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. I think I was making $1.75 at the time, which came out to $14 a day, $70 a week, or $280 a month before taxes. And I had other expenses, of course—not least of which was the car payment itself. So I just drove around in my dented Mustang, rear end crumpled like a shrug. C’est la vie.
Too often, when we think we can afford something, we forget about the total cost of ownership. Oil changes, tire replacements, the slow creep of maintenance. What good is a fancy car if you can’t afford to fix it? And what good is full coverage insurance if you can’t afford the deductible? 😂
When Charlie and I walk through town, it’s not unusual to see cars with grass growing around them—broken down, abandoned by necessity. The owners can’t afford repairs, can’t even afford to have them moved. It is the way.
“Everything breaks. That’s the rule. Everything breaks, and sooner or later, it ends.” — John Green
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” — Cesare Pavese
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
"A dense cluster of pampas grass rises like a soft choir from the earth—each plume a feathery wand, swaying in quiet unison. The plumes range from creamy white to a faint lavender blush, their fibers catching light like whispers. They stand tall and ceremonial, some leaning gently as if mid-curtsy, others upright like sentinels. At their base, long green blades arc outward, sharp yet graceful, forming a cradle for the vertical bloom.
Behind them, the forest looms—dark green foliage and tree trunks stitched together in shadow. The contrast is striking: the grasses glow with softness and air, while the woods recede into a textured hush. The whole scene feels like a threshold—where cultivated beauty meets untamed quiet.
@fdroidorg We have to put a lot of trust in a couple of systems: the signing server and the production buildserver. That is why they are not easy to upgrade. That provides key benefits down the line, like knowing that the client app will always receive uncompromised files, no matter where it downloads the files from (e.g. verification via the signed index). Thanks for your patience while we work in getting new hardware into our trusted #secure#maintenance setup. 1/2
On Friday, 20.06.2025, a hardware replacement will take place on our WebFAI server. Therefore, on this day from 1:45 PM to 6:30 PM, no installations can be carried out via the WebFAI. All other services are unaffected.
Photo of my desk. A display tablet (the XpPen Artist 19 Pro) on my desk, mirrored to a display. On it, Krita while drawing a page. In the corner, my red cat, Noutti, sleeping.
@davidrevoy I wish I could get that "volatile infrastructure" article printed and put into every Free Software conference. The PDF already exists for that:
Here are some of our main takeaways from the EU Open Source Policy Summit 2025:💡 👨💻
— Open and collaborative innovation solves the dilemma of #competitiveness and #sovereignty
— Now is the time to invest in open source #maintenance and #security
— Building sustainable open source ecosystems remains challenging but necessary
— Open source is being increasingly regulated in Europe, and the new challenge is #implementation and #compliance
If you would like to upgrade the RAM or mass storage of your TUXEDO we give you full control and, explicitly allow opening the unit without voiding the warranty.