What's Happening In The Now
- Writing: The Textbook Case Part 3
- Watching: Fallout Season 2
- Playing: The Outer Worlds & UT2K4
- Tinkering: Random site-wide stuff.
Same shit, different day(s). Before this page refresh, I expanded on how the New Year makes me feel like I'm lagging behind. By the time we got to the Lunar New Year, that feeling didn't really fade, but it did feel less overwhelming.
Which is good seeing as how "being overwhelmed" is currently a given, and I seriously need the headroom to compensate.
Back To The Job Board
I ended 2025 on a hopeful note, mentioning seasonal work that could hopefully be turned into something more permanent. Instead, it ended up being very temporary after all. As such, I'm back on the market for employment.
While not entirely unexpected (it was seasonal work, after all), it's still very disappointing. I seriously hate looking for work; it shouldn't be this God damn hard to find a job. I could understand if I was trying to get a job where I needed all of these top-secret clearances and very specific certifications. I'm just looking to go to a place, do some general labor, and come back. Does hiring for potential warehouse labor seriously need three-rounds of remote interviews? You can't just give the applicant a fuckin' yes-or-no answer on the day they applied?
Even worse is when they call you for an interview, send you the remote link, and it turns into literally just you recording yourself answering questions. With all of the AI-run rejection systems that have become en vogue, they've effectively made the hiring process completely hands-off, which is even worse for the wider general public that's seeking employment. And even then, with all of that automation, you still won't get an answer right away; you'd be lucky to get an answer within that month.
So, if you happen to see me on LinkedIn or whatever, don't be afraid to say hi.
And then promptly offer me a job. Seriously. I need work.
The Year of The Linux Desktop
It's been said for so many years, but with Microsoft tripping over itself to lose as many customers as possible with peak efficiency, it seems like everyday we're getting closer and closer to it being a reality in 2026. Despite that, I'm left wondering: was this really a goal? Does the Linux community actually want this?
I'm unsure. Don't get me wrong: Valve has done great things when it comes to gaming on Linux, but that's kinda just how computer science is. The first automations were either clocks, crop watering systems, or opponents at chess; the power of a computer can best be measured by how much you can game on it. No, I'm talking about casual users. The kind of people who don't RTFM, and won't bother to Google the acronym when they inevitably see it.
Personally, I think it's about time that people started realizing how bad Windows has been. With more casual users coming into the pipeline, hopefully their experience will inspire them to learn more about how their devices function.
hVmark Is Officially FOSS
We're coming to the end of 2025. Hell, by the time you're reading this, it's probably already 2026. (EDIT: By now, it IS 2026. We're literally almost a fourth of the way through.) It felt like the time was right, so I uploaded the hVmark general spec onto GitHub under the MIT license.
It's just a PHP file that can easily be used as a server-side include. Implementation recommendations are included, so it could be used as-is in a publishing stack. Do I think there will be wide-spread adoption? Not at all; the repo itself is meant to be more of a reference than anything. But hey, if you end up deploying hVmark onto your web publishing stack, let me know all about it. Just don't expect tech support.
I didn't release it publicly at first for a myriad of reasons, one of which being that I wanted to be confident that it worked. Not a full-package enterprise solution, but also not a concept of a project; something that I'd actively use in building this site, while bug chasing whenever problems arose.
It's been weeks since I've even touched the parser's code. Anything that could be considered a bug was just a constraint meant to be worked around. The overall goal was to tighten, not extend, and I feel that I've reached a point where it's tight enough to release.
...That sounded insanely wrong. Look, it's out, okay!?! Check out the repo if you're interested.
Subtennial Incoming...
The HisVirusness YouTube Channel is almost at 100 SUBSCRIBERS. It's pretty surprising, but if you notice the first upload on the channel (and how many times it's been reuploaded by others since then), it starts to make a little more sense as to how we got here.
It's nothing to shake a stick at, and honestly, I'm going to feel further compelled to start making more original content on there. Not to say I'd be on a regular schedule, but at least putting in more effort than I currently am... which is none.
I do have some ideas (one of those, of course, is outlined displayed above found here now), so Stay Tuned For More Bullshit. However, temper your expectations. After all, this does wrap back around to me pushing myself to start what I finish. And to be totally frank, I'm willing to have gaps between uploads if it means other projects in the pipeline are done, or at the very least actively being worked on.
It is pretty exciting, though. Wonder how long until I get ✓ verified ✓. I had a chance to way back when, but I stupidly turned it down.
Do you also think modern hiring practices are bullshit? Leave a @comm here.