While my initial intent in this post was to use bullet points to cover my geek activities in the last couple of days, admittedly, I'm feeling a little zapped from pulling out my whittling knife:

Taking Off Google's Goggles

As referenced earlier, I left Mountain View, California for Geneva, Switzerland to establish a custom domain email and update all of my logins respective to their associated sites along with my password manager.

While I have yet to use a backup solution for media in using some stranger's hard drive (i.e. cloud computing), I am using ProtonDrive's end-to-end encryption for my docs. I've also adopted my phone as a HD for a VeraCrypt volume. On some level, it is curious how we think of "The Cloud" in abstract terms, like there's an ether of electron bits floating around us as a public utility instead of what it is, on a box accessed easily by a bored admin in a business park somewhere.

With a mix of Aurora Store and APKMirror, I tossed my Google crutch aside as it relates to my phone's software and its system administration. It amuses me: on Android, Google Chrome actively blocks my ability to find Aurora's download, but when I run Brave, the browser that's based on the same project as Chrome, I have no problems. Brave is the superior browser anyway!

Site Move

I moved my site from Seattle so that it can catch some rays in Florida, somewhere between Disney World and Daytona Beach. As of yet, I haven't implemented Jekyll, but instead, I dance awkwardly with complete site wipes followed by extracting a compressed file; I just render my site locally and FTP it up as a single file. While (for now) this solution is about as elegant as a sledgehammer, I haven't given a second thought about Cylons—I tend to ruminate with dynamic hosting!

Windows 10 Wipe

On my main box, I returned to 2016 or 2017 with my adoption of Linux Mint 20.2, an OS I've been familiar with since at least 2010. Back then, it irked me when Ubuntu shifted to Unity and I sought a Gnome-based alternative. In context, way back in 2005, I ran Ubuntu's very first release, Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog), on my work boxes. As it relates to 2021 and my motivating factors, there are some philosophical underpinnings that involve words like * locus* —ultimately, it has a lot to do with my peace of mind and lack of trust in Silicon Valley actors.

On this day in history, my parents eloped to Vegas in 1970. In 2001, I graduated with a bachelor's degree. I eloped to Vegas in 2005. In 2012, I graduated with a master's degree.

NOW on THIS day in history, I weigh in under 200 lbs. At 197.5, I am the lightest I have been in 16 years! And five of those years had me well above the 300 lb mark!

It's surreal to finally return to this place—it's like I hitched a ride on the DeLorean. I pulled it off by achieving the largest Expeditionary weightloss by percentage (5.95%) since the initial, keto kickoff back with The 13th (8.3%). To put things in perspective, the pounds I lost in the last six weeks is about the same as the last three Expeditions COMBINED, spanning back from January.

How did I do it? I continued with carnivore, but I was more sensitive to hunger / satiety signals as I avoided overconsumption—food isn't a party to attend! I backed off the chicken wings via the air fryer for this very reason. My day-to-day for the last six weeks have basically been an iced coffee 30 oz tumbler with 2 tbsps of kerrygold butter, 1 lb beef and a second tumbler. Some days, I substituted one of the tumblers with an iced hibiscus or black tea. Some days had eggs, but it really depended on what my body asked for. Some days I couldn't even finish a lb of meat! When I recently bungled through krill oil supplements, there was a day I ate nothing with the exception of a handful of the protein sparing bread! Yes, my progenitors CLEARLY did not consume much krill!

Of course, all of that is about the past. I love it and celebrate it, but this whole Expeditionary thrust is about reaching toward the expansion of the horizon in becoming the best version of me. It's time to move on to the next Expedition: 23: The 90s Are Back!

And yes, my BMI now officially lists me as "overweight." It's been a long road from that class III morbid obesity BMI marker of 48.9! But, the night beckons and I gotta ride...

...and bada-bing, bada-boom, I'm back with Google. Sure, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the idea of Proton Mail's end-to-end encryption. Hey, this introvert likes his space apart from prying eyes—even of the Cylons dressed in red! And I don't mind running down Android apps outside of Google's garden. But the thing is, it began to remind me of living out in the country, when I had to have a separate service for water, another for natural gas, an electricity vendor and had to haul out trash myself, all in a context of an aversion of login multiplicity! So, to make things work, I had my secured email and began researching cloud storage/backup providers, like the zero-knowledge SpiderOak. For the price of a monthly subscription to Spotify, I could get a secure setup....

...but, to what end? Yes, peace of mind is wonderful as it relates to privacy, though since my original foray into Gmail was invitation-only, no doubt Mountain View has REAMS of data about my psychological makeup! As it relates to cloud space, what's the extent I need? My GNUCash monthly budget would be a waste on the server rack space for the NSA's PRISM. Yes, it would be a fun exercise for me to do in principle, but in practice...well, to what end?

And while I love the idea of custom domain email, I'm at the mercy of the technical expertise of my domain's DNS administrators—they're a great bunch, but the best people in the industry work for places like Google. It's like when I used to host my website on an old Dell laptop running Linux on a library shelf: I never had the time to monitor server logs keep up with patches to ensure it was secure. It makes far more sense to use today's AWS solutions (if not just an outright webhost) with their 24-7 support TEAMS of folks. But, I totally get the mindset of doing things just because we can!

Ultimately, I want to focus less on system implementation for feel-good funzies . I'd rather waste time in other contexts.