Do you have wood screws mixed in with sheet metal or machine screws? You don't have to sort that out today, but if you do then you'll have the psychic energy of millions of dads cheering you on, just something to think about

I invite you to do Dad Shaped Things today that you can do regardless of what sort of person you are or what sort of family you're part of or not part of

If you have a shed, you can do something in it or to it

Putter or potter about, perform tasks that will go unnoticed until they're not done

If there are any two-stroke engines around you can do things that make you smell like a two-stroke engine

Screws, and their interactions with jam jars, could be investigated today

Clean a filter

If you can't make your own dowels then store-bought is fine

With a hammer and a circle hole in metal you can make your own dowels

I made the dowels joke on other Father's Days and I'll make it again because repeating the groan jokes is Dad Privilege

A Bouquet of Dowels to all the dad and dad-adjacent people out there

Happy Father's Day to all the dads and everyone who has Dad Energy

(you don't need to be a man to have Dad Energy, you don't even need to have a kid to have Dad Energy, all it takes is an outward expression of confidence and a small selection of dowels)

(reminder, Linux users make up 20% of Fedi and 2% of the real world, never forget how poorly we represent humanity in general)

POLL: Fedi people, do you have a website or blog or personal wiki or some other kind of online Thing That You Control Yourself that other people can find you on that isn't paid for / maintained by someone else, meaning YOUR THING is at a web address like you.whatever, not at you.someonelse.whatever or someoneelse.whatever/you, I mean are you paying the tenner a year or however much for a whole-ass domain name all for yourself (or for you and a small group of IRL friends), and if not do you want to be, THE POLL, and here is the guidance and elaboration on options:

1) No and I don't want my own site, Fedi and/or other social media scratches that itch for me just fine and I'm content with this arrangement

2) No, but I have a Vague Yearning or a Curious Itch and I wonder sometimes what it would be like, but so far it's just feelings and not plans, I haven't taken any concrete steps towards making My Own Website a real thing that exists, but I'm comfortable saying that I would probably *like* it to exist some day when I'm ready

3) No, but more of a Not Yet than a no; maybe I've bought a domain name and not put anything on it yet, or I haven't yet bought a domain name but I'm researching my options (whether I do it in a lazy few minutes here and there or in focused making-notes sort of study, both count for the purposes of this question), I've spent some time thinking about this With Intent, and I feel less "*wouldn't* this be nice" and more "*won't* this be nice" about this endeavour

4) Yes I own at least one domain name, come on Dan this is Fedi, and at least one of my domains even have websites or services associated with them

BOOST THIS TOOT to get an INCREDIBLY INACCURATE IMPRESSION of how many people have and/or want websites and a more accurate picture of how many people On Fedi have and/or want websites

Local Goodwill had a pallet of computers for $45

All different eras in a big mixed up chonk, beige Pentium 4's to newer stuff, might've worked out to about $1.50 per computer

That plus a few Ventoy flash drives with Mint on them could set up a nice wee solarpunk raccoon computer shop and I'm honestly half tempted

I just gave my mate a laptop with Mint on it, this lappy's like ten years old and it's replacing a two-year-old one with win11 on it (and the linux one is faster, natch, another reason why this actually might be important, given that I've gotta live on a planet with a bunch of e-waste on it) and this is what happened: nothing

Like it was a complete non-event, I installed Mint, gave it to them, they had a quick look at the first-run thing, set up light or dark mode, chose favourite colour, did some updates, and then the very first Actual Using Computer thing they did was look to see how to install Firefox and well firefox was already installed, it came with it, so... done?

They said they'd sometimes have to use Apple computers and Mint was way more familiar than a Mac

and that was kinda... It. They just carried on with their normal computer tasks and everything was normal.

I see quite a few posts about people moving to Mint specifically who say it was kind of anticlimactic, like they were expecting some kinda Issue or they'd have to do some l33t haxxing and they ended up... not disappointed, exactly, but feeling somehow let down that Nothing Happened, the computer kinda became transparent

And I know my mate isn't gonna fall in love with Linux, and that's fine, you shouldn't fall in love with machines anyway it's not healthy

but

I think for months this is just gonna feel like Normal Computering, UNTIL this friend of mine has some cause to use a windows machine again, with all its nags and pokes and ads and trying to pester or force you into doing stuff that you don't want to do, and THAT will be The Moment

Because you forget, so easily, how normal you thought it was. Because it WAS normal, to you. You don't remember normal, normal isn't memorable even when it's a horrible sort of normal. You need to have the bad normal taken away for a while in order to see through it and notice how abnormal the normal got

When I started on linux it was Windows XP days and windows was unreliable and slow but Basically Alright, now windows is so so different, so much more malicious and creepy. Fifteen years ago linux felt like Freedom To stuff, now it feels more like Freedom From, y'know

I'm not normally, like, this rabid about computers, I don't like being the Linux Guy, I've spent fifteen years watching folk get frustrated with Windows and just kinda ignoring it y'know, all the way since WinXP days, it's Just Computers and it's not really all that important,

except maybe it actually is important, that people not have a lesson of "Consent means ask again in three days" reinforced every three days

like I really don't think that's good for us, as a species. I worry what that's doing to people's heads tbqh

I use the terminal all the time 'cause I'm a massive nerd who's always messing around with servers and shit, the difference between me and half the guys scratching their heads wondering why Linux isn't more popular is that I KNOW I'm a massive nerd

the way I, a massive nerd, use a computer, should never be considered a default

Me, 2003, borrowing someone's truck, going to start it up, cold day, looking all around, shouting to the guy "Where's the choke?"

THAT'S where the terminal should be

50% operating system market share looks like a banner across the Linux Mint support forums saying "Replies encouraging non-sysadmins to open the terminal will be removed"

Linux will take off and go mainstream on the desktop twenty years after the terminal is hidden away under "Advanced System Features" and the last guy replied to a help request with "OK copy paste this into your terminal"

I say twenty years because it's been a good ten years since the average person has needed to use a terminal but folk who've never used Linux still say it's all typing things into a black and green box, it's gonna take a LONG time for Linux to shake that off

Like, every other Linux distro I've tried has come with a terminal pinned somewhere so you can open it in one click

Back in the bad old days that felt Normal, like "Of COURSE this is gonna fuck up and you're gonna need to go back to DOSbollocking days to fix it," it was Expected that you'd be in the terminal

Now it feels like... why is this here

Like, tuck it away somewhere under Accessories or something

Have some confidence

I dare you

Linux Mint has passed that certain point, that Threshold, where a bad thing is slowly getting good, where you stop being glad when it works and start getting pissed off when it doesn't.

Like imagine drinking wine out of a glass full of sawdust, the wine guy keeps giving you new straws so you can work around the sawdust and you're actually glad of the straws, you thank him for them, you're glad there's less sawdust in your wine

And then when it's like 10% sawdust you go "Why the hell does this wine have sawdust in it" and that's where Linux is at now

It's finally good enough to be bad

Like it's pissing me off now because it's good

This is bad news actually haha