GROINK

Another Redesign

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It doesn’t feel like almost a year since my last update, but it appears it is so.

More website redesign! I decided to try Hugo to generate this site versus running WordPress. I think it works pretty well and the theme I used and modified keeps in the spirit of the previous version. I’ve grown attached to my CGA graphics style blog. I was not growing attached to the bloat that WordPress incurs. Besides, I’ve got little need for a dynamic website when all I do is bitch once or twice a year, right? I did get rid of the “Other Notable Groinks” section because…fuck ’em! I’m the only Groink that matters.

Nail

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When given the opportunity to write something, I invariably draw a blank. Far too much freedom. Especially when saddled with the anxiety of considering what other people may think. Do they like it? Is it trivial? Does it belie some aspect of myself that I’ve kept hidden away for fear of judgment?

I’ve spent a good deal of my life trying to be what other people want me to be. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. But it has left me this contorted, twisted semblance of a person. Bits and pieces patched together like a metaphysical Frankenstein’s monster, awkward and lumbering…naive. Every move, deliberate, thoroughly thought out and agonized over. Right leg forward, now left leg. Swing your arms. Nod and smile. Now laugh. Breathe.

Its Always DNS

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I may vocally deny that that I’m pretty smart in most social and work settings, but in my gooey insides, I often smugly proclaim “I am so smart.” This sometimes conflicts with objective evidence to the contrary, and then my ego goes “owie!” and slinks away to lick its wounds. Do you like how I abstract away my ego when it suits me? Like it’s not at all a huge facet of my being.

I Have No Friends

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic.

I don’t have any friends in meat-space.

That’s not quite true either, but I don’t want to define the relationship I have with that person as “friends” because I’m not sure if they think that way, although we are “friendly”. Maybe we are growing into friends, but perhaps it’s too soon to say. I will find some way of sabotaging it eventually, so let’s not count that.

Working Title

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I was trying to remember what internal crisis I was inducing last night. Then I remembered this morning: today is the last day of my very lovely two week vacation. Which means that tonight when I lay my head to rest for the night, it will be filled with an onslaught of thoughts about work, the issues that I left behind before vacation, how to solve them, how I am really just a very mediocre technology worker, and probably a few dreams about my teeth falling out, missing a final exam, or being naked while looking for my 4th period classroom.

Lets Get Metaphysical

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I like to think I’m fairly grounded in reality.

Hm. I’m not sure any good discussion follows that statement. But I digress…

I find myself pondering the nature of reality, time, space. It makes me recall this video by Carl Sagan:

We think of ourselves as three dimensional creatures. Granted, we have three dimensions, but are we merely that? Sometimes — that is, a lot of the time — I wonder if we are four dimensional creatures. Our brains are the sense organ for the fourth dimension, and our consciousness is that movement through it. Just as we are familiar with our current, physical three dimensional surroundings, is our current state of being just the familiarity and nearness of that place in the fourth dimension we currently occupy? Looking off into the distance at some mountain peak or other far away place is analogous to when we dream or imagine — we are “looking” ahead or around in four dimensions to states that we don’t (or can’t) occupy. Remembering something is examining a previous state of our being. Our existence from birth to death, that is the entirety of who we are as four dimensional creatures, as much as I am the collection of cells, tissue and other bodily parts with respect to three dimensions.

Television, My Colon, and All Things In Between

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was looking at my website on the shitter, which I don’t usually do, but the mobile version of the WordPress theme I stole/modified doesn’t look half bad. Except for the site title. It’s hard [for me] to predict how a font will render on different browsers and platforms. Anyway, I’m keeping the look for a while. I’ll to try and fix the title, hopefully not by just make it a JPEG or PNG or something lame. No promises, though. But that’ll have to wait because…

Redesign

Sun, 21 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

At first, I wanted something reminiscent of an old monochrome terminal. But I ended up going something vaguely CGA looking. I think some people might think it is some vaporwave aesthetic. My front-end dev skills are…lacking.

Windoze

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I installed Windows 11 at the constant, harpy-like urging of Windows 10. One peculiarity of having updated to Windows 11 is that it keeps re-activating Bluetooth after I’ve disabled it making it difficult to swap my headphones over to my work laptop. My J-pop playlists are essential for completing my daily work.

Off to Dr. Google I go! I found this gem, paradoxically, on answers.microsoft.com:

“However, if you are seeing it turn on more often or even when there is not any new release build version of Windows being installed, that can probably be solved.”

Panic Attack

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AHHH…elections! AHHH…Twitter! AHHH…Powerball! Sorta ahhh…Meta/Facebook!

It Seems to Me...

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

…that those who are unabashedly fervent in their support of religion and the police are those who believe others and themselves lack a moral compass to do the right thing without threat of punishment from the Heavenly Sky Father or by the muzzle of a weapon.

Dear Weirdos

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Nobody wants your 10 year old, used, ratty, rained on, left out on the edge of your driveway raccoon love nest of a mattress. Even if it is free.
Thank you for the $10 discount off of the MSRP on the kitchen appliance used only “a handful of times” over the last 7 years.

Reconfiguration

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am trying to give up swearing. It is proving to be difficult. Even more difficult is attempting to give up being sarcastic — and whatever derivative or similar humor that’s in the same vein.

Sarcasm is too expensive an activity to engage in for me personally, and frankly, the same goes for the United States. The ability to be able to detect the nuance of that kind of humor is absent in most. Certainly part of it due to mere naivete. More alarmingly the line between what is reasonable and what is absurd is all but gone. The mundane is unbelievable, and the norm is irrationality. Satire requires a common reference point, and that reference point is so divergent among everyone, that it renders satire irrelevant. A practical example is The Onion. With an uncomfortable amount of regularity, it is cited as an actual news source. The insidious corollary to that is The Onion also seems to accurately predict cultural shifts towards the absurd. Or it reports actual news in a screamingly satirical tone. Sigh.

Slow Motion Train Wreck

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It’s easy to be glib about things we feel we cannot affect. Even moreso when social media (and mainstream media, too) encourages you to be the most 15-seconds-famous as you can be. Entertainment is valued above purposefulness.

We are living in history. But we cannot be passive observers that the neverending buffet of media teaches us to be.

Fuel your purpose with love, not hate. Be resolute, but always introspective.

TwEeTeR

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Oh Yeah, btw...

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Three years ago my dad died. Guess this was knocking around in my head the last couple of days without coming to the forefront of my mind.

So that’s rad.

Happy Valentines Day

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I love each and everyone one of you! No, really.

This Valentine’s Day begins with a breakup story: I deleted my Reddit account. Having an account didn’t feel like it was bring much value to my life: the upvoting, downvoting or commenting on random things. Nobody cares. After all I have my own platform to write stuff that nobody cares about.

No Valentine’s Day is complete without sweets. I purchased five pounds of candy from Jelly Belly. What the hell is wrong with me? But candy is fun.

Fiction

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I think the only way that you and I can make this work is to understand that this is all a work of fiction.

Change

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

…is afoot. I’m getting ready to close one chapter in my life and (re)open another. The prospect of it is stupidly keeping me up at night, while I bandy it about in my head like a plaything, not achieving anything productive in its course. I think it will make me happy. In the end, it is change, and as this very odd year comes to a conclusion, that is what I crave.

Pretty Little Prison

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This second wave of Covid has further extended the need to quarantine. And it sucks. I suppose there are worse things in the world than to be stuck in the sticks away from people during a global pandemic. I’ve been here over a year, and during that time, only four months not under restriction. But with those four months during winter, when you don’t want to do much exploring anyway, held in by the warmth of the house.

A Whole New World

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

OMFG. It’s the Halley’s Comet of blogs. Wecome back!

I Moved

I moved and started a new job. Then when I had a bad day, I asked my old boss if he’d consider hiring me back. He said they’d love to have me back, but then I stayed at my new job.

I’m…such…a…little…bitch…

Changing up your whole world when you are on the dark side of middle age is a fucking challenging thing. I don’t mean to wax on about getting old [again — see my previous post from four years ago], but it really does change the way you operate. Hence the old adage “don’t trust anyone over 30”. I mean, yeah, some of it is ill-intent because you’ve gotten salty and adopted a DGAF attitude. But a lot of it is just the brain not working the way it used to, and going into flight-or-fight mode for stupid things. Desperately clinging on to bygone dreams

For The Lulz

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I had imagined that I would use groink.net as my platform for my own buffoonery and crotchety, old-fart rhetoric in relative anonymity. I don’t know if that is such a good thing after all. Maybe it was because I received an AARP card in the mail the other day, but damn, I’m feeling old and reflective.

The thing that’s been bugging me as of late (other than co-workers and traffic) is the overwhelming lack of gravitas in the US. And sure, this has been exemplified by the current US presidential primaries, but even before that cast of characters even took the stage, it feels like society has been dead set on squeezing in a dick joke (apologies to Bill Hicks) into every social commentary.

Work Haiku #1

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

When eating my lunch

the edamame look like

green, hairy nut sacks.

#workhaiku

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a dude. With a website. And cookies.

Contact

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Lol. Oh, dear…no.