Bucking

Today at work I got to enjoy another round of “Operation: Donkey Punch”, a term I picked up from my hacking friends. It’s where, after fighting with a device to make a change through standard means and failing repeatedly because the standard means are absurdly dumb or limited by policy or design, you tear it apart, make the change while it’s not looking, and then put it back together.

In this example, my department got a pair of Dell DGX devices — basically a set of ARM cores and a high-end NVIDIA GPU with lots of memory. They run a custom version of Ubuntu and are sold as desktop AI accelerators. They’re about the size of a Mac Mini. Team wants to try running models locally.

Thing is, the Setup Wizard expects you, the customer who just shelled out $5000 each, to be in a SOHO office environment, and it makes bad assumptions that don’t work in the Enterprise. My office has a MITM web filter that decrypts web traffic, sniffs it, and encrypts it with our own CA certificate. Every device that needs web access (which is mostly HTTPS these days) must have this cert installed or the device will trust nothing.

Despite being on the lab wired network, the Setup Wizard kept giving me the prompt to select a WiFi AP; that’s because even with correctly configured Ethernet, when it tries to call home to see if it’s truly on the Internet, it fails the cert trust and falls back to demanding WiFi. We can’t use WiFi in the lab; security policy.

There’s no widget to add a cert. Can’t even login on ssh or an alternate terminal. Completely locked out until Setup Wizard finishes. I tried every way to make it work.

Frustrated, I decided it was time to void the warranty. I opened the case, removed the storage, attached it to my workstation, copied the cert file to the right folder, simulated what update-ca-certificate does to “install” the cert, reinstalled the storage into the DGX, and powered it up. Restarted the Setup Wizard, and at the point where it would’ve asked for WiFi, it went directly to downloading system updates and finishing.

Fist up. Big ol’ punch to the head. Take it, bitch.

Next Verse

My sixteen days of holiday vacation come to a close tomorrow on Monday morning. I return to work. I’m not ready for it.

I keep thinking back to the previous two weeks and pondering what I did versus what I expected, fully expecting to give report of my time off at the water cooler or during the small-talk portion of tomorrow’s standup call.

Sorry, bossman, I did nothing of note.

And that’s just it; that nagging feeling riding my neck the whole time I was out. That I’d have to do something worthy of tale and spectacle. “Live a great story” is a terrible way to go through life, and is a dumb reason to do things. My hours are nobody’s business, and now I have less of them.

Basically I had a long weekend. Kept the same rhythm, the same themes, and played the same verse-chorus-verse motifs. And now I hit the bridge straight into the next verse. Carry on, carry on, until the coda fades me out.

Sustain

Not writing a retrospective on 2025. But I will go on to say that this has been a difficult year, what with the stressors and declining health and loss of hope and prospect for the future. I’ve locked into a bad rhythm. There has to be more than four on the floor and snare on the three.

Feeling like I should commit to an austere lifestyle to prolong myself. Too Much of Everything: eating, drinking, collecting, scrolling, worrying. It’s all so much, but still I have a hunger.

I need to destroy this rhythm. Or do I? Yes, but no.

I don’t know.

Metrospective

Given the nature of things in the Year of Our Lard 2025, I’m not offering much by way of personal retrospection on the prior year. It’s been a bit much. So very much.

However, this year has me on a massive music acquisition kick. By my count, I’ve picked up 217 albums this year, which is astonishing to me that I can do that, considering once upon a time, if I bought 4 CDs and spent $70, I immediately felt buyer’s remorse and spent the next 4 months sucking the marrow out of every disc before I could afford another 4. Much of this year’s collection is from trawling the used CD bins at bookstores and record shops on the cheap. The remainder is from online shops, the artists’ sites, or from merch tables. Some are bands I saw at this year’s SXSW.

The absolute standouts for me this year are Lost Signal, Kirlian Camera, HEALTH, Envy of None, Art School Girlfriend, Trevor Rabin, David Sylvian & Robert Fripp, Qual, Dido, and SUSS. I find myself putting these on repeat.

I also find myself picking up more soundtracks, which is not something I do. But with the thrift of used discs, I’m doing a lot more experimentation and exploration, and filling in the gaps for artists I already love. I’m also re-buying albums that I already had in crappy low-bitrate digital files; now they’re gloriously lossless.

I hope to continue exploration in 2026, albeit at a not-so-voracious rate. Like I said, it’s a bit much, and I’m wondering what hole I’m trying to fill with all this, but that’s an entirely different discussion.

Posting the full list below the readmore fold.

May you have a good 2026. Vote the bastards out.

Continue reading “Metrospective”