Greetings from western Canada

[jonw]

Name: Jon (JD) Watson

Age: let's just say I was a BBS SysOp before the internet existed.

I mostly post about: day to say stuff. I tend to lean geeky/tecchy and Canadiana, but I think a lot about lots of things and post topics can get pretty random. I keep it clean, mostly, so you can safely check out my content to decide for yourself :)

My hobbies are: journalling (privately, not necessarily online, but there is definitely overlap), writing, nerding out on home tech projects, self-improvement, and caring for my three dogs. If anyone ever asks you how many dogs is too many dogs, the answer is three.

I'm looking to meet people who: are Canadian OR have geeky job/hobbies OR see normal things in deeper ways OR are sane Linux users (AKA, not the alpha-nerd type of boor) AND are tolerant of the incredibly diverse state the world is in AND kind to things and people that can do nothing for them.

My posting schedule tends to be: Dailyish. Usually more than weekly but I doubt I can consistently hit daily.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: right-wing crap in all its forms, both overt and covert. And, honestly, politics in general. I firmly believe that social media is the worst place to get news or reliably accurate information on anything, and politics has emerged as the most divisive topic to date. Thus, I am not interested in getting involved in political discussions as a general rule.

Before adding me, you should know: I overthink everything and will probably eventually bore you with some deep indepth post about the merits of square toothpicks versus round ones.

Comments

[sixbeforelunch]

Hi! I've added you because of shared interests in indie web, Linux, and home labs. No pressure to add back, but if you want to know about me, my intro post is here.

[jonw]

Hi

Thanks for the follow. We do indeed seem to have some interest overlap. For home labs, I have two things sitting on my shelf that I get ideas for from time to time, but currently they are attracting dust. One is the obligatory raspberry Pi that has been a web server, and DNS server, and a NAS all at various times in its life. The other is a "BeeperBerry" which is supposed to be used to access the Beeper network (think, consolidated instant messaging), but it is a cool linux box in a Blackberry frame including the legendary keyboard so I use it for a variety of things, none of which involve Beeper :)

[sixbeforelunch]

Ah cool! I currently have an old tower PC that's dual booted with Window and Linux Mint that I use as a play machine (my daily driver where the important stuff resides is a Mac Mini, and my work computer is a Dell running Windows that's managed by my job so I spend a lot of time jumping between OS). I'm contemplating wiping it and installing Proxmox, but I'm on the fence about all that. There are some things I definitely want to self-host, but I'm at that point where I'm realizing just how intensive this hobby would be, and deciding if I want to move forward.

[jonw]

I have probably been through every stage of self-hosting since I put my first email server together in...like...2003 or something like that. At that time, you just had to figure out how to get it all working. God forbid you wanted to do something like a LAMP stack as getting all that working was blakc magic.

Email hosting, then and now, continues to be plagued by anti-spam measures. Getting a mail server running is not that hard any more, but making sure it is configured in such a way that things like sender callbacks work, and making sure the DNS records are set up so that DKIM, SPF, etc. work is another matter. And, if you don't own the IP, then you don't really have direct control over rDNS so you have to hope your host will make that record for you. Then...finally...even if you get all that working a lot of your outgoing email will still get dropped because residential IPs should not be sending email...it's really hard to get all that working, so email is something that I finally gave up on and allow a proper email host to handle that for me.

Web hosting is easy, and of course hosting anything non-mainstream is usually fine. I think the first application I discovered that took over the whole server and gave you a nice UI to work with was ISPConfig, then of course cPanel. Today, I run a YunoHost server. It is a really nice system...stable, maintained, reliable. You could check that out if you wanted to short circuit some of the config nightmares.

Strangely, I have not had a ton of container experience in my career. I use virutalization everywhere, but I guess I have never had that specific infrastructure engineering job where I would have leaned heavily on Terraform and other cloud configs. I do now many people that use Proxmox and love it, so I guess it works.

[jacober_calc]

Greetings from the island Jon! I admit right out the gate that upon reading you were from Canada and sharing the same island as me, I went to you blog to see more. I am so glad you finally made it to the Hawaii of Canada!

My name is Eric and I am into nerdy things like calculator (especially old HP ones and newer boutique ones made by Swiss Micros). I use Linux but also MacOS and Windows, I am a firm believer in practicality and specific-use for software and roll my eyes at anything sounding remotely dogmatic or religious about software with users (I am sure you know what I am talking about).

Vancouver Island I have recently learned has an amazing HAM radio community and this is slowly becoming my new hobby for 2026.

I can't say that I don't talk politics sometimes. But fundamentally I am a Blackadder-type who is sick of both sides. Read somewhere recently a person wrote in a political type post: clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right and I thought that hit pretty well.

I'll leave the adding up to you, if you are interested add me and I will be sure to add back.

[jonw]

Nice to “meet” someone local. I appreciate niche geekery so I’m definitely adding you back.

Yes…I once was a “actually, it’s GNU LINUX” guy but have aged out of all the silly holy wars about that. I also use the right tool for the job regardless of what it is. These days I work in infosec, though, so that pretty much means Linux because that’s where all the good tools are and also that’s what pretty much the entire internet runs on. But my daily driver is a MacBook although I admit I only use it because it’s “Linux enough” for me. I don’t disparage Windows users, it is just legitimately the wrong tool for most of my work.

So odd and cool that you mention ham radio. I have been looking at getting my license but haven’t done much about it yet. I’m interested a lot in that tooov and will also be pursuing that interest this year. Maybe we can compare notes.

[femgoroth]

'Sane Linux users' made me lauuuuuugh. I have yet to meet one of those in my brushes with the computer world and I'm SO GLAD to see that computer people find the insane ones trying as well.

[jonw]

You have no idea how embarrassing and cringey those users are to the rest of us. It has been my experience that 150% of them only use Linux as a hobby on their own PC. Those of us that use Linux professionally don’t care what other people do. Or at the very least, once an insane Linux user gets a job actually working with Linux they quickly get over their heads and either step up and get good or slink away in humiliation.

[femgoroth]

I can imagine, they are so cringe. And yes! That's been my experience too! It's very similar to the pixel-peeper 'photographers' who make their comments from the basement and photograph landscapes, perhaps well, but not particularly challenging. These are people who would have a breakdown being in the trenches with the rest of us having to say, photograph a wedding or a birth.

[leia_solo]

Can we give being friend a try?

[heartonsnow]

I also overthink things and see normal things in deeper ways so we could try adding?

It seems out of fashion to analyse things nowadays! I remember Win 95. Also had Linux but could not get anyone to fix it when it went wrong!

[jonw]

lol. Critical thinking, or perhaps any thinking at all, has definitely fallen out of vogue.

Desktop linux has come a long way. Primarily due to the folks at Canonical who created and maintain Ubuntu. But still, to this day I have never recommended anyone use it outside of a server scenario. It’s just never going to be where Windows is and most people use computers to do things rather than fiddle with things.

I’ve added you to my journal.

[heartonsnow]

At the time Linux sounded like a good idea because Windows kept changing for no reason!

[jonw]

Windows definitely was more stable than Linux (on the desktop). But these days I’m not sure. Every Windows patch seems to break something else!

[heartonsnow]

as an "end user" all I know is that every edition of Windows changes things that do not seem to need changing!!

[jonw]

The best phrase I have heard for that over the years in this industry is "moving the cheese". As in, "users do not like it when you move their cheese", referring to moving random stuff about which annoys and slows down your users.

I feel like the car industry is pretty good at leaving people's cheese alone. I have had three Hyundais in a row and while each adds features as technology improves, they keep the dashboard and controls as similar as possible. I like that attention to detail.

[heartonsnow]

I have never heard that expression, is it like when someone moves the cheese in the fridge and you can't find it??!!

[jonw]

Exactly.

I assume it emerged in the early days when computer “mice” were still new enough to make puns about.

[heartonsnow]

oh - haha!

[gatheringrivers]

A fellow geek, wohoo! :)

I've also been into the geeky stuff since the dialup BBS days, and even if the RL time hasn't allowed, I've still got a very deep interest in geeky hobbies AND jobs.

I've given you access so you can see my intro post - let me know if we seem compatible and I'll add you to the rest. :)

[jonw]

I love (still) the BBS world. It is very small now, even the Fidonet echoes are mostly filled with the same handful of people, but it was a great time full of newness. Even the Usenet has become a shell of itself.

Your intro post puts mine to shame. lol. I would say we have more than a few commonalities so for sure I will add you.

My filtered posts are mostly work related and not that plentiful. It seems prudent to keep work posts out of the public eye. Not because I am sharing work secrets, but because I am generally complaining.

[gatheringrivers]

Oh, it's definitely ALWAYS a good idea to hide the work complaints behind a filter! lol :)

[dandylover1]

You sound quite interesting. May I add you as a friend. Feel free to read my profile and if you don't find it interesting, I will gladly respect you and not add you if you wish. iIt's just refreshing to find a journal not filled with mental/physical health issues, fandoms, politics, etc.

[jonw]

Of course, thank you for asking!

[gremdark]

Laughing at the "how many dogs is too many dogs" answer. I used to have a friend, who, at 78, lived alone with five large and medium dogs from working breeds. I think I'd tap out at two, but he liked the excuse to spend plenty of time outside, and it gave him people other than himself to care for every day.

[jonw]

Haha. I love them all. They’re all small breeds so they’re more cat like than dog like. We’ve always had at least two because we just feel dogs need another heartbeat even when we’re out of the house. They are such emotional animals.

We try to keep them within 5 years of each other because that feels like a “generation” in dog years. When they’re that close they tend to have similar cadences and abilities to play and run and nap.

Due to an unfortunate event (one passed to cancer at 8 so we got another puppy) and a fortunate event (a tripawd needed a permanent home from a local shelter a year is so later) we now have three, all under 6 years old.

The two smallest ones are a Morkie and the tripawd is a Chiweenie (a chihuahua dachshund mix that is surprisingly common) are barkers so it can get a little loud. We purposely bought a house with a corner lot during our most recent move so at least we don’t have side neighbours riling them up.

[yvon]

I haven't used this site much yet and just returned today after a few years' break, but I think most of the stuff in your "looking to meet" section applies to me, except I'm not Canadian or a Linux user (yet... I have a great many complaints about Windows). No pressure to add me though, I just enjoyed looking at your posts so far, especially those about tech stuff.

[jonw]

Welcome back!

Yeah, maybe I should change some of the ANDs in my post to ORs.

I read your most recent post and agree that living through the birth of AI is painful. It is a great tool for a very narrow subset of work humans do now, but certainly anything creative is not one of those. This period of time is very similar to the dot com bubble of the 90s and early aughts. The AI bubble is starting to burst as the results are not justifying the billions of dollars a day it takes to keep the clunkers running and eventually it will only be used where it makes sense. But it’s tough to see that at the moment.