Notices by Lisa Lorenzin KR4LFE (she/her) (llorenzin@infosec.exchange)

"When the people who built and operated your cloud would rather knead dough than touch a terminal again, that’s not a career pivot. That’s a trauma response."

https://www.seuros.com/blog/aws-fired-the-human-who-made-the-difference/

The enshittification escalates...

I walked away from tech almost four years ago with a case of burnout you could see from space.

The intervening three years have only made me more grateful that I left when I did.

(I wish all my friends and colleagues still chained to the oars had my opportunity.)

#aws #layoffs #burnout #ai

@mhoye I'm looking seriously at Alpine Linux vs Devuan... We had to rebuild our internal server recently (which had been happily running CentOS 4 for over a decade, we are not power users), and it was a total PITA - systemd is a shitshow even without this age nonsense. I'm too old and too cranky to be excited about learning a new distro, but here I am.

This is *brutal*...

"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."

https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp

Achievement unlocked!

Thank you #RARS VE team for offering #hamradio exams at #RARSfest...

My favorite form of political #activism is writing postcards to swing voters! Got another 200 finished that needed to be mailed today - I only had 30 postcard stamps at home, so I figured I'd pick up the rest of the stamps when I got to the post office.

Apparently there's been a run on postcard stamps recently! My closest PO had none, and said someone came in last week and bought up 2600. (No, that's not a typo.). Next closest PO only had one roll of 100, which they had to go dig out of the back, but they were kind enough to call the third closest and check for me... Which didn't have any, either.

Finally got confirmation that a PO across town had them - so I drove over and they only had 80. Fortunately it got me what I needed, but that was an hour out of my day I didn't expect to waste.

WTAF, #USPS?? I can decide whether I think this is incompetence, under-fundedness, or some MAGA plot to prevent us from sending postcards because they're so effective. (Okay, I don't really think the latter, but I'd like to believe the postcards work well enough to make the Trump stans afraid of them! 😈)

Anyone else had trouble getting stamps lately?

#SilentSunday
#Photography #LandscapePhotography #rainbow #mountains

#SilentSunday
#Photography #LandscapePhotography

#SilentSunday
#Photography #LandscapePhotography

#SilentSunday
#Photography #LandscapePhotography #FallColors

Reading the stories from #Chicago :
https://aphyr.com/posts/397-i-want-you-to-understand-chicago

Makes me glad I'm signed up for this NLG webinar (this Monday, 11/10/25) on Preparing for the Federal Domestic Terrorism Apparatus:
https://www.nlg.org/civicrm/event/register/?reset=1&id=90

I feel so helpless in the face of this lawless administration. Hopefully NLG will have good concrete suggestions for what to do!

#activism #resist

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition...

I've put my mohair wrap on hold to make a scarf for a friend who's about to go into chemotherapy - when my MIL was in chemo, I remember her mentioning how cold the treatment rooms were, and I'd like to give my friend something warm, soft, and comforting to wear for her treatments. 🧶💖 I had a skein of this lovely cashmere-merino blend in my stash, and she liked the colors, so we're off to the races!

Normally I don't love working to a deadline, but I really want to get this done before her chemo starts, and this is absolutely the fastest progress I've ever made on a single project... I wound the skein into a yarn ball on Sunday August 17th, and today I've just completed the body, so all I have left is the edging. It helps that we had a road trip to VA to take some friends caving - I got a *ton* of it done in the car.

Unfortunately we had a huge downpour while camping there, and my project bag got wet - the yarn was damp, so I left it out overnight to dry out, and then realized in the morning that there were a zillion moths around. The last thing I want is moth eggs i
on a gift! So I did a little research online and found that [heat is a good way to kill moth eggs](https://www.wellandgood.com/shopping/how-to-get-rid-of-clothes-moths). Conveniently the filament dryer for our 3D printer can hold at the appropriate temperature... 🤔 So I jury-rigged some standoffs to keep the yarn off the heater bars and made a little yarn sauna. 😁

Hoping to get it finished and blocked this week, so I can drop it off for her this weekend! 🤞🏻

@cannibal @crochet

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition...

More adventures > more roadtrips > more progress! I'm making another instance of the same shawl for a different friend, and I was able to get the body done while adventuring - and then add *and frog* the edging while attending a pops concert and a Paperhand Puppet performance this weekend.

Why frog the edging? Because my friend was interested in a contrast edging, and I have some blue yarn left over from another project, but I don't know if she'll like those colors together. So I figured I'd work it up both ways and let her decide! ☺️ And it was easiest to just finish with the original skein and then pull the edging off so I can re-do with the blue... Hoping to get that done this week.

@cannibal @crafters

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition...

I missed last Monday's update due to Having Adventures, so I have a twofer this week - I've finished, blocked, and delivered the triangle shawl for my friend, *and* I got my mohair wrap done! 😁

Fall is Adventure Season around here, and the weather has been glorious - in the past two weeks, we've backpacked 30 miles in 3 days at Doughton Park, dropped two vertical caves near Blacksburg, and spent several days rappelled and ascending on a 700' drop at Whiteside Mountain in Western NC. We're headed out to Hanging Rock State Park for another round of backpacking tomorrow... more training for a 4-day, 40-mile thru hike in October. So I've had plenty of time to work on these as we roadtrip to our adventures!

Also got the yarn ball sorted for my next project, and I must say - winding a yarn ball in a car is *not* a great option. 🙄 Next time I'm going back to hanging the skein off my treadmill desk...

@cannibal

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition...

...in which I realize I am an *utter dumbass* and managed to break yarn, weave in ends, soak, and get mostly through blocking Betsy's shawl before noticing that I somehow only made the final edging picots on one side, but not the other. 🤦🏻♀️

At which point I swore a bunch and finished pinning it out to see how visible the difference was. (Answer: very.🙄) So my current plan is to unweave the end, tie back on - I thought about a Russian join, but I think the double thickness would be really noticeable in a picot - at the same place I left off, make the remaining picots, and then try to dampen just that edge and block just those picots. Realistic? I guess I'll find out... 🤞🏻

On a brighter note, I started a [Memento Mori shawl](https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/memento-mori-shawl) for my sister on the flights to & from the wedding visit, and at least *that's* going pretty smoothly! 💀

@cannibal @crafters

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition...
So I finished the contrast edging for the second shawl... The edging yarn has a slight gradient, so the two sides are asymmetrical, which would drive *me* nuts. But I sent both pics to my friend, and she likes it that way! Which is lovely, because it saves me the time of frogging again and re-doing the self-edging. 😇

These friends are both women I know through my mom, so now I'm making Mom a shawl of the same pattern - that way they'll all have a matching set. 😁 I took my show on the road again - @mbroome & I just completed a 4-day, 40-mile thru hike in the Uwharries, and we had a bunch of free time in the afternoons, so I was able to get the body mostly done around the campfires and finished it up when we got home last night.

Next steps are to block Betsy's shawl (this week), finish the edging (on planes to/from a wedding this weekend) and block Mom's (next week), and take both of them to Mom when I see her next Friday. I think I can get it all done - wish me luck! 🤞🏻

@cannibal
@crafters

#SilentSunday
#Photography #LandscapePhotography #panorama

@Infoseepage @HikerGeek @mcnado I was able to get Shingrix in my late 40s (in NC, at CVS, a couple years ago) with a doctor's prescription. My insurance (Aetna CVS) even covered it! No idea how your location or insurance works, but it's worth asking your pharmacist if they will dispense, your doc if they will prescribe, and your insurance if they will cover. I hope you get the same answers I did!

@mcnado (in support of your thesis)

@kpfssport here's a really handy chart I use for conversions like that!
https://www.laughinghens.com/yarn-conversion-chart
Looks like worsted (US) is equivalent to Aran (UK).

And here's my go-to for figuring out hook sizing:
https://creamofthecropcrochet.com/yarn-weight-and-crochet-hook-size-chart/
FWIW, this is highly variable by person. I tend to keep fairly tight tension so I usually end up on the larger end of the size range to get my gauge swatches right..

Current status 😣

#ADHD #ExecutiveDysfunction #neurodivergent