brennen @brennen@federation.p1k3.com

unexpectedly, between afternoon monsoon rains and volunteer plants from the compost, there is now a patch of somewhat thriving garden.

aside from the various nightshades, i guess i'm growing some as-yet unidentified squash and... watermelon? yes, that is definitely a watermelon.

anyway should i buy one on craigslist for 20 bucks?

i mean look at this thing:

https://mtbdatabase.com/bikes/2009/trek/lime/2009-trek-lime-wsd/

it has *exactly* the aesthetics you expect from something called "lime" and released in the long, horrible industrial design shadow cast by the late 1990s & early 2000s.

today i learned of the existence of the trek lime, a bike with... a front-wheel dynamo powered automatic shifter?

what kind of rube goldberg nonsense is this

me like 5 years ago: fuck it, i should just camp more.

me now: actually this one worked out, i should probably get back to it.

me like 15 years ago: i will hack on things and the world will get better as a consequence of all this collective effort to build a commons

me now: well, shit.

me like 20 years ago: i have opinions about art and one day i will make something important

me now: well, i sure did biff it on that one, but on the other hand art actually doesn't matter very much, so i guess that's an enormous relief

we went to get the bikes out of storage and i tell you what, even knowing it intellectually, it's pretty amazing what a thorough coating of fine alkali dust followed by a couple of years in a damp root cellar will do to just absolutely ruin every metal mechanical component, fitting, gasket, seal, etc. on a cheap cruiser.

my plans to have a real System for moving the irrigation water around have again failed to materialize. next year, i tell myself. gravity fed whatnot.

inexplicably, the apple tree is going gangbusters for a second year running. here's hoping it doesn't shatter under the load, since i once again did a terrible job pruning it.

once we get thru the worst of the midsummer heat, i'm going to plant a bunch of greens, try to put up a frame for greenhouse panels. (2/2)

it is hot as fuck.

i didn't plant much, and 70% of what i did plant died almost immediately.
on the other hand, the compost i mixed into the raised bed provided about a million little tomato seedlings and some squash or melons or something that are going to town, and half a dozen of the peppers lived, so i guess there'll be some nightshades.

there's also a volunteer dill that's now taller than i am, lots of basil, some very random lettuces. (1/2)

this is a writeup of a debian installation, if i understand this correctly, upgraded continuously since _1993_:

https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/11840.html

("cheerful" is both the new part and the part i'm still working on.)

i think embracing cheerful despair is going to be my new thing.