Stephen Michael Kellat alpacaherder@identi.ca

Ashtabula County, Ohio

Adjunct Instructor of Computer Science. A Librarian Long, Long Ago. Podcaster. TeX User Group Member. Amateur Radio Operator (General Class). Occasional Writer. Ubuntu Member. Fediverse Explorer.

  • Checking In

    2024-01-10T05:26:31Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Yes, I am still alive.


    Yes, I am still teaching basic computer skills at a community college.


    Yes, the scary old man from Florida running for President of the United States is saying stupid things that pushing me towards possible emigration.


    Where to emigrate to? I wish I knew...


  • Digital Literacy

    2023-10-12T04:11:30Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    It is a joyful thing to teach this subject but it does take quite a bit out of you. I get to wrap up with my fifth group in a few hours. Next week I get to start with my sixth group. Apparently I might just be doing something right, it seems.

    Jim Fulner likes this.

  • Still Alive

    2023-10-10T02:07:08Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    This week I get to wrap up the fifth installment of teaching "Computer Applications and Concepts" at my college. Next week I get to start all over again with another eight week round of teaching the class. It can be very hard work at times but I do think some good is being accomplished through this.

    Jim Fulner likes this.

  • PageKite

    2023-08-18T20:58:13Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    I do have PageKite set up on a Raspberry Pi Zero W 2 in my basement. There is a barebones webserver on it that serves up a single static web page. So far, so good. It can be found at https://smkellat.pagekite.me/ for those who are curious.


    Now I just need to build that out further if I get some free time from teaching undergraduates...

  • openSUSE via WSL

    2023-08-06T02:33:47Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    I'm finding this to not be bad at all on Windows 11. This is a bit of a change from Ubuntu via WSL but that's okay.

  • How Strange

    2023-07-25T04:33:55Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    I had a late night message from one of my community college students. I was getting worried as they had been missing for a while. I'm glad to hear from them. The big question is how to get them caught up now.

  • I Wish I Were Kidding

    2023-07-23T21:57:17Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Well, as of Thursday night my community is without any sort of movie theater. What ended up happening was AMC got locked in a heckuva negotiation with their landlord that wound up disastrous. Considering their poor sales in my local area and the outrageous price per square foot being sought by their landlord in their lease renewal, they chose the prudent course business-wise and shut down locally.


    This is not good. There is talk that we'll potentially be losing the local Walmart too. My town is turning into a ghost town before my eyes, it seems.

  • Alrighty?

    2023-07-15T04:40:53Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    My world is on fire again. I have to deal with the nightmare of a rare disease. The world authority for it is based at Cleveland Clinic. Beyond the nice lady's team at Cleveland Clinic there are researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. That's really it. It is a fairly obscure thing that is unfortunately cancer-related. As much as I want to get out of northeastern Ohio that is not a good idea at the moment.


    A hit rate of 1 in 200,000 is bad. That number is also an optimistic one, I think. Fortunately this isn't communicable. It still puts a crimp in life in ways I have yet to determine...


  • Boop

    2023-02-23T05:43:02Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: Followers

    Maintaining a presence here one step at a time
  • Where Am I?

    2022-12-23T18:09:02Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    I sure am spread out these days.


    The blog: https://kellat.me/

    The Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/smkellat

    The Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/smkellat

    The Mastodon: https://mas.to/@smkellat

    The Twitch: https://twitch.tv/shameraider

    The Telegram: https://t.me/smkellat

    The GitHub: https://github.com/skellat

    The Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/kellat/

    The Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smk

    The Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~skellat

    The Amazon Author Profile: https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Michael-Kellat/e/B085MR8Y8J


    I could make a point about needing to separate accounts from identity but the enumeration above should give you an idea as to why it might be a good idea.

  • Danger Is Lurking

    2022-12-11T04:56:22Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    When I saw mention of this lunatic article I was given pause. It portends violence, it seems. I'll simply post the link so others can judge directly: https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/23/hard-truths-and-radical-possibilities/


    When people start checking out on the democracy and elections you have fertile ground for takeover by a dictator. Who wants to be dictator of the USA? Unfortunately we have many budding candidates seemingly from the crazy side of the aisle.

  • 2022-11-19T04:43:00Z via Dianara CC: Public

    Tupulpo likes this.

  • WSL 1.0.0 has a neat feature or two

    2022-11-19T04:40:05Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    A nice part to WSL 1.0.0 is that it somewhat more seamlessly lets me use Dianara in Windows environments. With Twitter collapsing, Mastodon nodes getting dumped on pretty hard, and the world still a nasty place it frankly is nice to be able to mess with pump.io once again.

  • What Could This Mean?

    2022-11-13T20:02:37Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: Followers

    Yeah, for safety's sake I'm nuking much of what was present on my Twitter account.  Things are looking grim there.
    What did you mean by that?

    Jim Fulner at 2023-05-29T02:53:51Z

  • Here goes something

    2022-11-08T04:33:32Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    I teach computer & information systems at a local community college. I should have more of a presence here. With Twitter becoming a grand dumpster fire I can't really stay put there.


    I am blogging at https://kellat.me/. Hopefully that goes well.


    Jim Fulner likes this.

  • Ooof

    2022-10-21T14:00:57Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Well, what can I say?


    Right now my country has basically gone absolutely crazy. One of the two main political parties is descending rapidly into being antisemitic while being mired in a cult of personality following a fascistic authoritarian strongman. They're slobbering over Vladimir Putin and think that Ukraine has no right to exist as a distinct country.


    The other party is acting like the cultists can still be reasoned with.


    I'm not sure how exactly this is going to play out. Making a run for Canada is not too difficult if I had a boat considering Port Stanley is directly across the lake from Ashtabula. Getting to Australia would be a bit harder. Considering participation levels from my local county board of elections in early/absentee voting it looks like the cultists are forgetting to actually go out and vote while the president's party is remembering to do so. That will lead to further tension in November as election results push the cultists towards yet another Great Disappointment.


    Is a crack-up coming? I hope not. The open antisemitism and increasingly violent rhetoric on the part of the cultists leads me to think the odds are not in my favor, though.

    Screw the cultists, and most specially, their orange piece-of-shit leader.


    Best luck to you, in any case.

    JanKusanagi @identi.ca at 2022-10-22T03:21:48Z

    Stephen Michael Kellat likes this.

  • Work From Home...

    2022-10-19T03:23:42Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: Followers

    I am between teaching sessions at the moment.  My WFH desk is a bit of a mess at the moment.  Yes, that is a Teams phone on my home desk.  I am only an adjunct instructor so I don't get a PSTN phone number as I am only on-campus two days a week.  My students can call me via Teams, though.  Teams handles our college telephony needs.  The college uses far more SaaS solutions than you might expect.

    Tupulpo likes this.

  • Things Change

    2022-05-25T04:17:01Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: Followers

    I'm still tracking changes in what I'm listening to/watching in terms of podcasts here: https://code.launchpad.net/~skellat/+git/Podcasting

    Am I using a Macbook Pro M1?  Yes.  Is there a Raspberry Pi Zero W tethered to it?  Yes.  I haven't left the Linux world but rather am approaching it from a different perspective.

  • Things Change

    2022-04-13T03:17:33Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: Followers

    I have wound up with a Macbook Pro.  Since these don't do virtualization all that well I handle that through attaching a Raspberry Pi Zero.  In doing so I use the Pi Zero as an RNDIS Ethernet gadget and have a little Linux machine tethered to the Macbook Pro.

    Yeah, it is a paradigm shift.  So far it is working okay.
  • ARGH!

    2022-03-18T03:31:27Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Okay. I am a pollworker in Ohio. Three maps have been proposed setting out districts for the Ohio House and the Ohio Senate. All three maps have been rejected by the Supreme Court of Ohio. We hit the UOCAVA ballot mail-out deadline on Friday and will miss it statewide due to a technical pause by a federal court.


    The General Assembly is insisting that it is somehow holy writ that the primary election must be on the first Tuesday in May. They won't consider delaying the primary election to get all the pending legal issues resolved. Thanks to Section 7 of Article V of the Ohio Constitution, we can't skip having a partisan primary for seats in the Ohio House and Ohio Senate. The primary for those seats simply must happen or we'll really break the state constitution even harder than we already are. It would be cheaper to delay than to hold two primaries.



    Pollworker training on Monday is gonna be exciting, I think. Oddly enough, I originally was going to run for a legislative seat of some kind in this election before all the map craziness happened. I suppose I could run as an independent but that would be a whole new world of oddity.