Stephen Michael Kellat alpacaherder@identi.ca

Terra Incognito

Blogging at https://kellat.me oddly enough

  • 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.
  • 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.


  • 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.

  • Simulcasting Church's Livestreaming

    2022-03-12T20:24:28Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Our streaming on YouTube has been seemingly collateral damage from unknown events. We were expecting something like this to come down the pike. At this point we are now streaming on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GCCGeneva/ and on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/GenevaChurchOfChrist.


    I'm not at the point of seeking an STA/experimental license from the Commission to operate a low power TV station beyond current rules.

  • The Sounds of War

    2022-02-12T21:12:23Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Relative to the Ukraine crisis there is a statement posted to the Erie Looking Productions website. I'm moving ahead as best I can to institute WEFAX monitoring. Analog reception of at least one radio station from across the lake is verified. Work I have been fussing over in a certain git repo needs to be brought to a stable endpoint. I'll also need to be keeping an eye on what the CISA director has to say, I suppose.


    This B-Movie that we're all living in now is taking weird turns.




  • Shooting My Mouth Off

    2022-02-02T05:05:39Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    I had to travel to another county Tuesday just to get test strips for Mom's blood glucose meter. That's kinda ridiculous to me. Supply chain issues shouldn't be this bad. The store brand in question can keep plenty of booze on the shelves but apparently not blood sugar meter test strips. They're the largest company on the planet and they're having issues.


    No, things are not okay. Things are still screwy out in the world at-large.

  • And now...omnishambles!

    2022-02-01T05:31:16Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    ♥ I'm surprised I've kept things going at https://coyote.works/ this long.

    ♥ Central Serous Chorioretinopathy is not fun. Hopefully it clears up within the next three months.

    ♥ I'd like to go out and buy a MacBook Pro. Sadly nobody has them in stock in a fifty mile radius in the 14 inch screen late 2021 model. There might be another Apple event happening by the time they're back in stock.

    ♥ The snow locally is getting tedious...

  • Redistricting Madness

    2022-01-22T19:02:29Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Well, we're eventually shifting over to reviewing congressional map proposals again after the omnishambles that is the re-run of state legislative redistricting. The picture shows how I've tried to divide up Ohio's 15 federal congressional seats. The more highly detailed map can be found on Dave's Redistricting here: https://davesredistricting.org/join/98f59007-5602-44ed-8372-fa6891c5acf6


    I expect very little at this point.

  • Outlining things

    2022-01-17T04:50:18Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    I’ll try to outline what’s happening since things are a bit of a mess…

    • Laptop spiral to failure
      • The Thinkpad x240 is slowly dying
      • It is not cost-effective to repair it
      • Replacement is being reviewed
        • I’m not looking for another Windows laptop
          • The last visit to MicroCenter had many models out of stock
          • The models in-stock didn’t support Windows 11
        • I’m looking towards getting a Mac
          • I want to have an ARM-based laptop
          • I’m starting to miss MacOS as of late
          • With an eleven inch iPad plus a wireless mouse and wireless keyboard I have an almost-laptop now
            • TexPad is a great IDE for writing LaTeX on the iPad in those instances
            • Termius lets me log into a Raspberry Pi that happens to sit on the network for when I need to do terminal session things
          • Unfortunately these are not really in stock at MicroCenter and there is no estimate on replenishment
        • The iPad plus wireless keyboard plus wireless mouse can be used as an interim solution but it not sufficient long-term
      • If there were a suitable solution to convert a Raspberry Pi 4 into a laptop, I would
    • COVID Recovery
      • Test results are back
      • Test results are normal
      • It looks like I’m facing “Long COVID”
    • Redistricting
      • Both the state legislature and congressional maps were overturned here in Ohio
      • I testified as to the drafting of both of the now-overturned maps
      • The redistricting commission reconvenes on Tuesday at 1500 UTC and I will observe that meeting via Ohio Channel
      • Very short turnaround on adopting new maps exists
    • Social development
      • My life remains pretty isolated right now
      • Dating seems impossible in my immediate area
      • I keep feeling pulled towards relocation but no clear ideas for a destination have emerged
    • Projects
    • ELP Television is not fully operational since I am not producing local content
      • The site is up at https://coyote.works
      • Currently the video podcast feed points to video content that already exists on the Internet Archive
    • The Fourth Story
      • It is started but is a bit harder writing effort
      • I’ve had to do some mapping work to make writing easier using tools at https://mapchart.net/usa.html
      • I keep stopping writing as there are times that I write something fictional then I see it happen in the news
    • Weight loss
    • Currently stalled with weight swinging in the 185-189 range
    • The goal is still to get to a “healthy BMI” which means a BMI in the range of 18.5 to 24.9 which translate to a weight between 122 pounds and 163 pounds.
    • This goal might not be doable
    • The backup goal is to get to a BMI of 26.5 (174 pounds) which would still be decent even if not quite the whole way there
  • Testing Results...

    2022-01-08T05:40:34Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    The funny thing about test results at the moment is that they're delayed due to the hospital system laboratories being overwhelmed. Why are they overwhelmed? Processing COVID-19 tests will do that! We're in a really bad place with test positivity ranging from 38-50% depending on the test area in the northeast Ohio area. The only reason case count numbers are going down is because we're running out of testing supplies before we can track everything down.


    My relatively picayune tests are delayed in processing apparently until further notice. Some results are back and are simply weird. A couple have yet to come back still.


    It isn't rheumatoid arthritis. With luck it isn't lupus either. That things seem to be pointing to "Long COVID" frankly do not leave all that great of a taste in my mouth. Coincidentally, I want to move away from where I am. We only just made it to the 50% mark in the past few days for having my county's population vaccinated. There are third world countries doing better than that! The chances of me getting re-infected with COVID-19 are far higher here compared to many other places in the USA let alone just in Ohio.


    In the midst of all this crap I'm just at the point where I want to run away from this community. Ashtabula is increasingly not that great of a place for me. The problem is determining where to go and how to afford that...

    Tupulpo likes this.

  • A video podcast...of sorts...

    2022-01-04T05:04:30Z via Dianara To: Public CC: Followers

    Eventually I will get local production set up but the show can be found at https://coyote.works/ for viewing.