Jimmie Lightner

Technology, Truth, and Common Sense

The Letter

Forgive me for half a second, I just need to vent.

A few weeks ago, I got a letter (yes, right? a LETTER) in the mail stating I have carcinoma on my thigh. I must have read the line about six or eight times before it actually clicked. Carcinoma. Confirmed. Fucking scary. Enclosed in the envelope was a prescription for a chemotherapy cream with the instruction: “Apply daily to cancer area on thigh.” Uhhhh, okay? Let me try to not shit my pants right here, first… and then how much? A big glob? A little doot? Do I cover just the little spot or the whole thigh? I still had stitches from the excision, was I supposed to start it now or should I wait until it healed?

And why the hell did I find this out via a letter? “Apply daily to cancer area on thigh.” Fuck – imagine standing on the driveway reading those words, alone. That’s one hell of a mind fuck. Shouldn’t someone have called me for this? How do people usually respond in this situation? Is this common practice?

I’m baffled by the handling. Even if now I know “it’s very treatable,” no explanations leads someone like me (Curious George) to the internet. And the internet is… scary. I read all about the different skin cancers, the one I have, statistics, treatments… The treatment I was given, 5-FU (lol okay, the acronym cracks me up! FU!), scared the absolute shit out of me. If you want to have nightmares, go read about it and look at the photos. F. Me. Sideways.

Anyway, I drove over to the office the next day and made them answer all my questions. I called out the doc for the impersonal handling. I got the stitches out 4 days early – and even watched! (I usually pass out getting a Flu shot, so this is a big deal for me!) I got answers for how to apply the cream and started it the next morning.

I’m five weeks into treatment as of this Saturday. I have one more week to go until I’m finished. I’m ready to be done with all of it. What a thing to carry. Fuck cancer.

November 7, 2026
My Tuned SQ8 vs the Q7 Loaner

… one is a 690 horsepower, 5000 pound luxury monstrosity with warp capability… and no warranty.

The other feels like a padded elevator with a steering wheel.

I had to drop my SQ8 at the dealership this morning. Again. It was supposed to be a quick in and out, but they asked me to stay for the mechanic to ride along (Probably because they already rebuilt the damn engine 400 miles ago). Lucky me, the fella that did that work was my ride along victim! (Don’t worry – I did not put anyone in danger. This time.) We were able to reproduce two of my three complaints pretty rapidly. The third is just a rattle / noise from the right rear quarter, probably insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The weird roughness between 4 and 8 cylinder mode and the air suspension noises are definitely not as benign.

Anyway, they held a new Q7 as a loaner for me. I can truthfully say I am not a fan. It rides real nice, but that’s about all it has going for it. I wish they’d have let me take out that 2025 RS7 in the showroom, instead! 😈

The SQ8 is *THE* hole in my wallet. It would have been cheaper to have children. I’m suddenly questioning my life choices…

September 22, 2026
mkinitcpio 42 breaks LUKS auto-unlock using crypttab.initramfs
Updated the Dell XPS 15 this morning using the latest Linux 7.2.6 and mkinitcpio 42 only to be repeatedly greeted by the LUKS unlock prompt. After some quick Kagi searching, I noted this little nugget in the release notes:

install/sd-encrypt deprecates the mkinitcpio-specific
/etc/crypttab.initramfs file in favour of using the x-initrd.attach
option in /etc/crypttab (in the fourth field). This matches the
behaviour of other initramfs generators.

If you’re using crypttab.initramfs take heed! Your shit’s gonna break! (Mine did!) No amount of re-enrolling is going to fix this one.

The fix is easy enough, and documented on the Wiki here. Merge your crypttab.initramfs into /etc/crypttab and include x-initrd.attach in the 4th field like so:

/etc/crypttab root UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX none x-initrd.attach,tpm2-device=auto

Update your initrd and reboot!

Hold on to your butts….
September 15, 2026
Hi-Res Audio Surprise

Just discovered my 2021 Audi SQ8 can play Hi-Res lossless audio! 24bit 192khz FLAC is apparently no big deal. WHO KNEW!

I’ve got one of those 2TB SanDisk USB SSDs from Costco… yeah, that one. I don’t trust it for REAL work, but holding 600 gigs of FLAC and serving as my mobile jukebox? Yeahhhhh buddy!

August 11, 2026
Uh-what-the-fuck

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/05/uh-im-pretty-sure-people-would-know

I… don’t know what the fuck I just read. But I nearly spat coffee all over my screen. 🤣

August 6, 2026
Petlibro Granary Smart Feeder Review

Wow. I’m not typically moved to write a product review. You’d think it would be for something special, right? Like it was because something was mind blowingly awesome, riiiiight? NOPE! This review is for a thing that is a total piece of shit. Well, hang on, let me back up. The physical pet feeder itself seems to be fine. So far. Other than it being entirely dependent on the App. But guess what *IS ACTUALLY* shit? You got it – the “app.” Or should I say, the ad. It’s entirely, completely, one giant advertisement full of dark patterns. Every other click pops a new Ad modal, with check boxes already selected – just waiting for you to accidentally “consent” to their up-charged subscription “care plan” for ONLY $10 per month. Charged annually, of course.

You can’t create a fucking feeding schedule without encountering this bullshit. Go ahead. Try.

I’ve already opened a request to return it. Support seemed pretty prompt – at least until I said the R word, now it’s the old fashioned “let’s delay a week and see if they cave, maybe they’ll keep the garbage we sent them.” It hasn’t even been in my possession for an hour and I am already looking for something else. I won’t accept this kind of blatant disrespect.

By the way, did I mention the device connects to WiFi *AND* it has a Microphone? I’ve set up a packet trace to see if it does anything ‘funny’ between now and the “3-5 business days to escalate to a supervisor” to return it… I’ll report back.

Fuck. Me.

August 3, 2026
My Problem with OpenClaw

Honestly at this point I’m about done with OpenClaw and their misguided Doctor nonsense. Doctor warnings are probably great for the beginner who doesn’t understand the ramifications of the runtime choices being made. I’ve investigated nearly every setting, read the docs front to back, and explicitly hand-chosen and curated the configuration of the setup I’m running. I understand the risk of binding to LAN (and permitting exactly one entry point via a trusted proxy). I understand I’m not running the gateway as a systemd user unit. The Matrix channel configuration I’ve chosen IS THE ONLY ONE THAT WORKS for what I need. Quit fucking touching my configuration!

There MUST be a toggle to shut this fucking idiot up and make it stop casually mutating my configuration – some means to suppress the nonsensical warnings that I have already accepted as risk. I’ve already come up with a plan of maintenance. I’m tired of rehashing these things. I’m tired of having doctor “fix” my setup according to the idea of what *SOMEONE ELSE THINKS* I should be using on *MY* system. Only to have to go undo the changes after the fact when Doctor fucks it all to pieces. See the problem here? This system is mine. Doctor’s advisement is one thing (and, you know, entirely acceptable despite how strongly I despise it right now). Unchecked mutation authority is another. This is unacceptable and I’m done with it.

And before you go and say “Jimmie, just use OPENCLAW_NIX_MODE=1,” that does not solve anything to do with updater safety. It disables openclaw update entirely. On nix, sure that might make sense. It’s even in the name of the stupid env variable. Embedding an unskippable repair operation inside the updater with unchecked power to rewrite configuration is lunacy. Just default doctor to advisement, but with a prompt to accept modifications. Blind modification is the problem.

Maybe it’s beyond time to go look at Hermes… ~*wanders off muttering obscenities*~ </rant>

July 30, 2026
Chuck

Last night, Chuck, my next door neighbor passed away unexpectedly. He wasn’t even 70.

When I first heard, I noticed I felt mostly unaffected. Almost as if floating out of body, looking at myself, seeing the “well, shit” reaction crossing my own face. I guess that’s why it’s called shock. He had just been out mowing the yard yesterday. I saw him driving around in his old red pickup the day before that. He was always on the go. And now he’s just… gone. It’s only now really sinking in.

He was an ornery old fuck, a retired sheriff deputy, working across the road at the gun range in his retirement. Got away with more than most, probably. Always lit his bootleg fireworks in the cul de sac every 4th of July. Hah, I remember one year the police actually came out and he told them “oh, they’re just sparklers.” … And the fireworks continued.

I won’t pretend I was super close with Chuck or that I knew him more than casually, but he was the first person to truly make me feel at home, like part of the neighborhood, when I bought this house. It had really low water pressure and he crawled underneath the house with me to check the pressure switch on the well controller.

I hate this part of being an adult. The cost of building connections in life is becoming the keeper of more and more absences as it goes on. What a shitty bargain.

Damn. Rest in Peace, Chuck.

July 27, 2026
No AI Slop

I’m really starting to get tired of the AI written garbage all over the internet. Where’s the original content gone? Why’s every thought have to be augmented by an agent that makes it all bland and sound the same. I used to love being able to tell the difference between writers – now they’re starting to all sound similar.

Hell, I’m guilty of it, too. I used AI to help write a few things in the past – an entry bitching about Ticket Master, another complaining about Garmin BS – I’ve since deleted them. From here on, the only text posted to this site will be written by me. If my two hands didn’t type it, I won’t post it, let alone have it attributed to my name.

We should own our own damn thoughts. I’d rather see some personality in writing than some grammatically perfect but overly calculated clanker (de)generated slop.

July 24, 2026
Come say hi

I spent some time this weekend playing around with Matrix federation. It’s… fascinating. I’ll leave it at that. Come say hi 🙂

https://matrix.to/#/@jimmie:matrix.homeroot.net

June 14, 2026