Hey, I'm Gabriel! I currently work as a software developer doing OS stuff. Outside of that, I'm usually watching a movie or listening to a podcast. I'll p...
One thing I really appreciate about SomaFM is how obscure some of their songs are. I often run into songs I like, add them to my liked songs on Spotify, and find that they have less than 1000 streams there. It reminds me of my days listening to college radio, and of digging through the new releases at Burger Records. A few recent finds: Medicine Speed by Ryli (garage pop) Free by Ryan Auffenberg…
"The difference between in print and out of print is precisely the difference between life and death." - Donald E. Westlake I was reading some books by Dorothy Day a while back, and one thing she does a lot is reference books that influenced her thought. I'm a pretty big fan of her writing, so I decided to look into a few of her recommendations. Pretty quickly, I found that a lot of books she…
There was a slow moment while I was volunteering at my local food pantry, so I got a chance to talk with the pastor that runs the site. He told me that one his mottos in life is no stress, just tension. This was something he learned years back when he was interning at a startup, and was working as an aide to the CEO. At some point, the company was going through a downturn and they had to lay some…
I'd had a piece of bird poop stuck on my car for a while, so a few days ago I walked outside with some rubbing alcohol and paper towels to rub it off. As I was in the middle of removing it, a car slowed down next to me and the guy inside asked me what I was holding. "Rubbing alcohol." "That's what I thought," he said, and then pulled over to talk. It turns out this guy was my neighbor from a few…
I've been looking into a few video games lately, all with a length of around 15-20 hours. That didn't seem like a lot at first glance, but then I realized that there's a lot of things I can do with that same amount of time: Take a night school course (2 hours/week * 10 weeks) Read a long book (50 pages/hour * 20 hours = 1000 pages) Start one of the passion projects I've been thinking about Putting…
I can usually tell that I'm depressed when I: Have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. Have trouble thinking clearly and processing what other people are saying (i.e. brain fog ☁️). Check my phone more often than usual and get stuck doomscrolling. Feel awkward around other people (in my mind they can tell that I'm acting different, and they feel weird around me). Over time I've come up with…
I was talking with a friend who works at the local food bank, and she was telling me that food banks tend to get hit doubly hard when the economy isn't doing well. The first thing is that more people are struggling, so the demand for food and services goes up. At the same time, people who usually give small donations (say $20-50) can't give as much as usual, meaning a smaller budget to work with.…
I recently put a few of my old collectibles on eBay. I knew that some of them were fairly hard to find, so I thought it would be cool to have most of the money go to charity. It turns out that they were worth more that I had expected. I started them all at $20, and by the end of the day one had risen to nearly $400. Another two had reached $200 each. I started to check the bidding multiple times a…