I'd like a good dollop of happiness, please and thank you.

As someone from AZ (Phoenix metro), the summers feel like desiccating in an oven for three months. July easily exceeds 115+ F highs! The only silver lining is that it's very dry so evaporative cooling is effective and there are pretty Sonoran desert landscapes. Humidity is disgusting to me tho

Realized there's only one week left of October already and bought a bunch of pumpkin, squash, and pears I saw on discount to get more into the autumn mood and make some spooky recipes. I've been trying to transition into completely plant-based cooking at home but I've never been a huge red meat person anyways. Never knew that canned chickpea juice could be used to make a meringue!

I've been trying to appreciate the smaller things more and reduce my negative attitude. Lately I've been trying to ease into more mini trips around my area like a tourist since I've felt pretty stagnant and paralyzed mentally for awhile. Haven't been to a symphony in awhile so I'm looking forward to seeing Holst's The Planets. First time hearing that piece live.

I'm also experiencing a lot of issues with firefish.social instance, still looking at some other small instances to migrate for the time being before maybe moving back. Based on https://joinfirefish.org/join/ and the dev update versions it looks like it's still an alpha server, hopefully it won't push away users since it is the flagship instance. I like it over Mastodon.

Had a much needed solo weekend roadtrip to the Eastern Sierras in California to see the autumn colors and eclipse viewing. Bodie is a really cool ghost town. Altitude insomnia is no joke, had a dramatic difference in sleep quality when coming back to sea level.

Now back to my cycle of rat rotting and spiraling to my inevitable burnout before catching a second wind. Living is expensive and exhausting but some things make it worth it I guess. Sometimes I wish I could escape and live in a cottage in the countryside but that comes with its own challenges and drawbacks.

Em and en dashes deserve more general appreciation too, although it seems more of a typographer thing when a hyphens or parenthesis gets the job done but I always forget to close my parenthesis... I know mac makes it easy to type but windows is cumbersome.

I can sort of speak on Vietnamese but I'm not exactly fluent. Vietnamese pronouns are mostly gendered, and there is an additional dimension of the relative age/relationship and politeness between you and the other person when choosing which pronoun to use. Can also vary with dialect but I can't say much on that.

There's "tôi" for first-person and "bạn" for second person which are gender neutral but are more formal, there's also "mình" (1st person). However for example, if you're a young adult man you might refer to another person as "anh/chị" (literally also means older brother/older sister) if they are a man or woman slightly older than you which is usually the safe bet if with similar ages. If they could be your parents, "chú" or "cô" - also "bác" for both. If they could be grandparents, "ông" or "bà" and you refer to yourself as "cháu/con" for both. Conversely, someone younger you may refer to as "em" (gender-neutral) or "cháu/con" (gender-neutral) and you would refer to yourself as "anh/chú/ông" (male) depending on the degree of generation difference. In a hetero-romantic relationship, the guy is referred to and refers himself as "anh" while the girl "em" regardless of relative age?

I'm not sure about the queer young generation in Vietnam would use these days. For overseas Vietnamese-Americans, I have heard of "chanh" to address non-binary people which is a mix of "chị + anh" from both binary gender pronouns. There's also "cam" since "chanh" can also refer to a lemon lol, and "cam" means orange which is a parallel that seems less binary. "Nó" is sort of an equivalent to "it" pronoun but there's nuance to that. "Tao" and "mày" are also gender-neutral but very informal and derogatory lol

I have considered Linux for personal use but honestly for now I'm too braindead to put in the effort since I'm not that interested in spending time fiddling around with the OS. There are some proprietary software keeping me on Windows and I'm too lazy to dual boot for a few programs. I've had exposure to Ubuntu in college and dabbled in OpenSUSE though and it was pretty nice.

I have to say though that I transitioned to a lot of (open source) programs that are also available on Linux because I've had pains before with typical annoying shenanigans with closed software (enshittification but make it programs instead of social media). Programming and Linux are also adjacent relevant skills to my wider field so maybe sometime in the next few months/years I may transition. Windows is kinda meh but not irritating enough to make me switch. I have a Raspberry Pi running Linux for Home Assistant for smart home stuff though!