Well, that was a disaster. I thought things were going okay with Debian 9 on my laptop, but something got really broken all of a sudden and it’s beyond me to diagnose, so I’m calling it a failed test and restoring it to Xubuntu.
Edit: It was a hard drive failure; I bought a used one that was faster, but it died. I simply put the old one back in and reinstalled Xubuntu on that.
Oops! Wrong again; the laptop itself is dying. How sad. God is in control.
Today I spent time converting my bike from commuter mode back to off-road. That meant removing a lot of accessories and putting the knobby tires back on. It weighs about half as much now. I haven’t lost interest in riding altogether, just riding on the road. I think something got lost in the process of all those super long rides and it was no longer fun any more. So taking it back to off-road setup will allow me to use it for just fun and games. I need to avoid road riding, but if I need to go some where, I can still put lights on it, for example.
I think I’ve discovered the limits of trust on something: The VA websites — all of them — refuse to let me use my account now. I think my account got associated with another Hurst somewhere and now I can’t use it for much of anything. And there’s no way to let them know, because all of the contact forms refuse to let me use my actual email address. Once again we demonstrate what incompetent boobs the US government uses for just about everything.
