Vim and Egg Salad

24 Mar, 2025

Egg Salad and Vim

Except, we strive for nothing, don't we.

ART

I've made great strides with the technical abilities of my artwork, yet I lack direction. I originally thought I'd start a comic book but that idea fell through. Then figure drawing made nudity a commonplace theme of my home - typically when the guests weren't around. After an impressive session figure drawing session Milly asked "so what is all this art for? What will you do with it?" I mumbled a few things about maybe being an art teacher or studying, but the idea of spending a ton of money to study something new and still end up broke killed a little motivation.

I haven't posted any work online yet, mainly because I think I'm having a falling out with all purpose art communities online. I joined a bunch to see where I might fit in, assuming it would be easy for neurodivergent me. But the faceless masses of the net killed more of my motivation than added to it. Art is a very personal thing. For me, if I'm in a community of creators who share a rough approximation of my age, experiences, maturity, and views on art, it would be great. Instead I found myself just scrutinizing a lot. I discovered that the artists who inspire me belong to communities I don't have a right to be in as a faceless internetter.

I need to put my serious artistic endeavors to the side for now - just until they find their niche - probably as cute little publications on blog posts or a BBS if I ever get one off the ground

Egg Salad

Spring has sprung on the smoggy Misty coasts of DARUMATOWN; a good time to get out and enjoy what little semblance of nature we have. The pollution was reasonable today, and Milly happily basked in the nice sunlight, breathing air non-lethal to our unborn child. It reminded us of those nice long summer days in Japan walking around Kansai in endless wonder. Then, our time (and budget) for food was low, limited to cold soba or egg salad sandwiches picked up at small shops.

In Japan we Milly noticed that sandwich fillings never gummed up the bread and that the bread was typically very springy. Figuring out the bread was an easy task; rice flour is used to give bread that springy (and constipating) property. But the secret to keeping bread dry when packed with wet things? Turns out it's butter or margarine spread thinly on the inward face of the bread, creating an edible water repellent buffer between spongy bread and wet filling.

Returning to the present, I set out to make some very Japanese egg salad sandwiches (I'll need to post in the recipe). We baked the bread and prepared some pretzel baguettes, boiled eggs, mashed them, softened the butter, carefully aligned the filling, cut off crusts, cut sandwiches in half, arranged nicely on a lacquer plate, and covered. I felt more like I was making sushi than sandwiches. On average, the start to finish time to make one was 20 minutes. This took me 45 minutes but resulted in 12 picture-perfect sandwich halves.

The Picnic

We got to the park and set up. Being pros at minimal tent-life, we had the most cozy of set-ups stored in a single backpack. fuel, pocket-stove, coffee stuff, cups, plates, some pizzas, my prized sandwiches. This was bound to be an unforgettable luncheon. I kept the sammies wrapped up, hoping to reveal them once our friends arrived. Ann old co-worker who had since quit her job and started doing something she loves surprised us with a visit in the park. Her son, who I last saw when he could barely crawl was with her. Our expected friend came too, with her son. I'm gonna call him Kim in this article since he has no ability to voice his consent.

Kim is about 4.5 years old, but operates about 8 months below his age. As a child specialist I could toss theories as to why all day, but he's not my patient or student; all in all he is a very sweet but bullish child. No perception of anything to the sides of him, as self centered as any child at his mental age could be, but still honest, sweet, and cute at times. His life-long obsession is food. We had some fresh strawberries (finally berry season!) on the camping table, and before we could stop him, he tramples over the bag with my sandwiches to grab some, knocking the strawberries to the ground, and trampling over them again to offer one of the two he managed to grab to Milly without looking back.

Kim is a very sweet child, but my sandwiches didn't end up as part of the nice picnic photos of that day and they hardly got eaten as a result. If this had happened last year, I would likely be screaming internally, understanding and controlled externally. I wasn't incredibly stable the last two years; I went through endless stages of grief when my daughter died. So when Kim destroyed my sandwiches, I was glad to feel something akin to "Eh, accidents happen." I'm a bit disappointed that my hard work ended it a state of failure though. After sitting out for so long untouched in the sun they became stale and inedible... but what sort of brownie points was I trying to get with making 7-11 style egg salad in the first place. We all enjoyed ourselves and Kim was just as fun and sweet and bullish as ever.... although maybe more condensed since I saw him than tall.

Baby names and baby fears.

We are in week 28 of pregnancy! It's been a very smooth pregnancy thus far. I get really worried over little things. Counting kicks often, mulling over ultrasound results, trying to find zen within this space of love and worry. We had our latest ultrasound last week. The doctor told us that we'd gotten too fat, and the baby was 5 days too big. In fairness, we really hunkered down into baking and sweets this winter. We are waiting for the baby to be born before we switch back to a mostly plant based diet. But with our weight being a little higher than we want, its good motivation to cook some very basic dishes.

I often cook Chinese, Japanese, Indian, or Italian foods. All of them have their strengths, but I'm trying to appreciate natural flavors more - something akin to my Zen roots. Eating seasonal foods without coating them in sauce makes each flavor shine with as little oil or extras as possible. Fish has fallen out of our diet but lean cuts of chicken and beef as well as simple stir fry's are taking center stage. I think beef will fall out next, then chicken. Another friend of ours just came back from her home-village with a bunch of freshly picked veggies for us to enjoy. I only have a cut of beef in the fridge, so I think I'll use that up soon and then do a lot more with the freshly picked veg.

I hope baby likes it. The last ultrasound revealed some worrisome information too, but its the sort of thing that we just need to keep our eyes on and also adjust our life styles a bit to get more exercise and better nutrition. It's a small wake up call to be ever present.

We also came up with names finally! A girl's name very close to Buddhism and the Dao. and a boy's name linked closely with nature. Both (at least in our native languages) are pretty gender neutral too (yay!) so despite whatever sex the child is born to, they can express themselves however they like without a name holding them back. I do hope they like their name though - we put a lot of effort into choosing them. But, as parents, our job is to help guide them into being the person they want to be, not the ones we want them to be. They will know we chose the names with love in our hearts.

NeoVim

I'm applying for a Master's degree in Information Technology in New Zealand. Most of my life has been in Early Childhood Education but I'm ready for a change. Education has started making me feel stunted; my only work-related skill is being a teacher. Now that education as a profession has become so politicized and broken in many places, I'm done with the abuse. It's shameful because I really loved working with children. I feel like I need to defend myself, so I'll rant a little here. For many many years, I've used my specialist knowledge and love to bring about 100+ children to fluency in two languages, inspire confidence in themselves, and grow their respect for life, nature, and others. I'm really proud when I find out that children I worked hard for made it into big name schools, began studying their passions, and are confident in the choices they are making. I don't want to sound like it's all my doing though. I just gave them opportunities to be their best selves, and worked hard along with their parents to support that growth their whole life.

The Education Farce

Then, we'd get a person coming in every hour to see that I'm doing that, interrupting lessons, work sessions, naps, etc. So that children are dolled up nice and neat and cute for photos I need to take. Anyway, my job went from helping parents and children grow, to protecting children from essentially abusive demands, then from abusive staff demands. I'd find ways to keep the children in appropriate bounds of development and happy and healthy in their environment while essentially feeling like I'm tricking the harsh world around them to just leaving them alone and letting them grow.

This year, I've had my most successful group of students I've ever helped nurture. I'm really proud of how far along they've all come, but I've run myself ragged doing so. Not every day is a battle, but more often than not. And then I get questions asking me if private is even worth it over public, but with costs and standards dropping, I can only say "if they are lucky enough to get a real teacher, it could be worth it."

LINUX and VIM STUFF!

I've been spending what little free time I have exploring Linux systems in greater depth. I have a small goal of turning a Pi Zero 2W into a daily driver for my most often used low-power tasks.

I've always liked the idea of doing Linux System Administration. I feel so at home in a terminal, and although I don't do a lot of hardcore programming, I like putting together systems that work. Writing little scripts that make dumb stuff like typing "tetris" into the terminal auto-launch Tetris Classic 1998. brings me joy. I like finding wonky fun little programs, fixing systems, loading them with the right software and getting that smooth fun operation. I really love my IRSSI config.... spent a year getting that just right.

I also have small dreams of running something on gemini, or starting a real BBS, blogging more. Adding to the indie-web as its now being called. I like perma-computing, and making things really live out a lifespan beyond their programmed expiration date brings me satisfaction. Milly makes fun of me for tweaking things like my Miyoo Mini to perfection but then never actually playing it (I go through phases.... I am trying to beat Pokemon Crystal on it).

So when I read up on system administration I got excited and figured I'd go for it. I'm sad that I became tired of education, but I guess I had to "graduate" kindergarten sometime. I got maybe a year and a half left - plenty of time for baby to grow and for us to save up for a big change. The linux system I am running right now is nearly perfect, which gives me time to start exploring something I've been putting off since I was a disenchanted emacs user in college - VIM

Vim is the Dwarf Fortress of Text Editors.

Somewhere down the line, Emacs got replaced with VS code for me, and programming projects would flair up once in a while. But Vim felt like something oddly out of my range. Now having built one system that I like, I figure it's time to take the plunge. I installed vim via xbps (I'm playing with Void to see if runit is a good alternative) and did the vim tutor. Zipping around with the key bindings is endlessly novel. Most key bindings mirror those in other applications, so that's handy. Also knowing VNeovim supports LUA plugins rocks! Maybe I'll have some inkling of an idea to make my own tools for it later down the line.

A couple days of waffling around in Vim, I thought to myself that I should learn plugins and configurations. I knew a lot of people used LazyVim, and that many had configured the editor to even write notes, novels, and use markdown for blogging - something I'm excited about. So I figure step one is to install Lazy. I didn't read the documentation all that much because maybe the word "lazy" was deceiving. A little more baguetting around takes place as I make directories that I thought would have come default to the editor. and boom! Now my Vim is looking a lot less like Vim (Or should I say Neovim. I changed partway through to add in Lazy).

One reason I installed lazy was easy plugin integration, or so I was told. I assumed it would have been a lot like adding plugins to IRSSI (because that's something I configured a lot and it wasn't too hard) but Lazy does things differently.

Stuck, I scoured youtube and peertube for tutorials. Many videos had titles like "from zero to hero lazy vim!" and I'm like "oh great, I'll start at step one!" and most videos would start like "okay friends, step one, install neovim. Step two, get lazy in there. Step three, use the vimtutor. Step four: SAFGRAGNi4qkjnfksdnDFGdgnksbf............"

I really need to take things slowly. Maybe editing code at the speed of thought makes you forget that slow people like me exists. I'm re-evaluating my vim goals. I'll take some more time to play around in normal Neovim, or at the very least start reading the lazy documentation. It's sometimes hard to tackle my impatience; especially when I'm so eager to jump into something. Maybe after I learn how to configure Neovim to work in Markdown I'll get more into the bigger aspects.

The Pi Project

A big project for me right now is diving deeper into the concepts of Permacomputing. When I think back to my childhood, nearly everything I needed to be happy ran on a C64. That later turns into a chonky DOS computer. That turns into a different chonky windows 95, etc. etc. I built beastly computers only to sell them unsatisfied later - not something I'm proud of. I take more joy out of recycling. My current laptop is, sadly, reaching its EOL through Windows Updates. I'm in no rush to drop a couple thousand dollars on a new machine while this one has pretty impressive power and battery at its disposal. So I've been testing out a virtual machine that runs very little power, relies mostly on terminal applications, and can still get information from the internet as needed. It also plays DOS games.

The ultimate goal of this project is to put together a device that works well, either as a standalone desktop, or at the very least gets use for server projects while my laptop takes the role of being a very capable Linux device. Step one has been choosing the software I want to run, and the next step will be getting it all running on the pi. When Baby is old enough to use computers, and if there is interest, we will have something that will work as a tool with limits that prevent baby from getting sucked into the screen through flashy apps and advertisement campaigns.

Computers, in my mind, are tools. Having the ability to create effective and needed tools with minimal requirements is important - especially in the world we live in today. I feel like there is a big difference in computer-literate people who make choices over what (if any) social media they use, and those who use social media because they have no choice. It's becoming more important now that one can have control over themselves and their data - and that they are respected for this.

More on that next time

There is a lot to write about, and I'll be happily documenting my projects here as often as I can. I think it will be especially exciting moving into the actual use-case of the pi and its practicality.

Until then,

With loving kindness, Daruma
Did you enjoy this? Send me an email!

© Daruma - all rights reserved

#ramblings #tech