From: Tim
To: Kev Quirk
Subject: And it begins
Date: 01 January 2024

Happy New Year Kev!

As you know, and I will explain, when we first planned on this I had a different blog under my real name, boy did things change. The thought process started when my daughter told me she didn't feel comfortable with her picture in my social feed, and which I deleted most traces of her that show her face at least. Then I started thinking about my family and all the silly things I post online. Noting really racey, but maybe a tad eccentric, and majorly geeky to be sure. Is that fair, when people they know go snooping around for them and see their father/husband's shenanigans online? I'm not sure, but I rarely do anything professional online. I am a computer hobbiest with an interest in operating systems, privacy, and code. So does having my real name out there matter? So....

I had an older blog lying around at https://parzzix.prose.sh and decided to move there.

So I moved my identity to Parzzix. This is not me being all secret squirrel, not in the least bit. I've used the name Parzzix on and off for some time. I am sure anyone with the slightest OSINT skills could put it together, but it's enough to keep me out of the limelight to say the least. The only account I have under my real name is Facebook (I know!), it is where I can keep track of relatives, old friends, and army buddies.

So that's the gist, feel free to hit me up with any questions you may have, I'm pretty open. As far as other basics, I recently moved to Wisconsin, have 2 girls, 2 boys, 2 dogs, and been happily married for 13 years abouts. I work part time from home so I can manage the kids lives (aka. Mr. Mom), while my much more educated wife is an MD and works at the local hospital.

Now you can feel free to dig deeper. I haven't read your other penpal posts in order to keep it fresh and see where our conversation goes.

Cheers!
Tim (Parzzix)

From: Kev Quirk
To: Tim
Subject: Re: And it begins
Date: 02 January 2024

Hey Tim,

Thanks for agreeing to be part of this little experiment - so far I'm really enjoying it; I'm sure that'll continue with this month too!

I totally get your daughter's position. The whole social media thing is something my wife and I have to battle all the time. Our boys are adopted, so it's very important for us to keep them off of anything online, as it could literally mean their personal safety. It is a pain, having to tell the school, Scouts, swimming club, football club etc. not to put any photos of them online, but so far, they have all been great. Whenever a picture is published with them in, their faces are always covered with an emoji or something.

The whole anonymity online thing is something I've tossed around a few times. I use my real name (even though lots of people ask me if "Quirk" really is my surname...it is, unfortunately) but I've considered having an anonymous persona too. I've never done it, as maintaining 2 identities just feels too much like hard work, plus I'm not really sure what value having an anonymous blog/persona would add for me. So I've just stuck with my real name. If I were to start again now though, I don't think I would use my real name. Instead, I'd come up with a fake name and use that, rather than a screen name. Overall, I don't think having your real name out there really matters though.

How do you find Prose? I've looked into it in the past - it's all done via SSH, right? It seems like an interesting concept, but feels too much like a barrier for me. I'm comfortable in SSH, but when writing, I want a box I can type in and click a button to publish. That's what i'm really enjoying about Kirby. There's a CMS I can use (and customise to my liking), but because it's a flat file CMS, I can write content in a text editor if I want as well. It's pretty cool.

No judgement on the Facebook thing here - I killed my Facebook account many years ago, but my wife and I started a new one when we moved down to Wales, just so we could join the village group on there. More to get to know people and have an understanding of what's going on. We literally only use it for that group and the occasional Marketplace thing. None of our personal friends are added on there or anything. For all the privacy and security nonsense that Facebook "offers" it is really great for keeping in touch with people, I'm sad to say. Yeah yeah, we can just phone people, I know...but I'm REALLY bad at that. Plus, I don't have the number of a lot of people from my past. I still don't think I'd go back to using Facebook "properly" though.

How did your move to Wisconsin go? you and the family enjoying it there? I don't know why I think this, but i've always had the impression that you're British. Is that the case? If not, I have no idea where I got that from. 🤷‍♂️

Are you one of those sadists that enjoys working from home? I do a couple days/week at home, but love being in the office around people. I couldn't work from home full-time; I actually really struggled with that during COVID. Luckily I work for a Bank, so was able to claim it was "critical infrastructure" so could go to the office. After a couple months at home, that's exactly what I did - working from home was affecting me (negatively) in lots of ways.

Ooof this was a long one, so I think I'll leave it there for now. Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Kev

From: Tim
To: Kev Quirk
Subject: Re: And it begins
Date: 04 January 2024

Hey Kev,

It's nice your kid's school and other programs respect their privacy. I know here in the US it seems normal to fill out paperwork these days giving permission for the school to use kids info on social media and on their website. I went as far as saying they could share a picture in groups, but couldn't name them. I figured it was fair enough and wouldn't ruin it for the school. I could assume searching for a photo taken at an event that could be used could become a real problem as parents get smart and start not allowing it.

It's true as you mentioned in the PS I'm hard to find anyway. And Tim Cook and Donald Trump made it even harder 😉. But I figure 20 years down the road, that could change. Who knows. To be honest, the privacy rabbit hole also becomes sort of a hobby, with all kinds of tools to try and a whole new category of reading material.

As fas as Prose, I do really like it. I was a longtime Micro.Blog user, and love it. But I really like the idea of having all my posts in documents right on my machine. Micro.Blog does have an option to save things with Git, but then you add another process to keep it updated on your machine also. Prose, though without a lot of features, is pretty darn easy to use. I would love to use Blot, but I don't do any of the services they sync with and I think using git is a bit more of a pain. I have this horrible fear that all the pointless stuff I've written through my life will be lost when I croak. Especially when bills stop getting paid..lol

Yeah, Facebook is just one of those evils we put up with.

The move to Wisconsin went well, things are good. I actually grew up and went to high school about 15 minutes from here, so it's coming home for me. I've been away for close to 30 years. Yeah, no British here, I was born in Chicago. Ancestrally I have some Irish in me, that's about as close as it gets. I do have cousins living in Scotland also.

I do not necessarily enjoy working from home, but I accept its convenience. Especially as far as being there for the kids goes. I only work part-time, and it's really boring work. I work for an ISP in Texas. I find it completely unrewarding and feel guilt advising customers because I don't agree with many of the choices the company makes as far as products go. But, the people who own it are decent folk, and I stay loyal to those who treat me good, which they do, putting up with my schedule and me always being unavailable because of kids stuff.

I found your last to blog posts interesting, I used to be a motorcycle guy myself. I had a thing for the old Honds CBRs from the 80s and later I got into tour bikes. But it's been a long time, people drive bad here in the US and I have kids, not worth the risk these days.

Also, I saw the do without one. I am curious about the car? Does that mean you will just use a motorcycle? That's cheating...lol. I find quitting coffee for a month incredibly brave also. I couldn't do it. I've quit recreational chemicals, alcohol, and smoking; Coffee is my last crutch.

I feel I remember you saying you were in the service long ago? The military, that is? Am I mistaken? I'm an old soldier myself. and even worked with some English troops in Wales for a short time back in 1999. I remember them being a fun and slightly crazy bunch of guys. And I loved being served tea on the rifle range.

Cheers!
Tim

From: Kev Quirk
To: Tim
Subject: Re: And it begins
Date: 05 January 2024

Hey Tim,

I hear you on the Privacy rabbit hole thing. I used to really worry about it, but now I just run a mixture of an in-browser ad blocker (1 Blocker) and network level ad blocker/proxy (NextDNS). If I'm on public wifi, or a network I don't trust, I'll switch on my VPN too (Private Internet Access). After that, I just don't worry about it. I've come to the conclusion that life's too short and I have shit to do. So I've taken steps to protect it as best I can and that will have to do. Do you do anything special from a privacy perspective?

I used Micro.blog for a while too, but only for social stuff. I'd never use it for a blog as it's not flexible enough for me. I also think it's having a bit of an identity crisis - is it a blog? A social network? A replacement for Good Reads, Instagram et al? Is it a newsletter? A podcast service? I think the answer Manton would like is "all of them". But the result, for me at least, was a confusing mass of services that were all mediocre. It's kinda like Nextcloud in that respect - that does the same, in my opinion.

Blot is good, I used that for a while too and liked it. Dropbox isn't my favourite, although I do have an account from YEARS ago with around 15GB of accrued storage. I didn't want to install the client on my machine though. Luckily for me, I have a Synology and already use its Drive feature (like Dropbox). Synology has another tool that can connect to 3rd party services, like Dropbox, via API. So I just set that up and had my Synology do the work. It worked well and I didn't need to install extra software on my machine.

I stopped using Clot because David, the single developer of the platform, said a couple of things to me via email that didn't give me the warm and fuzzies about the project's future. I'm sure it will be fine, but I personally didn't want to invest too much into the service.

I have no idea where I got the British thing from. Clearly I just need to drink less beer haha.

Work:life balance is so important. I always say to people on my teams that they should sign off when they can, and get the downtime they deserve. If someone needs to be flexible and leave early now and then, I always accommodate it if I can. Reason being is that I prefer to work with happy, satisfied people. I'm rather selfish like that haha. I get it though - home life should always come first, and if you work for a company that is good in that respect, then that say a lot.

It could go the other way - you find something where you get more enjoyment out of the job, but as a by-product, you're not as present for the kids. Which will only impact them in the long run really. I work for Bank of America, and moved into a global role a couple year ago. Before I did, I had a conversation with my potential new manager to explain to her that although the role is global, I had no intention of working past in a normal working day. Obviously if an incident kicks off and I'm needed, all bets are off - that's the nature of the industry I work in, but BAU, I won't be working late. And if that's no good for her, I'm probably not the right guy for the job.

She totally understood, and to her credit, stuck to it. She since moved roles and my new manager is exactly the same. I love working at the bank, the culture is great and the people are even better. This is the first place I've worked where I really can't see myself ever leaving.

So year, long-winded response, but I get the work:life balance thing - it's so important.

I thought about getting rid of the bikes when our kids came along. But my wife, strangely, talked me out it. She said it's part of me, I've done it for so long now, and it's one of my stress releases, and therefore really important I continue. I knew there was a reason I married her! :) The old Honda CBRs are some of the best they made, and the go for a lot of money now..."modern classics" apparently.

I wasn't going to cheat on the no car thing - I was planning on using my push bike haha. But I spoke to my wife about the "one month without" thing after writing the post and she pointed out that some of the things on my list would be incredibly impactful to the family. No car being a perfect one - I pick the kids up from school 2x a week - no chance I can do that on my push bike. So I have re-factored the list slightly, but now it seems so basic that I'm not sure it's worth doing at all. Either way, I am planning on doing the no alcohol thing though, just to see how it goes. I'd like to do that for a year at least.

I am a veteran. I served in the Army between 2004 - 2009. Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during that time, and served with many of you "Yanks" :). I also served with the Canadian and Dutch armies for quite some time too. I loved it. Sure there were some difficult times (being in Iraq when Saddam was caught, tried and executed was no fun) but I got to see the world. Eventually I met my now wife and my priorities changed, so I got out. Don't regret it for a second though. When/where did you serve?

Oooof this is another long one, so I'll leave it there, I think. It's pissing down with rain, but the dogs needs walking, so I'm gonna don my gortex and get myself out.

Talk soon,

Kev

From: Tim
To: Kev Quirk
Subject: Re: And it begins
Date: 09 January 2024

Hey Kev,

I'm trying to space out my replies otherwise I tend to do it immediately. I didn't want to overdo it. We're having a bit of a snow here, kids are home from school. But in the glory of remote work, I don't get a snow day..lol

Privacy stuff is basically a hobby for me, it gives me stuff to tinker with. My threat model is pretty nil, unless someone wants to snoop on the conversations with my kids teachers.

I'm in agreement on the whole work life balance situation. Lucky for me that my wife has a great career. I mainly work to maintain my own sanity and to be productive when the kids aren't around. But back in the day I used to do those 60-70 hour weeks. No fun at all, especially when you throw an hour commute on top.

Good on the wife for letting the motorcycle love continue. I as of late have lived through Ewan McGregor and his Long Way Around and other versions of the same.

As far as Military history, I served from 1994 to 2004 in the Infantry. I was originally a career guy, but took a bullet in Iraq in 2004 that shut that plan down. If you were there in 2004, I was in that whole Sadr City kerfuffle. NatGeo made a miniseries about us and everything, my one claim to fame and I would prefer it came another way. I also was there for the invasion in 2003... basically I went on invasion, came home, about 6 months later went back and got shot on like the 3rd day in Sadr City and went home..lol

Other places I served were, Kuwait, Saudi, Korea, and Germany. Plus the little stint in Wales I mentioned before, but that was only a few weeks.

I did really enjoy the military, I actually miss the life a lot. At the same time, I don't want to do any of that war $hi% again. It's all fun and games when watching Netflix or playing Call of Duty. The real thing is a totally different story.

Since those many years I found religion, partially from the military experience I believe. You know, the whole, no atheists in foxholes thing. Which I used to call myself. But I can't count how many patrols started with me begging god to keep me alive. But I'm not here to push that stuff on ya. Plenty of room for us all to believe what we want to believe for the most part. As long as we're all civil.

I'm toying with moving my blog again. I hate it when this happens. I am shopping around, luckily I haven't really found anything that could really entice me to leave yet. You never know. I did just throw up the mail server I'm sending this from last week. I got bored with Protonmail and decided to fire up my own. I've done it in the past. I move around mail services like I do Linux distros. Thank god for domain names so no one else sees my neurotic moving around.

Well I'll chat with you later, this is way long enough.

Cheers!

Tim

From: Kev Quirk
To: Tim
Subject: RE: And it begins
Date: 12 January 2024

Hey Tim,

Apologies for the delay in reply - Jen and I are back at work, and the kids are back at school so the old free time has taken a tumble. :(

I joined the Army in 2004, so still would have been a CROW (Combat Recruit Of War - I "nice" name for the newbies haha) then. I went to Iraq in mid 2006, mostly based in Basra, but spent a bit of time in Baghdad too. Then got back, had a couple months at home and deployed to Afghan in late 2007. In Afghan I was attached to the Dutch Army under the NATO banner, in a small FOB called Tarin Kowt, around 150km north of Kandahar.

My tour of Afghan was cut short though, as I found out my stepdad was in intensive care (think you guys call it critical care?) after an operation had gone wrong. By the time they'd shipped me me home, my biological dad was in the same IC unit with cancer. I was 23. I'd lost friends in the military, but nothing prepared me for that - going to an IC unit to visit my dad and stepdad was....difficult. Luckily my stepdad pulled through and is still with us, but we lost my dad in the February unfortunately.

I'm sorry to hear you got "dinged" (another affectionate word from my military days) - I hope it wasn't too bad and the recovery went well. A good friend of mine lost one of his legs below the knee in a road side bomb. After the recovery, he picked himself up, shook himself off and has done marathons and all kinds of crap since. I have so much respect for people like that; I don't know if I'd have the mental strength to do it.

I miss my friends from the military, but I don't miss the copious amount of bullshit. Stand to attention, polish your boots, why is there a piece of fluff under your bed? Screw that!

I'm an atheist. Always have been, always will be. Like you say, as long as we're all respectful to one another, who cares about who believes (or doesn't believe as the case may be) what? I certainly don't.

Urgh, self-hosting email is a nightmare. I did it for a few years on a Zimbra server, but it was a paid and ended up constantly battling spam. After that, around 6 years ago I think, I switched my wife and I Zoho. Been there ever since and have been very happy with their service. What on earth made you want to self-host email? Is it just a technical thing, for the enjoyment of it? Are you hosting all your families email? I only hosted mine and Jen's.

What are you thinking about switching your blog to? I'm so happy with Kirby. This is the first time I've really felt like a platform has ticked all the boxes I need. I do sometimes think about the longevity of my site though, and what will happen as I get older and fade away to memory. I think if I every hang up my keyboard, or if I carry on and get older, I'll convert my site to a static HTML/CSS only site, and leave it up for posterity, with strict instructions for my kids to renew the damned domain and hosting haha.

Oh, don't worry about replying too soon. The way I see, the more we email, the more we get to chat about. I'm gonna be end up being the bottleneck here, I think. Sorry in advance for that!

Talk soon,

Kev

From: Tim
To: Kev Quirk
Subject: Re: And it begins
Date: 15 January 2024

Hey Kev,

No problem on time delay, this time I got totally distracted. It's been incredibly cold here the past few days. Averaging around -15F and more with the windchill. We got a bit of snow also. Walking my dogs has become tough, even they don't want to go outside...lol

I'm sorry to hear about your Father. Its cliche, but it does eventually turn into a bank of fond memories with less sorrow. My father passed some time ago.

No Marathons for me, but I do well, bullet missed my spine by about an inch. But I was walking around the next day. One of my joes had a similar wound but hit his spine and he was paralyzed. Sometimes we get lucky. No sense on who does or does not receive such luck.

I actually miss the order of the military, I think I work better that way. After such a long time in it also provided a sense of security in a way, I know exactly what was going on and when all the time. Now I have kids, dogs, wife,..lol, it's pure chaos at times.

I self-host the email one, for the fun of it. Secondly I want to host my kids when they get older so they aren't stuck with Google or Outlook, and it's much cheaper this way. I would like to get my wife on the boat, but she is a bit more difficult and set in her ways. She still uses her Yahoo email... it make me cry daily..lol

I constantly think of switching my blog, but to be honest, at this time I can't find anything to settle on, so I will stick with prose.sh for now. I am always looking and see people post and it gives me the itch to try new things. I have a hard time forcing myself to stay in one place. But these days there are a few things I really want, the biggest is all the files on my PC, without me having to throw them on Github first, or doing lot's of copy and pasting.

As far as longevity, if I can keep it going to a significant amount of content, and since it's stored on my disk as markdown files, maybe I will learn some code so I can occasionally import and format chunks into a PDF or something I could self publish into a book and start collecting them. Maybe yearly? I want to do the same with my journal. I use an app called jrnl to write entries on the fly in the terminal, it already has an export and make pretty type function.

By the way, I love your home, it has really come along looking at what you share now and then. I'm a bit jealous even. It looks wonderful.

Well I'm off to appease my 7 year old and play Minecraft with her for a little, they are off of school, it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, so no school for them.

Cheers!

Tim

From: Kev Quirk
To: Tim
Subject: Re: And it begins
Date: 19 January 2024

Hey Tim,

Once again it's been a hectic week and I'm only just getting time to sit down and email you...

My dad passed a long time ago (Feb 2008), so it's definitely not raw at this point. But it's still very sad, especially when there's a father/son scene in a film - they always get me and make me think of him haha. The song Father and Son by Cat Stevens always gets me too. :)

Wow, missing your spine by an inch - that's lucky! You're right though, when your number's up, it's up and there's not a damned thing we can do about it. Anyway, onto less morbid things...

I can't believe you miss the order of the military, you sadist! :) Joking aside, I think I'd have probably felt similar had I done more than 5 years. I was older when I joined too (19), so I'd experienced adulthood a little more before joining up. I think people who join straight from school are more easily moulded to the military mindset.

I managed to switch my wife from Gmail to Zoho a few years ago. She still forgets her email address, even though it's firstname@quirk.cc. Let's say her firstname is Elizabeth (it isn't) she's always like "Is my email address elizabeth@, liz@ or lizzy@?!" All variations of her firstname forward to the main mailbox, so it doesn't matter, but she often forgets that too. 🤷‍♂️ That's the only complaints I get though. On the whole she's very happy with Zoho...when she bothers to actually read her email, of course.

I've never been able to get into journaling. I've tried in the past, but it never sticks. At the end of the day, I'd much rather be reading that writing, so I always give up after a few days of doing it. Now I'm posting more personal posts on my blog, I suppose I can keep that as a kinda journal over the years.

Thanks for the kind words about the house. It's a lot of work, but we do love it.

I'm feeling like crap today, and one of my sons is ill, so I'm off to feel sorry for myself on the sofa with him.

Talk soon,

Kev

From: Tim
To: Kev Quirk
Subject: Re: And it begins
Date: 29 January 2024

Hey Kev,

I win the slacker award this run. Had a super busy couple weeks, my wife works 7 on and 7 off so it was her 7 off which she had a lot to do, or for me to do...lol.

I hope you and your boy are feeling better. My girls have had a rough cold for about a week themselves.

I actually made a blog move. I went to weblog.lol​. I actually paid for like 10 years of the service when it was new, I think I spent like 20 bucks. I love their community and Adam who runs it is about 10 years younger than me, so I have faith it will be up for awhile. My Prose blog is staying up, just no new posts, and I copied most of it to Weblog, if people stumble upon old links they will still get there.

The only other thing I have going on at the time is a laptop repair. I have a Surface Laptop 3 who's keyboard is dying. Like 4 keys don't work right now. I just ordered a new keyboard housing from iFixit. The Surface Laptop's keyboard, touchpad, and whole top finish are one piece. My laptop was black, but they didn't have the part in anything but Sandstone, which sort of looks like Apple's rose color. So my laptop will soon be two toned. I happy i could at least get a replacement and keep it trucking along for awhile longer.

I made the mistake to look at the news this morning, my goodness what a downer the world is at times. Being a dad, I try to stay super optimistic, but the sillyness that goes on is just mind boggling. I usually avoid it.

Well, it's pretty close to the end of the month, and it's been great. Just because the month is over, doesn't mean I won't shoot an occasional update now and again. It's been a pleasure.

Cheers!
Tim

From: Kev Quirk
To: Tim
Subject: Re: And it ends
Date: 31 January 2024

Hey Tim,

Managing to get this in right at the end of the month, phew!

We're all feeling much better, thanks. Hope your girls are too.

omg.lol is a great service, I have an account on there too - there's just so much on offer there, for so little money and Adam is always adding cool new stuff too. I'm semi-active on their Masto server too; if I were to ever leave Fosstodon, I would definitely migrate there. Seems like a great community. So good choice on going with weblog.lol.

I've just updated your feed URL in my feed reader - might be worth putting something on the Prose blog so people who subscribe via RSS to your blog know to update if they wanna continue following you.

I've always hated laptop repairs; they're too fiddly. So props to you for getting it done. You're far more patient than myself. Plus, a 2-tone laptop would be quite cool, I think. :)

Ooof the news is just depressing. I'm still avoiding it and remain blissfully unaware of what's going on in the world. Yes I'm in my own bubble, but it's a happy bubble.

Yep, this is the last email I'll publish, but as you say, it doesn't mean we can't continue to email back and forth from time to time. I've really enjoyed getting to know you better, Tim. Thanks so much for your time and for indulging me in this little endeavour.

Best,

Kev