Rob Fahrni

More snowfall today. ❄️

As I’ve gotten older I’ve been thinking more and more about my mortality. There are some things I’d like to keep but after discussing it with my wife I realized I need to rethink things.

I wanted to keep all of my main domains; fahrni.me, crabapples.net, and hayseed.co. There’s also curmudgeon.cafe, which I’d like to have around for the folks who remain on it. That one I will be able to hand off to someone on the instance. The other three I need to do something else with.

I was talking to Kim about keeping them, but that takes money and time to maintain them. I’m now thinking I can just pull everything into my github account, leave my github credentials with Kim and just let everything else go. Rot off the vine so to speak. I won’t be alive to worry about it any longer, no need to put that stress on someone else.

To that end I think I’m going to stop using Carrd for maintaining fahrni.me, hayseed.co, and all of hayseed.co’s sub domains with plain text files, so they’re completely static and easy to move around.

Under fahrni.me I have iam.fahrni.me which is my old WordPress blog. I’ve pull all of it down as HTML, CSS, and any images it had. I can do iam.fahrni.me now. I’m no longer using it.

Most of the data under crabapples.net is completely static with the exception of my blog, rob.crabapples.net. That is maintained at Micro.blog, which I really like.

I’ve been thinking about moving rob.crabapples.net out of Micro.blog and to a manually maintained weblog. Completely static. I was inspired by Louie Mantia’s website. He manages everything manually. How can you not love that? 😃

Of course, like a knucklehead I want to put together some tools to take care of that. I’m thinking I can put everything on github and write something to help me generate my blog’s main page and publish each post as static HTML.

I’m sure as I lay dying I won’t really think about this, but I am now. 😄

The snow is still falling and it is absolutely beautiful.

Here it comes! ❄️

I do love it!

Tuesday looks like fun. We had snow on the ground for most of January. Had a week without it. And it looks like we’re gonna get some more.

This time it’s not gonna be deep freeze city afterward. The rain that follows on Thursday and through the weekend should clean it up.

I guess Punxsutawney Phil did say six more weeks of winter. 🐿️

We expected rain with a chance of sleet or snow overnight and this morning.

We have an active thunderstorm passing through. That wasn’t in the forecast. I’ve never experienced a thunderstorm with snow, not that it’s happening now, but I’d imagine it could happen? ⛈️

Speaking of under the weather. I’m still feeling terrible. Clogged sinuses and it just won’t go away. I’m also exhausted. Why can’t I shake this? 🤒

Today, expected high of 69F, nice and sunny, just a perfect day. 🕶️

Tomorrow, high of 37F, chance of snow. ❄️

It just cracks me up. The East is a weird place. 😆

It’s a real shame Substack loves Nazis so much. I thought it was a great platform up to that point.

Their iOS app is really quite nice and the styling of the website and app are fantastic. It gets out of the way and lets you do what you’re there for, reading.

Got my first sales report from Cotton Bureau and was super excited to see how many t-shirts and cases I’d sold! 😃

One. I sold one phone case and zero t-shirts. Oh, and that one case was sold to me, so it doesn’t count. 😳🤣

If you like the Stream icon head over to Cotton Bureau and buy a t-shirt or phone case!

Kim got me some chili made with Ghost and Reaper chilis and I decided it would be a good idea to eat it for lunch today.

HOLY COW! My eyes are watering, nose running, my tongue is actively melting in my mouth, my gums hurt, and my throat is swelling. The milk isn’t helping. 🥵

Man-oh-man is that hot.

Ms. Gracie cuddling with her toy hoard. 🥹

She’s falling asleep like that.

Another cold morning here in the Charlottesville area. 🥶

On the bright side we’re going to hit a high of 37! That’s 15 degrees warmer than yesterday’s high!

I mean, can Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Zuck, and whoever else gave money to Marmalade Messiah give me $1MM each, or heck, $1MM total between all of them? I’d be ok with that. I promise I would use it wisely and wouldn’t use it for corrupt reasons.

Anna Merlan • Mother Jones

As Big Tech scrambles to placate Donald Trump before he reassumes office, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that his company would replace their fact-checkers with user-generated Community Notes, beginning in the United States and then rolling out globally.

Now, more than ever, is time to start your own weblog. Zuck and Musk don’t own the internet. It’s open to all.

Dump Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Space Karen’s X.

Go social on the open web with the likes of Micro.blog, Mastodon, or Bluesky.

See what I did with that title? I’m here all week.

It’s been snowing overnight and when we got up this morning Kolby was like “Oh, it’s that cold white stuff. Guess I’d better do my business so I can go back inside.” That’s just what he did. No sniffing about. Get ‘er done.

Gracie on the other hand was like “OMG! I love this stuff it’s cold and fluffy and I should lick it! Now I should lose my brain and do zoomies around the yard for the next five minutes!”

Keep in mind that Ms. Gracie is a 110 pound Great Pyrenees. She doesn’t usually move that much or that fast.

She did her zoomies, tried to coax brother into playing, then decided to take a break in the snow by lying down.

She loves it so much. 🐶

Now they’re both passed out in the floor. Busy morning.

Snow has started falling. It’s supposed to go all night. Guess we’ll see. 🥶

We’re getting prepared for a deep freeze here in Charlottesville. We’ll see if the projected 10in of snow falls on Monday or if, as often happens, it completely changes and we get rain instead of snow. 😂

It is supposed to get pretty darned frigid.

Happy New Year y’all! 🥳

Here’s hoping 2025 is really boring for all of us!

I don’t believe in making resolutions for the new year. If something needs doing, just do it.

I’m just starting to feel better after a few days fighting off a stomach bug. There’s an alarming trend with my health. When someone in my family gets sick I seem to be the only other member of the family to get sick.

Friday afternoon I started feeling uncomfortable. By Friday evening my granddaughter and I were both pretty darned sick. She was worse off than me. She stopped vomiting around 11PM and fell asleep. Poor baby was wiped out.

I puked my first and only time at 2AM (my issue has been the other end!) Last time I checked the time it was 2:45AM. I fell to sleep sometime after that.

She woke up Saturday feeling much better. I, on the other hand, slept most of the day and stayed in bed as much as my gut would allow.

The dogs woke me up Sunday morning. I was still off. I felt detached from my body. When I’d touch things they didn’t feel real. No fever, but it’s often how I feel with a fever. I managed to eat dinner. My first meal since the slice of pizza I had Friday evening before symptoms really kicked in.

Here we are, Monday morning. My gut is still gurgling and feels fragile. I did have coffee. I was hoping it wasn’t a mistake and so far, so good. No vomiting since Friday but still having issues out the other end. I’ve managed to keep down water and Gatorade just fine. Today I’m hoping some additional solids will help get me over the hump.

All of this to say I’m thinking about my mortality more than ever before. My body is breaking down and I’ve not helped myself by becoming morbidly obese — according to the doctor based on my weight. I get tired easily and my body flat out hurts most of the time. I sit on my butt way too much. I’ve become that lazy man I said I’d never become and it’s going to kill me. And still, after all that, I lack the motivation to do anything about it.

What’s wrong with me?

To be totally honest I can’t die anytime soon. I’ve predicted my own demise at 80 years old if things don’t change. I have a wife, kids, and grandkids who still depend on me. Couple that with being an idiot when it comes to financial planning and I’ve setup the perfect American nightmare scenario. Aging husband, retired wife, two kids who struggle in our economy. We are one medical disaster away from all of us living on the streets. That’s the most American thing I can think of.

One of my biggest issues is having a positive attitude about things working out. I’ve always felt like we’ll be ok and find our way through. To date, we’ve managed to just that.

I’d imagine this is a fairly average tale as folks age and realize they are indeed mortal and they did a horrible job of financial planning. Also, I believe, very American. 😂

Kim, my amazing wife, is right. I need to make big changes. I used to be active and loved going to the gym. I need to exercise more. I also need to stop abusing my body with crummy food. I love fast food. There, I admitted it. I love to eat. It’s a terrible attribute. Why couldn’t I be “addicted” to math the way I am to food? Genetics has something to do with it, I’m sure. I developed a strange attitude after almost dying at the age of 17. My attitude was: If I want it, I’m getting it. A second piece of pie? Yes, please. Yep, another brilliant strategy.

If anyone knows of a study that’s been conducted on people’s relationship with food please point me to it. I obviously have a bad one. It’s like being a crack addict or alcoholic. It’s like staying in that abusive relationship because you’re in love. I’m sorry if that comparison offends anyone. I have no other way to make my point. I have a real problem.

I know, I know, what a strange thing to share.

This is just me with a quiet morning to myself, coming off being sick, with a slightly addled brain (still feeling detached) from the ordeal. 🤪

A very Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! 🎅🏼

I feel like I’m being watched. 🤣

Ms. Gracie living her best life. 🤣

We caught Red One at our local Regal on Friday afternoon and all of us really enjoyed it. 🎅🏼

We prefer Alamo Drafthouse but their last showing was on Wednesday evening. Regal worked.

It was a great way to spend my birthday. I got my free birthday Starbucks and pizza that evening. ☕️

Just a really great day. I’m a pretty simple person. I love little things with family.

It’s also a family tradition to pick a place for dinner. I chose to wait for breakfast with everyone yesterday morning. I chose Cracker Barrel. Simple, tasty, food. 🥞

My daughter took me out for coffee this morning. Mmmmmmm, Grit.