So I’m sitting here writing this on an AlphaSmart Neo that, regrettably, seems to be developing screen problems. An old device, breaking down, like me.
I got it out to try to write maybe two hours ago. I decided to use the Neo to try to avoid distractions and nonsense, which seem to be getting the better of me these days.
But when I tried to power it on, the batteries were dead. It’s probably been a few years since I actually used this device. And then, when I put the new batteries in, the filesystem was corrupted and we were hung at error messages.
So I had to pull out the laptop and go online to diagnose. Where I found out how to do a hard reset (the password on the confirmation flow, for some historical reason that I don’t know, but that makes me smile, is ‘tommy’).
Then, after the hard reset, my custom typefaces that allowed for more than four lines of text on the screen were gone. So I thought no problem, I’ll just re-install them.
But try to chase down actual downloadables for the Neo these days, like font packs, or even harder to find, the Neo Manager software… Not easy. So that took me a while.
Finally tracked down at least the Windows version, and was wondering how compatible it would be with anything modern, but then found out that the Windows VM on my Kubuntu laptop no longer works after my recent updated to 25.10.
So then I’m into diagnosis. I don’t have a ton of time to look and it’s not like I’m a Linux virutalization expert or working on those codebases, so I rely on LLMs to help me to diagnose.
Multiple reboots. Grub work. Kernel work. All kinds of nonsense. Finally, we (myself and LLM together, with me directing the conversation) realize that the KVM module is listing vboxdrv, which leads to the realization that VirtualBox now integrates with Linux KVM on the latest releases, so I actually need to remove the workarounds (blacklisting modules, adding Grub command lines, whatever) from previous Kubuntu releases that I’d put in place and then rebuild initramfs and reinstall Grub and so on.
So we finally do that and now in all the futzing, VirtualBox has lost access to USB devices.
I could sit here and try to continue but all I was doing was trying to get usable fonts back into this AlphaSmart which now has a dying screen and probably doesn’t merit much love an attention going forward.
But I’ve managed to burn like two hours on this. That’s how life is these days. You start with good intentions but there is basically an infinite queue of to-do work or an infinite set of regressions (however you want to frame it) and you never really get done with anything you’re doing.
Instead, like a fractal Mandelbrot “flower” there is just this infinite blossoming and telescoping and repeating of things that aren’t really work but that sort of give the metaphorical appearance of work.
We do all of this stuff until we die, burning our whole lives at it, myself included, and this is why modern life sucks and I’ve sort of turned against it.
Because somehow in late modernity there is this game they trick you into playing whereby you just spend your whole life doing pointless bullshit and spending money after hours or when you’re on break.
I don’t know. And I don’t know who “they” is. I just know that today disappeared and even when it got late and I was going to come and blog for the first time in a long time and say that today disappeared, even that moment for blogging soon disappeared beneath a giant pile of unproductive stuff that, if it isn’t done, is somehow moving one backward, making anti-progress.
Treading water is the mission. It is what all of life seems to be now. Treading water in a silly 6×9 pool in an AirBnB rental.
— § —
So I took some more time to work on it because I’m addicted to modern life.
Now it’s about three hours in. We’ve restored the functionality of VirtualBox in Ubuntu 25.10 by removing the kernel modules from blacklisting. We’ve fixed a bunch of permissions stuff. We’ve re-installed guest additions and switched from the ICH9 chipst to PIIX3 so that shutdowns work.
It’s all pointless. It’s a waste of my life. But now I can start and use Windows 11 again properly inside Kubuntu. Which I really don’t have all that much reason to do.
I mean, I was just installing fonts on a Neo, which I almost never use and which is breaking anyway, so that I can post on a blog that I have recently mostly neglected, in a post about—
about—
And this is the problem. Having been routed once again into techno-distraction, I have no idea what I was planning to say. I only have the vague knowledge that there was a bunch of stuff I was going to write about and mention and I was wondering whether it was really too long for one post.
Only now all I have this this stupid post about Ubuntu 25.10 and VirtualBox, which nobody wants me to be using anyway, but I can’t be bothered to figure out KVM because I’m old.
Okay, that makes me think something, but I’m going to put it in a separate post because if I put it here after paragraphs of boring-as-shit technobabble, nobody will read it.
Not that anybody reads it anyway.
But that’s beside the point.
— § —
(And now, to add insult to injury, I have just discovered that what I’d thought were fonts I’d added after the fact—in short, what I was working on all this time—were built into the Neo after all, and I just had to look for them after doing the hard reset.
F***.
Such is life.)