Bryan Ruby

While all eyes are on how Elon Musk is handling the blue checkmark over at Twitter and debating the checkmark's value and devaluing, I submit the checkmark isn't just a Twitter problem but also a social media problem no matter what platform you're using. Over the past couple weeks, I've come to the conclusion that it is a huge mistake to confuse verification with designating someone as notable or not. The use of verification for only notable users, which in turns designates the remaining users as non-notable, is divisive and never should have happened. While I reluctantly have sided with Mr.

The other day I witnessed a children's story time that showed a picture of an incandescent light bulb symbolizing an idea. At that moment I thought to myself, pretty soon these kids will have no idea what a traditional light bulb looks like as they get replaced with more modern lights. Take for instance my own garage where I recently replaced the last of my light bulbs with LED Garage Ceiling lights that aren't bulbs but now LED lights composed of 6 adjustable LED panels. So it goes, time has moved on in my own house.

A few months ago, I purchased the Beelink U59 Pro Mini PC with only a few reviews available at the time. Despite being a longtime Windows and Linux PC I've been skeptical of the mini PC market  in general and have avoided making a purchase in the past. So much skepticism that my first introduction to this small form factor was last year's purchase of an Apple Mac Mini M1 despite not being a huge fan of the macOS operating system. Luckily, this Beelink Mini PC has convinced me that "small is better" for Windows and Linux as well.

A year ago I purchased for home use Apple's Mac Mini M1 with 512 GB SSD built into the computer. Coming more from a Windows and Linux background, it wasn't the operating system or Apple services that lured me to make the purchase but instead its small footprint in both size and presence. While the Mac Mini is a neat computer on its own, there are a couple tradeoffs. The negatives include fewer ports and the lack of ability to upgrade both memory and internal storage. I was afraid to turn this around, I was looking at unattractive cables to external devices spread across my desktop making that "small footprint" no more.

I've been struggling as of late trying to find the time to write articles for my blog and websites. It's actually caused me some stress to not be writing because there is so much I want to say and share. I always feel that I'm so behind in my writing. This has been an ongoing theme for me but it's not because I don't have the time but instead because I have chosen higher priorities with my time than blogging.

For Christmas, my son bought be half a dozen albums from what I call the Discogs "bargain bin". These are the vinyl records being offered for two to five dollars from the same seller you might buy more expensive purchase as the shipping and handling gets cheaper per record when you buy more albums. It's really a hit or miss on the quality of used albums you can find at this price range. Despite the cheapest of these albums my son purchased, Tuff Enuff by The Fabulous Thunderbirds is the album I have enjoyed most out of the lot.

For two-wheeled motorcyclists a 382 mile trip is quite doable but can still be a challenging trip when crossing the high plains and mountains. Only the dumbest people would do such a lengthy trip two-up on a mini bike though. If you recall that's what exactly happened in the movie Dumb and Dumber with the shows two main characters, Lloyd Christmas (played by Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (played by Jeff Daniels).

Like most office workers, two years ago at the start of the pandemic my employer moved our non-operational staff from the office to the home. Although my wife and son initially had to work remotely too, they didn't stay long and have since then returned to work and school. Yet, here I still sit the only human being at home for eight hours a day.

It was early 1981 and my Dad received an offer from Columbia House to join the Columbia Records Club. For one penny a person could get eleven vinyl records by joining this music club. Better yet, fill in the "secret bonus" 12th box with your album of choice and you got an additional album for free. Nevermind the marketing ploy here that you would be committed to buy additional albums at full catalog price in the months to follow...my dad was about to receive a dozen albums from his favorite bands all at once. So many albums were about to come through the door, that my Dad let my sister and me each pick out a record for ourselves. Whether my Dad liked my choice or not I can't remember, but I picked AC/DC's Back in Black.

It make take awhile but when I make a mistake I will eventually admit and correct the error of my ways. Half a decade ago, I turned my back on supporting niche websites and focused all my effort in creating a new multi-topic website which you now know as socPub. As counter-intuitive that it sounds, the more diverse and interesting topics we published under this website, our number of loyal visitors to the website decreased in numbers. I found this analysis to be alarming and discouraging.