Compressed Thoughts

A Journey Through Some Rough Lenovo Firmware

How I diagnosed a bad NVMe drive on a laptop over several hours., Jan 18, 2025

I recently had the displeasure of working on a Lenovo Yoga C740 which had stopped booting into its operating system (Linux Mint). What should have taken 30 minutes, ended up taking me probably around 8 hours.

Confidentiality in the Digital Age

A primer on message and file encryption, using common, open, and secure standards., Oct 24, 2024

This post is going to focus on teaching the basic functionality for the "GPG" software, specifically how to; encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify text/files. But first, why? I have two motivations for writing this. The first is just a general desire to share some cool knowledge I have with other tech people that may be interested, but the second is due to feeling more and more like the time and place in which I live requires such knowledge to continue living a safe and peaceable life. While I won't elaborate on that second point, it is my primary motivation behind sharing this knowledge.

On Homosexuality and God's Word

A response to the mistranslation argument., May 15, 2022

A particular verse of the Bible, which many quote when talking about homosexuality, is often refuted by claiming it is a mistranslation not present in other versions of scripture. Here I will explain why that is an ignorant response, and does not justify homosexuality.

Happy Birthday, Me...

This last year has been..., Jun 09, 2021

A wild ride to say the least. COVID contributed to that, though it wasn't the only thing, that's for sure.

Why political party affiliation is stupid.

Here we are, my first political post. Signs of what is to come? I don't know. But this is something I've been thinking about for a while now., Aug 03, 2020

People will often ask what political party you affiliate with, and as soon as they ask the question you may be uncomfortable. You know that depending on how you answer, the outcome of the conversation could be radically different. While many normal people will simply accept your answer, there are concerning individuals who will suddenly become highly irrational at the mere mention of association with the opposite party.