Blog | Aaron Graves, PhDude

If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Poorly

July 10, 2022July 10, 2022 by Aaron Graves

The first draft of this article began in February 2022. I’m getting around to posting it in July. What happened? Frankly, perfectionism happened. Perfect is the enemy of good. Perfection is the enemy of done. I want this article to be absolutely perfect. As a consequence of that, it’s sat unfinished, merely an amalgamation of …

Beastie and *nix

August 28, 2021 by Aaron Graves

Fair warning, this post may get a bit long, maybe skip to the TL;DR A brief history It was the late 90’s, early 2000’s that I first got a taste for *nix. At that time it came in the form of two distributions of Linux. One of them was a version of Mandrake titled “Linux4Win” …

13 Stoic Lessons That Will Immediately Change Your Life

June 13, 2021 by Aaron Graves

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BC. It is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world. According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to eudaimonia (happiness, or blessedness) is …

There Is Only Hit.

June 11, 2021 by Aaron Graves

I first heard this quote from Alan Watts. It’s in reference to a zen saying of sorts, that “there is only hit.” When a zen master hits you while meditating, that is reality. Or something of that nature. Basically, what it boils down to, is whatever it happening in this moment is the only reality …

Reset Your Mindset

June 13, 2021October 21, 2020 by Aaron Graves

Powerful words by such luminaries as Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Les Brown, and Jocko Willink. Emotional background music by Whitesand.

The Spark That Ignited the World

September 12, 2020 by Aaron Graves

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and that sucks. Paradoxically, that’s ok. It seems a bit wrong to talk about sparks when part of the country is literally burning, but honestly, that’s kinda what got me thinking about this. All it took to arrive at a massive fire is one little spark. (Ok, …

The Cure to Laziness and Procrastination

August 6, 2019 by Aaron Graves

We want to be the best among the average people.

Tutanota Review

January 29, 2019January 29, 2019 by Aaron Graves

When it comes to secure email providers, Tutanota is often one of the top two most mentioned. Of course there are more than just two, however these two are the most commonly mentioned. Tutanota provides an end-to-end encrypted email service, based out of Germany. The team is small but committed, and the user base numbers …

Quick thoughts on communications, privacy, and security

January 29, 2019January 16, 2019 by Aaron Graves

“Encryption matters, and it is not just for spies and philanderers.” Edward Snowden to Glenn Greenwald We live in a world where just about everybody has been the victim of a data breach. If you’ve ever been online, chances are various bits of your information has made it into the hands of unscrupulous people. Then …

The Sting of Loss

November 10, 2018 by Aaron Graves

I’m going to start out by saying that this is a total first world problem. Consider yourself forewarned. Loss. Whatever it is, it’s never easy. Life. A child. A spouse. Your retirement. Data. Wait… Data? Yes. Data. Or roughly about eight months of your history in Apple Health. The first world-ism is about to get …