Fall may have officially arrived in September, but it definitely feels and looks more like fall today. Much of the autumn in southern Ontario is rainy and wet. Fallen leaves plastered to the pavement are typical.

In past years, I would probably have become a little glum around this time of year. But now, in my 60s, I feel I have more of a sense of the rhythm of the seasons. It’s as if, with age, there is a loftier, zoomed-out perspective where it’s easier to see the pattern, respect it for what it is, and accept it.

One of my goals for years now has been to figure out how to sync my configuration files (dotfiles) between machines and to have a standardized process for setting up a new machine without all the irritating trial and error that characterizes the usual process. With the help of an LLM, I’ve been setting up chezmoi, which is an open-source Git-backed system for managing dotfiles and the installation process. So far, so good.

I’ve been testing the process on a Debian 12 virtual machine that I’m running on a macOS host. I installed Tart for that. It’s much lighter-weight than some of the big names in virtualization. On macOS, it did ultimately require me to update to macOS 27.0.1 against my wishes and my better judgment. This version of macOS looks horrible. I have to set the system to permanent dark mode because it is at least tolerable that way. Why do the designers have to constantly fiddle with the appearance of things?