Intro

Hey there! This is going to be my first non-technical (mostly) blog post. I’ve decided to write about the best gift I’ve ever received, at least in the conventional sense of a gift. It’s a personalized T-shirt, and I think it’s really cool. The gift is also really personalized, and you can figure out a lot about me just by observing the details.

Some background: my friends from high school, Lilian and Danniell gave this to me as a joint birthday gift for my 18th birthday. If I remember correctly, they also gave it to me about a month late. That hasn’t stopped me from loving it though. I’ve worn this T-shirt for the past year or so, and decided recently to retire it once a year had passed from my 18th birthday. I didn’t want it to get too old, and will likely hang it up somewhere. :)

The Gift!

Here’s a picture of the CustomInk mockup.

It’s pretty cool! The front is a terminal displaying a neofetch like printout, while the back is an assortment of art with me in the background.

The Front

My friend Danniell designed most of the front. For the uninitiated, neofetch is a command that information about your computer in a textual format. It’s commonly used in Linux (read: tech nerd) circles. I’m very much a part of many of those circles, so I’ve gotten quite a few compliments from people who’ve seen the front. Anyway’s here’s a picture.

As alluded to earlier, the front side of the shirt showcases a terminal, roughly styled after gnome-terminal.

In neofetch, the left side is typically used for ascii art of the operating system. So if you ran neofetch on a macbook, you’d see an Apple logo representing MacOS. In the T-shirt, it’s an ascii-art version of my Discord profile picture of the time, which is a cute pig plushie with a crown on top. The original picture of this plushie is actually a picture of my friend Annabelle’s technoplush, which I’ve sort of adapted and stolen as my own branding.

The right side is normally used to show system information in textual format. A lot of it has been modified with personalized information, so let me just go through them line by line.

stephen@lsd: This is my name, and LSD is an acronym we use to describe our friend group. Lilian, Danniell, Stephen. We also all have the same last name (Xu), so it’s kinda cool.

OS: Fedora Linux 36: This is the operating system I’d been using for about two years at the time.

Host: His Parents' House: Where I was living at the time. Danniell translated it to the literal meaning.

Kernel: 0.9.1366-100.fc36: Kernel normally refers to the linux kernel version, and it essentially looks like a bunch of random numbers. Here, they’ve been replaced with special numbers with meaning, I think 1366 has a special meaning I’ll explain later down.

Uptime: 18 years: Well this was a gift for my 18th birthday, so there’s that ^_^. And I haven’t been powered off yet so I’m at 18 years!

Packages: 1 ;): hi.

Shell: English (with typos): Normally Shell corresponds to the program you use to speak to the computer. For me, I speak English, I love English, I write English, and I also typo English. I think the typos come from me being too excited while chatting with people online.

Resolution: 5'6": A reference to my height.

DE: GNOME (literally): Once again. Lilian and Danniell are both taking advantage of the fact they’re taller than me. DE normally corresponds to Desktop Environment, of which the most common one is GNOME (and is the one I’ve been using for pretty much all of my years of booting Linux).

WM: Red Guy: Danniell goes by Red Guy.

WM Theme: DEFCON-Abridged: Not sure why this is DEFCON. It’s a hacker convention, held annually every year in Las Vegas. At this time last year, I really idolized being able to compete in DEFCON CTF finals, which is an annual competition you have to qualify for. I sort of viewed it as the ultimate test of hacker skill. Funnily enough, as of writing, I’m at the airport, about to fly to Las Vegas to go compete. It’s fun to see how things change in a year.

Theme: DEFCON-Abridged: Same thing as above. Something I forgot to mention is the Theme I currently use on my computer is Catppuccin, which makes my computer have pretty pastel colors and I love it.

Icons: Lilypad-Custom: These are used to theme the icons on a computer. Lilian goes by Lilypad, and she drew a bunch of things on the shirt.

Terminal: Adherence to Sunk Cost Fallacy: I mean … this is a pretty self explanatory character trait. I’m often pretty committed to things, and really want to see things done even when it’s clear it’s not worth it. I haven’t changed at all in this regard.

Terminal Font: Noto Sans Mono: Just the font.

CPU: Trying its best on low sleep: Normally refers to the CPU, known as the brain of the computer. My brain doesn’t get any sleep. Still hasn’t changed, but I am definitely still trying my best.

GPU: Assisted by CRT lenses: GPU = Graphics Processing Unit. I have terrible vision naturally, but I have stellar vision because I wear CRT contact lenses. Honestly a godsend.

Memory: Pretty Bad: Typically refers to how much memory a computer has. I’m fabulously forgetful and struggle to remember things, so this unfortunately describes me quite well.

The Back

Lilian drew the back. For all the normies out there, this is what gets pointed out the most. People usually notice the picture in the center, and then slowly recognize it’s me, or ask me about the catgirl. We’re not going to talk about the catgirl, but here’s the design of the back below in it’s full glory.

The Psyduck on the very top left is my spirit pokemon! It’s just so me. Constantly confused with a headache haha. Funnily enough, this design got rejected by CustomInk for copyright violations due to the Psyduck, and Lilian drew something else. CustomInk ended up printing the copyright violation anyways though.

To the right of is a kitchen, with an arrow of “PROTIEN” pointed to the burger patties. This is a misspelling on a poster back when we were taking AP Biology together. They pointed it out to me, and I didn’t notice because I couldn’t tell it was spelled wrong. The art is of the game Overcooked, which I’ve played on and off for a bit and find really fun.

On the top right corner, there’s text says “disappoint”, dollar bill with 13.66 on it, a Carolina Reaper with a x_x dead face. “disappoint” is one of my common misspellings, although I’ve since corrected and no longer misspell it. 13.66 is a sort of inside joke between me and Lilian, as once she said to “compensate” her for editing my resume, and I Zelle’d her 13.66, which I did at the time to bring my bank account balance to a clean number. The Carolina Reaper (and the subsequent x_x face) is a reference to when we went to Dave’s Hot Chicken together and I died eating their Carolina Reaper Sandwich.

Then there are the two pigs directly below this on the right and left. The one on the right is the aforementioned technoplush, and if you’ve ever played Minecraft, the one on the left is easily recognizable as a Minecraft pig. Minecraft is the single game I’ve played the most in my life, and it’s still a game I find really fun and as a nice creative outlet now.

In the very middle is a bright drawing of me. If you want more context, it’s based off a picture of me sitting on the side of a curb, right after doing an Escape Room.

On the left and right of the central picture, you’ll observe both a bear and a logo of a hooded figure with a laptop. The bear is actually a Top Gun teddy bear, which my CTF team, Les Amateurs stole as our team mascot. On the right, is a logo of CyberClass, program I was involved with for a couple years in high school, where I taught cybersecurity.

Below, on the left is an organic molecule, as well as a bunch of Tetris pieces. I play a lot of TETR.IO, and if you’re a bit observant, you’ll actually notice the pieces actually form a L, S and D shape. LSD! If you’re a bit more observant, and happen to know your organic molecules, you’ll notice the molecule is actually LSD! Once again, me and my friends co-opting a psychedelic drug as our mascot.

On the right is an airhorn, a figure skate, a Bidoof, and lyrics to Frozen’s Let it Go. The airhorn and the Let it go are about This music video, which I played on loop as a form of [self torture?] during distance learning. Bidoof is another favorite Pokemon, mostly because of the short animation Bidoof’s Big Stand. I’m not too big into figure skating, but it fits in well with the Let it Go vibe.

And we can skip over the catgirl, don’t worry about it.

Final Thoughts

Writing this post has really made me grateful not only for my friends gifted me this, but for all my friends in general. In the long run, these gifts don’t really mean all much, and are just a small token relative to the amount of love and support I receive from my friends. :’)