Jacen's Blog
Can This Make Me a World Champion? - The Difference VGC Notebook
July 18, 2026
A notebook review is somewhat uncharted territory for me. I've read a lot of information from hobbyists about notebooks and pens, but I don't really claim to know much about them. Still, when Wolfe Glick announced his VGC notebook, I felt like I had to give it a try. Is it a fancy gimmick, or does it really provide the World Champ Difference? Only one way to find out.
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A Medalist Review
July 9, 2026
Other than Bandori, I've been pretty out of the seasonal anime scene for a while, so I kind of missed the boat when Medalist originally came out last year, with its second season finishing a few months ago. Now that I've started reloading my Plex server, I decided that it would be the first new show I would watch start to finish as my entry back into the modern anime world. I don't really consider myself to be a media reviewer, but I decided I wanted to write about my thoughts on it. So, let's jump into that.
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I Switched to Firefox
June 9, 2026
After five years of driving and recommending Vivaldi, it finally came time for me to make a switch. I've made the move to Firefox. Let me explain the reason for the switch and how I've set things up.
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The Premium Dual-Screen Option - AYN Thor Review
April 18, 2026
In my review of the Anbernic RG DS, I mentioned the AYN Thor, a handheld that starts at nearly triple the price of the RG DS. With the compromises that Anbernic had to make to hit the sub-$100 price point, surely there's an advantage to the more expensive option, right? What exactly are you getting for the additional money? I decided it was worth giving the Thor a test drive to find out.
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All I’m Saying Is That Ty Gibbs Has Looked a Lot More Consistent Since Gabehart Left
April 14, 2026
I originally said this mostly as ragebait for the highly vocal anti-Gibbs crowd, in addition to poking fun at Joe Gibbs' lawsuit against Chris Gabehart, but after Ty's win at Bristol, I had to wonder if there might actually be something to it. So, let's take a quick look at some numbers to see what kind of a story we have here.
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IT Pro Tip - Fixing An AD Domain Trust Relationship
February 16, 2026
Let's set the stage: you've just started work for the day, sorting through yesterday's tickets with your morning coffee when you receive a call from a user who can't log into their account. No amount of account unlocks or password resets seems to fix the issue. Stumped, you walk to the user's desk (or connect remotely if you're fancy) and try to sign in yourself only to be greeted with a message of "The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed." What does this mean, what could have caused it, and how can you fix it?
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Weaponizing Notepad - Bypassing Microsoft's CVE-2026-20841 Fix
February 11, 2026
On February 10, 2026, Microsoft announced the existence of CVE-2026-20841, a command injection vulnerability related to the rendering of Markdown links in Notepad. While they claim to have fixed it, I think their fix completely missed the point of the vulnerability. To that end, let's take a look at the fix and how an attacker could work around it.
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I Hate AI, But I Used it Anyway - FSMO Troubleshooting Writeup
January 17, 2026
I'm not the biggest fan of AI. It's very obvious to me when people use it, and its outputs almost always have major issues that people refuse to take responsibility for. Overall, it just doesn't feel like it's reached the point where it's useful to me on a regular basis.
On this day, however, I was at my wits end, so I booted up Claude to give me a helping hand. Here's a look at what I did and how it responded, because it's a good showcase of the good and bad of LLMs.
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How To Analyze A Malware Sample
January 15, 2026
It was just before lunch when a ticket came across my board. SentinelOne had flagged and blocked a threat at one of our clients, and our Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service reached out to us to investigate further. While the threat seemed to be mitigated, we all agreed that it wasn't a bad idea to investigate further and figure out what exactly had kicked things off. So, here's another real-world case study on following the thread and figuring out the techniques attackers use to try to outsmart cybersecurity professionals.
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Return of the Chase
January 12, 2026
NASCAR fans were never going to be happy with anything NASCAR announced. There's no chance of ever going back to a full-season points system for reasons I've discussed before, so there was no point in ever even entertaining the possibility. Still, the new format is here, so let's take a look at it and what it means for the future of the sport.
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