// cleaned transcript · Oct 24, 2026
Warren Westfall: the conversation
This is the cleaned publication copy: noise, private topics and figures are removed and marked [redacted]. Line numbers match the original recording transcript.
L1[redacted: private, lines 1 to 29]
L30Warren: Well, my first experience with computers was back in the, 80s. you know, the beginning of the 80s, apple… Had released the, Kind of like, one of their first computers. And, you know, oil money was flowing Flowing like crazy up here during that time.
L31Nix: Sure.
L32Warren: And so, all of the… I grew up in a village. About 250 people in the… in the…
L33Nix: Wow.
L34Warren: In the middle.
L35[redacted: private, lines 35 to 61]
L62Warren: Yeah. Anyway, so in the early 80s, oil was flowing. You know, and we got lots of money out to the rural villages, so they built a school. And we got… probably… you know, for a K-12 school that had maybe 90 kids in it total. So, the whole school was K-12. And we had 28 computers. And it was all green screen, you know, you had to command line it pretty much everything to get anywhere. And, so we were doing Oregon Trail, that was our, that was our, you know. our prize was, like, if we finished, got done with homework early or whatever, we got time on those computers. And so the first… my first remember is, memory is, Oregon Trail, and the sword fighting guys, you know, the stick fighting. And, anyway, so a couple years later, the Lisa came out. You remember that? The… the square box?
L63Nix: The old computer, yes.
L64Warren: Yeah, and so you got a mouse, and you could draw on it, and I still have that picture, the first picture I drew. with a mouse. Anyway…
L65Nix: Oh, got it, that's cool.
L66Warren: Yeah, it just… it was… it's in my… it's in my keepsake box for some reason. I just thought it was cool. I never… I never dreamed to be a techie-minded person, you know, up until a few years ago, actually. But, so anyway… through the 80s, you know, you just get through school, get into college, I used computers a little bit in there, in the early 90s, to… to do papers and stuff like that. And, but I never owned one. And then I became a firefighter. And, one of my, one of the firefighters that I roomed with, he was big into computers, so he… but it was all gaming for him. True. And so he was into the gaming scene, and so he… it was up and coming, and I'd play a little bit on it, and I was like, I was more into Hot Rod cars, and… And, you know, that kind of thing back then. And… Metal music. I wonder what Apple's doing. And Apple had just come out with this dual 450 tower. But it still had OS 9 on it. And I'd heard… I'd heard about OS X. coming out, and I was like, oh, that's gonna be cool, you know, they showed, like, a, you know… it was some magazine, I saw pictures, and…
L67[redacted: style, lines 67 to 75]
L76Warren: Anyway, and so, So then OS X came out, and it changed, and just a life, you know, it was just like, whew! Everything changed, you know? Everything worked. It was brilliant. I loved it. You know, I was like, this is it. You know, this is where… this is my destiny. Apple computers. And so, at the time, you know, you could still do some stuff. with it, you know, get into it. I was… I didn't know anything about coding, I didn't know nothing. I was like. I wonder what this thing does, how do you make it do stuff, you know? And I didn't know anything about chat boards, or any of that stuff. I didn't even have a phone, I didn't have a cell phone, nobody did, really. But, So, I didn't know what to do, and I ended up going to the library and finding these magazines. And realize, you know, and I was learning stuff like cron… cron, you know, learning stuff, little things, little bits, tids and bits.
L77Nix: Sure.
L78[redacted: private, lines 78 to 79]
L80Warren: Yeah, so for, you know, the big boys. Anyway, so that got, you know, that just waylaid any of my computer, adventure. And then about 2006, I got a MacBook Pro. I subscribed to Macworld magazine, And Macworld came with a live boot disk of Ubuntu. And… At that time, I'd learned how to get on chat forums and that kind of thing, and so I was asking questions, what can I do with this? And they're like, well, dual-boot it! So I dual-booted… dual-booted the MacBook Pro with Ubuntu. in 2006, and it was terrible. It didn't work, didn't work right, you know, I didn't know what to do with it, I had no idea, and there was real no instructions. It was just kind of like this… weird thing that you open the book, and there's a CD, and I was like, oh, what's this? You know, there's really no instructions. I didn't know where to go to get them, and Anyway, that was my first exposure to linux.
L81Nix: Okay?
L82Warren: And then, I, put it away for a while, 2008 came, I tried again. I do. I actually triple booted that computer, I had Windows. Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu on there, and it worked. It was working. I actually got Wi-Fi working. Wow. And it was working, And I was just poking around, you know? Sure. And so then that… It worked for a while, and then things broke, and then… Then I just put it back.
L83[redacted: private, lines 83 to 162]
L163Nix: Let's jump to… let's jump to Omarchy, like, how did.
L164Warren: Okay.
L165Nix: I'm working.
L166Warren: Okay, so, 2022. I bought this computer where I'm sitting on now, which is a System76, Oryx Pro, yep, 17-inch computer.
L167[redacted: private, lines 167 to 185]
L186Warren: So, anyway, I bought the, I bought the, this computer, and I was using, Pop!_OS. Because I had, I had switched to Pop!_OS before that, on the MacBook Pro. And I was like, okay, this is user-friendly for… for, beginners and, you know, that kind of thing, and I kind of, kind of learned my way through it, and And so I got… I got… I got stuck on Pop!_OS, and I was like, okay, I'll just stay here. And I would try other stuff on… on, a VM, You know? I try other stuff on VMs, and that kind of thing for a while, and I, you know, I tried a bunch of stuff, man. Whatever I'd see come up on X, or… whatever it was, I'd… YouTube, you know, I'd just go try it, and then I'd be like, yeah, nope, staying with pop, you know? And just because it was…
L187Nix: You'd look for something better, and find out it wasn't so bad where you were.
L188Warren: Yeah, right. And then I, you know, then I was like, then I bought this computer, and then I, installed Steam and was playing games for a little bit, and I was like, holy cow, this is great! This thing's working great. I mean, that's what this computer is made for. And, but… You know, I was just learning, so I was… I messed it up several times, like, broke it, and had to reinstall it from the beginning, kind of thing. And,
L189Nix: Where you already know, man.
L190Warren: Pardon?
L191Nix: That's where you learn.
L192Warren: Yes, exactly.
L193[redacted: style, lines 193 to 197]
L198Warren: I've been using it as a tool, and… when I do things, like, I've been doing things on my own, learning how to use GitHub and all that. And… But I've been asking it to walk me step-by-step how it does things, and then let me do it. And, it's… that has helped, because I just… I've had all these ideas. how I've wanted to improve my productivity, but I just don't know how. I've tried learning Python.
L199Nix: Well, the cool part is, me and you got to see it before it existed, and now we're gonna get to see, you know, we're gonna go from no computers to AGI, I think.
L200Warren: Right, yep. And that kind of scares me, to tell you the truth. So I've… I've been working hard at doing everything local.
L201Nix: Tell me more about that, that's… that's a… that's a… Let's dive into that a little bit. Tell me about what you're doing on local.
L202Warren: Okay, so let me, let me back up just a little bit.
L203Nix: why you're doing local.
L204Warren: Okay, let me back up just a little bit.
L205Nix: Cheryl, please.
L206Warren: So I was on Pop!_OS, and Pop!_OS went to all Rust. Re… redid their whole… thing in Rust, and I was fine with that. Whatever. Everything seemed to work fine. Cosmic came out. And, you know, I'm like, it's just… it just seems like everything… just like Apple was. Apple started out like this, and then just slowly went, and then you can't do nothing. And so… and this is the way I feel like Cosmic is going, is they're just… they're just making it so that it's just… it's not really going like this so much as it's going like this, and you're… and you're going, well, I'm getting confused here. Do I have control of this machine or not?
L207Nix: Right.
L208Warren: And so… A year and a half ago, Omarchy came out, He, he, DHH… I just happened to, for some reason, he came up on my feed. And I'm like, who is this guy? This is, like, kind of a wild, crazy-haired guy, you know? what's going on here, you know? And I listened, and I was like, it's not for me, and then it came back around. And he's like, just try it. And I'm like, okay, I've been doing this for a long time now, I'll just try it. And so I put it on an old 2016 MacBook Pro at the time. And at that time, you know, you did the arch installer. And I was so afraid of Arch, because you hear all the horror stories. So I put it, and it was so easy, it just, like, boom, boom, boom, boom, it did it. And then I installed Omarchy. And Omarchy worked, it was great, and it was working, and then it just bricked my machine. Boom! it just disappeared. I mean, I'm not kidding, it was just like a bomb went off, and I was like, what's going on? Did it fry something? You know?
L209Nix: Come back from that, because generally when that happens, you're like, screw that.
L210Warren: Well, it was the… my… his first impressions. I've always been a keystroke guy, like efficiency, And so… I'm like, when I first started messing with it, I was like, oh, oh, oh, you know, you're discovering how efficient You know, you just… open the key bindings, and you get the key bindings. And, you know, and so I was just learning that, and then within a few days, I had gotten the lay of the land. And I was moving around, and opening windows, and tiling, and doing all this stuff, and I was like, yes! This is what I've been looking for! This is what pop is not doing, you know, kind of thing. And… and then it bricked it. And then the computer sat for… 8 months or so, because, like, it went into, like, a… it went into, like, a panic mode, Apple's kind of backup security feature, or whatever, it's called, firmware. firmware login page or something, I can't remember what it is, but I had to, like, go to Apple. With the original receipt, and then say, you know, unlock my machine.
L211Nix: Product.
L212Warren: And so I bricked it one more time after that, and I was like, alright, I'll just leave it alone. And I followed on X. And then… When was it? When was it when the first one came out? January? The…
L213Nix: It's been about a year, yeah.
L214Warren: assumption.
L215Nix: according to it, yeah.
L216Warren: Yeah, I can't remember when it was, when I… I think it was 3.0 that I actually, bit real hard, and I… I was like, okay. You know, all nervous. Backed up all my files.
L217Nix: You've been use… you've been using it since 3.0.
L218Warren: Yes, I've been using it… well, actually. I don't know what it was last year, in October, August, October, somewhere in there.
L219Nix: Okay, so you're not… you're not jumping on the… the train, you're… you've been on it for a while.
L220Warren: Yeah, as soon as you could install it on an Apple computer, I had been playing with it. And, so then, you know, It's gotta be, I want to say July this year is when I switched over all my machines.
L221Nix: Bum.
L222Warren: I've got a… I've got a old Lenovo ThinkCentre. That has got a bunch of storage on it, and I'm using that as a server storage, kind of… it's on all the time. And so I run, you know, my… my CleeAMP server, my Jellyfin, my, Just everything that's server-wise, because it stays on all the time. And that leads me into… why I am really appreciating Omarchy is because I wouldn't be able to do this if I hadn't learned about how AI can be Integrated into your workflow. Omarchy kind of introduced me to that.
L223Nix: That's right.
L224[redacted: private]
L225Nix: What's your… what's your X handle? I don't… I can't correlate names back to X sometimes.
L226Warren: I don't even know, dude, hold on a second. Let me see… What is my X handle?
L227Nix: That's alright, if you're… If you want to put it on the profile, we can, but if you're not real active, then that's alright, too.
L228Warren: No, I'm… I'm on X, But, I follow all you guys, and all the whole Omarchy,
L229Nix: Well, yeah, well, give me your handle, then I'll make sure you get bumped.
L230Warren: Okay, I'll, I'll get that for you. And, but,
L231Nix: We're coming up on time, so let's bring it home.
L232Warren: Okay, man.
L233Nix: Nope. So, you got into the drones, you're building stuff locally, the last thing, let's continue on, you made some plugins, and where are they, and how can people find them?
L234Warren: The one plug-in that I do have on, the… GitHub is called Expenses, and it's basically…
L235Nix: What's your GitHub user, do you know that?
L236Warren: I'm not, Wardad52.
L237[redacted: style, lines 237 to 247]
L248Warren: Yeah. And it's basically, I, you know, and I'm learning this, so I don't know, I don't know how it's gonna get labeled, how's it gonna… anyway, so basically the premise is, is that I… I scan those… I scan those receipts into a file, and there's a script that grabs that receipt, it… It imports it into Easy Bookkeeping, Which is a free service. And it… it creates a ledger. And you look at the ledger, and you can go into each transaction and change the category. If it imported it wrong, or, you know, you're auditing your own expenses, basically.
L249Nix: True.
L250Warren: And it's all free, it's all local, it's on Tailnet, it's on my tailnet. Yup. And so, that's it, man. It's just a real simple… Tracking expenses, and
L251Nix: All good.
L252Warren: Yeah.
L253Nix: Good.
L254Warren: So, so…
L255Nix: Charlie, go ahead.
L256Warren: No, it's, it's… I'm really excited, because now I kind of feel like one of the, you know, one of the crowd kind of thing. I've vibe-coded something, and it's really cool. It's awesome.
L257[redacted: private, lines 257 to 271]