Tag: life

Oh Hello

Welcome to 2026 and the blog I am continuing to work on and have not forgotten about.

I had a bad case of spring fever because it was about 60 degrees today and work was slow for me. It’s Sprint Planning Time which means the people with the real jobs who do actual work sit around and talk about what work they will do at their real jobs over the next 8 or 10 weeks and people like me, who write documentation, sit quietly in the corner and drool because no one ever really seems to know what to do with me.

It’s been a problem for a while but when we were setting goals for the new year one thing I told my boss was I know I really need to get more annoying when people aren’t sending me the information I ask for. Today he said to me “I need you to be annoying about this” (“this” being a matter of moving files around). Normally if I’m “told” to do something the ADHD defiance kicks in. Even if it was a thing I was about to do. Like, if I’m heading for the bathroom before leaving the house and you say to me “Be sure to pee before we go” I will automatically NOT have to pee for like 8 hours (not really an exaggeration).

But if it’s something interesting like “go be annoying” I’m going to take that as permission.

Basically, with one short sentence, my boss turned a chaos demon loose in the team. Which sounds like it would be a problem, but there’s at least three others of varying degree. It’s probably closer to seven, but I don’t work with everyone. I don’t think it would be much more than ten though. Our department’s not that big. On the other hand, it IS an IT department.

Draw your own conclusions because this is drifting close to math territory and I don’t go there (I can say there’s not enough information to continue because you don’t know how many people there are in total. I know enough math to know that).

Tomorrow I have to go to the dentist because I lost a filling on New Year’s Eve. Not a big deal except it’s one between my two front teeth, and now I have a gap and it’s not really bad because I don’t smile or talk or … show my face anywhere other than my own house… but sometimes I do have to talk on the phone (to the coworkers) and anyway when I was being annoying about the file move, I could hear the lisp. Listhp.

I don’t know about you, but right now all I’m doing is flailing through the apocalypse. I can’t even handle reading news without my brain going into protective mode and shutting down. Real great start to the new year. It’s not a new one though. We’re in 2020 part 6.

New Equipment

So I’d been working on this post yesterday (Dec 18th) and it was all full of angst about getting a new work computer and where I was going to put it, and would I be able to plug it in, and then … I don’t know. At some point I cleared off my side desk so when the computer showed up today I had a place to put it.

It was literally one of the “I put this off forever and in reality it took 15 minutes” things and I can 100% promise you that I have learned nothing from this. I will procrastinate on everything until my brain decides it’s time to do one of the things on the list and then I will do that thing in that moment and go “dude, that was like, 15 minutes… why did I wait so long?” and the cycle will repeat.

The fun part is that sometimes my brain will decide it’s time to do something at really stupid moments. I think probably the biggest benefit of living alone is that when I wake up at 3 in the morning and feel like playing a game, or reading a book, or coloring my hair, or ordering my groceries, or I get struck with the desperate need to sort and pair all of my socks, or literally whatever it is whenever it is, I don’t have to worry about disturbing anyone else — except the dog, really. The cats mostly ignore what I’m doing as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.

Anyhow. The new hardware showed up today and it’s a Windows PC and it is surprisingly heavy. It’s dense you know? Not just heavy, but dense. It came with a wired keyboard and mouse, which is good because the keyboard is a little small for me and I don’t like the way the keys feel. They’re very soft. I’ve also never been a touchpad fan. Obviously I would’ve used my own keyboard and mouse, so it’s nice that they’re actually provided by the job. I’ll probably still replace them with my own because I have no idea how they feel yet. That’s all still in the box.

The computer is also a touchscreen, which is a huge pain in a house with cats. There’s also a docking station so I’m hoping I can get two monitors set up and not have to open the notebook at all.

I’m getting a little concerned about the number of computers in my house and I think I’m drifting close to the evil lair 101 enrollment requirements, but again… The cats aren’t bothered and so far nothing has exploded.

You’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking, but the secret is, now that we’re all thinking it, it can’t happen because it’s too cliche. In a similar line, I bought like a 5-lb container of animal-friendly deicer, so there’s a good chance that Baltimore City (or at least my general region) won’t have much in the way of ice. You’re welcome.

Yeah so that didn’t last long

I had to switch back to this template. I’m still not completely happy with it, but I like having my last.fm readout there. Don’t ask me why. I know how to go to my own page to see what I’ve been listening to. Maybe I just want to pretend that you also care what I’m listening to.

I know you don’t, really. It’s ok.

I got a nice “Meets Expectations” on my end of year review at work. I’m fine with that, because in many ways I feel that I didn’t even meet (my) expectations, let alone exceed any of them. I won’t find out until March what my raise and bonus will be, but I’m already making more money than I ever assumed I’d be making — especially the way I’m making it. Every time they pay me I’m afraid they’re going to come to their senses and fire me. And because this is one of my paranoid fantasies, I owe them for everything they ever paid me over the last (counts on fingers) 16ish years.

I also managed to lose actual weight between the whole surgery thing and last Thursday when I had a doctor appointment. I made the tech weigh me twice because I couldn’t believe it. You don’t get numbers. You get to know that I went from fat to slightly less fat. You also don’t get to comment at all about weight loss, because I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care. The weight loss is interesting because I have been eating G A R B A G E since I got out of the hospital. It’s been convenience, carry-out, coffee, and carbs, so I don’t know. Maybe that pain I had was alien tech sucking out some fat cells.

No. I would not put up with the pain for any amount of time if it magically made me lose weight. The “not in pain” parts of my life feel so rare.

I’d like to take a moment now to say… HOLY SHIT IT’S DECEMBER.

I just put October down over there on that stack of magazines like yesterday and now you’re telling me we’re about halfway through the last month of the year. I dunno man. Again, pain, alien, probably abduction (there’s probably also a joke about abdomens in there but I’m not in the mood to go that far down. I’ve been listening to techno trance music most of the night because it makes girldog zone out, and it’s also making me zone out, although that could also be the weed. This parenthetical has gone on long enough now, goodbye) because there’s evidence of November. There’s proof right in this very blog. But somehow there’s no memory of November.

Actually, everything from like, May onward is sort of a blur. Any further back than that, forget about it. That space has been cleared out and probably refilled already. I can’t wait to find out what’s in there.

See that’s how my brain works. I learn stuff by accident. I put podcasts and documentaries and audiobooks on as background noise a lot (although it’s Wild Wild West a lot lot) and while I’m not paying attention, my brain is grabbing onto stuff. Then, one day sometimes, or maybe not, someone will have a question and my brain will go “OH WE KNOW THIS!” and I will answer the question and at least one person will look at me and ask either “Why are you like this?” or “Why do you know that?” And I will shrug and say “I’m online a lot?” as an answer for both questions.

Anyhow, since I can’t control what or when my brain decides it’s going to record things, I also can’t control where it put things, and sometimes it just shoves things out to make space. Had those memories been copied to Archives already? Who knows! Memory tech chucked the boxes without checking the dates and dropped the new ones in.

I have only ever claimed to be a Data Angel. There’s never been a statement or even a suggestion as to the quality of that data. … or that angel.

Hey! Do you like what you’re reading? Do you know people who might also like reading it? You can share this. Really. Just because I don’t want my friends reading this doesn’t mean I don’t want your friends reading.

I’m kidding. I hope my friends are reading this. BECAUSE THEN I CAN TELL THEM HOW MUCH I LOVE THEM AND HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO ME

Except they’re my friends, and they would know that was being said with eyes-too-wide, teeth-too-bared-and-clenched, and smile-too-psychotic to be true.

I love you more in a “mumble it into the hood of my coat as I’m leaving ok seeya love ya…. ” way.

Getting Stuff Right

PLACE YOUR BETS: how long after I post this will my executive function completely shut down and leave me stranded?

I’ve been doing pretty good lately with keeping track of things. I’ve been remembering my meds every day, been keeping ahead of the cat litter, keeping the pet water fountain full and clean, and not having any emergencies like being out of coffee, or being out of filters.

I’m kinda screwing up the groceries though. I started getting them delivered in 2020 and it’s actually a lot more helpful for me than actually going to the store, but it’s still not something I enjoy or even remotely like. I’m really restricted as far as food and a lot of it is my own weirdness, but there are also multiple food allergies at play, so I tend to stick to about 10 things that I trust to always be safe (and “safe” as in the texture or whatever won’t bother me).

So shopping for groceries isn’t fun. I tend to buy the same bunch of things (Lactose-free milk, Saltines, coffee, plain yogurt, chicken nuggets) so going to the store is boring and long and waiting to pay for things is intolerable some days. Unfortunately shopping via app is also not that much fun. I put things in the basket and take things back out again because I’ve lost interest in it. I put all kinds of snacks and things in the cart and then take them back out again. Then I spend every evening whinging to my mom that I have no junk food in the house and what kind of monster is denying me cookies at 8:30 at night?!

Anyhow, I’ve been putting things in and taking things out of my cart since like last Thursday and it’s getting dire. I’m almost out of milk and I need toilet paper and latex gloves, so I’m going to have to be brave and click the checkout button. There are snacks in the cart right now, but will they still be there when I complete the purchase?!

Probably not, because I’m actually incredibly stupid and mean to myself.

Aren’t you glad I started blogging again? Deep, insightful stuff going on here.

Today’s music: Starting with Toad the Wet Sprocket’s album “Fear” straight through. I’d forgotten how good this album is.

It’s the stupid things that make me happy

For example: this new blog layout. Be glad I didn’t leave it in the original green text. Although there’s also the option for amber, and I did love me some amber displays back in the day.

I can’t promise this is going to stick around a while. I’m still not happy with the layout. I want something very minimal and almost completely text focused, but so far my problems with this layout is it’s not indicating when comments exist on a post unless you view each post as an individual, and that’s not fun. Who wants to click on everything to see if there’s a conversation going on?

Ok, it’s entirely possible that the problem is there aren’t any comments, or comments are still broken and you can’t leave one (A friend of mine is having that issue right now — 503 every time I try to comment)

Anyhow, if you’re out there and want to take the time to try commenting and let me know what happens … (This is the good thing about having so many nerdy friends. Someone somewhere will look and know what’s happening).

Additional things that make me happy: still writing.

I’ll tell you a little bit about it, but not much. There’s these two guys, see? Both Gen-X, both have terrible relationships with their families. Basically raised themselves from about the ages of 10 because I did mention they’re Gen-X? Anyhow, they’re both sarcastic, weird, low-level con artists, snarky best friends, and after a run of bad luck (one guy lost his job, got divorced, and inherited a house in the space of like 10 months) they’re roommates.

Oh look. The best friends odd couple situation. How unlike me. And it turns out the house is haunted? You don’t say. Who ever would’ve imagined I’d come up with something like that? Wow.

SO OF COURSE I MADE THE CHARACTERS IN THE SIMS (my mom is probably rolling her eyes and silently telling me to get on with it, because absolutely zero of this is a surprise to her. But to be fair, she’s known me a really long time and I’m actually pretty predictable).

Anyhow… no names yet. One’s tentatively Nate/Nathan, but I dunno. The other is just a question mark, although we’re all getting pretty tired of “dudeman”.

Right. So getting back to it…

two male sims sitting on a sofa in a haunted house

Dudeman on the left, “Nate” on the right. The year is roughly 2001. Nate’s got massive gauge holes in his ears, a tattoo on his left forearm and the nape of his neck. He does have an outfit that’s jeans, boots, t-shirt, and flannel shirt tied around his waist, but I haven’t gotten a good screenshot of it yet. Hang on to those last days of Grunge, baby! You can also see that dudeman has sleeves that end in fingerless gloves.

And finally… Dudeman

(Dudeman does have a last name. It’s Brekman. So that’s something at least)

Anyhow… kinda getting to a point where I might need to talk to someone about the writing? I used to have esso to bounce ideas around with, and sometimes just complaining out loud to someone helps get through blocks, and boy am I blocked. Like

I have maybe a 4th of a thing written, but it’s spread out over acts 1 and 2 and there’s huge gaping holes where there’s supposed to be story. This is me indirectly asking if anyone might be interested. Except you, mom. I can’t swear in front of you.