I never seem to have the drive and energy to put my thoughts down here.  I think if I did, it would be a bot that just screamed every few hours.  We have one of those on Mastodon, and I share those posts reasonably often.  

Lessee...  Since November:

Job outsourced to Data Center company who absorbed employees that would be outsourced.  Re-badging, they call it.  So at least for the time being, I have a job doing my job and getting paid by someone else.  After that transition, lots of layoffs happened.  And now the hospital is closing clinics.  A few to start.  We'll see how many more as time goes on.  Medicaid funding, of various types, has been the issue, and I can't imagine things drastically improving.  Pretty sad for former co-workers.  New employer is ok.  I am told I will have more opportunities once we get the hospital transitioned over.  It's...  going to be an experience.  Hopeful for them. Not hugely optimistic though.

Related to COVID stuff, Cue Health got caught messing with their reagents in their NAAT COVID tests, and lost their FDA approval. Among other things, this resulted in them declaring bankruptcy  and dropping out of the testing business.  We were directed by the FDA to destroy any remaining tests we had.  That was ouchie.  We did find an alternative that turns out had better pricing.  Metrix tests by Aptitude.  Same accuracy.  Good stuff.  So that was good.

Relatedly, still masking in public and generally avoiding public when I can.  There have been work related flights that then involve a strict protocol afterwards to make sure the family is safe. So far we've been both diligent and lucky.  Coming to grips with the public reaction to the pandemic has helped prepare me for the reaction to the general state of things today.  Empathy largely took a walk to some other planet and left us to fend for ourselves for a while.  Still have a lot of anger and resentment about that. 

Relatedly there, I spent some time in NM visiting family.  Lost both my parents in the space of two weeks back in February.  One in a year plus battle with heart failure and another coming to the end of an 8 year battle with Alzheimer's.   Both long separated for decades.  Not sure either knew about the other's state.  I wasn't close to either, so for me it was a finality to grieving that had been going on for a long time.  Visiting family involved a lot of fence-mending.  Turns out having a narcissist in the family really creates artificial strain on relationships, and once they are gone and notes compared, a lot of sympathy and empathy comes out to comfort each other.  Not at the loss, but at the welcome release from their absence. The prevailing theme of the time was, "At least he won't be able to hurt anybody anymore."   Live your life with enough awareness and empathy that this won't be the mantra uttered by your loved ones over your body when you die.

Spring and summer has brought with it another chance to get some tomatoes going in the yard.  We don't have a plot to grow with, so I use grow bags.  Got lots of seedlings this go around, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of them.  Did an experiment where a local gal suggested starting seeds a little later to account for the cooler spring temps and her assertion that the plants would catch up to ones started earlier that then undergo stress from the temps.  We shall see!  The early ones are tall and blooming and hopefully setting fruit soon.  The later ones are doing well.  I just hope they have time to catch up and fruit.  Need to also get the Basil in.  It is usually pretty fast.  

Otherwise things are mostly chugging along.  Trying to maintain my sanity and health while surviving in the world the way it is.  Trying to continue to be kind and caring and helpful when possible.  Not without its challenge, but it is really the only way to make it out ahead.  

Hope you all are well!

Not a lot of words with multiple syllables or more than 4 letters to say about the recent stupidity.  That will probably change, but I'm trying to focus on self-care at the moment.

That aside, things are things. Ok.. so maybe I lied.  Those of us who are COVID conscious and have continued to mask and distance in public places and being mindful of bubble interactions probably already knew how things would turn out.  When we can't even get the liberals who claim to care about vulnerable people and human rights to put on a mask, what hope would we have for anybody else to do any real heavy lifting?

Yeah.. I'm a little angry.  Lot going on.

My father is at the end of his life, and I've been no-contact with him for about 13 years now.  My step-mom tracked me down recently to let me know he is dying and tried, even after I told her that I still wasn't interested in contact, to convince me to come see him anyways.  Now I'm having to teach her what boundaries are and that if she wants to have contact with me, that she is going to have to learn to respect them.  I did try and be as sympathetic and kind as I was able.  She certainly doesn't need any problems from me with what all she's dealing with now.  But in light of why I went no-contact, I did need her to understand that there are lines she needs to be aware of and to respect.  I'm not optimistic of how well that will be received, but I'm open to being surprised.

Self-care looks like playing a lot of Minecraft and Skyrim and self soothing with sweets and other things that are probably not good for me in the long run.  I'll figure it out. 

Work is a lot.  I keep noticing signs that money has gone past the point of being tight.  Experience tells me that usually means layoffs are on the way.  Nothing has been said, and they've always been, "We've never had layoffs," but things do feel kinda shaky to me. Not sure how that will work considering at least my team is already short-staffed for just keeping the lights on.  I suppose if they outsource us, that's one way.  Earlier mention of anger comes back to this too because not only are we as a hospital really not taking COVID seriously, but the critical parts of the early pandemic are what put us on our butt financially in the first place.  And we're kinda back where we were now.  I feel like I need to start a PBS show called, This Old Sisyphean Life.

I'm trying to figure out what the next pages look like.  I'm kinda ready to abandon my career and find something that helps me feel better about myself while also allowing me to continue to be safe given all things.  Not sure what that looks like, but if any of you have thoughts of either work-from-home or COVID-safe jobs, i'd be interested in hearing.  I do IT work now, but I'm pretty much trying to open my options up to anything that isn't intense physical labor.  Definitely time for a change.

Early today we discovered our sewer is backed up. The landlord is here to sort it out.  Hopefully it won't be as difficult a problem as last time.  But hey.. nothing like a visceral and olfactory demonstration of where things are at.  Fun times.

Drains and toilets aside, we are chugging along. 

It might be good to start keeping track of things here more.  We'll see if motivation manages.

One of my latest jokes about getting older is that I spent my youth babying my body, and now as I get older it shows its gratefulness by breaking down.  As I peek over into 52 this week (Friday!) I have become acutely aware of how my sedentary lifestyle has done a number on me.  The little voice that for the past 20 years has said that I should move more and do more is finally gotten to the screaming stage and I think I'm finally listening.  hehe.  I can say of my just over half century in the world, I can continue to never be accused of learning lessons the easy way. I'd consider it a fault, but in its own way, it has helped shape parts of me I rather enjoy.

As I continue to crest over into the latter half of the century, coupled with *waves hands around at the state of the world*, I find myself looking to ways to make my life easier and to help me enjoy my time.  Some of this has included taking up a more active effort into vegetable and herb gardening.  It is a great way to get real-time feedback for your efforts.  Kids?  Nah.  Gimme a dozen basil plants and a cat.  Heh. I do really enjoy seeing work paying off in the form of tangible visible gardens.  And it is nice to get out, and move and do the things and know that effort will be rewarded.


I do also spend a significant amount of my waking hours buried in a video game of one stripe or another.  I think that stems from having a place where I have more perceived control of outcomes. When I invest time in Minecraft, I build the thing and I can see and experience it within the game. When I play Skyrim, I collect the things and can see that progress and I complete quests and see that progress.  And that experience generates the brain chemicals.

The world continues to tilt towards destruction and I feel like I only have so much energy to devote to improving that in direct ways and the brain chemical return on investment is a hard play right now.  But I'm trying to stay aware of issues and certainly voting and encouraging others to do so.  I'm also big on mutual aid and have been making a point of investing in people lately.  Some I know who need help with a project and many I don't know who just need help getting their next meal or a roof over their heads.  I imagine there is a brain chemical return on that, but I do it mostly because I can.  People ask for help, I can help.  It really is as simple as that.

I find that generally I'm just doing more to take care of myself and trying hard to steer clear of things that bring me down.  A lot of that has involved becoming more aware of who I am and what I want, and what of that has changed in the last 4 years as a result of *waves arms around*.  Some of it has been finally deciding to finish up projects and plans that got left hanging for various reasons, and pushing the stone forward.  Just doing that part has also gotten me to make decisions about things that might not bring me the happiness I thought they would, and cutting loose the burden of carrying the idea or the half-finished process. 

All in all, I continue to move forward feeling reasonably good about life and where things sit and finding comfort in the now and also in the strategy of being open to the inevitability of change.  Tomorrow could turn us on our heads or kick us out on our butts.  But we're still alive and we can be afforded the ability to choose how we face what is to come. 

Happy New Year, y'all.  Hope the new year brings prosperity and peace.  I'd ask it for more, but I think we're already going to be asking a lot of it.  I'll take small gains as wins all things considered. 

Heh.. I had more to say, but I realized it might be nice to start with better energy.  Suffices to say that we in the know have a lot of work to do this year.  May we find the strength, the perseverance, and the solidarity. 

One of the things I've become extremely grateful for in recent months are the groups that are taking COVID seriously and who plan extremely low-risk events and do what amounts to truly "living with COVID".  Unlike the majority of others who have moved on and continue to pretend it doesn't matter as more and more of them and their friends get it for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th time and are getting to understand what some of us have been worried about all along. 

Having found some COVID-conscious community that really works to care and be inclusive has been a mental breath of fresh air.  After literal years of feeling isolated and disregarded, it is nice to know there are people who are interested in figuring out how to make things work in a way that looks like something other than hiding at home and never being near another human again.

I actually got to see a movie recently in a theatre that was arranged to be only for those who would test ahead of time, mask the entire time and would not eat or drink.  It was weird and nice and I'm deeply grateful to that community for leading and arranging that meet-up.  The same community also continues to consolidate COVID information and information related to discounts and sales for masks and tests.  

There are parts of the world I really miss that I won't go near as long as the community at large is not interested in keeping me and mine safe.  The world has changed and it's never going back to the way it was.  And my recent goals have included how to best find joys in safer places, and how to mitigate risks as much as possible.  It is very heartening to find community in the same spot that is doing all it can to bring back joy in safe spaces.  

 

 I was thinking about my early experiences with social groups on computers after reading Cat's article that I posted earlier.  I hate to do a "back in my day", but when I was in high school and early college in New Mexico, I had a Commodore 64 and I used several local BBS' on dial-up.  We had a few Commodore specific, but we also had another one that was multi-line and for those that remember, that meant that for the interval (you were only allowed to be online for 10-20 minutes at most before you'd get kicked to allow someone else on), you could chat live with other folks who happened to be online at the same time.  I have super fond memories of that era both for the friends I was making and for feeling like I was a part of something.

Growing up a neurodivergent geek, I got Other'd a lot. I did take comfort in some measure that I wasn't always alone and us Other'd would gravitate towards each other.  And boy would they Other for any reason at all.  In high school, my best friends got Other'd on the spot by a teacher.  They were from England and had funny accents.  Didn't think much of it at the time since I had been treated that way my whole life and had stopped noticing it was not a good thing as such. Funny how that goes.

So one of the things we did on the multi-line BBS was have weekly Saturday night midnight dollar movie meetups.  We'd gather a bunch of us at the IHOP by the dollar theater around 10pm and we'd socialize and hang out with late night food, and then we'd walk over to the theater and watch whatever was out that week.  One of the things I quickly discovered is that ALL OF US were Other'd.  Every single one of us.  And this was a way for us to get together to find friends and acceptance.  And mostly we did.  As with all groups of folks, there were always some who brought in some toxicity, and there were always those who wanted to come into the group as Other and further Other the Other'd.  Sort of the nature of humanity in that way.  Most of the time, those looking to fracture us didn't manage to do that very well.  And there were folks who floated in and out.  But the core of us held pretty steadfast.  I met my first girlfriend from within that group.  I stayed on with the grouip for some time until later college when I discovered the internet (such that it was) and had an avenue to get onto it via the university and later my first internet dial-up provider.

At the time, I discovered something called ICB.  This was not IRC which was another chat-group setup at the time which felt more like the Wild West.  ICB was generally created by groups of university geeks at several of the major technological colleges. It expanded some beyond that, but mostly it was university students or alum.  My participation in that grouping led to my first IT job when the head accountant of a local food service company needed someone else to do IT related stuff so she could get back to doing actual accounting.  We knew each other through ICB and she mentioned having a position and I applied and got it!  In addition to doing IT related stuff and general support and data clerking, she would sometimes throw basic accounting stuff my way for some of the less complicated balance sheets.  She taught me the rudiments of double entry and I would help her do some of the data entry.  Later we hired a friend of ours from ICB who moved to the area needing a part time job while he worked on his Masters of Nuclear Engineering. And later that lead to another girlfriend who was also on ICB who moved to be with me and finish up her degree.  And then we opted to move to Seattle.  :-)

Somewhere in there was Livejournal.  And chat wise, there was ICB still, but also ICQ, AOL Messenger, MSN Messenger, and what persists as Google Chat.  I can remember being very fond of the multi-chat clients that allowed me to connect to all my favorite services at once so I could have one single place to work with.  I also remember the migrations as things would either disappear or become less accessible.  ICQ (iirc) also got slurped up by the Russians.  AOL and MSN did their thing.  Various places came and went.  Some gone forever.

I have a distinct memory not that long ago (except it was probably going on 20 year now) of a friend being so excited about Facebook and quitting everything else to focus there because it was the site that brought people together and the place they were able to reconnect with so many people.  I've grown out of touch, but I wonder if they concern themselves with the bigger picture.  

it feels like the internet is always been evolving and wandering in various directions.  Facebook and Twitter gave people an anchor to build a raft in what otherwise was a fast moving river.  There is something to be said about having a place to call home.  There is also wisdom in learning to ride the rapids knowing that no anchor is immutable no matter how hard someone might try.  One good wave and we're all scurrying.  And I don't mean there are greener pastures.  I mean more that it is good to consider purposeful attachments and to know when to let go and move on.  And to build the skills and mindset to do that with minimal stress and discomfort.

Even if Facebook and Twitter survive, we're clearly falling over the precipice of what will be the next things.  Some will zip in and out and something new may come around and stay for a while.  Will be interesting to see where it goes and what becomes the next zeigeist.  As it is often the case, I'm sure us Others will be leading the charge. Long may we reign.

 Chipped away at some of the doom boxes this weekend.  Things have gotten a little out of hand, and I'm kinda forcing myself to deal with the clutter.  Of course it feels good when I make progress, but not good enough to overcome the inevitable inertia.  I don't have a good plan for dealing with it in a way that works for me, but I also know that if I can at least keep poking at it little at a time, I'll continue to progress a little which is quite fine by me.

I was able to get a serviceable portion of my Stage Top gaming table printed and sorted.  We used it to play some table top games this last weekend and it worked out pretty well. I'm pleased. 

I otherwise spent most of the weekend being a bump on a log.  We finally got some rain which was needed, and it cooled things down nicely.  Back up to warm today, but hopefully the rest of the week will be less so.

I've got two 2am maintenances coming up next week.  Neither should be particularly difficult.  The difficult part will be trying to find some sense of normalcy in my sleep schedule for the days following.  Going to be messy AF.  And THEN.. I'm on call the following week.  Fabooo!!

In some book somewhere, it has been said that we should honor our parents.  They gave us life. We exist because of them.

Somewhere sometime as a young kid, even though I probably couldn't have articulated it as such at the time, I came to understand that even parents need to earn that honor.  There isn't a participation trophy that gives you a free pass.  When you are the subject of abuse and collective trauma due to one or more parent, all the good works in the world and all the external accolades mean absolutely nothing to you.  Nor should it. It doesn't matter what others think. Maybe they see the abuser as the best at their job, or the most friendly person they know or whatever it is that sets them apart.  In fact it is highly likely and deliberate that a narcissist would build those achievements to stand in stark contrast to who they really are.  "You can't possibly say I do those things because look at who everybody knows that I am."

Bullshit.  Complete and utter bullshit.

Honor is earned.  Every fucking millimeter.  

No free passes.
They are people too.  And they fuck up. And they also have the ability to reconcile and make amends if they really want to do so and if we choose to let them. We can choose to rebuild that trust. We can equally choose to honor our own trauma and not allow them back in our lives.

Again, we get to choose, no free passes.  No participation trophies. 

In honoring ourselves, we owe it to ourselves to acknowledge their failures as theirs. It doesn't matter what we think we could have done differently to make things better. It was never up to us. And it's not our job to fill the gaps they left. And maybe we tried anyways because we didn't want to see others hurt like we were. Or maybe we regret that in dealing with our own trauma, we couldn't help fill those gaps to help others from getting hurt. But the failure isn't ours. It is theirs. We did the best we could with what we had while dealing with our own pile of shit.

Honor as they deserve to be honored.

 

 The last two days have had weather with highs at less than 70, and it's been glorious!  Love every millisecond of it.  I wish there had been rain, but hopefully that will come back soon.

This week I was gifted a 3d printer by a co-worker that had gotten fed up with the fiddly-ness of them.  It is true in my experience that the less you pay for a printer, the more work you are required to do to make clean nice prints.  This printer had apparently experienced a catastrophic print that completely coated the hot end in plastic.  I gather that the nozzle had clogged.  My co-worker had even bought the replacement parts and just had completely lost the interest in fixing it.  I appreciated the timing because I had been shopping for a printer for myself.   I was able to get it repaired and then spent the better part of the week dialing in the settings and tweaking the fiddly bits.  As of Thursday night, I managed to get some pretty decent prints from it and tried some other things over the weekend and am pleased with the results.

Me being the guy I am, once the printer was mostly up and working, I got to work getting a raspberry pi attached with the Octoprint software. This allows you to access the printer over the network. Makes some things so much easier, and I discovered that Cura, the slicer program that I use, supports direct-to-octoprint printing, so that's just an added bonus.    

Overall, it should be nice to have and I'm looking forward to making the most of it.

 *sigh*

Working in a hospital has always put into perspective the mess we're in.  Our COVID census had dropped to single digits for a little while.  And of course, now it isn't.  

I think at the core, I try to stay hopeful for our family unit.  Not even that is in my control, but it is a smaller place to focus and worry over than larger units.  

The deep denial and stupidity are painful to see.  I count myself fortunate that I don't have to deal with family or close relatives or "friends" who don't get what we're dealing with.  Everybody in my circles is on board and gets what's at stake.  I'm really thankful for that.

Hard to know what the future looks like, but I guess we'll see what comes.  I'm sure we'll dive deep into the Greek alphabet by the time we get to the end of this tunnel.

Stay safe.  Be smart.