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Trying my best to find a new job asap so that I can actually take 1 or 2 weeks of summer vacation instead of just stressing over applications.

Also my cat is getting surgery today to have his upper front teeth removed because they were infecting (and already had been before). The vet said it's best to just remove them altogether because he won't really miss them anyway and can eat fine without. Worried about my little guy but I'm sure he'll be okay ❤️
he should be ok to be picked up in about 4 hours yay :)

Also, great opportunity to air out the apartment hehe

Edit:
Cat is okay yay! He's completely zonked out on painkillers lol

I've been in a lot of anxiety because of politics and what's going to happen and now after today I'm just scared. I guess I'll have to figure out how to live once this is over. Do I just hope to continue as before with things just being worse off or are things going to change a lot?

I've been just trying to rationalize that most of this is outside my control and have to accept the world for what it's becoming. I've already given up, I don't want dreams I just want peace.

Checked into a partial hospitalization program last week because my social anxiety and agoraphobia got too big to manage alone.

The past few days have been perhaps the first I’ve felt joy and love in their full forms 😸

Not bad.

I've reached the point where, as a contrarian, it's time for me to speak less about politics online, so I started adding in filters to my Mastodon feed, and I like that my feed is less doomscrolling now.

Guess who got their computer back??

Finally after having to send the motherboard I had bought back that I had unintentionally broken the pins on, it's together and back at my house and I'm so grateful. I'm glad I had a laptop to lean on but I hated it all the same.

It was a bit of a struggle because the drive with Windows on it wouldn't work for some reason. After messing around with it, I got it to function, but I need to find the time to wipe everything and start over with Bazzite and Windows dual boot. That's a project for later me, though.

I got help for my dog's vet bills, as I'm drowning in money issues currently. It's not a huge chunk of money and I'm spacing their visits out, but Bowser is behind on immunizations and they both need annual checkups. I feel like a really bad pet owner because I'm disabled and don't work, yet have two dogs, but I treat them the best I can. And originally, circumstances were different and I could afford everything much more easily.

But things are okay at this very moment. I hope everyone else has a fabulous week.

The cat is cute. Work is stressful. It's too damned hot (I hate summer). I should read more -- I miss having the time.

Finishing up an Alaskan cruise. This is the complete opposite of how I usually travel and likely something I will never do again. That said, it has overall been an incredible time with some wonderful companions.

Tomorrow, we will pick up my friend's ashes at a post office in Anchorage, and the next day we will head to Kenai Fjords National Park. He made it to 49 states, so we're bringing him to the 50th.

A few weeks ago I posted here that I was about to go to Open Sauce. I was too tired to give an update right when I got back, but I'm here now and boy, it was incredible. Best convention ever. There was a Smash Bros tournament right as you walked in the door. There was a tesla coil music setup with a Faraday cage that they picked audience members to get up and dance in. There was a booth selling 3D printed Spiderman style magnetic grappling hooks. There was a hexacopter with a 6-foot wingspan. There was a booth demonstrating a piece of open source software designed for flowgraph/node-based procedural generation of vector graphics and written in Rust, thus hitting every single one of my interests simultaneously. There were multiple people walking around in fursuits. There was a celebrity go-kart race where the audience got infrared laser-tag blasters which would make the cars slow down, which I promptly cloned using my Flipper Zero and proceeded to wreak havoc as best I could.

I do not think there was a single allistic person in that building. It was glorious.

I had the time of my life just letting my ADHD carry me from booth to booth of hobbyists showing off cool shit they had made and asking about this and that and how they put it together. It was WAY bigger than Open Sauce 2023 and easily 10 times cooler.

Anyway, I mention that because I met one of my favorite YouTube creators (Zack Freedman of Voidstar Lab) face to face while I was there and he gave me this 3D printed poker chip with his channel logo and a QR code that my phone refuses to scan but that I'm told goes to the Rickroll. He uploaded a video today explaining how he made them, pointing out several subtle design flaws that I never would've noticed but that are going to bug me forever now, and mentioned that in every single chip there was an NFC tag. I got the chip from its pride of place on my desk, held it to the back of my phone, and sure enough, was taken (via a Bitly link) to an unlisted video on the Voidstar Lab channel -- uploaded earlier that day! Open Sauce was weeks ago. Now I'm also bugged by not knowing what would've happened if I'd thought to put the tag in the same pocket as my phone while we were there.

If you meant what's been happening to me this week, well, not much to report. I'm still off school, had some fun going swimming, got a little self-conscious when I saw 8-year-olds with better upper body definition than me. Finally got back into gaming now that I can do that without feeling guilty about blowing off my homework. I've been playing this really great indie metroidvania called Ghost 1.0 which I could gush about for ages (great gameplay, great humor, really neat game mechanic where you can leave your body and possess enemies which they make fantastic use of in puzzles)... but I mostly just wanted to talk about Open Sauce and tag the people who asked me to report back: @rozwud@beehaw.org @megaman_EXE@beehaw.org

all in all things have been going pretty great!

Finally finished fixing bugs for an unofficial update of a fan game that I was modding. So pretty good.

Work is going fine, that's about it.

I just had some vacation time, which was SO nice. Today, I was supposed to go back to work, and the office experienced a major issue with our servers, which could take up to a week to resolve. So I might get a second paid week off, which would be one heck of a nice vacation.

For hobby stuff, I've still been livestreaming (mostly elden ring dlc), and people are coming around more often lately, which is neat. I'm starting to see two or more people show up, which is mind-blowing. I'm excited but also nervous because that could eventually be way more people if this pace keeps up. I feel like I'm kinda just fartin around, so I'm not really sure what to do as things grow. But I assume I'll have some time to ease into things. It's neat!

my dad and his wife visited for a few days, so that was fun. went to a couple of museums, breweries, etc.

RAGBRAI is less than two weeks away!!! i gotta get more riding in. i did get my new tires installed yesterday, since i noticed my old ones were looking a little worse for the wear. was hoping to go for a ride then, but storms rolled in and ruined my plans.

echo (border collie) is showing some signs of generalized anxiety—pacing, whining, barking, and generally restless. i'm not sure if it's because her routine was upset with family visiting + fireworks + storms, but i'll probably get an opinion from the vet. i did ask for some better anti-anxiety meds for the sound events, since the xanax wasn't doing a whole lot, even administered pre-sound.

spent a lot of time reconfiguring my budget with actual since YNAB is hiking up their prices again. still pissed they did away with their promised "lifetime" subscription price.

I've learnt how to launch 7 terminal simultaneously; feel like a total hacker out of a movie.

On a different note, I feel completely lonely. I haven't talked out loud with anyone for 4 days. Speech is exhausting.

Add to that, just had the opportunity to watch The Babadook and Hereditary back to back. It broke me in a beautiful way.

My primary instance is experiencing a DDOS attack, so I am on my backup account for a while.

Last month my wife's employer went bankrupt and tomorrow my employer is holding a meeting about the financial situation and the consequences. Fun times.

We've had a friend visiting for a few days to help build out his photography portfolio and get some nice pictures of stuff around the farm, which I'll be sure to share once I've gotten them. It's super nice to have outside perspective - I don't always feel the progress that others perceive, and don't give much credit to the work that's put into it. I should put more into validating myself and my efforts, but it's still nice when other folks help out with that.

I'm also nearing functional completion of my bookshelf project but have been a little bad about documenting it for !diy - I have a few photos I'll share once I have regained some of my bandwidth. I'll still have to do the trim but will be able to start storing our books, records, and stuff there soon instead of all the small shelves and stacks scattered around the house.

Wednesday morning edit: a few weeks ago I met another photographer, one who works for National Geographic. They reached out this morning to see if I'd be interested in collaborating on a project or two of theirs and I'm crazy excited for that opportunity

The gastritis is..... bad. And I'm tired of working through the pain. But my friend made me dinner this evening which was amazing because I'm so tired of making food that's suitable for me to eat.

Never take ibuprofen on an empty stomach.

Not great.

To be honest, I feel quite hopeless.

Just a lot of bullshit not in my control that's taking its toll.

Moving delayed again due to weather. Also honestly I'm not sure why family keeps offering to help me move. Their vehicle has cargo space, sure, but it's one vehicle between five adults, and very few of them know how to drive so that really limits when it's actually available for me to borrow.

They're just gonna have to evict me and throw all my shit down the stairs and break it like they do with my neighbors.

Had to cancel an art collab I'll never have another chance to do, because I live in one apartment and my computer is in the other.

Skin infection isn't going away but my insurance rejects every test I get, so I'm done trying.

Had either COVID or the flu, but it was the week of a major US holiday and they were disciplining people for calling out, so I worked all week. Got publicly shamed for my terrible metrics while I was too phlegmy to speak.

Basically, next week HAS to be good.

ETA at least I'm back at the gym, although I feel terrible after being out for two weeks. I was so sick I was just working and sleeping for a while.

Gonna vent some. Long week, it's not Friday yet, stupid coworkers, stupid customers, managers who don't care about standard operating procedure, ahhh.

A man was not meant to sit in front of a computer monitor for nine hours a day.

Update: thank goodness I have the ability to take a bath. I was whining earlier, but I am very privileged. This is my affirmation.

Last weekend was too busy, but in a fun way. I was announcing a roller derby tournament.

This weekend is super chill. I'm doing nothing, and it's everything I dreamed it could be.

Back to work. With the US holiday being essentially a 4day weekend, plus getting back into town from a weeklong biz trip the week prior, didn't do a whole lot of anything last week, other than sleeping and gaming and occasionally looking at email/Teams.. So it's a bit hard to get back into it.

I think I've settled on a new apartment in my soon-to-be new city. It's expensive. Parking alone is like $120/mo (street parking requires a city permit). But it is what it is. It has what I want, particularly being close to a subway stop. Maybe I pay out the nose for the first year, then once I have my bearings, learn the area, I can find something cheaper elsewhere.

Dealing with apartments is a pain in the ass. I live in an apartment now and have lived in a few different apartments for the last 9yrs. So it's not like I have no experience. But god, some of these places makes it very difficult to talk with a human. No, I don't want to chat or text or have a phone call with a chatbot or AI assistant. No I don't want to start the application process online before I get my questions answered. I just have a few questions; call me, please. Luckily someone -- a real someone -- finally called me today.

Also, what the fuck is an "administrative fee" at an apartment, and why is it so high? I get having an application fee of like $50. I get needing a deposit. But a $500 "administrative fee?" Have never come across that before. And this isn't the only place I'm looking at that has it. As always, just another way to wring money out of folks.

Hopefully I'll have this all settled within the next week or two.

Otherwise, back to FFXIV. Taking my time with the new Dawntrail expansion.