28 october 2016
there goes the streak
~variscite@TTBPI've been playing the hell out of some early Game Boy Castlevania lately.
The Adventure isn't bad (people seem to not like it for whatever reason) - maybe I'm a tad biased because it's a 1989 release, though. Belmont's Revenge is a hell of a fun game with fantastic music, though, even if I haven't really made much progress in it.
These might actually be the first games in the series I've played on their original hardware, amusingly enough! Pretty much everything else was emulated, but there's just some charm to playing these games on a monochrome screen.
I'm actually playing and talking about games again. Holy shit, did that pig just take off
Finally starting to get stuff cleaned up again. Small favors.
I think I've decided on modding a DMG-01, and cleaning up this other GBC I have. The GBC needs a new shell, and of course, I'm interested in backlighting another DMG. Then again, it's the ghosting that has me iffy on that one, but the Pocket's battery life is just too low.
Of course, I say this, and sometime a couple months from now I'll be walking around with a backlighted, kitted-out Pocket. I dunno, we'll see.
I certainly like that idea more, if not for the battery life.
Up comes a week of mostly closing now. Tomorrow's still an early day, but the rest are late days.
It'll be interesting to see how much energy I have compared to this week. There's several nights I just ran out of energy and crashed, to run the point into the ground.
Either way, if things continue like this... it won't be ideal, but it'll be a hell of a lot better than being bounced between early and late by the day, rather than by handfuls of days.
I still need to get around to installing my new SSD and deciding what to install on it. I'm torn between Debian or Arch, honestly - Debian would have the stability, and it stays a little more out of your way, but I find Arch helps me out the most with actually installing all the stuff I need. (The AUR is a fantastic thing.)
Aside from that, I feel like I've been in a bit of a rut. I've been mostly writing about the same few things over and over, as there's not really much else going on in my life.
I really, really want to mod a Game Boy of some sort as of late.
I'm just not quite sure what I'd want to go for, exactly. There's a few different colors of backlights, and I can't decide which one I'd want to stick with. Then there's also the matter of which system I'd want to mod in the first place - the DMG would probably be the most flexible, best option, but the Pocket's screen is just so much better. Its battery life absolutely pales compared to the DMG and Color, though, and the dumb issues I've been having with the Everdrive don't help.
The Color would be nice, but from what I hear frontlighting isn't quite the best.
(or maybe I should just find one of those backlight-modded GBAs, they're pretty damn comfortable)
I haven't enjoyed gaming on anything this much in quite a while. It's refreshing.
Results of a week of early days: crashing hard on Friday nights.
I probably would've put more effort into trying to adjust to it, save the fact that I knew it wasn't going to be a completely consistent thing.
Tomorrow's the last day of the early week. I didn't really adjust to it all that well, partly because of nerves that next week wouldn't be the same. (And it's not, instead I'm closing four of the five shifts. Go figure, especially when I want to open on Friday, eh?)
Things have been weird lately. I've been yearning to talk to people more and more, yet later on that night I'll retreat far away. I dunno how much of this is due to work, or other factors.
Another one of those uneventful, tired days.
Turns out the GBP doesn't play completely nicely. With my batteries, I can only flash a new game at 100% - the moment it even drops any kind of noticeable amount, flashing just starts failing.
hooray voltages
Already, I've noticed a little thing with the EDGB: when using rechargeable batteries in a Pocket, you need pretty fresh ones or flashing games will reboot the system.
I dunno if this happens on a GBC, GBA, or DMG. Sigh. Figures the one I actually use the most (portability, mainly) would give me a little hassle, eh?
(Aside from that I'm happy as hell, though. Super fucking cool to see some of these old homebrews on real hardware.
It's hit me that I've barely ever been out of this general area since... at least 2008.
Aside from yearly trips just out-of-state to visit family, I believe I've been out of state... three times since then, all three to Delaware.
I'd certainly like to go some places in the future, at least to visit people. It's just a matter of money and finding the time, and neither one are in very plentiful supply yet.
I do get to go places once in a while, at least, but it's generally smaller stuff in the general area.
I'm debating throwing Linux on my desktop instead of 8.1.
I'll end up going that direction eventually, so kinda like what I did going from XP to 7 in 2012... why not just take the plunge early? I actually bought a second SSD for easier booting. Worst case, if things don't pan out, I guess I could always slap the drive into my laptop. It's faster than the one currently in there, after all!
(With that said, part of me debates putting a larger / faster SSD in there anyway... except I don't really use it heavily enough to warrant it anymore, sadly.)
There was actually a while when my laptop was my main machine. It pretty much overpowered anything else in the house, and it ran OS X to boot! (This was, of course, back when 10.6 was king and 10.7 was pretty new.) Nowadays, OS X is... an indifferent thing, really. It feels like all the soul it had has been sucked out, and it's just an expensive alternative now.
...But it's still better than Windows 10.
the Everdrive is coming in soon and being able to play romhacks on real hardware is super enticing. oh man
welp, the morning shift week begins soon. I wonder how well I'll be able to adjust?
On the positive side, there's certain people I'll actually be able to talk to and certain things I'll actually be able to do, next week. And the relative consistency will be extremely nice. (though 10:00-19:00 seems like a hell of an odd shift, eh.)
The Everdrive is on its way over. Shame I probably won't get it before break on Monday, but it's due to arrive soon, at least!
The Everdrive has shipped already. Holy shit, that was quick!
It seems like people enjoy reading my nightly stream of consciousness. It's interesting to think about, in a way - I'm pretty much just throwing up whatever little blurbs here, something I started that kinda just stuck. Sometimes I write a little bit about something. My layout still isn't fixed.
We're down a staff member - today was her last day. Pretty sad to see her go, especially considering she'd been there for quite a while. Here's hoping the new job she found works out a lot better for her!
I wonder what all people have stashed in their home directories here sometimes. TTBP itself is in endorphant's (~/bin, specifically), but I haven't browsed anyone else's. It feels a tad personal. I actually got a mail about a silly little "mail me if you see this" file around the time I joined, which was pretty surprising - I figured it was just a silly little thing nobody would see unless they had sudo/root access, yet I pretty much immediately got a mail about it!
Well, for the first time in a while I didn't fall asleep early. It was a hell of a fight though.
I ordered an Everdrive GB. Thought for a moment that I wouldn't be able to place the order, considering the official shop doesn't take Paypal... but a couple of other sites he suggested at one point when his own was having problems filled in the niche quite nicely (and saved me about $4 to boot, too)
I honestly can't rmember the last time I've had a long, solid, intentional sleep.
There have been times where I've just fallen over and slept a while, but... again, that's not intentional, and I really doubt how solidly I"m sleeping when that happens, too.
These past three years have been full of sleeping flakiness, actually. My schedule got thrown off massively in 2014, then I got a job with ping-pong hours and while this solved how off-center my hours had become (sleeping from 13:00-20:00 in some cases), suddenly I wasn't sleeping very much and the quality became questionable.
Maybe this is why I'm always tired.
So apparently my schedule for next week is all morning shifts.
Well, it's consistent, at least... if it stays as such I could adjust to it. I'd be giving up a lot, but I could adjust.
I asked about a more consistent schedule. There's a very slight chance.
I mean, fuck it, if I'm falling asleep every damn day anymore, what do I have to lose by trying?
Even a small, sorta meandering conversation helps.
Things continue to be pretty quiet, though I actually talked to someone for a little while tonight.
A general feeling of stagnation over the past few weeks. Hoping to shake it somehow, but I'm not quite sure just how...
Is it just me, or have things seemed extremely quiet lately?
It might just be me. It seems like all the usual places I float around have been... far less active as of late. This might also just be because of the new scheduling, I dunno. (Though I don't get home any later than I used to...)
So, there's the first week of completely full-time hours.
Holy shit, I need to ask for something consistent. I've been practically dead at home lately. The ping-pong shit was bad enough when I was usually working six hours, but eight or nine... yeah.
(not to mention I miss way too much already...)
Another day, another crash. broken record
At this rate, it really does feel like work's becoming my whole life. I don't really do much of anything or talk to anyone anymore.
Well, we'll see how much benefit I reap from the new schedule soon. Certainly not enough, I imagine, but I do what I must.
I've been doing some disk cleanup again. I've heard rumors of Windows 7 and 8.1's update schemes changing: montly rollup patches (which I think are probably confirmed, and I'm willing to stomach) and, one place, I read something about Windows 10-style forced updating (which would have me running Arch on my desktop, probably).
Part of me hopes it's just the rollup patches. I can kinda see the good here: easier to update older installs, and fewer combinations of updates to test. But this could possibly more easily break things, and if I find out I'm being restarted for updates, I'm probably jumping ship. Part of me just wants that to happen to get the inevitable switch over with, but the problem here is that I actually like Windows 8.1.
Computers.
Some days, it feels like work has become my life.
This week's a real big one. Increased time spent actually at work, unable to attend an event I was looking forward to as a result, and more exhaustion basically making it a totally dead night. (I've actually asked people not to inform me of any more events. Can't be angry about missing it if you don't know it's coming up, eh?)
I'm not really quite sure what to do. Attempting to get a consistent schedule has bore almost no fruit. (It's made a preference known, but that means nothing when I'm still being bounced around.)
I guess it's become easier to tell when I don't really do anything at all, because I kinda just default to venting about work.
The complete full-time-experience!!! has kicked in, and we have someone new.
New guy's pretty good, and thus far the early days are just tiring.
Still too tired to really think, unfortunately. The rest of the week is late days, at least.
It's one of those nights where I just can't seem to think. I'm super tired. I just lay my head down for a moment and nothing comes.
It seems to be a running theme, lately. Inconsistent times for everything, leaves me exhausted and having trouble functioning... and bad sleep.
Here's hoping for a more positive turn on things soon.
another night somewhat lost to crashing.
this is bad because I don't really have the time for it anymore
I really want a Pi-top. It's a really neat idea, it's a laptop that would absolutely stand out from the rest (green!!!), and it seems like it'd be easy to upgrade down the line.
It's a damn shame it costs so much. It's more expensive than my Chromebook, and has a good bit less power. The storage would be slower, the CPU would be weaker (cores aren't everything), the video would be slower. The Chromebook has USB 3.0, and through a small SD card adapter I've given it 64GB of storage to work in, which is especially nice in a chroot.
There's something unique about the Pi-top and it's fantastic for both education and enthusiast purposes, but I just can't justify the price of it with the way things are right now, sadly.
Plus, has anyone used a Pi 3 with it? I run my main 3 with a fan to keep it really cool, and I don't think there'd be enough room for this in the Pi-top. I'm sure someone's probably tried something with it, though...
I find myself continuing to try to organize my data.
I was really bad at it when I was younger. really bad. I eventually got a little better at it once I started using Windows 7, but... sadly, not by as much as I'd have liked. Files ended up everywhere, too huge a task to sort them out, so I just kinda ended up quarantining the worst mazes of it to another drive so I can still have them, but they aren't taking up all my space and everything.
I still feel as if I have a lot of room to improve, even though things are now better by a factor of... lots. Today I freed up over a gigabyte in duplicates, even on a cleaned-up drive. I could blast away another 64GB, too, if I were to wipe a backup image of one of my RPis.. If it's sufficiently old enough, I think I'll do so.
Part of it is wanting everything to fit in a smaller space. I don't know if I can get everything down small enough to fit into a 256GB drive, but maybe I can get it small enough to be able to reasonably back up on a regular basis. I don't have to sort every little thing ever out, I just want to get rid of all the excess stuff that's causing a lot of wasted space.
At least digital messes are easier to manage than physical messes. Make a few desktop folders and push files into there while you sort them out. Physical space... if you don't have it, good luck getting everything organized.
So, I have a Debian chroot set up on my chromebook now.
I first tried to set up Stretch. This would fail because a package was missing, except in a couple cases... and xbmc was, well, still trying to use xbmc, and KDE had no window borders out of the box. Bad show for now, maybe we'll try again later... (Xfce and GNOME 3 both failed to install because of netsurf, oddly enough)
So then I tried Ubuntu. Standard things-crashing-everywhere fare. I botched setting up a panel and just opted for another chroot, because I was busy and it's easy enough to install a new one.
Debian Jessie. Oh man, this worked well. I've currently got the chroot running, and everything's stable - and even Steam is installed! (Sadly, Rocket League didn't run, but this seems to be a common issue for now. I'll try it again at some point and hope it's at least playable on here.)
I'll have to throw up a screenshot of my Xfce setup sometime soon. Maybe after work. (Which again, had another case of me getting shoved aside when trying to make sure something was right. Fuck it, I'm done caring.)
So it seems like we're back to the days of the random start and end times.
I just don't have the energy to fucking care anymore. I'm done fighting for consistent scheduling.
It's why I hate going in early so much. If it were a consistent thing, I could adjust to it. But given the game of ping-pong being played (and I'm the ball!), they're just nights where I get fuck-all for sleep.
I've been slowly getting things into a cleaner, more organized state over these past few days.
let's hopr the next week doesn't entirely wreck my work. I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it.
My schedule still doesn't seem to have been changed. I'm not sure what tomorrow's going to be like, but if nothing gets changed beforehand, I'm not going in earlier.
In before it was edited but they forgot to save it.
more work schedule changes sometime soon.
i'm possibly going to become very scarce very soon. we'll see.
I keep on reading ancient OS X reviews.
It does make me kinda sad that I missed an era of huge evolution in computing. There were so many unique systems, even in the 1990s - Apple was trying to create a next-generation operating system (and eventually succeeded when they got Jobs back, essentially turning NeXTSTEP into OS X), there were Sun and SGI workstations (do MIPS and SPARC even really exist anymore?), Amigas and Ataris were still doing well(-ish?) in the early-mid decade, and even ARM was a thing then.
In a way, a lot of these don't matter too much. Aside from Amiga and Atari, all of those other platforms were professional workstations, to my knowledge - very unlikely most home users would even know they exist, let alone own one.
Windows XP was the big thing for most of the time I've been heavily using computers. Vista happened in 2006 (and before that, Longhorn builds and such), but considering a lot of the bargain basement hardware of the time, it wasn't really a hit. (Granted, SP0 was pretty bad, but when hasn't this been the case? Hell, it even kinda extends to OS X's .0 releases, depending on how you look at it.)
Things are still developing, still evolving. Hell, for all I know, in three or four years almost everything we own now could be woefully obsolete. As it is, a good machine from the late 2000s (and even mid-2000s, depending on your use cases) is still probably pretty serviceable, depending on what you want to do. Crazy to think about.
In ways things get old even quicker than ever, but in ways things are lasting longer than ever.
I write way too much about computing lately. I guess there's some sort of itch that really needs scratching, but hell if I know what it actually is. Maybe I'll set up a better chroot on the chromebook and play around in that. I've got a fresh Mint install on an older laptop, but it's not a machine I find myself usually using, whereas the Chromebook's my main portable.
(maybe if I ever see one cheap I'll debate a MacBook Air. Depends on how good they serve as Linux machines.)
Inconsistent work schedules have fucked up my sleep again.
Oh, boy.
17:00-21:00 going into a 9:00-15:00. How fun!
I just want something consistent. Hell, I'll work all mornings if you want me to, just give me something consistent so I can adjust to it and make plans.
With them trying to push me into being a full-timer, too, I worry external events not on weekends will become a thing of the past, that I just won't have the energy for them anymore.
bleh. work scheduling sucks sometimes, and I'm starting to fall back into the ranting about work pattern.
With OS X 10.12 hitting, I figured I'd read Ars Technica's review.
Still nothing to get me excited. It'll be another upgrade for the sake of running the latest version. Eventually, my still-perfectly-capable laptop will be dropped from the supprt lineup, and then it'll be time to go all-in on Linux on the thing.
I read about Developer Preview 2, as well. It's really cool to see a version of OS X with the old Mac OS skin, honestly. Part of me kinda wishes things kinda stayed like that. (If I remember right, you could delete the graphics for the new skin and get the good old Mac OS 9 interface in one of the versions where they hadn't yet finalized 10.0's UI...?)
Old versions of OS X really do intrigue me. Kinda fun to see the transition from nearly-dead company to a successful one. (I just wish they'd stop on this crazy path they're taking. I was almost all-in on them at one point, and then they started doing things that really made me not want another Mac ever again. Oh well, I guess, there's always System76.)
The customization experimentation slowly begins.
Aside from that, nothing really happening. Schedule woes next week, but that aside, probably the quietest day since I made this thing.
I think it's about time I get back into customizing things more deeply.
I used to do a lot more of this - even tweaking things others have made, sometimes, to try to get exactly what I was looking for. Somewhere along the line I kinda just ran out of energy after something broke somewhere, though. Probably that time I tried to install Gentoo on my netbook. (That turned me way off of the thought of even messing around with Linux for a few months, honestly.)
I wonder if people have made cool custom themes for 8.1. There were so many for XP, and that's probably one of the things I miss most.
Just looked at nju's recent post.
I do have a few plans here, but the biggest problem is gathering up the energy and motivation to really poke at them. I have a not-insignificant amount of cleaning things up to do, and I get the feeling that's been bogging me down a lot. (Which gets bogged down because of work, unsurprisingly.)
Speaking of work, hey, inconsistent scheduling again! surprise! who didn't see this coming : - )
I've been feeling unusually lonely lately.
I miss the old days on the internet.
I miss Windows XP on a modest setup, still having plenty of fun and not really feeling limited even by a computer that's a few years old, I miss being creative and somehow managing to enjoy myself even on a slow 56k connection (though I got annoyed when people played games and I couldn't join, apparently)
I miss customizing Windows XP, I miss learning about hardware and things I didn't even know were things, I miss playing around with new operating systems and learning about them.
I miss the age of discovery.
I miss when the internet wasn't an aggressive creature.
I'd go so far as to say it was up to 2012 I really enjoyed. Shit hit the fan that year in a few ways for me. It had its ups and downs, I guess, but family dying and the beginnings of the aggressive internet came that year.
For a few years I've been trying to stay as low-profile as possible, lest I say one thing and have people rush me for it. I probably have no reason to worry about this, and if I'm saying something harmful I'd at least hope someone would pull me to the side and try to explain what's going on.
I just don't really have anywhere near as much fun anymore.
I don't know how much work's contributed to this. I mean, it certainly cuts into hours where people I enjoy the company of are floating around, but it doesn't seem fair to me to blame work for all of my issues. A lot of them started even before that.
I wonder what spurred this on tonight. Perhaps the fact that I, myself, caused alarm by joining a thing, and I was so taken aback by it that I just couldn't form a coherent sentence.
Here's one of my fondest memories of 2008, one of the peak "old" years I was talking about. A friend sent me music over AIM every once in a while, and I generally listened to everything a lot because music was hard to come by - money was tight, and 56k prohibited a lot of downloading. Rush immediately clicked with me from the very first few seconds of the song, and he sent most of the rest of the compilation over. There were a few other songs (Far Cry from Snakes & Arrows being one of them, as well as a little bit of Filter's stuff), and a few other things I downloaded at points in time on the internet, but I think this one might've been the most memorable, most impactful on my current musical taste. A friend did send me The Number Of The Beast over MSN one time, too, and that became one of my more listened to albums. Shame he never sent over any Dream Theater, though I dunno how I would've reacted to some of their longer material. I did find a cover of Erotomania I was sent, and probably played, but it never clicked until I'd already heard Dream Theater and gotten into their stuff, probably 8 or 9 years later.
There's still a few big musical discoveries I've made. Amorphis, Arch Enemy, and Metallica are probably a few of my more notable gateways into more music as of recent years. Probably not quite as impactful as what I've mentioned above, but they certainly opened me up to stuff I'd previously not looked at because of others' opinions. (Looking back, that was kinda dumb, and I never was that bothered by the style of some of these things. Maybe I just hadn't heard the right stuff yet. I dunno.)
I've been typing this thing way too long and I'm rambling so it's time to sleep
I get nostalgic too easily, to sum it all up. Holy long entry.
I didn't know karlen was a dog??!!!?!?!?!
So, coworkers have expressed their desire to have me on full-time. I'm apprehensive, but considering it, especially under a few key conditions.
Okay, that's a small list. But unlike previously, I'm actually considering it this time. I'm at a time in my life where the small amount of extra money would be greatly helpful, and a few little benefits would be... well, beneficial. If I could get a consistent schedule, I'd probably be back on my feet in a few weeks, so to speak.
(I don't look forward to reformatting my life a bit around this, though, but... shrug)
Of course this could all fall through. I dunno. A schedule like this week would be wonderful.
Work has a new carpet.
Holy fuck, after one day my feet hurt so much less.
I just hope the remaining changes they have to make are beneficial, as well. We've been getting remodeled, and all the changes are shaping up to actually benefit everybody.
A positive work-themed post? What alternate universe is this?
...don't worry, I think there's some more ~schedule fun~ happening. can't get too optimistic, can we
Sadly, I think the great work week schedule is a one-off thing. A damn shame, as it's something that perfectly balances number of hours worked and sane hours to keep me from being a sleeping mess. Oh well.
I was reading some things earlier, and I have since realized: awareness of gender dysphoria has honestly helped me out a ton, and I think it has the potential to help everybody out. Even if just something to think about every now and then, where one lies. I'm perfectly comfortable in my own body, gender and all, but awareness actually got me to think about my own identity, and I have learned to deemphasize characteristics from that identity. There's no reason to like or dislike something based on gender. Just give something a try and see what you think of it.
Everyone deserves to find an identity they're comfortable with. Lots of us all have trouble with some parts of ourselves, myself included. But I've done a lot more thinking about that kind of thing since reading some things and getting an explanation about seven (fuck!!) years ago.
Hell, this even leads a bit into music. I don't hear quite as much about music being tied to parts of someone's identity, but it's certainly still there sometimes. (Is it not possible to love cute, fluffy things and kittens while also enjoying music that's anything -but- "cute"?)
As the subtitle may have given away, I find my largest comfort zone in metal. Certain things just stick out to me, even if they may be different than what I'm used to. I actually somehow had this thought tied in a little better, but fell asleep while writing once or twice and lost the connection. Oh well! "Like what you like" was probably the gist of it.
I'm starting to fall asleep, so I'll cut the file short.
I actually fell asleep while trying to close out and save the file. I've always been a bit afraid to share any kind of thoughts, even those intended positively like this one. (Mostly because the internet is an aggressive place these days.) I'd like to think I can trust ~town, though! Honestly, some of it was worded really weirdly, so probably for the better.
Hearing my phone ring fills me with a sense of dread. It's usually either work trying to drag me in, my mother (not usually anything terrible, just usually at inopportune times), or a random phone number.
The sense of relief upon discovering one of the latter two is huge. (Especially in the morning.)
I think this is why I could never use a song I like as a ringtone. I would quickly grow to hate it. The biggest reason I use the one I do now (Sceptrum, if it's on other Android phones) is because it's the least intrusive of the bunch, yet still plenty audible. Maybe I should set up a quieter one.
Everything's in a state of flux right now. Still trying to get a few things together before everything inevitably gets thrown out of whack again. I just pine for a consistent schedule so I can plan things again, and hopefully feel a bit less alienated from friends. There have been groups I just completely cut myself off from because I couldn't stand dealing with the timezone fun, as frustrating as it may be.
And thus, begins another week.
The longest day will be shorter than the shortest day this past week. What a difference a single day off makes, eh? Here's hoping it's not as tiring and stressful as things have been.
I've been getting a little better at trying not to be so distant. Of course, I've still got a long ways to go, but some progress is something.
I wonder about theming this page up a little bit more. Kinda want to see if I can get those transparent backgrounds working... preferably without the opacity attribute, because whee, that hits text too!
sigh. theming can be a pain sometimes.
Triple 1080p setup get!!
With that, I've officially upgraded everything as far as I can imagine it being useful, and don't really have any plans for anything else. I might've gotten a second SSD for Linux, but honestly, I wouldn't boot into it enough to be able to justify spending any more than $10 on it.
Been sleeping like mad these past few days. The week took a lot out of me, so I guess I've gotta make up for it somehow?
I just hope I don't start stagnating again. Been doing okay this past week, despite everything.
That week of long days is over. I don't know why it was as absolutely exhausting as it was.
I keep on thinking about identity as a concept sometimes. It's always amused me, the multitude of ways one can express themselves, especially online. Sadly, the thought I wanted to write about earlier has since vanished, because I wasn't in a place I could write such things down. Oh well!
I might be upgrading my center monitor today. We'll see. I don't plan on spending very much on it, considering what I use it for. It'd be nice to have a bigger screen in the center of everything, though, at least resolution-wise! 1366x768 is a tad cramped and things get hidden behind each other, even though I usually just run a few terminal windows there. 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 are my targets. I've got a gift card, so I might just end up spending only $55 on a decent 1080p panel. Nice.
last day of the exhaustion week coming up.
After an entry about being distant, this certainly hasn't helped it all that much. I did talk to a couple of people about it, though, if nothing else.
here's hoping I'm a little more energetic and talkative soon.
Dumb things continue to drain any and all energy I have.
Slowly continuing to clean things up and sort them out, I guess. Long workdays and everyone being stressed out lately.
At least I get my money fairly soon. (And then I proceed to lose most of it pretty much immediately, but what can you do?)
Just one of those irritating, boring, (mostly) lonely days.
I do apologize for being distant lately. The last month or so has been a clusterfuck of things, and I've by and large just been too nervous to poke a lot of people very often. This goes for a lot of places, a lot more people than ~town, but it definitely applies here too.
The money situation is looking to be fine. Bonus pay even gives me a little more than just $50 of wiggle room, which is extremely nice.
I've still been prodding at my room to try to clean it up every so often. Not all that much luck, most of the time, but every now and then we'll make a noticeable chunk of progress. Was too tired to do anything today, but maybe tomorrow we'll be able to get to work on it some more.
I think part of the nerves to talk to a lot of people is the fear of having one of those "hey" "hi" "sup" "not much you" "not too much lol" types of conversations, or one where I just end up venting out a bunch of negative stuff weighing me down. Neither one is really something someone wants to see, I feel like, so I just kinda sit there for a while. At least lately I've been better at touching base every once in a while, instead of just... completely disappearing. Progress is progress, eh?
Maybe I need to get more creative again. I was doing good on that at the end of July and beginning of last month, but with everything hitting the fan I pretty much fell flat on my face. We're getting back up to our feet slowly on this one.
Work schedule this week is a bit rough. I think what gets to me the most is that it's impossible to adjust, because things either keep changing or I get bounced back and forth. (That last one is funny, because I actually was starting to get used to it, then it changed again. Oh well, weekends exist again!)
I wonder what the near future will bring. Just gotta soldier on through this week, and hopefully things will get a little more manageable. I guess I'll start trying to poke people some more again. At least more than once every few weeks.
Long week at work this time around.
I think my weeks are going to be semi-stable from this point on. While it's not going to be a "same hours every day" ordeal, if things keep up like they look like they will on next week's schedule, I'll mostly be closing with maybe one day opening, and maxed out hours.
I know I'm being looked out for here, with those hours. I'm being maxed out to pull in as much money as possible -- maybe a tad exhausting, but the way it's looking to be handled gives me hope that I won't be a perpetual pile of sleep.
Slowly knocking out a bunch of things I need to do. This is good.
I don't know how people get their desks looking super-neat, and cables managed perfectly. It seems like every time I try, it just ends up not looking any different than before or the cables just can't reach without being a bit of a mess. I've given up on it for now.
The server's running fine after an upgrade. Apparently plenty of strides have been made for the XU4, so we'll see if that thing makes its way into regular use. The interface just felt too sluggish to really enjoy, even if it does have more raw CPU grunt than the Pi 3.
Speaking of, setting up automounting was a bit of a bear. Fortunately, I was able to get it all up and running. (Turns out gvfs is kinda important, who knew?)
WE'RE FUCKING SAVED
Been taking advantage of the 3 days off to try to get some things done. Server upgrade is done, there's just a bit of physical cleanup-type stuff to do now.
How in the hell dust piles up so fast, I will never know.
I don't think I've ever anxiously checked my paystub as much as I have tonight. Just really nervous, hoping there's going to be enough added.
I'm definitely going to try to get some things cleaned up. I guess I'll start with the desk area.
Got my Pi 3 back up and running closer to normal. I just need to get to some more customizing...
I have a 3-day weekend!
Here's hoping I'll be able to get things done. Mainly, some cleanup-related stuff. It'll help me a ton to get rid of a bunch of this shitty dust, and hopefully sort out my cables a little bit. (How do you people do this?)
Longer workdays next week, but we should be fine. Bonus week will have most likely saved my ass this time around. (Only nine more hours until it's time to start obsessively checking to try to see how much I'm getting. I don't normally do this, but in this case...)
it's september. hooray.
I've laid out plans to "renovate" my space a bit, so to speak. I won't really be able to do that much alone, but something at all is far better than nothing.
Mainly, I want to clean up my desk area (it's a mess right now, especially underneath) and do a bit of dust cleanup. The area around my television is extremely dusty, and I'd like to... make it not quite so dusty. I should really take care of dust more than I do, but the fact that I don't have a very good setup for organizing as much stuff as I need to gets in the way.
Maybe it's time to move even more things into the basement. Maybe it's time to get rid of some things. I have a bunch of old computers downstairs. I have my doubts that their parts will sell, unfortunately.
I remember finding a bunch of old parts at a flea market I went to. Some of that hardware was even in use until I replaced my primary server with a Raspberry Pi to cut back on power usage.
I honestly doubt I'd be using a lot of that hardware at all. My big problem is I have trouble just getting rid of stuff, especially now: I want to try to make some money off of it. But again, I have huge doubts these things will sell.
Oh well, I guess.
I even tried to upgrade one of my desktop's monitors today. It works fine, but the setup and the way it worked on my desk just did not work well. It has me thinking my room's in need of a complete remodel... but I don't know how to get started on that, and there's so much big stuff that I'm not even sure I could do it all. (And anyone I could talk to about such things is always so busy...)
I feel stuck.
(I hope you enjoyed this disjointed entry. work shit's got me nervous, as always)
the night was so uneventful.
I worry about my ability to stay awake anymore. It seems like if anything gets dull for a moment, I just end up losing most of my energy and falling asleep.
I dunno. I need more things to do.
So it's looking like it will indeed be a bonus week.
I might be alright.
Still wanting to mess around with my landing page, so to speak. It's been the same placeholder since I got here, I just haven't had any ideas for it! Maybe I'll have to peek at others' around here, get some ideas...
Work schedules changing around is going to mess me up for a while. I don't think it'll be constant ping-pong, at least, so I probably won't turn into a lethargic lump like before. Hopefully. We'll see. If I do, it won't be for that reason.
Aside from that, things are relatively uneventful
Following up: I changed my phone's DPI! Holy shit there's so much on the screen now, help. I think it's kind of overkill on a 5" screen, but if I get a 5.5"+ phone with a 1080p screen, it seems like it could really shine.
um and vilmibm had a discussion about what exactly tilde.town is. One thing that came up intrigued me:
I actually mucked about with SL for a while. (in fact, it's where the name variscite originates from -- I found something called the "VR Painted Sergal" and pretty much immediately latched onto it, because it was the most well-done thing I'd ever seen in that environment. My interest in the species kinda grew from there.) The concept of a huge 3D sandbox is fascinating, and people have done some truly creative things, ranging from just creating their own character, scripting a few little features, or even building entire nightclubs and entire cities! Sadly, not everyone's got the required skills to mess around in a 3D realm like that, and I ended up just kinda hanging out with people for about eight months of 2014. I ended up dropping off massively because it just felt like there wasn't quite as much fascinating stuff to explore as there once was, and for what was essentially a visual MUD/IRC client, it was far too taxing for my liking. (And I was especially annoyed with how poorly it runs on AMD cards compared to Nvidia cards.)
Worldbuilding is fun, though. Despite not having the skills to do very impressive things there (or really the money, honestly), there's other outlets. Writing, and in my case, Zelda Classic and ROM hacking filled that niche.
It makes me wonder what kind of thing we'd have here. I'm just kind of imagining people's directory listings being objects to look at, descriptions of things. Maybe I should throw a description of Variscite up here sometime... both as a way to actually have content aside from my TTBP and to flex the creativity muscles, actually flesh him out beyond being a green fluffy thing.
Aside from this, though, things are still up in the air. Things are looking like they might be okay.
I should talk to people about random ideas I get more.
this TTBP clearly best viewed in a web browser, I guess! I hope it's not too unreadable in the interface.
nikolojedison mentions running Linux on a MacBook.
I've been really wanting to look into such, myself. OS X has begun to bother me in various little ways - gatekeeper, difficulty with terminal-related things (why the fuck is it so hard to install livestreamer?!)... and my laptop isnt getting any newer. Sierra looks to be dropping support for Macs prior to 2010 (and in a couple of cases, 2009). This doesn't affect me, but being an early 2011 model, it has me nervous that soon enough I'm going to be left out in the cold, despite my laptop still being fairly powerful for anything but gaming. (and even then, is it really THAT bad)
I could install Windows 8.1 on it. I actually ran it as my main OS for a while, but upon installing an SSD returned to OS X for the power savings over Windows. I'm hoping these power savings could also be achieved (and maybe even improved upon) under Linux. It's a more friendly environment, too, as far as I'm concerned... for the most part. I do always worry about things randomly breaking, but it seems like this will be the case on almost every OS. El Capitan doesn't feel as solid as previous releases (10.6-10.9), though this may just be the fact that the install's nearing two years old.
I'm also hoping to break myself from Windows soon - despite how much I actually like Windows Phone, Windows 10 on the desktop makes me incredibly uneasy. I'd like to be in control of my computer, not vice versa. At least OS X doesn't have that going... yet. Gatekeeper changes in 10.12 have me seriously looking elsewhere. (As it is, its behavior in 10.11 agitates me. No, don't enable it after 30 days, you moron! I have it disabled for a reason!)
Computers are annoying. Hghdgshh.
Up next: changing Android's DPI and other customizations I'd like to play around with, and more panic as I desperately worry about money. What's next? Who knows!
So we might be alright.
They're working with me, and it may be a bonus week. I've got a few backup plans, just in case.
We might be alright.
so apparently, for the next week, my hours at work have dropped.
this is not the time for this
So yep, the schedule change seems to be confirmed.
So far, all I know is that I actually have a weekend off. Here's desperately hoping for those consistent shifts.
I need to find more ways to bring in minor income.
Identity is a funny thing. Every once in a while, I'll occasionally feel the need to "reinvent" myself, as it were. Getting tired of the same things, or something.
I used to be really bad with this. Back in the early-mid 2000s, having numbers in your username almost seemed a reason for derision. I sought out a new name because I was tired of the derison.
These days, you don't really see all that much of that. I wonder what changed?
On that front, I haven't really been all that bad with the whole reinvention thing. I've tried a few things, but these weren't really very outward-facing, so nobody really knew of it.
Just a silly little thought. I do wonder why exactly we all do this, sometimes.
sometimes I just need to throw a little something in here, a vent of what random crap I've been thinking about.
At the moment, it's still phones. The Moto X looks a bit more appealing now, and the Lumia 950 is out of the running. I just can't function completely if I'm not on Android.
Still hoping the weekend shifts end soon. I'll be working longer weekdays, but eh. Worthwhile tradeoff for actually having the weekends back and being able to go out and do things like I used to be able to. I've missed this whole summer, pretty much, because I've been working every weekend.
I might be upgrading my center monitor. I dunno yet. Too tired to try to set it all up.
I want my energy back. I'm better than I was when my schedule seemed almost random, but there's still more to go, I guess.
trying to decide on a phone is hard as hell.
Soon enough, I'm going to be getting a secured $300 credit card. I need something to actually pay off, so I decided I'd get a phone upgrade!
Cue difficulty in deciding. Every phone seems to have a compromise:
(Here's a list, cons/pros because I dunno why I did it backwards)
There's also the Nexus phones, but I dunno how much those cost or where those exactly stand. I'd kinda want to wait, see if they put out a decent new 5-inch phone. (Remember when 5in. was huge? hahahaha.)
It's a shame there's no Android Lumia 950. Seriously, the only thing stopping me there is the huge ecosystem leap.
I guess there's some more time to think about it. Input is appreciated!
My biggest criteria: beefier CPU/GPU than the 2014 Moto G, US LTE bands, decent camera, 3.5mm jack. Removable battery and MicroSD are huge positives, but if I can find a little shim for a tiny 128GB USB drive, I'd be okay with bringing that around with me for music. $300 would be my ideal limit, but I'd be willing to throw a bit of cash at it as well in the name of getting the best upgrade I could.
Hell, I'd be willing to forego the LTE bands if I could find something to nail everything else. The K3's camera is what did it in for me, I think - I actually work with photos I take from my phones from time to time, and I really am kinda frustrated with iffy cameras. (probably why I take my Lumia on walks, partly)
this has been a long rant about getting a new phone in hopes I'll get a few pieces of advice tossed to me
11-hour workday. fuck me.
we've been so damn busy we haven't been able to get everything done in time most days. we'll have to see what this next week brings us.
I'm just so tired recently, it seems.
holy shit! I actually updated the icon
In a way, I feel like I've gotten to my feet again today. Despite the long-as-hell day, I'm not fully dreading it.
I'd like to ramble about music in here sometime. Maybe soon.
I'm such a bundle of nerves lately.
Weekends certainly don't help (going to work for a long day while tired is so fun guys right :)), but there's also other stuff. Things have just been a mess these past couple weeks, and I'm trying to break down these "walls" so to speak where I can.
Weekends should hopefully end soon (with someone returning to classes, weekends will probably be his best bet for work), and with that some nerves in other areas, possibly.
It'll probably require some reformatting of the sleep schedule if I get that consistent 15:00-21:00 shift, but it'll probably be doable.
The only thing that'd suck would be the pay hit, but eh, it wouldn't be all that bad. I could use everything I could get, but above all, I could use an actual consistent schedule that doesn't leave me randomly drained.
as far as phones go, I may have to end up just going with a tiny USB disk with a big capacity. The options with a MicroSD card that don't suck are just too limited anymore, and it's infuriating. (I recently realized the only reason I'd be willing to put up with this would be the far easier file transfer... I've had some stupid issues with it on my current phone, which now requires using an external reader, lest the files just... don't show up. It's dumb, and I dunno what to blame.) I just don't like having that external piece to forget/lose, but eh...
The workposts will probably slow down soon. Seems like they've been getting a bit more sparse, which is always good
Sloooowly cleaning things up.
I'm annoyed when online merchants don't take PayPal. I don't have any cards (yet) so I can't really use one, not to mention I'm paranoid about throwing the numbers around if I did have one.
I see a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not the headlamp of a fast approaching train
this feels like a time of transition.
there is a chance I will have a completely stable schedule soon. it'll be a minor pay hit (by about $40 or something), but it'll hopefully be worth the actual being able to plan around work thing.
another weekend, another few days of crashing. the pattern seems to be predictable now. fuck weekends.
Work is going to be weird as hell.
...So, our manager resigned yesterday.
I have no idea what to make of this. Shit was tough for him lately, but... damn.
I've got my own share of personal worries about this, but I'm more concerned about him. Didn't seem like the kind of thing he'd do...
Making severe changes in the way you do things is tough.
If you try to do it gradually, the problem is you'll probably end up really easily slipping back into old habits. If you try to do it all at once, it feels forced and easy to fall back into old habits.
At the same time, though, it sometimes feels like all-at-once is the only way to really do any big sweeping changes. (One thing at a time, of course, it's possibly disaster if you try to change too many big things at once.)
I really don't know. Part of why I haven't started or kept up on some things is exhaustion. Once I'm done work, especially on weekends, I'm just too tired to want to really do much of anything.
I have the feeling something's going to change at work soon, though. For better or worse, I don't quite know yet. If I can get a fully consistent schedule, though...
I have so much trouble staying organized.
Everything's just a mess. I want to get organized, but the problem is that I seem to feel like I need to / try to get everything organized all at once, and as a result everything just pretty much remains at a standstill.
Money's on my mind more than ever, also. Part of me really just wants to think of easy ways to make little extra bits of money, because everything at all counts.
As it is, I have a fleet of old Android devices running PerkTV. It's not a ton of money, but an extra $50 here and there is always pleasant.
I feel like all the other worrying I spend my time doing has me distracted from paying attention to people I care about. It's no secret I've gone quiet a lot of places. Part of it is mental exhaustion, part of it is me always being tired, and part of it is... organization. I just want to spend so much time sorting things out.
I just need help but I don't know where or how to get it.
It's interesting to think about.
At one point, I was actually afraid of people who created things. Games, drawn artwork, music, photography... I was intimidated to talk to people because I felt like I might be getting in their way, keeping them from creating or just generally bugging them.
EVentually, for some reason or another, I tackled this fear. Early on, it still persisted, because I thought these few instances of it going well were flukes.
Eventually, I realized it's just a person with a different talent. We all fall into this, mostly. Some of us do certain things better than others. They're just another person with whom to enjoy something, to kinda swipe a quote I can't remember the exact source of.
I need to start pushing to be a little bit more talkative, too. I've been awful at it.
Time to try to get some sleep, I guess
I've inadvertently half-switched over to Windows Phone. I tend to use my Moto G during the day, and my Lumia 640 at night. Probably related to feeling more comfortable with the versatility during the day, and being experimental at night? Windows 10 on a phone is nice.
I've been looking at phones around / slightly over the $200-300 range. I'm going to be possibly getting a credit card soon, and I want to actually have something to pay off. (yes, I already have the money)
super tired right now. what's a words.
Is it possible to simultaneously feel like you're stagnating further yet getting out of a rut of sorts?
Because that's exactly what I feel like I've been doing. Constantly falling asleep, but at least I'm feeling some motivation here and there!
Really looking into customization options, other new things for my main Android phone. Windows Phone has been weirdly tempting but I'm not sure if I could manage on it exclusively...
I honestly can't remember the last night I didn't fall asleep without outright crashing.
I don't know whether it's just general exhaustion, I'm just pushing myself too hard, the weekends fucking me up, or some combination altogether of the three.
sanqui brings up an interesting point.
I seem to phase between being open and talkative, myself, then suddenly kinda shutter down for no real reason. Probably nerves. The fear that if people see what's truly going on in my mind, they'll abandon me?
This absolutely relates to the internet's more aggressive nature. I'm fearful, still, of making just one minor misstep that infuriates someone. I'm not above being nudged in the right direction (and in fact encourage it, even if initially at times I may seem a little defensive because I'm caught off guard), but what scares me is the possibility of basically being labeled "bad", so to speak.
I'm pretty sure I don't really have anything to worry about, in this regard. Hell, I try my hardest not to interfere with people... to a fault, really.
I'm afraid to nudge people because I don't want to interrupt them.
All this shit I'm trying to work on. Still doing okayish on the "trying to meet people" front, I guess.
I still need to be more active here.
Unfortunately, I haven't been as active around here as I've wanted to. Part of that is just exhaustion, part of it is distraction.
I've been consistently prodding at my own things for a little while now, though. Maybe it's time I finally start directing some of that energy towards my page here.
I've been messing about with a Windows Phone: the Lumia 640. It's a really nice piece of hardware -- I'd actually go so far as to say it's a nicer phone than the Moto G. The problem lies in Windows Phone, though... while it's a really nice OS, there's just a few gaps that severely need to be fixed before it could really be used as a daily driver. I don't see myself dropping Android at all, but I'd certainly like to be able to just grab whichever phone suits my mood on a given day.
I'll say, though, I adore the tiles. Having your icons be little windows to show off the wallpaper is absolutely beautiful, especially on such nice screens.
And as a phone, these things blow anything else I've used out of the water. Typing on them is bar none the best experience I've ever had on a mobile keyboard, and the call quality seemed pretty good! (considering I was just using it for a couple minutes to check my voice mail once, though, I dunno if this counts...)
It's not my first Windows Phone (that one being my 635, another sub-$50 purchase), but it's the first one to really make me think "holy shit, why has this not caught on?"
Maybe I'll get my new icon up sometime soon. (it's already up on Twitter, just send me a mail if you're curious about where I am!)
As for work, well, it's another long weekend half-over with for now. As much as I gripe about losing my weekends, this is way better than what I had before. Short days aren't too bad, and the consistency is really, really nice.
re: nikolojedison's wall comment: i've got a ghost process keeping the thing open. sorry about that! you can still edit it manually.
Another weekend coming up. How fun.
I'm just insanely, insanely tired of all the weekend time being gone. I miss doing things.
I don't even know what "normal" is, this past half-year. It seems ever-changing.
After seeing schedules, I'm fearing I'm going to be trapped in weekend hell for months to come.
I'd really, really rather not. I miss doing things.
yet another crash...
I saw our new guy today. He seems like a decent guy. I'm just hoping once the schedules change again I'll be able to pick something and keep it consistent.
Aside from that, I got a Lumia 640 yesterday. It's a nice phone, just a shame it doesn't have the support iOS and Android phones get. As far as look and feel, I'd go so far as to say it's the nicest phone I own.
The Moto G's still my daily driver though, and in absolutely no danger of being usurped. Again, there's just too many things Android can offer me that Windows Phone can't yet.
(That, and the inability to block ads unlike Android with AdAway is grating...)
another night, another crash (again)
I've been a bundle of nerves these past few days, since the weekend or so. Been trying to pull out of it, since... it's not doing me any favors as far as trying to be more outgoing.
I can't help but wonder how much will change once the weekends come back. (I should know better than to just "dash forward", so to speak, though. It only seems to make things a bit worse.)
another night, another crash. sigh
what I think agitates me about this the most is that by the time I've recovered, I'm thrust right back into the long, early days that leave me tired and take away any chance I would have to do anything.
shrug
so this next month or so will also be a dead time as far as people and places go.
i hate weekends.
hump day again for me.
I sure like how a package containing vinyl was left out in the rain. :)
It's such an unremarkable day, it's painful. Though I did make it without crashing beyond the hour of sleep I took when I got home, if nothing else..
Well, another throwaway weekend. I know some people are starting to wonder what the fuck's happened to me.
New guy is in our system. We'll see what happens... hopefully the weekends free up again. I miss actually going out and doing things and seeing friends.
I hate weekends now, oddly enough
so, they've found someone. but we're also possibly still looking at some form of consistency.
Cautious optimism.
I just hope I stop crashing already soon. I only need so much sleep!
Air conditioner at work fixed. Small (huge) favors. It feels tons better now.
Apparently a more consistent schedule soon is a possibility. I'm so, so hoping so. It'd help me tons.
So our air conditioner at work has broken. Jooooooy.
On the more positive note, I've actually begun talking to new people again! Here's hoping I can actually stay in touch this time, instead of retreating like I usually end up doing.
It's nice actually having a tiny bit of freedom. Being able to actually do a few things at night during the week is nice.
There's a place nearby hiring. I'm torn on whether I want to try to jump over, or stick with what I have. The pay over there is better (about 1/8 more what I make right now even), but I do worry about jumping into a worse situation. The worst part is that there's apparently no time to think about these things, so any decision I make is going to be rushed.
I dunno. I really just crave some kind of consistency. I know I have it now, but it's an extremely temporary consistency which will eventually go right back to being random shit again.
I just don't want my recent drive to do things to be crushed by that again.
It's apparently supposed to be even hotter than it has been recently. So glad I have today off.
The lack of air conditioning in a store is a baffling decision. Doesn't it seem like something that might run people off?
I'm finally starting to stop crashing. Shame I get the feeling the decent scheduling will end soon!
It's nights like this where I just kinda hope I'm not the only person to fall asleep while getting ready for bed.
Seriously, that shit happens to me so much lately and it's super annoying. At least I didn't have a horrifying crash this time - progress! I can actually sleep comfortably!
Monday is going to be an inferno. So glad I have off.
nikolojedison reminds me I've been fucking around with a RPi2 recently.
I've set it up on my right monitor as a media center. The biggest reason for this is that I'm hoping it'll serve well to reduce power usage. Money is becoming weird again, and I start dwelling on how to gain every single cent I can.
Still trying to get my energy in check. Shame that it'll all be totally moot, if my schedule changes again!!!
I reread over stuff. It's not as annoying as I remembered it being while typing. Huh.
I'm honestly extremely nervous about my schedule eventually changing back to its fucked up random thing.
Here... well, I work weekends, but I know what to expect. It's generally fairly consistent, so I actually have energy these days! (I"ve still found myself crashing, though nowhere near as early as before)
I don't want to lose the consistency. I don't want to end up tired all the time and never doing anything again. (not that the latter has changed much, but now at least it's lack of opportunity, rather than lack of energy)
I know the times will probably change at some point. I just hope they're consistent after that.
(I need to talk about this at some point.)
There's something really, really weird about looking at old projects. It's weird to think 2003 was almost half a lifetime ago. 2006 was a decade ago!
It feels like up to a point, there was a lot going on in my life. Some things stayed the same, but others were continually fresh and exciting. After 2012, despite the shitfest the first half of that year was, it feels like this has dried up. I'm really not any farther along, any better than I was at that point. There's memories after that, but by and large some things seem to have stayed the exact same for so long without any real positive change that it's frustrating.
It's probably why music's been such a major thing for me. It's about the only thing that hasn't completely stagnated, though it seems to cycle around the same few things anymore without really adding anything new.
That said: new Opeth album in September. Excited as hell. I wonder if it'll be a bit more like their older albums in sound, or continue on the path Heritage and Pale Communion have set? Either way, I'm fine with it.
So apparently, I've got a ghost process running somewhere on the wall. I've tried to kill it, to no avail.
Shit.
So for now, just manually open it at /home/endorphant/projects/ttbp/bin/graffiti/wall.txt. It should still work.
I'm both annoyed and slightly relieved that I didn't actually keep it open somewhere, locking everyone out. (...well, it's still locked, but not intentionally)
also worth mentioning: my feet aren't in constant pain anymore. fuck yeah new shoes!!!
And thus begins another week of the same. I'm constantly worried I've done something wrong somewhere that'll lead to bad things.
All this sleeping hasn't been helping either, really. Slowly getting better with it, but 10-12 hours is a bit much.
I had something I wanted to go in depth with, but forgot it. I'll throw it up here if I remember.
My Moto 360's been having some weird problem lately: namely, the screen seems to be staying on, absolutely annihilating the battery.
As far as the watch goes, as frivolous as it may seem, it's one of the best purchases I've made in a long time. Considering some jobs' draconian laws on phone usage (god forbid I silence the fucking thing?) it's honestly a huge boon, giving peace of mind and the ability to not fall off the face of the earth entirely for [3-10] hours. You actually know what's happening, and can actually make plans to address it if it's important - no more ignoring something that may be crucial such as "hey, someone's in the hospital right now"
It's also... really impossible to distract yourself on such a thing, so I think nobody really cares (or at least not enough to fuck me over)
Weather at a glance is also nice. It generates a fun talking point with people sometimes.
Here's hoping I can figure out the issue without doing yet another factory reset. At least in this case, it's not because I flashed a new ROM on my phone again...
and there's the reason i hate weekends: long hours and the horrifying crashes that result afterwards, plus people pressuring me not to go to sleep
get fucked, i need a bit after an early shift, especially a long one
There's not really much of anything worth mentioning today. I guess it's hot as fuck.
When it's hot as fuck, I tend to slow down a lot on the job so I don't cook myself. Things still get done, of course, but there's no rushing for anything.
I can't wait for winter again.
So it seems there's a consistent schedule in place.
...Except entire weekends every week are indeed true. Welp, goodbye, having a life.
On the positive side, at least I'll have plenty of time and energy at home. Maybe I'll even start actually getting some shit done, who knows? There's still way too damn much to clean up in my room, and all that extra time would be a huge boon.
So it's looking like I'm going to have the "short days + full weekends" shit.
Fuck my ass.
Is it any wonder I've given up on having a life?
It's not all bad -- at least I'll have some nights back, but there goes any chance of doing anything ever. The show I'm going to is probably only fine because it's something I made plans and a commitment to beforehand.
At least this will save me a bunch of money on dumb shit I guess
Well, I've officially wasted over half the week sleeping my nights away. Joy. (I guess the fact that little has been happening lately doesn't help, though.)
Even now, when I'm supposed to be eager for some consistency, there's a thick veil of uncertainty. Next week's schedule is currently a handful of bullshit shifts (we're not even OPEN some of these times) and with the scramble everyone else seems to be making it's not looking like I'm going to be able to enjoy any consistency for very long.
Again, though... we'll see.
So my work schedule got reformatted a bit this week. Early shift turned into a late shift. Cautious optimism that there's going to be a bit more consistency next week.
The past few days, despite the permeating exhaustion, were actually a bit of a much-needed rest. Things are going back to normal now, sadly... again, all I can really do is hope for a bit of schedule consistency. It's nice to actually be able to plan and do things.
work: Holy shit, this weekend was actually fairly good! Shame this is probably only a one-time deal.
Mario Maker is a funny thing. Before release, I was extremely hyped up for it. The thought of making a level and offering it to everyone to play, through officially sanctioned methods, was super appealing!
And then the game hit. While its level creator is actually really solid, going to play levels is another thing altogether. You'll find the occasional okay, or even good level, buried under mounds of shit. Be it overly-easy coin spam shit, just flat shit, or cheap-deaths-everywhere shit. (The latter I have no qualms in skipping. If I die because I didn't hold a direction as soon as the level started, your level gets skipped.)
It's... honestly really turned me off the game. I haven't played a 100-mario challenge in months, nor have I really even checked people I'm following for new levels! There was one creator whose stuff I was really enjoying, who seems to have just stopped making levels after an initial huge burst of them. Shame. And he has enough room for more, too...
So, this marks the second day this week I just wasted a day via crashing.
At least work was pretty stress-free and good today? Even still, 12-hour days (and apparently everyone outside of work being idiots today) are absolutely exhausting.
So, we're officially down one person now. (Supposedly.)
This will mean one of a few things:
Everyone except me hates #1. I understand it's tougher, but I'm far better off when I don't have wacky hours and 2-week schedules. I don't want us to be operating poorly, but... there's a point where I just have to put myself first.
For the moment, I'll end up running out week 2 of my current schedule. (This is good, as Thursday night I have something to do.)
Will this signal the end of me venting about how tired I am and how much my schedule sucks and people pissing me off? I dunno. I've noticed my patience lessening over the past couple months. I'd like a chance to get some of that back.
So, those devastating crashes? Yeah, had to do things immediately upon getting home, and then just crashed in the middle of eating and could not stop. This schedule has me so fucking wiped. Didn't even really have a chance to relax tonight, just... sleep, then thrust back into it all tomorrow.
I had another "oh I'm leaving" person today. It's honestly ridiculous how few people take charge of their medications -- and when people do, sometimes the doctors are the ones dropping the ball. It's not our fault you couldn't come pick it up despite receiving calls. It's not our fault the doctors aren't sending us shit.
But again, am I really supposed to be heartbroken? If it's nothing I can help, I don't think so.
[giant shrug goes here]
(recent world events probably aren't helping how i feel either)
the long weeks continue to utterly exhaust me. In this case, I pretty much crashed the second I laid down.
I find it cute how people expect me to react when they tell me they're going to go somewhere else, like it's my fault [thing] went wrong. Previously I used to even say "well hey, good luck" or something along those lines. But when someone gets all uppity and pissy because you ask them politely to move to where people line up, well, you kinda stop caring altogether.
Bonus points for "I'm a nurse". Good for you, then you should understand more!
Firefox keeps crashing on my Pi. Why. It's segfaulting
work: we're almost at the end of someone's tenure. here's hoping for some better scheduling soon enough. i'm pretty sure the scheduling ran our other cashier off, so... here's hoping for some consistency in the near future.
it's honestly more fucked than ever right now. maybe I'll just have to change my available hours. I don't do anything because the inconsistency has me in a constant state of worry and "what'll change THIS time". six early shifts in a seven-day stretch = "what's sleep and feeling well?"
I just feel like it crushes any inertia I had toward "fixing" things at home, too. Late nights mean I get things done, essentially. Without that, there's naught but sitting around.
it's strangely comforting to know that someone reads this sometimes, though (hello insom!!) -- really hoping to have a bit more non-work content to put on here again sometime.
cleanup: just realized i have a closet. maybe some stuff can be put in there...
Feeling like there's a never-ending list of shit that apparently you've been doing wrong forever and/or things constantly changing is absolutely infuriating.
This is the case at work all the time. My schedule's even more fucked up than usual this week, supposedly I have been doing various things wrong for ages, etc.
(brief interesting side thought: is it common to have "dreams" where you hear things before falling asleep?)
Working on holidays without any incentive is absolute dogshit. Just sayin'.
Not exactly a way to coax the best work out of your employees.
in other things, I had a really strange sensation in my hands tonight while typing. it felt like my fingers were made of lead or something, or like I had weights tied to them. Typing felt slow and heavy, even though it wasn't actually any different than normal. It's one of those "deja vu" feelings too, as if I'd gotten it before. It's reminiscent of a couple other weird sensations: carrying a thin, but very heavy stack of paper, and laying down and the corner of your room near your ceiling feeling extremely far away.
the last one even reminds me of a cough-medicine induced dream where CD/DVD drive faceplates were floating all around my room, freaking me out.
I wonder what causes these feelings, anyway? It'd been a great while since I experienced one.
I wrote last night about how things seem to be slowing down for me.
This actually seems to be the case for everybody. There's a lot less going on as of late than there used to be. (even on ~: less activity on IRC, ttbp hasn't been updated for a while... stuff like that. the first may be wrong, though, admittedly I've been paying little attention to IRC)
in the end, we're all just people trying to live our lives. sometimes things cooperate with each other. sometimes things fight for our attention. (sometimes what we like wins. sometimes it doesn't.)
I'm just ultimately trying to find the balance here, having gone from a largely unchanging world to one that changes at less than a moment's notice. I just feel like sometimes I need people to talk to so I don't have to think about it all the time.
I'm starting to feel like I should give up on the whole "I want to dump my thoughts nightly" thing. It worked for a little while, but eventually it became a monotonous rambling thing about work almost every day. I haven't really thought of anything interesting or fun to write about anymore.
In fact, I've kind of disappeared entirely lately, into just watching random crap and occasionally listening to music. (The Getaway is an excellent album, by the way. ha ha get it f;lhd)
It's kind of funny how certain things just kinda... shut down when you're exhausted. Obviously your body will, but other things such as... well, thoughts, and all. Like I said, I've been too wiped to really think of anything interesting to write about. I still haven't gotten my Pi back up and running completely yet. At least my phone's fine and excessive machines have been moved downstairs? It's not much space, but it's something.
In fact, I've been falling asleep quite frequently, even while writing these things. (Oh well. At least I'm thinking to some extent again...
today in "jesus christ shut up about work": apparently i'm being called in an hour early. it's not the hour early that pisses me off, so much as it's the lack of notice (I'm asleep, for all intents and purposes) and the fact that it's yet more inconsistency to an already inconsistent schedule. I'm getting to the point where I can't even trust the schedule anymore.
I did do a bit more cleanup, though! Moved some laptops I wasn't really using out of my room. It's not very much space, but it's something. Maybe soon I'll get that corner actually cleaned up a bit more.
I'm starting to get really sick of this job. I'm tired of being expected to have radar and being in panic mode for hours a day.
I seriously hope my schedule becomes consistent sometime soon. I'm so tired of the weird 2-week schedule, and being tired as all hell. At least the new shoes seem to be helping.
well, I upgraded the phone to CM13. Now for the growing pains of a new OS.
Not really that much to say aside from that! New shoes are here, we'll see how much they help.
new shoes obtained! they feel very much like my old ones did at irst - let's hope they help as much as those did at first, too.
I got Arch back up and running on my Pi, too. For some reason the window maker prefs keep crashing when I'm trying to set colors. Maybe I'll just use textured windows or something. (or maybe I'll just go back to openbox, I find certain desktop metaphors hard to adjust to and probably only got along with OS X because I used Macs a lot early in life? or something. I dunno.) I want to give some new stuff a try but it doesn't always make sense
I'm lagging a hell of a lot while typing right now, so I'm going to cut this train of thought short. I'm words ahead of what's being displayed and it's fucking disorienting. (and hell to make corrections on)
That one day off after a 7-day stretch is weird. It's not really a weekend, so much as a breather. I'd happily squish my four short days into two long ones to have a 9-day stretch, but then five days off in a row instead of two (and one "straggler" day)
Since I was just too wiped during the week, I have to cram upgrading my phone, reinstalling Arch, and getting new shoes all into one day before retiring early because morning shift. whee
At least the early shifts, save weekends, tend to never exceed 4.5 hours.
And naturally, I have a very violent crash after that workweek.
I'm still trying to knock out my "to do" list. Maybe I'll be able to explore a little more after that.
Air purifier seems to be a worthwhile thing. If nothing else, my sleeping spot is a lot nicer with it.
I'm still pushing things around, trying to get myself a little more "together", so to speak. I'm actually a bit more talkative again, which is good. Now I just need to figure out how to not vent about work all the damn time.
I guess there's a couple shows I could try to go to next month, we'll see how scheduling lines up
man, I need to poke at the page layout again. maybe later.
hooray, here comes another 18-hour weekend!
I almost wish I'd get the four short days merged into two longer days sometimes. It'd be a nine-day stretch, but then I'd have plenty of days off in the meantime. As it is, I only have an actual weekend every two weeks with one day off to break up the stretch.
I bought an air purifier and I've been cleaning things up. New antenna did not work as well as I'd hoped (Monoprice flat antenna), so back to the old one for now. I keep hearing about outdoor antennas, but honestly, I wouldn't even know where to get started and the cost would probably be too high.
At least the flat antenna could possibly make a good portable antenna? (Except, well, if my current one's outperforming it...)
I want to get creative again. Still torn between color icon or not, partly because I'm super attached to this one. Random thought soup because I just can't muster up anything to write anymore.
Here's to hopefully regaining energy sometime soon.
(and hopefully an Arch chroot on my chromebook?)
I crashed after coming home from a late shift. Peak of exhaustion.
I should at least be getting a package sometime soon. Ordered some cables and an antenna to improve my TV tuner experience. Maybe I'll tape an USB extension cord to my wall and plug it in there so I can still bring the tuner around with me if I need / want to.
Speaking of, if anyone's reading this, does anyone know anything about Hauppauge USB tuners on Linux and OS X? If so, please shoot me a mail or something! (I'd say prod me on IRC, but honestly, I've been paying such little attention as of late...)
I actually fell asleep to a blank screen this time.
This is probably the exhaustion - I'm feeling like I'm hitting a peak, I've been tired all week. I woke up relatively well-rested... for all of about five minutes.
The big problem is I keep dreaming about work. Dealing with someone when I get woken up, roll over and sleep more to finish with them, continue on until I finally realize "oh fuck, they aren't real" and stay awake. It's infuriating.
At least I haven't dreamt of fucking something up there. Yet.
Waiting for shipping is simultaneously aggravating, yet... not.
When it's something you need, you really want it to arrive, and fast. But at the same time, the wait is a little something to keep you going, at least for a few days/weeks. Something really important when things are frustrating.
I've admittedly probably spent a bit more than I should lately - but it's good to have something in the future to look forward to, be it shipping, waiting for someone to get back to you on something, or even something else. (In a semi-related note, I may have a new icon in a few days. We'll see. I kinda like the current one, but having a bit of color might be nice :P)
Especially since my schedule seems to be getting random idiotic variations just to throw me off. Why am I there an extra half hour tomorrow? Why am I there a half hour LESS the next day? And why an extra 1.5 hours the day after that?!
Again, I just need to focus on cleaning up. Make my own room as livable as possible, it'll at least make the home life nicer.
As always, a weird night. Does that mean it was normal?
I did a bit more cleaning up. Somehow, my wall was dusty. It isn't anymore.
I looked through the past year and a half of file sends/downloads on my laptop. It's... kinda saddening. It feels like everything in everyone's lives has come to a screeching halt. (Myself included.)
I'm just hoping cleaning up will gradually alleviate this issue. It's not gonna be a panacea, or fast, but some progress beats none, and being able to take care of stuff like that will help me tackle bigger things later.
I'm falling asleep while typing again
back to the seven day grind. and with no fun days to boot, too. hum.
I guess this is part of why I'm cleaning up the room so much as of late. With the schedule the way it is, I'm pretty much going to be trapped at home or work most of the time. Might as well try to make the most of it.
Cleaning can be intensely rewarding. My room, especially my bed, looks the best I can remember it being all year. There's still room for improvement, too! Maybe I'll even knock more out tomorrow.
Dunno about anything the next week, though, because lolwork. But who knows? Maybe the momentum will be great. (oh also in our required dose of work negativity, supposedly there was a very negative reaction to attempting to change shifts around. final nail in the coffin for events for me. why not make my home look better, then, at least?)
I ordered some extension USB cables, short USB cables, and a wall-mount antenna. I got a USB TV tuner with the intent of portability. The plan will be to "mount" a USB extension cable to the wall, and just plug the tuner in there. (The antenna will be on the wall, of course.)
I love Monoprice.
so, apparently, my frustration with work is becoming so great that it's starting to run people off.
apparently, when I've had that much alcohol I want to clean. (and I still drink a shitton of water)
new RHCP album today, hell yeah
It seems like I'm going to be stuck on the clusterfuck schedule until September. Oh boy. I'm sure gonna love being mentally and physically dead for three months!!!
I got a TV tuner and it works fairly well. There's apparently a game show channel broadcasting over DTV here. Oh boy. (Now, I just need to find ways to get the thing working in OS X and Linux.)
"you will not always feel like this." (c) 2016 endorphant, all rights reserved
I'm sure as hell hoping not. I just feel more exhausted after every day. I feel like I need to cut a ton of "superfluous" things from my life as of late.
That show's probably not happening, and I don't think I'm going to bother trying anymore. It's too stressful to ask and I'm too distrusting of everyone. I still feel like "the new guy" despite others being newer than me. Perhaps it's because they technically have a higher rank. Perhaps it's favoritism. I don't know.
All I know is I think I'm going to go ahead and approach him about getting a consistent schedule. 13:00-21:00 daily would be wonderful. (I'd prefer 9:00-17:00, personally, but for some odd reason they refuse to give anybody consistent opening shifts. whatever.)
new RHCP album tomorrow! now will I have the energy to listen to it
test
I bought a DVB tuner today. Turns out, that doesn't work in the US!
Why on earth was it on sale here?
I also bought a new blu-ray drive which I'll be testing once I get home from work. Warranty this time, so hopefully this one won't stop reading blu-rays
(also sleep's probably not gonna happen. fuck it, too tired of fighting for the days I need for this shit. what, you thought you were getting a post without some kind of work rant? i shall not allow such a thing!!!)
but yeah aside from that shit today's been pretty okay
I've begun slowly cleaning up my room again.
I've got a few more things to move downstairs, then comes the 15-month-long mail backlog, some of which is probably way too outdated and some of which is probably not even worth bothering to look at.
Two nearby events are keeping me going at the moment: a new album release, and possibly seeing Sleep next week. The agitating thing is that the latter isn't even a guarantee, since it depends on work scheduling shit. It kinda snuck up on me, and I'm scheduled during the show that night.
It's part of why I don't want to take full time: I'd have absolutely no time to do anything, anymore. Everything would happen when I was at work, unless I had a crazy stroke of luck for an event to fall on a weekend. (Unless they wanted to give me morning shifts as requested... but then I'd be too tired to enjoy anything. Working with hundreds of people every day is fucking exhausting.)
It seems like there's going to be "on" and "off" weekends. It's funny, I start looking into weekend events again and this happens. Wonder why I bother.
It just seems like that frustration's leaking into everything nowadays. Slow progress, I guess...
I have a day off! I don't know what to do in this day off
I'm just so drained I want to sleep, but I don't want to spend all of my time asleep. I also want to get a new blu-ray drive, my current one only reads CDs and DVDs anymore.
Android Wear 2.0 is getting a keyboard. I might have to upgrade for that, as being able to reply without speaking would be such a huge thing. I just hope the reply text is saved when the watch locks, so I can hammer out a few words at a time. Weird situations, I guess. Taking 30-60 minutes to reply sure as hell beats 4-6 hours, though.
Detaching myself a bit feels good.
Obviously, I'm still going to care. I don't want to see people leaving disappointed, after all. But there's times it can't be helped, and I'm beginning to recognize this isn't my fault. Nothing I can do except try my best to take care of everything without overexerting myself.
Hell, in a way, I think it's made me more productive. I actually feel like I'm doing better.
(I feel like I'm bugging people most of the time still, though. This is something I'll have to work on.
There's a chance the 7 day stretch may be 6? I might be switching a day. I don't know, I didn't even get any time to think about my scheduling because I was too fucking wiped.
I'd like to switch. Might possibly get me a day off to go see Sleep. I haven't been to a show in a few months, and it's kind of become the only thing I get out to do anymore.
At least there's a few things in July.
(But then I wonder: Should I be spending money like this? I don't even know.)
the "hump" of the long week is over.
there's something insanely exhausting about these weeks. one of the biggest things being "it's friday. wait, i'm not done? what the fuck man"
I'm really not sure what I'm going to be doing these next three days. There's going to be a lot of sleeping, for sure, but what else?
On the plus side, I guess motivation for a few things is shooting higher. I've taken care of some few things I've been meaning to for some time.
the sleep is butting into my thoughts and typing right now, help
just had another heavy crash. right in the middle of a complete week of work with no days off.
something about this routine's gotta change. i know i'm going to be giving up more than i'd like to. a lot of people. but for the moment, everything's just unsustainable.
a shame, too. but whatever.
(it feels like an empty promise by now but i swear there's gonna be more positive/thinking type stuff here at some point)
arguably one of the worst things about the inconsistent schedule is the random sleep shifts. It's impossible to sleep consistently when you have to wake up at different times. At least I was already kinda prepared for this from my sleeping being horribly fucked up before work began...?
it feels like nothing is good enough. a good idea will be crushed because it might be slightly visually unappealing. you know what? fuck it. i'll do things the more attractive, but less convenient, way. more money for me if I have to do it at a certain time.
i've been detaching myself. after getting turned down for a fan to keep cool, there's no reason to exert myself 100% if it'll cause me massive discomfort. take it slow and steady (but not too slow of course), don't sweat anything you can't help. it should all be common sense, but here I am, attached to everything and trying to bust myself to make things right.
it's been proven it doesn't pay off. let's just get through the days, one at a time. i'm not gonna suddenly treat people like shit, but if I can't help someone, oh well. if they leave us? fine. whatever. less for me to worry about. we're stretched so thin anyway that increasing our number of visitors actually hurts more than helps, it seems, as then we can't keep up. or so it feels like, sometimes.
i'm hearing the faint beep of that fucking computer in my head at night. it's infuriating. the machine beeps when the screen is touched, and everyone can hear it. time to use the mouse, I guess. (besides, that's more accurate.)
one of these days, this isn't going to be me ranting about work. i hope. it's just annoying how I try to make things work better, and all of it's just "oh no you can't do that." whatever.
realizing what's making you angry/bitter/depressed/annoyed is the first step toward correcting those problems.
I've picked up on a few of these reasons, and am trying once again to clean things up. It's not going to be perfect, I don't have the space for it to be perfect. But improvement is improvement, perfect or not.
I wonder if all this strangeness has mostly been caused by clutter. There's a good bit of it here, and a conversation between karlen and insom got me thinking about this.
I've never been great at organization. I've absolutely improved over the years, but I'm practically trying to build a solid structure on a very messy, unstable base. It's not going to work unless I take out that base and rebuild that, but there's just so much it feels like it'd take forever.
I guess as far as files go I've built the new, solid structure on its own ground, separate from the messy base... slowly prodding at that mess and adding it where it needs to go in the new structure, so to speak.
Wow, that's a weird metaphor. But what about applying that to the physical realm? Suddenly, it gets a lot harder. Objects have weight and volume, and you have to think about where these go in relation to other things. With files, you can just put them wherever, even if they're organized you don't have to worry about putting everything in such a spot physically that it becomes inaccessible.
And that's where I'm at right now: there's just too much, I need storage space, and I lack the means to get rid of some of it. I'm going to want to get money out of getting rid of stuff if I can, because hooray work being work :)
It's just kind of infuriating. I can't just let go of something without doing it "properly", and that just holds me back to the point of no progress. It's not like files, where it's entirely your jurisdiction. You can't sell an image file like you can a DVD, so you don't worry about it. With the DVD, there's some sort of obligation to try to reclaim something from it, especially if resources are tight.
summary: i'm a mess and trying to improve but there's only so much I can do without help, and I feel as though I've bumped up against that limit.
Android on a non-touchscreen device is really weird. The lack of native multi-window kinda really kills the idea of using it as a desktop OS, which is a shame for something like the XU4 where Android runs really well on it and would make a really nice choice.
My schedule's been getting jostled around again. I don't know what's going on with the sudden 7-day workweeks as of late, but I really don't like it. It's why I just stopped planning to do anything, effectively grinding my life outside of work to a halt. There's a few shows in July I'm wanting to go to, but I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth bothering.
There was supposed to be a flea market today. Impending rain apparently killed the whole thing? Honestly, I couldn't care at this point.
Something needs to give somewhere, sometime. I'm really, really tired of how angry and bitter this job has been making me. It's like all my positivity is drained dealing with people. (Granted, I still like a lot of our regulars, but... fuck.)
I've been pretty drained lately, even despite the short workdays this past week. My sleeping's become weird again, and I find myself crashing a lot.
The scheduling itself seems to be flying off the rails, too. Next week starts off kinda usual (some half hours are bounced around), but then I work the weekend again? I never work the weekend, why the fuck are you giving me two in such a short timeframe? (And then another week of short workdays.)
Get me the fuck out of here.
...On a more positive note, I did a bit of page layout modification like I said I was going to do weeks ago. Need to find a way to make the entry boxes transparent... when I tried a transparent PNG it just kinda flopped. Maybe I just need a new PNG, I dunno.
I can't seem to get my mind off work anymore. I'm always thinking about the next schedule, wondering if we're gonna be busy or not, wondering when all the asshole customers are gonna drop in.
It's funny how one infuriating person or event can apparently nullify an otherwise reasonable day, isn't it? Perhaps it's because everyone expects us to bend over backwards and suck ourselves off to try to appease the customer. Not every customer is going to be happy, or be appeased easily, and personally I've learned to accept that. Let them leave over minute things.
Unfortunately, anyone over you is going to assume it's probably your fault... or so it feels, most of the time. In rare cases, it may be, and that's okay as long as it's not becoming a huge problem. Nobody is perfect. Unfortunately, people will try to guilt you even if you already realize this.
I need to detach myself, but I find it really difficult to do so. All the inconsistencies, it feels like, have just been serving to make me gradually more angry and bitter over the past month.
happy one month ~ I guess
I've been debating asking for consistent full-time closing hours.
On one hand, I'd have consistent hours again -- no more schedules jerking around like a fucking madman. I'd be making a bit more, and they'd have to pay out benefits to me. (Tripling my time off accumulation from one hour per 43.33 hours worked to one hour per ~17 worked would be pretty nice. I'd actually be able to take some time off at the end of the year!!) I imagine the inconsistencies are part of why I've been so irritable and erratic as of late.
On the other hand, though, I feel like I'm already getting stretched thin enough (they push me as hard as absolutely possible). I'd be around even less, and you could say goodbye to talking to any friends from another timezone. It'd be like slamming the book shut on some friendships.
can't I get one of those jobs where you can get away with having something open on the side as long as your work gets done? please? (it'd probably pay better too, lol)
This is what I was afraid of, part of why I delayed so long: I was afraid of it destroying any semblance of a life I had, which it's been doing. They made someone else full-time recently, too, so any leverage I had was pretty much gone. I'm no longer the pillar holding them up.
I just need someone to talk to about this, physically.
The ODROID board came in today. It's kinda neat, but I haven't found a solid use for it yet.
If it never pans out, I guess it'd make a great server or HTPC. It seemed to run really well for those!
More short things today. Let's hope for more energy tomorrow!
Looking back over old screenshots and things reminds me how sterile, less fun computing has become.
You used to have little things that would walk around your desktop (like neko), sit on your windows... there used to be themes you could apply to your OS and utilities you could run to really mix up the experience.
These days, as far as stuff like that goes, we have... changing your window colors (and not even that on Windows 10 for a while) and Rainmeter. The latter's pretty flexible, at least.
And this is assuming you're on a Windows system! I haven't seen any kind of theming for OS X since the Leopard days.
Perhaps that's part of why I seem to cling to having some sort of Linux setup: it seems to be the only thing to really embrace customization these days. You don't have to customize your distro's default appearance if you don't want to (much like the Windows of old, especially when you could mod msstyles), but it's wide open if you'd like to.
Granted, I tend to err on the side of minimalism: openbox and tint2 are enough for me, maybe with conky when the mood strikes. But... again, you can do that, and maybe that's why I find mucking about with Linux so fun. There's still so much power to make it yours, while on Windows you can only really do so much.
As far as Windows styles, I've always liked Alduin by lassekongo83. CleanGlass was really nice too, as well as a few oth-- oh my fuck there's a GTK version sign me up
I wonder if I can use that in MATE. And some new wallpapers. I could stand to mix it up a bit, one of my monitors' wallpapers has remained the same since 2014. I did this from 2005-2007 at one point too, but for some reason that felt like a far longer time. Huh. Probably that whole fun thing again.
I miss Windows XP.
While we're on this random tech rant, my XU4 should be getting here today. I'm excited to toy with it. (then, inevitably, it'll just kinda sit there, knowing me.)
Finally, a day off!
I've been sleeping a ton the past day, probably about to do so a bit more. The workweek took a hell of a lot out of me.
I remember when it was frustrating, but not necessarily horribly physically taxing. I wonder if the increased stress over time is the culprit of this?
hey, low hours this week means plenty of time to myself. probably a lot of it spent recovering. we'll see.
I'm trying to be a bit less annoyed and bitter about things lately. Primarily work and schedule/time related.
Those off-the-wall times next week? Whatever, gives my feet some more time to recover, I guess.
It's a really short one today, sorry. I'm wiped.
Vacation time was a thing running through my mind today.
Some people get in one day what I get in an entire paycheck. It's imbalanced as fuck, and am I REALLY going to be able to do anything on that time? I know not every "vacation" has to be a grand excursion that you'll remember your whole life, but god damn it, there's things I actually want to do and I need time to do them. I want to visit people I'm close to sometime.
As it is, to get a full-time day off I have to work about eleven weeks. Some people can get that eleven fucking times faster.
Yes, I'm pretty fucking livid. I want to make plans to visit someone sometime, but so much is in the way and even then I really don't know if I'd have that much time.
On the plus side, when my manager discussed this with me he did say he'd be willing to pull some schedule wizardry so I'd have weekends surrounding that block of time, effectively doubling my vacation without any hit to anything else. Kind of weird, but I'm really glad for it. It'd mess with other things, but... if I went away from home, it'd be worth it.
Worst case, I guess I'll just sit on the time. Hopefully it'd accumulate somewhat faster in the future...
(Or hell, better yet, I'd be working a better paying job.)
tonight's earworm of the night: Rotting Christ - Snowing Still
I'm almost halfway through the agitating 12-day stretch. Three days more before my single day off, then... short shifts. Why make me work 18:00-21:00? You're bringing me in after the peak. I guess it'll be good to have me around to help close, though, but it just seems silly.
I've honestly kind of forgotten what daylight is. I look outside and when it's not dark at 19:00, it's disorienting. I'm used to going in when it's light, and then leaving and doing everything when it's dark. Early days are strange because I actually get out during daylight hours, and this throws me off. (I end up doing shit pretty much every one of these days, as it's my only chance to for the most part.)
I can't wait until DST is over again. That "extra" hour is always nice, and I like it when it gets dark around 16:30 or so. I dunno, maybe it's just me, I've never seen anyone else who agrees with this bit.
Maybe I've just adjusted to not seeing much daylight anymore, I dunno. There are no windows aside from the building entrances, so the state of everything outside just... ceases to exist.
7-day workweek, not halfway through it yet.
vacation time accumulation is pitiful. less than one hour for a week of work, while some people get more than I get per week in a single workday. I get you want to reward long-time employees, but jesus christ.
I'll just now be coming up on a full day of time off, after a few months. I was hoping to visit someone later in the year, but the way these things are looking I'd have to hope for some schedule wizardry, and I wouldn't even get a full week of time off.
sigh. it's times like this that make me feel truly isolated. everyone else gets multiple vacations a year, I"ll be struggling to even take one. I guess I could just spend it at home to have some time off, but... there's people I really, truly want to visit sometime.
at least the pay's better than most shit out there
hi nikolojedison! I am really interested in the Pi Zero thing. A little tiny portable laptop like the NanoNote would be cool.
There's just some weird appeal in "non-standard" computing setups to me.
Like... not your standard x64 Windows/OS X PC. Things like alternative OSes, different CPU architectures, little single-board machines.
I read someone preferred using their Raspberry Pi for things because they felt like it was "their own". I can kinda understand this, and beyond building your own desktop, it's kind of the next best thing.
I don't think these little boards are advanced enough yet to fully take over, though. If you're used to multiple monitors, going down to one is hell. Storage, while it's getting better, isn't quite there yet. Drivers and support aren't as big in most of these boards.
Still, though, they somehow fascinate me. Hell, even using older machines for tasks fascinates me, but I'd rather, say, use an RPi 3 than a PowerPC Mac these days. Less power usage and better support by far, even if I miss the things and the PPCs had their era where they were widely supported.
I also miss netbooks. Little cheap tiny machines that could do most stuff of the era. Solid.
I feel like I'm always missing everything. I feel like I'm spending more time catching up than actually interacting with people anymore, these days. I'm out for about 8-9 hours a day, then I get home and spend about an hour or two seeing what I"ve missed.
Maybe I shouldn't worry about it. I'm used to missing people, missing conversations. It happens all the time at work, why do I feel the compulsive urge to keep up with this at home so much too?
Music is an interesting thing. It's funny how everyone has their own thing that puts them in their "happy zone", so to speak. Some people like upbeat, dancy tunes, some people just like more relaxed, chill tracks... and then you have me who likes having their face shredded off. (not literally, of course.)
I just find it kinda interesting how some people can relax to something so vastly different from another. While I do generally touch base with everything, or at least try to, as I hugely believe there's value in almost all music, I find that my usual fare as of late (example linked, for the curious) isn't really something I share in common with most people. I figure that's a good example as I actually listened to it on my break at work during a hellishly fast day, and I came back feeling a ton better.
It's understandable: not everything is for everyone. I just kinda wish sometimes that music taste wasn't something people tended to look down on others for and that I knew a few more people into that kind of thing. (I used to be guilty of the first for a while, even, even if in more of a joking tone)
I feel like this is word soup by this point. I just got a phone call and nearly shit myself since I thought it was work wondering where I was at first. It turned out to be a random number. Doesn't help with the nerves, though.
there's something exhilarating about getting something up and running, fixed, or working for me.
I just set up a Raspberry Pi (specifically, RetroPie) system for a friend, and trained him on how to copy files to it. And then fixed up a controller that had a button that didn't really press well.
There's just something really satisfying about taking something and improving it, like getting a setup like this set up or repairing electronics.
Part of me wants either an ODROID-C2 or an ODROID-XU4 to play around with. The big thing stopping me is that these would, unless I switched to one for all my "secondary" computing, be expensive toys... and I feel more comfortable with the Pi's huge support base.
oh well, I guess. if there's ever an Intel board that cheap I'll have to check it out
wow, I didn't whine about work for once
(also working on the layout. soon...)
also, insom's recent post has me thinking about how I keep trying to trim things down a bit. I make some progress, but always seem to get distracted or too tired until things start getting cluttered or messy again. I'm slowly catching this sooner and sooner...
so soon, I am going to have a bit more of an in-depth discussion about this potential new thing.
I am very cautiously optimistic. I'm supposedly the only one that took this seriously, so that's one thing that at least doesn't really work against me.
I wonder if I'd be capable of the attitude needed for some other jobs. I'm overly apologetic at my current one, mostly because... I'm dealing with things people need to live comfortably -- and in some cases, live period. I feel like shit when something goes wrong, even if it's not my fault. (It's rightfully so a lot of the time when people get angry, though honestly they should get in touch with us a bit before they run out so they're ensured they'll get what they need. multiple people come by, and multiple people need the same thing, so it's not always a guarantee that we'll always have everything in stock, even if we try our goddamn best to.)
The Pi overclocked pretty successfully to 1.25ghz. I'm trying out Ubuntu MATE on it now, since I haven't really tried to use an "out of the box" distro extensively for years now and honestly I don't have the energy to keep poking at everything to keep it working all the time. It's a bit of an exaggeration, but audacious seemingly doesn't want to play audio on my Arch setup anymore and I just don't have the energy to troubleshoot it like I used to. (Which is a shame, as Arch is a speed demon compared to Raspbian, at least.)
also damn, I still haven't fixed my header. Maybe I should do that soon.
it's funny how the brain only seems to really bake up ideas in certain conditions.
"shower thoughts" are a common method, really. Showers never really inspired much creativity for me, but what seems to get me going is when I lay down before sleep, right as I settle down. I seem to just dump what's been on my mind for the day then, if there's anything.
It's a lot harder to do this elsewhere.
I played around with overclocking my Raspberry Pi 3 today. Unfortunately, I can only seem to get it running well at 1.25ghz with an overvolt of 2 - everything else throttles down or just outright halts. I could probably push it to 1.26, but I don't really know if 10mhz is really worth the extra time and effort.
Hell, I don't know if 50 is. I'm just trying to get every little boost on the thing I can, to make it even nicer to use as a secondary desktop.
sometimes, days are just kinda uneventful, for better or worse.
as expected, my work schedule is way fucked up. In a couple weeks (a week? fuck I dunno anymore) I have a full weekend (cool, I sure like being able to not do anything -- this is why I stopped looking into local events a year ago)
This is the kind of thing that's lit a fire for me to look into this other job. Even if some shit gets worse and I'm not around much, it'd... be consistent.
also, test ttbp post again. hi. let's hope we're still here
everything mostly works. my icon got deleted for some reason in the update, though. I'll fix it later.
there are some nights where everything just kinda feels dead.
it's weird, as nights have historically been (for me) when everything happens. it's part of why work was frustrating as hell sometimes, because I'd find I missed everything.
As time goes on, things slowly got pared down, and I even feel as if I've missed a lot during the day too whereas in the past I didn't feel like too much happened.
I kind of just exist in a vacuum half the time these days. It might be why I find myself falling asleep so often.
I need to get myself doing other things again, but I can't help but feel like it's wasted time if I'm not being "productive". Call it old habits from before I got hired, I guess.
(Then again, at what I make, if there's anything I can do to boost that income I'd probably do it, even if ultimately it's just a couple hundred dollars a year.)
I know I shouldn't be so focused on money. but it's tough when it gets thrown in your face all the time.
(I hope I'm not too incoherent lately)
So, we're temporarily minus one person at work. (He's on vacation and getting married.) Oh boy, I am not looking forward to the schedule fun.
I'm still super nervous, thinking about how things would change if I get that position at the financial firm. I've gotten everything taken care of and will be getting back to him about it tomorrow.
It's not the job itself that scares me - I learned a lot about how a pharmacy works, after all. My big fears are time. Will I be able to be around much, anymore? I know my schedules would change pretty drastically, and to the point where a lot of people I do stuff with now would... not be feasible anymore.
I'll also miss the people, strange as it may seem. As much as some people make me want to bash my head in, when you treat people well, they'll remember you. It's very common I run into people outside my store these days, and these cases are generally a good thing! I'd hope I'd still run into these people.
I dunno. People kinda fascinate me. Sometimes people just don't click, and this is fine. (At least, as long as you don't have to see them every damn day) But if you treat people well, it'll at least be rewarding emotionally. I see no reason to treat anybody poorly. Frustrations happen sometimes, and that's okay, as long as everyone's willing to work to overcome the issues.
Back to the whole "being around" thing, though... it makes me very glad technology like smartphones exist. I'd want to get a GPD Win, or something similar to bring around with me, if I had to start relying on other methods to get around. I've always liked the idea of little machines you can bring around like this, and it'd be nice to be able to at least keep in touch with people. (I'm not too keen on the whole Windows 10 thing, but... I feel like I'll have to learn to live with it sometime.)
This one's kind of a jumble of thoughts tonight, I guess. I guess most of it just comes down to not wanting to find myself lonely. As it is, being at work most of the day has pretty much stolen most of my contact with some people, and I guess I just don't want to lose even more of it.
Time is a bitch.
Sometimes, the silliest tasks make one seem productive.
I just freed up a ton of disk space on my laptop. Roughly... half the drive, or so. (It's got a 120GB SSD, for reference.) Feels good doing that. Maybe I'll sort out the files soon.
It's interesting how having a clean "digital space" so to speak improves the mood. Physical spaces do this too, of course, but it's a lot harder to come across extra physical space whereas disk space is a lot easier - you can just shift things around between disks, and it's not too difficult or expensive to purchase more!
I'm nervous as hell about this financial firm job offer thing. We'll ask our questions tomorrow, and evaluate the situation from there.
I'm scared. This tweet should kinda sum everything up pretty well. My biggest fears are "health/wellness" and "friends/family" put on hold, and sacrificing hobbies/interests. I already feel like I've done plenty of both.
(But what if it pays a livable wage?)
I dunno. I also fear I'd end up being the one going after people for money. People like me at my current job, even if it is a giant ball of stress sometimes. I really don't want to be "that evil guy".
(honestly, I imagine many bill collectors and other such reviled positions really don't enjoy being the "bad guy". They're just doing their job. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.)
I don't know anything anymore.
what a mood swing.
I looked at insom's recent post. (hey, we're reading each other's stuff!!)
It's interesting to think of ~town as a "fork" from where the internet was in the 1990s. It's nostalgic for me as well, but... in a different way.
It reminds me of a time where the internet just didn't seem so unwelcoming... so violent, in a way.
This probably doesn't help all those feelings of nostalgia. I've slowly disappeared more and more from the internet for this reason.
My foot pain seems to have almost completely gone away. Whether related to new insoles, a 3-day weekend, or both, we'll see.
I'm cautiously, ever-so-slightly optimistic. (Though, I'm not looking forward to another 9-hour shift.)
so I have been offered a referral to a financial firm.
...this is interesting for a few reasons.
It just feels like a whirlwind of change is hitting my life again. I understand that getting comfortable is a very bad thing, but I really at least want to get myself straightened out, and adaptable, if it makes sense.
We'll see where all of this goes.
there's always something slightly melancholy about these long weekends.
they just remind me of a time when I didn't have quite so much stress in my life. it's really, really nice to be able to just... escape for a day or two. then you get thrust back into a stressful environment.
again, though, I'm changing the way I do some things to try to minimize stress and discomfort. work is unavoidable stress, but why should I have to deal with a bunch of stress at home as well?
also, random nostalgia can be a bitch. "hey, this thing was pretty good... and cool, it's never coming back." kind of sucks, honestly. right?
just need to try to make your own positive memories in the current day. (I think nostalgia kinda stops me from doing this, fearing the time what I'm enjoying will cease to exist. but that only serves to make the present more miserable.)
I really just need to learn to live more in the present. learn from the past, and plan for the future, but don't get so absorbed in either that it keeps you from doing anything now.
I swear I'll write happier things soon! (I hope)
day 1 of shoe inserts: the pain's gone down tremendously. I'm still feeling the pain at home, but this will probably go away over the next few days, I'd imagine. (been hammering my feet for weeks)
I think the most telling time was when I got up after a break. Previously I'd stumble a bit to get my bearings as the foot pain kicked in. Didn't have that this time.
good time for 3 days off, I'd say
I've been battling with an old problem again: "crashing", or falling asleep... before I actually go to sleep.
This problem seems to come in phases. I'll be mostly fine for a little bit, then it'll start again. Usually just running out of gas while, say, finishing up one more thing I need to do. (or in some cases I'm just too drained to get ready for bed)
It's especially annoying when you add work to the equation. It means I get less "normal sleep" and most of it's just "oops, I made the mistake of settling for a moment" sleep (this sleep actually really does hit me quick - often feels like it doesn't even take a minute.)
the most annoying thing about it today is it means I can't return a DVD to someone, since I haven't finished ripping it yet. damn it. at least it's just seven and a half hours only on this shift.
also I got a pair of shoe inserts. here's hoping those help my feet a bit.
so, I bit the bullet and decided to go for one of those shoe inserts.
those things are expensive ($50) but with the way long shifts have been fucking up my feet, I think it'll be worth it. At least via discounts and coupons I can bring the price down to $35.
here's hoping to hell they work, though. it'd be nice to walk normally around the house again.
on a more positive note, I've noticed these new pillows have REALLY improved my sleep - if nothing else, I fall asleep a lot more reliably. Here's hoping that continues.
(one thing I like about ttbp is that if you have more, it's super easy to add - you're not locked into an entry until the day's done)
never mind re: hours changing. this week and next are fucked up, but the new hire refused a drug test so we're continuing on the same thing. they're annoying hours that hurt, but at least they're consistent.
as time goes on, i feel like "comfort" spending is less and less of a dumb idea. stuff like memory foam pillows ($50 for two pillows, and I am not regretting this one bit) and my Corsair K50 ($80 for a keyboard? sure, but it's a really nice keyboard with a wrist rest). maybe spending a bit on more comfortable shoes as well, or insoles or something.
and with nine hour, stressful days, my feet tend to hurt these days. it probably doesn't help that all the walking probably pounds the shoes horribly worn and flat.
I guess I'm still changing things, albeit ever-so-slowly. one of these days, soon enough, I'll be generally happier -- or at least, less irritable over some things.
I really didn't come here to gripe over work and such all the time, but these days it feels like working is all I ever do. Then I come home and everything's already been missed for the day, so I just kind of... exist in a vacuum for a while, or something. I feel like it's been bugging some people I'm close to, and I hate the thought of being a burden on someone.
(also I'm annoyed that I never got to ask a couple questions I had at work. maybe tomorrow I'll have to force them in, or something. I dunno.)
I dreamt that a doctor tried to put me on seven different medications, and one of them made me particularly uncomfortable because I knew I'd be wed to it for the rest of my life. I don't know if this kind of thing is an inevitability, or... what. I hate thinking about it. I just see the depressing side of life, anymore - people requiring expensive medicine, not feeling well. It wears one down, only seeing this side of everything, not seeing the fact that everyone else (or, well, a good chunk) is potentially leading very full and enjoyable lives despite this downside. Customers and coworkers alike, I only see the negative sides of everything, and never get enough of a chance to see any of the positives.
I'm gonna shut the brain dump off here for now. I really, really want to start putting happier things up sometime. These past few days have been super negative, and that's no good.
an amusing related story: I was leaving a grocery store once, ran into one of said customers. Went to pick up food, and it turns out we went to the exact same place.
welp, today begins the new work schedule.
new hire means I'm getting shifted around a bunch. these next two weeks are both super different from each other.
I'll still be floating around, though I dunno quite how much. hopefully it doesn't fuck me up too bad.
hey! i'm the top user of ttbp aside from endorphant himself. whoa.
I had a discussion about identity and the internet earlier. It's interesting to think about, really - generally, as it has been, you get a lot more say in your identity on the internet than in real life.
you can choose your name (same in real life, to an extent, but it's also a lot harder), you can choose how you represent yourself, and even to various extents how you represent yourself. hell, look in the corner of my page, I generally use a fluffy fantasy creature thing to represent myself on the internet.
i'm fortunate in that my physical self makes me very comfortable. not everyone has that luxury. (who knows, at some point this may change... but living in the now, I'm happy.)
it baffles me why some people are so quick to leap on others over such things. I can understand not understanding it, sure - hell, I was even there at one point. but... why do people get angry, rather than try to figure something out? (even if they don't dive headfirst into discovery, the whole attacking thing confuses me.)
I dunno. I've always kinda lived by not interfering with others' personal lives if they're not causing me problems if I can help it. Maybe even to a fault.
if I can think of anything to add to this I'll do it later, it's 8:22 and I'm tired and I'm really only up this late because I fell asleep earlier. my new pillows kick ass
hey guys, brief history of my time in ~town
people are cool and I like it here
I actually thought it was a mildly secretive place at one point, and invitation was required. hell, I even hesitated to submit my registration initially (though part of that was only because I wasn't exactly sure about how to handle the keys)
kind of silly, in retrospect.
I still have a little bit more I'd like to do with the layout of this. Maybe I'll add a background image. I've thought of a few different icons for the corner, but that one's basically my "main" icon. Sometimes simple is best. (I kinda wonder how endorphant would handle an icon thing if I'd been around in time, haha) The gray header bar was a testing thing I liked enough to keep around.
Maybe I'll change the font. I've warmed way up to courier as of late, though.
It's interesting how I'm keeping both a ttbp and some kind of personal own log thing or something, I guess they'll serve different purposes
(oh crap the subtitle sticks around um uh time to play with the CSS)
something interesting about ~town is that it seems like the first legitimately "new" thing I've brought to my life in years.
like... even despite getting a job in 2015, I feel like I'd stagnated completely. No new experiences, I just had money and still did nothing. I just spend all my time working now, instead of sleeping. (seriously, my sleep's gone down the gutter, especially lately)
it fits right in around the time I decided I really need to change a big handful of everything, too. I'm not 17 no matter how I feel anymore, I need to actually start acting like an adult in some fashion. making big changes to my life when needed is part of this.
maybe more new things. maybe just correcting age-old bad behaviors. I dunno. But let's try to slowly change things.
Doing more theming. I notice that I'm the only one (at least of last night) to theme their ttbp
I do hope theming catches on a bit more. endorphant did mention adding some theme support and other options, so I'd like to see where these go
poke! ow
there's something weirdly relaxing and/or welcoming about ttbp, I have no idea what exactly it is
Work is short tomorrow so mayb I'm going to get started on that layout. I'm still not entirely sure what I want but I do have a few ideas!
I kinda like xkeeper's page design. Maybe something inspired by it. I don't know what a div is anymore!!
I miss being up to date on HTML/CSS