This is sort of going up a week late (which is fine, because there’s exactly nothing I can do about any of this in any kind of active sense and keeping my mouth shut in the moment is probably for the best given how many people are absolutely fine with exposing themselves to potential issues in the future by speaking aloud some potentially illegal things (or at least some things that could make them a target should the worst happen)), but what a fucking wild weekend we had. Nothing quite like a former president who is currently running for president getting shot at while he’s giving a campaign speech. Nothing like spending a weekend watching the political party of calls for violence, virulent hate, and increasing violent rhetoric decide to flip the script and blame their rivals for supposedly creating a world in which a hateful bigot gets shot at by another hateful bigot. Nothing quite like watching most of the internet and media either move on from an assassination attempt incredibly quickly or spend an unbearable amount of time luxuriating in the dunks (internet) or endless punditry (media) of the presidential candidate who was shot at and the hateful bigot in the audience who died. Just completely unprecedented times. Genuinely, the only part of this that is playing out exactly as it always does is the fact that this latest instance of gun violence will do absolutely nothing to change gun laws in my country of birth. The United States of America is pretty dang fucked. Not, like, in a hopeless “we’re fully in fascism” kind of way. We’re not there yet. Just in the “shit is so wild that everything just seems normal now” and “guns are more valuable than human lives in the US” kind of ways. Which, you know, are pretty fucked up.
Continue readingProcessing
Problem-Solving Via Repetitive Work And The Back Of My Mind
I spent my entire afternoon turning something on and then off and then on again. That’s kind of par-to-the-course for my job, since I’m a tester and sometimes what I’m testing is what happens when I turn a thing off and back on. This time, I was helping a coworker chase down a really bad issue he ran into a couple times in the last twenty-four hours. The likelihood of it ever happening was low, but it was a significant enough issue that the off-chance of it happen was so bad that we dropped everything to work on hunting this bug down. After a few hours of work, though, we never managed to reproduce it, which usually means there is another hidden step somewhere in the process that we missed during today’s work. Such is the nature of testing, though. Lots of effort for zero pay off, sometimes, paired with the possibility that we’re going to find the issue the instant we stop looking for it. It can be a tiring, frustrating job at times.
Continue readingSilence And The Heart Of The Problem
It can be difficult for me to take a moment to quietly think something over.
I’ve spent so much time trying to fill the space in my life that used to be occupied by friends and living in the world at large. Podcasts, audio books, music, video games, and even talking to myself. So much of what occupies my days is something I started to help me get through the periods when I feel like the weight of the pandemic is going to crush me.
Continue readingWriting Out My Problems
As I’ve been adjusting to the added labor of composing (and frequently rewriting) a blog post for every day of the week, I’ve felt tired and worn out more frequently than usual. Which makes sense. I’ve added two daily tasks to my day-to-day workload: writing a new blog post and editing the one that will go up the next morning. It’s not an insignificant amount of labor, even if sometimes it takes me only half an hour. Usually, it takes more than that.
Continue readingLearning to Live with Yourself
I’ve spent a lot of time with myself, lately. Despite working pretty hard to make sure I talk to people outside my household every day, messaging people constantly, and spending more time bothering my coworkers during my work-weeks than is strictly necessary, there are more hours in the day than I can fill with other people. I don’t know if you’ve ever picked up on the theme in my many blog posts, but I don’t really like spending time with myself most days. I’ve got a lot of baggage, spend a lot of time dwelling on negativity, have a tendency to get caught up in my own feelings, and am really not very nice to myself. I’m not exactly the best person to keep myself company.
It Was the Best of Times AND the Worst of Times
Despite all of my preparations, last week was both a great week and a terrible week. I had a schedule, a to-do list, plenty of projects to work on, books all lined up for reading, some new games to play, and a new exercise regimen that would allow me to get a close to full workout in at home. Yet I made it through only two days before I started to fall apart.