I've spent the last couple of days trying to figure out how to write this post. And I'm not sure, even now if I know how to write this. I've been struggling with it for a couple of days and, somewhere deep inside my software, avoidance has been keeping me from thinking about or writing about it.
I mentioned last year that my mom had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was undergoing treatment for it. I stayed with her for a couple of weeks to take care of her. Let's start there.
Content warnings: Cancer, medical science, stuff in …
It's been nearly a month since I've last had time to post anything here. Earlier I'd expressed hope that things would slow down and I'd have some compute cycles free to get my breath back, maybe go for a walk and do something fun. Unfortunately, as so often happens these days, that was wishful thinking. I wish that I had a lot of good news to write about, but unfortunately I don't. Just a little. If this post is going to be too much for you in your personal situation, close the tab. Seriously. If you've got your own ten …
CW: Stuff about medicine, post-surgical care, and cancer. Feel free to close the tab if you need to.
It's been a couple of weeks since my last update. I was working on a different post in my spare time but I'm not entirely pleased with how it's turning out, plus I think it needs a lot more work, so I thought it'd be easier to write about the last week and change. By "easier," I mean "easier to write," not "easier to handle."
A little over a week ago, on the 21st of August, I was killing time with mom …
CW: Stuff about medicine, post-surgical care, and wounds. Feel free to close the tab if you need to.
This won't be easy for me to write, mostly because I'm tired, scatterbrained, and trying to put everything in some kind of order. I'm pretty stressed out and my allergies aren't helping, either. It's also been difficult to find ideas to put together right now.
Cancer is a nasty adversary. It runs you down, robs you of your strength, and tries to steal away your dignity. The overall supply of dignity in the world right now is starting to run low and …
Observant readers may have been wondering why I seemed to drop off the grid for a couple of days. Timed posts kept going up as expected, and undoubtedly other socnets seemed like they were being operated by my exocortex (which they were, for the most part). You've probably been wondering what happened.
You know what? Fuck it. I don't have the compute cycles right now to do a proper intro. I count it as fortune that I have the compute cycles just to type this right now. There's no easy or polite way to talk about it. My concentration is …
Life's busy right now. I'm being pulled in several different directions, sometimes simultaneously, which hasn't left a lot of time or compute cycles to do any writing. What I have had time for lately has been a lot of "fire and forget" stuff, which doesn't really do anyone any good. Failing that, long hours at my day job doing what I do best. I don't think any more need be said on that point.
The next release of Byzantium Linux (v0.5b) is due in five days, so that's where most of my spare time goes - knocking out the next …
This is probably one of the hardest blog posts I've ever tried to write. It's hard to write something like this so that it's not all drama, not all pathos, not all "holiday tragedy human interest story" (which is its own unique flavour of article, to be sure), and yet not come across like I'm trying to manipulate people by tugging at their heart strings. So, to that end, I've opted to write only the facts as I understand them, with a minimum of linguistic ornamentation.
Mylia, Chey, Mika, and Cindy are old friends of the family, and rented a …
As I write this, Bill (my father in law) just came out of surgery to implant a defibrillator to monitor his heart. I'm told that the procedure went smoothly, and he's recovering nicely. He'll be spending about four days in the hospital while they experiment with his medication a little.
After work on Friday night, Lyssa, Laurelinde, and I packed our gear to make the trek northward back to Pittsburgh, by way of Chili's for dinner just of the Beltway (to give the bridge and tunnel crowd a chance to get home and clear the way). We packed as little …
Last weekend wound up a bit in the air due to an emergency at the last minute - one of Lyssa's relatives died unexpectedly and the family was hastily reconvened for her funeral, which was held on Saturday. because I'd been on the road the weekend before, I didn't have to make the trek back to Pennsylvania, much to my relief. Grant picked up Lyssa sometime on Friday while I was at work and returned to their homestead, which left me with some time on my hands. The first thing I did was move my car maintenance appointment back to Saturday …
