"The truth of the world is that is is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the twelve-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control, the truth is far more frightening; no one is in control, the world is rudderless."
--Alan Moore
I've been thinking about that quote a lot lately.
In the month or so since my last post I've been basically keeping my head above water and trying to live as productive a life as possible. It's easier than it sounds, oddly, but it costs a lot …
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."
--Mal Reynolds, Firefly
I've been relying heavily upon timed posts these last few weeks because my mental health has been forcing me to choose between being able to get essential stuff done (read: work) and, well, anything else. Come the end of the (work) day, all I have the compute cycles to do is goof off with a side of doomscrolling (because when I don't I get blindsided by The Next Damned Thing). Mostly, seeing the world operate on Covid Standard Time is disheartening and the …
For reasons I don't quite understand I always equated growing up with situations where you can walk into someplace to do something, talk to someone, and immediately have a real conversation about life where you live. I was struck by this when I went to the car dealership to sell my mom's car the other day. While at the dealership talking to the salesman we chatted about where we were from (the yinzer shibboleth of "I'm from Pittsburgh," "Oh - where at in Pittsburgh?" "I'm from X." "I'm from Y, great to meet you!"), which lead to who we knew, when …
I flew back to Pennsylvania about two weeks ago to wrap up my mom's estate.
I'm really not sure how else to put it. It's short, to the point, but nothing at all like simple.
Lyssa and I flew back on two different days: I got us set up in a hotel and
tried to sleep off the jetlag because I flew out at 0700 from California. Lyssa flew out just before midnight a day later. As it turned out we both slept all day and night because we just didn't have it in us to do anything else.
Things seem to have calmed down a little so I've had more compute cycles free to do stuff. The last week at work was uncommonly... I don't want to say "uneventful," but "less eventful." This left me a little time to work on some projects that have been hanging fire for the last month or two.
Mom's estate is still in a holding pattern, more or less. I'm still trying to get through to her tax preparer, with no success. I've also reached out to the estate attorney I'm working …
This blog post best read while listening to this playlist.
I keep trying to figure out how to start this blog post. I've started, stopped, pondered, and taken a shower while thinking about it off and on ever since my last post went live back in February. Unfortunately, life in the twenty-first century is.. well, being life in the twenty-first century. The laundry list of things that have taken up most of my time is unfortunately way too long: Java and log4j have cost me more nights of sleep and almost-but-not-quite migraines in the last month or so than I …
Disclaimer: I'm not getting anything for these reviews. I haven't been asked to write them, I'm not being compensated for them, and I don't have an in with any of these companies. My Amazon links are affiliate links but I rarely get anything from them (and you are, of course, free to look at the affiliate link, do your own search on Amazon, and buy it on your own). I'll also probably update this post once in a while as I try new products. Also, none of what I'm writing is medical advice. Some of the stuff I tried may …
pandemic fine - noun phrase - A state of being in which you are employed and healthy during a pandemic but you're also tired and depressed and feel like trash all the time.
Seems like a pretty cynical take on life, doesn't it? In a sense, it is; it comes across as somewhat defeatist, as a way to write off much of the experience of life. Or at least as a dismissive and macho way of ignoring parts of reality. However, if you dig into it a little bit there is also more truth to it than it would seem at a cursory glance.
I've already written quite a bit lately on the topics of death and grief so …
