Updates

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Oops, I guess I haven’t been posting here as often as I’d like. I guess I’ve mostly been using Discord to keep in touch with folks.

I’m fairly busy at the day job. I’ve already rolled out a few important features for our websites and soon I’ll be ramping up on another project. So far everyone there has been super great and I’m glad I lucked out with this job, even without the societal/financial catastrope that happened shortly after I started.

Isolation hasn’t been great for me. I’ve been having a pretty bad fibro flareup lately, and I still haven’t quite shaken whatever this dang thing I have is. It’s not gotten severe enough to require medical attention but at the same time I’d love to not be missing occasional workdays when I’m feeling especially lousy. It might also just be part of the fibro flare, too. Fortunately the new job has unlimited sick days, because dang I’ve been taking a lot of them this past month.

I’ve had to switch back to decaf because it turns out having even half-caf espresso every day has gotten me sensitized to caffeine again, and I was starting to have panic attacks again. Phooey. I still love my Flair though. I’ve also had a couple of people ask me about selling my custom tampers so I should see about, like, doing that.

Non-COVID-19 medical care wonkiness

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So, because I’ve changed insurance plans, I need to change my specialists as well. One of those is my sleep specialist, which I mostly want to get a DME provider set up with my insurance, which requires a screening in order to get DME approval.

Because of COVID-19, appointments are limited, and they can’t see me until June 1, which means if I need to refresh my mask et al I’ll have to go out-of-pocket until then. Not the worst thing in the world (and honestly I found out-of-pocket to be cheaper than the copay on my previous DME anyway), but annoying.

But there’s a bit more that this leads to which is a little wonky… because of COVID-19 they had to ask me the usual appointment pre-screening questions regarding SARS-NCoV-2 symptoms and exposure. But those questions are based on right now, and probably won’t be valid in three months. Like, one of them was “have you traveled in the last 14 days or been exposed to someone known to have the virus in that time?” and regardless of how I answer now that has no bearing on how it’ll be on June 1. Similarly, just because I have no symptoms or fever right now doesn’t mean anything about how I’ll be in June.

If the appointment were within two weeks I’d say this was reasonable, but… it’s two months away. How does that make any sense?

Surprise frustrations

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So, I am using way more soap than usual when washing my hands, which has been drying out the skin a lot. To try to counteract that I’ve been using lotion a lot more. But it turns out that this leads to more tactile stimulation on my fingers (basically I constantly feel like I’ve just been soaking in the bathtub for an hour) which in turn leads to a sensory overload/pain flare, and it doesn’t even help with the dry skin anyway, and the dry skin also leads to its own level of sensory issues too. And Fiona’s insistence on sitting on my lap while I work isn’t helping at all. Just before lunch I had a bit of a meltdown because of it.

I guess I need to figure out a better way to periodically clean my hands without leading to other issues.

I could also really use a haircut, because my wild scraggly hair getting in my face is making this worse. Of course all the hair stylists are (rightfully) closed right now. I suppose I could break out my Flowbee but that feels like it’s taking the “mental stress due to isolation” look a bit too far. (Plus I don’t want my hair to be that short right now. I need every femininity cue I can get these days.) Maybe it’s time to finally learn how to use hair clips, but I suspect feeling them bouncing against my face would make me flare too.

Why is my brain like this? Ugh.

Teleconferencing tips, advanced edition

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In the last article I talked about how to teleconference without too much hassle; my main, key point was to wear headphones. But headphones can be a problem for some for various reasons (sensory issues, needing to get up and walk around, and so on).

Since I teleconference from a home recording studio, I have a reasonable amount of semi-pro audio gear. Lately I’ve been experimenting to see about a headphone-free setup that still works, and I’m pretty sure this setup is fine and workable. However, do note that it’s a lot more expensive than just wearing headphones.

Read more…

Mosaic Palette 2S on an Artillery Genius

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A few days ago my Palette 2S arrived, and I’ve been having some amount of fun with it. I won’t do a full review of it (there are plenty of those on YouTube, after all) but I’d like to talk about some of the things I’ve learned and how I have it set up.

Read more…

Join me on Discord

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Just as a reminder, if you’re bored and want to chat with other bored people about geeky things, I have a small but friendly Discord community. We mostly talk about the sorts of stuff I talk about here, but lots of hobbies are welcome.

I’m trying to keep it cozy and comfortable, so if you need somewhere that’s cozy and comfortable, hopefully this is a reasonable place for you!

Updates from Elsewhere

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So, my cold symptoms came back somewhat today, so I took another sick day and took it easy. And now I’m feeling better, so, yay.

The last few days I’ve been having trouble with my sleep apnea again so I’m giving my CPAP another shot. Since I’m on new insurance and getting healthcare at a different place now maybe I’ll get a new sleep doctor who actually listens to my concerns instead of just taking shortcuts based on simple apnea.

I also of course still want to get tested for COVID-19, if only for peace of mind. I’m not fond of this constant uncertainty. If I can get a clean diagnosis I can stop having an anxiety attack every time I cough or feel short of breath. And on the off chance I do have the virus I know what to prepare for. (Plus I switch to no-contact grocery and food delivery for a while.)

Inside I’m going to ruminate about the virus itself.

Read more… (COVID-19 rumination)

Today’s Catalina iTunes Music gripe

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iOS and watchOS have a great little remote control app for iTunes, which lets you control iTunes playback. It’s useful when I need to play or pause music during a typing break, or if I get a phone call while I’m in another room from my computer or whatever.

It’s supposed to work with Music.app.

It doesn’t.

I mean, it’ll pretend to connect just fine, but it never actually shows any of the playback information, and the controls do nothing.

Bonus fuckery: iTunes Match completely messed up the Fingertips suite on They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18. Tracks were out of order (yeah, yeah, I know it’s supposed to be shuffled but my brain has a thing) and half of them were glitched out and truncated.

Some tips for teleconferencing

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Right now a whole bunch of people are starting to teleconference without having done such a thing before, and some of the hardware setup is a little bit unexpected. So speaking as someone who’s been doing teleconferencing for a while, here’s some tips to help everyone get along better:

  1. Please use headphones! If you do nothing else in this list, please do this. Headphone use alone will make the biggest difference. The reason for this is that your microphone will pick up sound from the speakers as well, and using headphones means that your audio won’t feed back into the microphone, so you won’t have feedback loops or echoes, and it will cut down on how much the software needs to do “echo cancellation” which is a big part of why you talking makes everyone else cut off.

  2. Also mute your speakers, if your headphones don’t do this automatically. If you’re using a laptop/tablet/phone this probably won’t be an issue, but on a desktop computer this might still be something you have to do yourself.

  3. If you’re not speaking, mute your microphone. Especially if there’s background noise (kids, cats, music, etc.) or if you have a cough or cold.

  4. Please try to limit the amount of background noise, as well; if you have a very meowy cat or barky dog, close your door with them on the other side (if possible). Turn off your radio or TV.

  5. Only connect/listen with one device at a time; this is sort of an extended version of point 1 above, but if you are listening in on a speakerphone or radio or TV or the like, using your headphones won’t prevent feedback from happening. Any noise that someone in the room can hear, your microphone can hear, and anything your microphone can hear gets broadcast back to the conference. You really don’t want your microphone to hear the other participants of the teleconference.

  6. If you’re on a laptop and don’t need to type during the conference, use the microphone on the laptop, which is almost certainly going to sound better than whatever’s on your headset. However, if you need to type, please use a headset with a built-in microphone instead; most laptops these days accept a 2.5mm telephone headset (the kind with four metal “rings” on the plug) and this will reduce the amount of keyboard noise that the microphone picks up.

  7. If you’re using a headset with a built-in microphone, make sure the microphone is clipped to your shirt rather than hanging loose. If it hangs loose it might brush against your shirt (which makes noise) or knock against your desk (which makes noise). These noises can be very distracting and disruptive to others on the conference.

  8. Similarly, please, please, please don’t join in while outdoors if you can help it; even the slightest breeze will also be picked up as a noisy rumble. (As will all background noise.)

  9. Finally: Most teleconferencing systems will show you if the microphone is picking up and sending your audio, or will have a test mechanism where you can check to see if it’s working. Please test this before joining in on the call, which will cut down on the amount of time you have to spend asking, “Can you hear me?” or having others ask, “Are you muted?”

With a little bit of effort we can all make our newly-found virtual presences go a lot more smoothly and less aggravating for everyone.