busybee fluffy rambles

So last night I kind of hit rock bottom, in that I was incredibly depressed and ruminating about every single mistake I’d made in life and so on. I had a good cry and went to bed at 10 PM (and didn’t use my CPAP because my nose was all stuffy), and then the next morning woke up at 6 AM, still feeling kinda like crap, and I stayed in bed until 7:30. But when I got up I felt better, and I ended up going to the grocery store at like 8 or so and bought stuff for making a decent breakfast for once.

Today was basically a self-care day, and I think between having reduced my nortriptyline dose, having gotten a full 8 hours' sleep, not having used CPAP, and having been taking magnesium supplements, well, at least one of those things helped out. And today I was… well, not pain-free, but lower pain than I’d felt in a while. This afternoon I ended up taking a brief walk and managed to go a lot further than usual, too, although it was still only like a mile total. But I didn’t feel completely worn out by it.

Kitt wrote an entry about splitting a pastry in thirds, which has a few different solutions. I hashed out what I thought was a correct solution in the comments but I’d actually made a pretty big mistake that came from me not actually drawing a diagram. So here’s a version with diagrams.

I’m in the midst of a really bad fibro flareup lately, and am burning through my sick days at work pretty quickly. It’s frustrating and I need a way out, and something else that I can do as sustainable income.

I’m in a bunch of differently-intersectional support circles, and I’ve noticed the following:

Disability circles: Doesn’t understand the impact of my disability on my profession (because they don’t understand what my profession entails)

Technology circles: Doesn’t understand the impact of my disability on my profession (because they don’t understand what my disability entails)

The thin segment of disability+technology together: Doesn’t have any answers either, just sympathy and relatable experiences with not knowing what the hell to do

I keep asking in technology circles to see if anyone knows other jobs that would use my brain without needing to use my body and I keep on having to grow the list longer and longer with preemptions. No, I can’t go into management; I’m not good at coordinating other peoples' moving parts and it’s not what satisfies me as an engineer, and the brain fog from the pain makes this not a thing I’m likely to be able to get good at. No, I can’t go into teaching or training; that has even more requirements and rigidity in terms of my scheduling and I cannot do anything that requires that I be available at precise times on specific days.

I ask in disability circles, and there’s another, different list; no, I can’t use voice recognition software to program (not while there’s shared open-plan workspaces or I’m working in languages which aren’t suited to it – and I usually don’t have a choice of language). I still can’t go into management; it’s a completely different set of skills and not a natural progression. I already have a good ergonomic setup, both at home and at work. And employers don’t look too kindly on me smoking weed all day.

And in the intersectional circle, the only response I ever get is: “I have no idea, let me know if you figure something out.”

One of my favorite YouTube cooking shows is the eponymous one run by Barry Lewis, formerly known as “My Virgin Kitchen.” Given how long it’s been running and how many videos Barry has made over the years, there are certainly some standards that happen.

So, in the great tradition of Internets past, here’s a good old-fashioned drinking game. Actual amounts to be determined at the discretion of the viewer.

A few days ago I watched season 5 of Black Mirror, a show I have a sort of love-hate relationship with. The premises are usually pretty interesting, but the morals feel heavy-handed and often don’t even say anything of actual substance beyond “Technology is bad” and “Privacy is good.” It tries to be a modern-day Twilight Zone, but I feel like most of the plots in Black Mirror were actually done better by the original run of the older series.

(As a note, I’ve seen the first two episodes of the current Twilight Zone revival and they’re fantastic. I need to get around to watching the rest of it at some point.)

Anyway. Season 5 returns to the series' original 3-story-per-season format, which helps to keep things fairly tight and focused, unlike the sprawling, interconnected mess that was season 4. (Okay, “Arkangel” was pretty good, and “USS Callister” was at least a fun heist episode, although it over-relied on a bunch of tropes which rubbed me in the wrong way but that’s a subject for a different blog entry.)

So far, critics seem to be loving the first episode (“Striking Vipers”), just apathetic to the second episode (“Smithereens”), and absolutely loathing the third episode (“Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too”). My feelings on the episodes are pretty much completely inverted from that – “Striking Vipers” was just okay (with a decent, but hollow, payoff at the end), “Smithereens” was a lot of setup for a story that didn’t have a lot of substance, and “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” is probably my favorite episode of the entire series so far.

Some more detailed thoughts have been pinging around in my head for the last few days so I figure I’d share them. I’m going to try to limit any actual spoilers here, but you probably need to watch the episodes to have a point of reference; this isn’t a review, but neither is it a recap.

Let’s see, where am I at right now…

• Sleep: I got a weighted blanket on Meh. I’ve slept with it two nights. First night my sleep was aborted because of a… thing, second night I slept pretty well under it and woke up sore in the morning as if I’d been lifting weights for the last several hours. Interesting.

• My new CPAP mask has been working pretty well for me. Although somehow I managed to not only take it off but take it apart in my sleep last night. Wat.

• The… thing: I was feeling a mysterious pain in my left leg and hip starting on… Tuesday, I think? and it was getting worse and worse, and felt a lot like the DVT I had back in November 2017 which threw a clot and turned into a pulmonary embolism which wasn’t exactly a fun experience that I have any interest in repeating anytime soon. So I went to the ER to get it checked out, and it turned up… nothing. So, good news, no DVT. The doctor suggested I just take it easy for the next few days, which I am trying to do, and oddly enough I’m feeling a lot better, go figure. Also I’m glad I’m with Kaiser because the whole thing only cost me $15.

• But it’s hard for me to take things easy because I want to get my home clean, because my birthday is coming up soon and I am intending to host a completely unrelated pizza party at my home. (Incidentally, if you are in the Seattle area and are interested in pizza and you think I know you well enough to let you into my home, let me know and I’ll maybe extend you an invitation to the party!) Fortunately a friend is coming over tomorrow to help me out with the cleaning stuff (for which I am incredibly grateful!) but I am oh so very tired. So I mean I’m taking things easy at the moment, but I’d rather not.

Remember the iPhone sync issue I was having? Which had me switching back to my 6S and planning to sell the XR? Well, it started happening on the 6S too, a couple weeks ago, so I’m glad I never managed to sell the XR. (That and it would have been a nightmare).

Anyway both of my phones are now stuck in this no-sync state, so here’s the Apple Feedback (née Radar) I submitted last night. Maybe someone else will enjoy reading it, or maybe it’ll just get a bunch of search hits from other people with the problem. (I have a few acquaintences at Apple who are already looking at it, at least.)

Whenever Apple talks about a new piece of high-end hardware at WWDC, the Internet resonates: That’s so overpriced! Why would anyone pay that much money for a piece of hardware? A Hackintosh would cost way less! Apple is such a ripoff!

The thing is, the reason these hardware announcements are made at the WorldWide Developer Conference is because the conference is for developers. People who are building the software for people to use. And a lot of that software is for highly-specialized, resource-intense purposes.

Yeah, the average consumer doesn’t need to handle thousands of audio tracks and software instruments at once. The average consumer doesn’t need to handle multiple simultaneous streams of uncompressed 8K video. The average consumer doesn’t care about the latest API features in the next version of macOS or iOS. But the average consumer isn’t who’s being talked to in these presentations. There’s a reason the consumer devices get their own “town hall” events with an entirely different tone.