Still looking for work queue management stuff

Hey! As I’m trying to get more serious about my music contracting stuff, I’m looking for a better way of managing my projects and requests and so on.

Here’s the criteria I’m going for:

  • Self-hostable (and ideally free)

    I do not want to be beholden to someone company’s capricious whims about the future of their exponential growth platform.

  • Public vs. private vs. shareable items

    It would be super useful for me to be able to link to a page which tells people how much work I have pending and also maybe be able to designate items as whether the public can see the specifics.

    Having a means of letting people also see progress on their specific items would be great, but not a requirement.

    I definitely need to be able to make some specifics or even the project/task names hidden to the public, but I still want people to be able to see that there is something going on even if they don’t know what.

  • Nested items and/or project groupings

    When working on music, I want to be able to see what work needs to be done on a per-project basis, but also be able to see what work needs to be done in general. Ideally this would be a “containment” concept (i.e. sub-tasks of a larger task) and not a “relation” concept. Which is to say, there needs to be actual hierarchy.

  • Freeform text entry for projects and tasks

    Usually client requests come with a whole bunch of information that needs to be browseable, and keeping it associated with the request itself would be stellar.

  • Kanban view

    Being able to see the tasks in terms of a pending/in progress/delivered/complete view where I can move stuff from left to right as it progresses would be super helpful.

    Ideally things in the “complete” column would automatically age out.

  • Priorities and due dates

    Sometimes a task has to get done by a certain time. Sometimes a task is a “nice to have.” Sometimes a task is just a placeholder for what work might eventually need to happen.

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February plans

Hey y'all! February is here! Oh gosh!

My big thing this month will be making as much music as I can for Strawberry Jam. February and November are my two big music-making months (November being when I do Novembeat normally, although this year it was taken up with other things).

I’m also hoping to do a second season of Transformative Meditations, also for Strawberry Jam.

I also have a couple of concerts lined up, one tomorrow and one next Friday.

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Are you having COMPUTER PROBLEMS?

As I mentioned on Mastodon and Bluesky, my gaming PC got infected by malware/ransomware, particularly Azov and Expiro. I’m not sure how my computer got infected but this was the push I needed to switch it over to Linux, now that VRChat and SteamVR run pretty well on Linux anyway.

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Vertigo progress

Today I finally had an appointment with an ENT and an audiologist, as part of trying to figure out what’s going on with my vertigo.

The audiologist didn’t find anything wrong with my hearing and said it’s normal for someone of my age. (She also told me the correct pronunciation of “tinnitus.” It’s like TIN-nit-iss.) She didn’t have any idea what might be underlying my tinnitus but I’ve had it my whole life and it doesn’t seem to be relevant to anything going on now.

The ENT didn’t see anything particularly out of the ordinary with my sinuses from what he could see in this basic exam, but he wanted to bring me in for a more focused CT scan, especially since my previous cranial CT scan found sinus polyps as being a thing, and I have such a long history of chronic sinus issues. So that’ll happen in a month. In the meantime he also referred me to a physical therapist that can do vestibular rehabitation, and he thinks the prognosis for that is really good.

Hopefully I’ll be able to feel comfortable driving again soon, because gosh do I not like being stuck in my little bubble.

I don’t have a whole lot to say right now

I knew things were going to be bad, but I wasn’t expecting just how out-loud bad they’ve been starting on day 1.

Erin in the Morning is a great site to follow. Also What The Fuck Just Happened Today?

I have deactivated my Facebook. Not that I was very active there anyway but it’s clearly not the place for me, per the CEO’s own missive.

I’m flying my pride flag high. Soon I’ll be hosting someone who’s escaping from a deep-red state for a couple weeks, I hope to do more to help my local community.

Everything important in my life feels like it’s either under attack or has become a shouting match.

I hope I can get in a good headspace for working on music. I have a game jam coming up this weekend and a month-long one in February.

Tomorrow I have a small show in VRChat and then I have my appointment with the ENT which will hopefully help me find a solution for my vertigo, and after that I have the first night of choir practice for this season, and I’m holding on to what I can.

Yet another TODO list

Stuff on my plate right now, for the immediate future:

  • Have some lunch
  • Finish reorganizing my bedroom
  • Laundry
  • Get around to editing and posting my VRChat concert recordings
  • Tidy up my recording studio

Longer-term things:

  • Get around to replacing the failing security camera on my studio entryway
  • Work on some music, gosh darnit
  • Gather and donate/sell all the disused crap treasures I don’t want anymore that could do others much more good
  • All the other stuff

SOMA Connect + shairport-sync

I’ve reorganized my bedroom and as part of it I decided to finally address the ongoing issues with my audio setup in there. I have an old AirPort Express which I was using as an AirPlay receiver so that I could play music and podcasts and such on the (rather nice) hi-fi speakers, but it’s been super unreliable as of late, and even when it does remain connected, it generates random popping noises on the speakers — not great when I’m trying to sleep!

So anyway I was looking up various aftermarket AirPlay receivers, and most of them are pretty expensive, but then I realized that there’s probably a way of receiving AirPlay on a Raspberry Pi, and yes, there is, and then just as I was about to look for used Raspberry Pis to install this on, I remembered I already have a Raspberry Pi, in my bedroom, in the very same nightstand I would be putting a new one in: because I have SOMA’s older smart shades which use a rebadged Raspberry Pi as their Bluetooth-to-HomeKit bridge.

And the SOMA Connect image is just running Linux (specifically Rasbian 10) and some proprietary software.

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meh

The reports we received had enough information to evaluate your condition.

You said you were unable to work as of 05/15/2022 because of fibromyalgia, chronic pain, arthritis of hands and knees, vertigo, hypermobility spectrum disorder, depression, panic disorder, anxiety, and ADHD.

The evidence shows you have received treatment and assessment for these conditions.

We do not have sufficient vocational information to determine whether you can perform any of your past relevant work. However, based on the evidence in file, we have determined that you can adjust to other work. Because you can still perform some type of work, you are not considered disabled. Therefore, a period of disability cannot be established.

If your condition gets worse and keeps you from working, please contact any Social Security office about filing another application.

Given how many times I had to file a vocational report (at great length, in longhand, which FUCKING HURTS) I’m guessing they just never fucking received it. And of course, I’d love to work, but nobody wants to hire me for the number of hours I can work doing what I’m able to do, and commuting is also quite difficult for me.

I’m still waiting to hear back from my disability attorney but she hasn’t responded to any of my messages over the past couple weeks. Guess I need to send her a text on Monday.

In the meantime I’ve applied for all of the state-level things I can find, and it turns out that they do not require me to be declared disabled federally to be a possibility. Washington Connection is super helpful.

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Tyler update

I forgot to post about it here but Tyler’s problem turned out to be much simpler: he had fleas. A really bad case of them, which should have been obvious to me, but I am apparently oblivious to the difference between “he is unable to clean himself” and “the crusty junk all over his hindquarters is flea poop.” And the pain was just because he was super overwhelmed by, y'know, having bugs crawling all over him and biting him.

He is now on flea medication, as is Fiona (even though she never got infested, better safe than sorry), and he’s back to his old cuddly self. I also thorogughly combed him and disposed of so many dead fleas, and have done so much laundry.

I think I’m going to try once again to keep Tyler and Fiona indoors all the time from now on. Wish me luck.