busybee fluffy rambles

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.

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.

As is tradition, I am not a fan of resolutions, just aspirations.

I guess this is something of another TODO list, to keep myself accountable.

You might have noticed that I’ve made a slight change to the comments on this site: the comment threads are only visible to those who are signed in. This is a temporary experiment just to see if it cuts out the spam I’ve been getting and also if it increases the quality of what comments do come in.

I’ve been thinking about how I can go about improving comments in general, in ways which would also satisfy some of my other general long-term plans around Publ.

I got an M4 Pro mini for my office, so that I could put my M1 Studio in my studio. I’ve also changed web browsers. Let’s talk about both of those things, and one other thing!

I was just going through some old files while preparing some hardware migration stuff (ugh) and I came across a file entitled distributed social network.md, dated December 13, 2014. This was the start of my ideas about what would eventually result in Publ.

Obviously things drifted a lot between 2014 and 2017 when I finally started implementing Publ, and a lot has changed with my goals since then as well.

Don’t use this as a roadmap, is what I’m saying.

About a month ago I was turned on to the show Brilliant Minds by means of a Steve Shives video. My curiosity in it was piqued specifically because of his mention of two characters: the main character is faceblind, and one of the supporting cast has mirror-touch synaesthesia.

I have both of those things! And nearly every time I’ve seen them portrayed in the media it’s been infuriatingly awful!

So of course I just had to watch this show to see how it handled them.

There are mild spoilers below.