Sick again

Comments

I seem to be sick again. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I was exposed to COVID quite a lot two weeks ago (confirmed exposure at the office, probable unreported exposure at the hotel, not to mention all the other places where people have gone totally lax with distancing and face covering because I guess everyone’s given up on everything now) and a two-week incubation time is still not unheard of. Tests come back negative but apparently the current variants have a huge false-negative rate on the at-home tests.

Basically I’ve had a persistent headache and extreme fatigue (like, way more than usual for me, which is saying a lot) for the last week or so, and now I have a painful cough and it hurts to breathe sometimes. Robitussin and albuterol are helping, and I have a stash of promethazine if it comes down to it.

(Gosh I wish the war on opioids didn’t make promethazine so hard to come by…)

Even if what I have isn’t COVID-19, so many people around me are still getting it. This pandemic is far from over and I wish people would keep taking it seriously, and I wish people had been taking it seriously to begin with. Maybe if everyone had done their part to stamp it out, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.

It sure would also be nice if Pfizer et al had actually kept their mRNA up to date like they said they would, and if the rapid tests were updated to cover new variants as they emerge. And if fucking Bill Gates hadn’t convinced the US government and WHO to not require vaccine stockpiles to be shared globally, so that maybe the breeding grounds for new variants might have not been quite so effective.

This was not a time for half measures.

IndieWeb + Tumblr = 💜

Comments

The other day, several IndieWeb developers (including me) got messaged by Tumblr’s COO about them searching for contractors to work on Tumblr-IndieWeb integration. I had to decline due to already being overextended and not really having the spoons or bandwidth to take on this work, but I offered to be available as a resource for high-level conceptual stuff, at the very least.

I’ve written a few bits over on Tumblr about my thoughts on how Tumblr can (and should) become an IndieWeb provider, and I am ecstatic that Tumblr is taking steps in this direction. I think that opening up IndieWeb to a wider audience is absolutely a good thing, and Tumblr is one of the best-positioned providers to make this a reality. In particular, Tumblr’s culture is incredibly IndieWeb-compatible, and rejects the idea that lock-in and monetization are the end goals of any social space.

I have some thoughts about how things can/should possibly work, although keep in mind that there’s absolutely a lot I don’t know about how Tumblr works under the hood. So this is going to be in extremely broad strokes.

(It’s also extremely a midnight rantle, so be warned if you’re expecting a useful technical discussion here.)

Read more…

ATM cards

Comments

Oh yeah, a lot of places in San Francisco are cash-only. So, the other day I tried taking out some money at the ATM, and thus took out my debit card for the first time since the pandemic started.

It was declined, with an error that the card had been blocked.

I tried to figure out what was going on through my bank’s website and it only gave very evasive information. Reading up online it seems that most banks end up blocking debit cards which haven’t been used in a while, as a security precaution.

So just now I finally got around to calling them on the phone, and it turns out that’s exactly what happened, and unsurprisingly the bank is handling a lot of calls like this lately, because of how many people haven’t needed cash since March, 2020 until now.

It’d have been nice if my bank had, like, warned me about this rather than leaving me in the lurch while traveling, but much like the Y2K+20 problem it’s probably not anything that anyone had really thought about until it was too late.

Some easing of stress

Comments

Today things have gone significantly better than they had for the past few days. The plumber was able to complete all of the work this morning without incident, the tenants are taking care of paneling the wall (using plywood instead of drywall on the plumber’s recommendation since that makes future access easier in case any maintenance needs to happen), and everything’s all ready for the new washer and dryer which are set to be delivered tomorrow.

I also made it safely to San Francisco, and checked into the hotel. I was afraid of the worst, thanks to a bunch of incredibly negative Yelp reviews, but my room is totally fine. I thoroughly checked for any signs of cockroaches and bedbugs (both visually and using a UV flashlight) and nothing seemed amiss. The linens are perfectly clean, the mattresses are in Good Enough™ condition, and everything’s fine. The room’s just a bit dated, and it’s noisy what with overlooking Mission St.

Read more…

ADHD meds: probably not for me

Comments

I took a week break from dextroamphetamine, and tried taking it again with the idea that I’d just take it every other day. And all day I’ve had headaches, and what focus I’ve had has been difficult to direct towars the stuff I’m trying to focus on.

I don’t think that going to immediate-release would help with this either.

I’d like to just get my pain under control and go back to self-medicating with caffeine. And not be in a situation where everything depends on focus in the first place.

Meh.

Remember to be kind

Comments

With the current state of the world, everyone is on edge and quick to anger. Approach situations from a perspective of kindness. You never know what someone else is going through at the time, and responding with a default of anger to what seems like a personal slight is only going to make things worse.

Lots of people around you are struggling with mental health, anxiety, loss, grief, and more. If someone does something thoughtless, it’s best to just let it go. If it’s egregious enough to require correction, start out by asking them if they understand what they were supposed to do (in a kind way) rather than assuming that they were purposefully being malicious. They almost certainly weren’t doing it on purpose, and even if they were, is it really worth getting into a fight over it?

It’s also worth remembering that other people aren’t necessarily in a space for the same reason as you, and they might be inexperienced with the use of that space. Something that seems obvious and straightforward to you might be a confusing mess to other people.

And the inverse also applies; if you’re the one who has caused other people to blow up at you, regardless of intention, you don’t know what they’ve been going through either, or how many microaggressions may have led to them boiling over.

tl;dr: Assume good faith in others.

Vashon ferry encounter

Comments

well I just had a lousy experience that has me depressed and frustrated and withdrawn and just hating everyone around me

My therapist was trying to convince me to come out to an art gallery opening on Vashon Island and I wasn’t feeling up to it but I decided I was wallowing and I should get out and do something nice.

So I start driving to the ferry, and I follow the GPS instructions for getting there, and there’s a long line of cars so I go a few blocks up to try to not cut into the line, and I guess I didn’t go far up enough because when I got in line, the person who pulled up behind me ran up to my window and started yelling at me for cutting in line, and acted like I was being a jerk on purpose. And then when I didn’t immediately get out of the line (which runs parallel to a busy street and it’s difficult to tell when it’s safe to pull out) she ran up to the person in front of me and told him what I’d done and then he started yelling at me too.

This was too much for me and I had a meltdown and had to head home.

And now I just want to wallow some more.

From her point of view it probably did seem that I’d cut in line and I understand her being upset but I didn’t know, and if I’d been told nicely that “hey the line starts up at such-and-such street” and not gotten other people mad at me too, things would have gone very differently. But now I just like. never want to take the ferry every again because now I"m worried I’ll get people mad at me again.

It sure would be great if people didn’t assume malicious intent. I absolutely wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, I was just confused about where to go while having a bad mental health day already. Being yelled at and berated for an honest mistake, by multiple people who immediately assumed I was out to be a jerk, is not what I’d call a good time.

The worst part of this is that the people who yelled at me probably feel like victorious defenders of justice, and they’ll never know the actual end result of their actions.