Covid III fluffy rambles

so I’ve gotten COVID for a third time, an this time it’s hitting me way harder and for the first time I’m having a Very Strong Positive test result. I thought I was just having really bad allergies (and antihistamines were working) but today when I got home from the choir show I started to feel really off, and out of an abundance of caution I took a test. The reaction was pretty much immediate.

Fortunately my parents happen to be in town for the choir shows and they want to help me out while they’re still here, and my insurance provider has a virtual doctor that can prescribe paxlovid, so hopefully things will work out okay.

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The Other Side Dream log

She woke up, as she always does, hungry.

She looked around at this world she was in. Surrounded by artifacts, everything just a little off from how it should be. The Ferris wheel that had no axle. The stream that did not flow. The sole road through town that only looped back on itself.

She sighed, and wandered into the small town — a strong word for what amounted to three distorted buildings that only stayed up by the grace of God, or whatever passed for God in these parts — to see if the other residents had made any headway.

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Birthday plans 2024 fluffy rambles

Hey y'all! My birthday is tomorrow, June 14! I will be turning 0x2E. Or 0b101110 if that’s your preference.

Anyway. Normally I’d use that as a reason to have a huge karaoke blowout on VRChat Friday evening, but I have a big choral show on Saturday and some of the pieces need my full vocal range, so I’m not going to risk fucking up my voice for Saturday.

So instead I’ll have birthday karaoke in VRChat Saturday evening! I’m thinking it’ll start at, say, 7 PM Pacific Time. You can join off me if you have me friended or I’ll be posting an instance link on my discord.

Also, to help with the celebrations, I’ve thrown together a party hat.

Furality Umbra: a brief review fluffy rambles

Furality is the largest virtual furry convention, which takes place annually in VRChat. This past year (Umbra) was also the most highly-attended furry convention of any kind ever, with a whopping 21,000 attendees!

I’m just a nobody when it comes to furry stuff, especially cons, but I figured I’d share some of my observations, good and bad, especially in comparison to the other two Furality events I attended (Luma Festival and Sylva).

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Some income would be nice fluffy rambles

It’s really unfortunate how I’m stuck in the hinterland between being too disabled to work but being too abled to get on disability (at least not easily). Dealing with Social Security has been super frustrating and I’m not expecting to get a full hearing or determination any time soon, so in the meantime I could really use some sort of part-time income. Not to mention having things to do that other people care about.

I am way too burned out on software engineering to do that anymore (I barely even want to write code for my own projects), but I would be super willing to do things like:

  • Music
  • Sound design
  • Video editing
  • Character design
  • 2D and 3D art
  • Game design

Anyway, here’s my resume.

I’m willing and able to work part-time in Seattle (remote-focused hybrid preferred) or remotely.

💬 Re: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan wants AI clones in meetings Notes

In reply to: Re: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan wants AI clones in meetings

Instead of building better business cultures and reinventing our work rhythms to adapt to information overload and an abundance of busywork, the vision here is to let the busywork happen between AI. It’s an office full of ghosts, speaking to each other on our behalf, going to standup meetings with each other just because.

The current fixation on genAI tools means that we basically have AIs talking to AIs for no benefit to the people anymore. We have AI resume builders optimized for AI recruiters who use AI to determine which AI is the best match for the AI-generated position at the AI-dominated company. AI tools for writing a lot of useless scaffolding around our business emails which then get fed through an AI to extract the salient points, when the emails could have just been written with only the salient points to begin with.

It’s so maddening.

As a kid I remember a scene from The Smurfs where one of the Smurfs created a machine as an artistic statement that did nothing but scoop up dirt to fill in a hole that was created by the same machine. At the time it was very much meant as an anti-capitalist metaphor, but today it feels like it’s specifically about AI tools.

At least the Zoom thing highlights the absurdity of meeting-heavy business culture.

Upcoming engagements fluffy rambles

I have a whole bunch of stuff going on right now and most of it involves things that people can come see me at!

With Seattle Center on Contemporary Art I am one of eight artists in a show featuring transgender artists, entitled Taking Up Space. Its opening reception is this Thursday from 5-9 PM at the CoCA gallery (114 Third Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104).

Sunday afternoon I am performing in the Trans Academy Trans Pride VR talent show, which is from 12:30 - 3 PM (Pacific Daylight Time) in VRChat. See the announcement video for more information, and of course there’s plenty on the community Discord and on X.

Next Saturday (June 15, 2024) I’ll be performing with STANCE at the Museum of Flight for Sally Ride Day, at around 12 PM.

The Friday and Saturday after (June 21 and 22, 2024) I’ll be again performing with STANCE for our Pride concert series, at 7:30 PM on the 21st at Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church and 3 PM on the 22nd at Seattle First Baptist.

Some Wednesday evening in July I’ll be performing a full set of my own music at Trans Academy’s concert series, Moonlit Academy. More information as it becomes available.

And then on July 19 and 20th I’ll be performing with Song Fight! Live at the Buntport Theater in Denver, Colorado, actual show times yet to be determined.

I am, as always, a busy bee.

Finally have my car back fluffy rambles

So, I went to the Kia dealership, and it took them an hour to figure out where my car’s keys were. Also they had trouble finding my customer record, because it turned out the service advisor misspelled my name, and they don’t have a good way to search their system. Disorganized clown-shoes operation.

But, whatever. I finally have my car back. And the click sound was gone at first but it came back halfway home. And according to the tech notes, guess what they did during the month they had my car:

absolutely NOTHING.

They decided that the sound was “normal EV motor noise.”

Why did they need my car for a WHOLE MONTH to tell me that?

The tech notes said (all misspellings theirs):

No abnormal noises were heard fro vehicle. Test drove vehicle and found no abnormal noises heard. Referenced TSB ELE234 and found the noises heard from the vehicle to be constant with the Note: Be careful to not mistake the abnormal noises for the normal noise of the EV motor in the vehicle

Did they also read the part of the tech note that says that the TSB’s clicking noise is intermittent and only occurs at slower speeds? Probably not!

And, I repeat, it took them A GODDAMN MONTH.

But at least I have my car back and a paper trail for what happens when the bearing fails.

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Per-capita EV registrations by state fluffy rambles

A question that keeps on coming up in my conversations is: where exactly is the electric vehicle adoption the highest?

There’s plenty of information about it on a per-country basis but I couldn’t find anything that breaks it down by US state. So I did a little number-crunching, and figured I’d post it here so that other people can benefit from it.

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