Years ago, I reached out to my community, and over time, found a place where I felt, and felt like I belonged, and in my arrogance, I attempted to change those places in ways I thought would help. To my credit, my arrogance was oft appreciated, as much as it annoyed. I did not have even half enough of an understanding of the circumstances to have taken the path I did, just a sense of righteousness that guided me. But that sense did a lovely job of hiding how much it blinded me.
Recently, I’ve begun reaching out again, and I’m enjoying it, appreciating how much less of an outsider I feel as I connect with people. I still come from a different set of experiences, so there will still be a flavour of dissonance in the air, but less so than I’ve feared for so long.
There is an honesty here that soothes, an authenticity and acceptance of quirks that resonates, a background harmony that comforts.
There is far too much dissonance, both outside and within, the conflict outside being reflected in the soul, creating disorder and discomfort. Within community, that dissonance is displaced by a harmony of common intent, resonance that soothes as mutes the background buzz.
Fancy words, but hopefully they convey my meaning.
Testing out using the wordpress editing tool, in full screen no distraction mode. It would probably be less distracting if I turned off the other two monitors, as both are currently active with things. Discord on one, and my friend Scott reading smut on the other.
Recently claimed a split table and a flatscreen tv. With a little work, I’m thinking I can mount the TV into the table, so when that sliding it apart, you’ll reveal the TV, for using as a digital tabletop. In theory, there might be a way to also raise the TV, but I think that’s a step beyond what I’m likely to accomplish.
Still, could be useful to hosting Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons, or something else that needs a map to play well.
I don’t know whether or not I live too far out of the city to succeed as a paid in-person Game Master. I have some of the tools for being a paid online Game Master, having Foundry as a Virtual Tabletop.
The biggest thing standing in my way in that regard, is a lack of practice with the tools, increasing my familiarity with the systems and also building my confidence in the skills.
However, the path to both is to do more of it. I think I’d mentioned that as an option in the discussion about getting this blog back up and running.
The other being the excessive number of board games I have, and finding a way to document my culling of the pile.
I suppose, to that end, I need to play the games, and either post written reviews, or write up scripted reviews and then film them. Perhaps with some assistance.
A year ago, I’d just had my thyroid removed, and after an extended hospital stay due to complications, I’d returned home. It’s hard to explain the experience of having extremely low calcium levels. It was an intense vibration, but not painful, just intensely uncomfortable.
After that, I’d received a phone call, telling me I should probably get to the hospital in Squamish, ASAP. So I booked a flight and flew up. I was able to see my grandmother a couple more times before she passed that week.
There may be some small errors in this document, they will be removed if discovered.
Where to begin? Well, I’m somewhat freshly home from the hospital. I had an 8 day stay, a full week beyond the original plan of surgery and overnight observation. The surgery was a bit intimidating, but the surgeon had done it hundreds of times before and his confidence was reassuring; it was 7 hours, hence the overnight observation afterwards.
It’s during the observation afterwards that the problems arose. My potassium levels were low, and kept falling despite the supplements they were giving me. My magnesium and calcium were also low, though the calcium was to be expected, as the parathyroid, which is impacted by the removal of the thyroid, helps in controlling the calcium, and the magnesium is tied to the calcium.
My wife had set up my kindle in a gooseneck mount with a remote clicker, so I was able to just lie there and read my book. That helped pass the time, as did the podcasts on my phone and random youtube videos on my tablet.
We’d planned the surgery for a week when we didn’t have our daughters, so she would be able to spend time with me, and it’s fortunate that we’d done so. Having her stay in the hospital with me as much as she did made the process far more bearable than it would have been on my own. Especially when the calcium symptoms overwhelmed me.
Low calcium often results in a strangely intense sensation, related to pins and needles, and while I wouldn’t describe it as painful, it definitely takes your focus in the same way pain does. As it wasn’t painful, there wasn’t much that could be done for it, beyond providing additional calcium, which would reduce and remove symptoms as my body absorbed it.
There were times when I felt like my body was shutting down, and that I wouldn’t recover; that my body didn’t have enough to keep going. That I needed to use my phone to record some last words, telling her that I loved her. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case and I’ve been able to tell her several times since how much I love her and how much I appreciate what she’s gone through to help me with this.
At one point, the symptoms from the calcium withdrawal were bad enough that she thought I was having a stroke, and we did a FAST check, as I had facial drooping. Turns out, that’s just one of the things that happens when your calcium gets too low. The nurses were a little concerned over that, though they were kept good poker faces.
We’d also made plans for our dog, who is a loveable but scared boy of a good eighty-plus pounds. We’d adopted him from a shelter back in the fall of ’22, and he’d been there a good while before we had. Given his disposition, it didn’t make sense to try to board him anywhere, he needed to be taken care of by family. My mother-in-law and my wife’s girlfriend were able to help us with that, and I can imagine the strain on them was considerable. I’m grateful they were able to help us with him, despite all the challenges they faced.
I spent a fair amount of time with IV fluids being pumped into my arms. I’d had an IV put into my right arm when I’d arrived. I think they had a second one in my left hand during the surgery, but it had been removed after. On, I believe it was the 3rd day, the IV in my right arm started to leak, so a nurse removed it and then installed one in my left forearm. Later that same day, an additional IV was placed via ultrasound in my right vein. The fellow who did that was a bit of a character, and confident in his work. (Frankly, all of the staff were wonderful.) The IV in my right arm became the main one to be used, though at times I had IVs in both arms, as they were running bags of Calcium, Magnesium and Potassium fairly regularly, to keep my levels up.
Overall though, the experience wasn’t unpleasant. As I’d mentioned, the staff were great; they had amazing attitudes, were always trying to help, and just really seemed like they enjoyed and cared about their work. The food was quite good, and I even learned of a new meat substitute that I enjoy, Tempeh. I’d ordered it as part of a salad and it really hit the spot.
My wife had brought in a board game, Cosmoctopus, and we were able to play that. It was nice, just sitting there, playing a game. Folks came in for various reasons, providing meds, taking blood or vitals, etc, and they were amused by the cute little octopus.
She also brought in my steam deck, and while I had initially hooked it up to the main TV in the room, she’d later provided me with her secondary monitor connect it to, so I spent a fair bit of time playing games on it. That definitely helped with the waiting.
I had regular visits, both from the surgeon and his team, and from the other doctors who’d been brought in to figure out what exactly was going on and what could be done so that I could be stable enough to go home. I’m sure I’m leaving out a bunch of details, but the short version is that the surgery went well, the tumours were removed, and things were looking good, as far as the cancer went.
Monday, my wife brought our daughters to visit, and we were able to go down and have a family dinner in the cafeteria. It was nice spend time with them, though dragging around the IV of potassium was a little awkward.
At some point, the team brought in a nephrologist, which as I understand it specializes in the kidneys. After an ultrasound and some blood work, there was positive news and a theory; Hyperaldosteronism. Tests were planned.
The next day, they infused me with 2L of saline over 4 hours, which should lower the levels of aldosterone in my body, and then drew blood. After that, they were able to give me a drug to help with the aldosterone, which should allow my body to stop fighting the treatment. Then it was just a matter of time to get me stable without IVs, so I could be discharged.
Wednesday, my girls came to visit after school, and I was discharged with them. I got to go home, sleep in my own bed. Prior to that, the staff were able to remove one of the two drains that had been installed in my neck and the stitches. The drain was painless but odd feeling as it was removed. The stitches, I mostly didn’t feel, except for a tugging, especially at the end, with the final tiny stitches.
The next day, I had to go to provide a blood sample in the morning, so we were able to take the girls to school. I got a few looks as I walked my daughters to their classroom doors, hopefully I didn’t scare anyone too much. After a week of providing blood samples every 8 hours if not more often, just providing one sample a day was a nice change.
At some point during my sleep deprived state, I’d started to refer to them as phlebotanists, rather than phlebotomists. Taking my blood to feed their plants, apparently.
The test results came back, my diagnosis confirmed. Primary aldosteronism; an endocrine disease. It’s symptoms were things I’d dealt for many years. Having it understood to be the cause, there is hope that those symptoms will be abated or better controlled, and that I can be much healthier in the long run.
I continue to meet with the various doctors, and take an excessive amount of pills, but I’m in a good place right now. It’s been a journey, there is more road ahead, but spirits are high and we will wander on, perhaps a little less lost.
I’d mentioned that my doctor had performed this surgery hundreds of times before, and the surgery itself, seems to have gone quite well. I’d just had a complication that kept me there a week, longer than any previous patient of his; I’d set a new record.
I’ve left out little details, how little sleep I got, due to how often I was poked, how often my vitals were taken, or simply that I couldn’t get comfortable. And also how often the respiratory team offered me water for my CPAP, or to help set it up, despite it being my own machine that I regularly set up and used and that they’d provided a good liter of water for on the first night.
It’s Christmas day, and aside from the dog managing to perform a Hoth manoeuvre on me, it’s been a good day. My wife bought me a new watch and despite her concerns about picking the right one, it’s probably a better choice than if I’d gone out and got one myself. I’d have probably just gone for a samsung smartwatch, as I’d seen they had a price drop recently and have decent reviews. What she got me was a nice Garmin with a whole slew of bells and whistles. Nearly a decade ago, I backed the pebble smartwatch and had one of those for a few years until it randomly became haunted. This reminds me of that, but better.
I’ve previously owned a Garmin watch, a nice little GPS one that my parents bought for me, I’d used it to track my walking speed. When I logged into their system, I saw my data from back in 2011 and earlier, with a brief burst of activity in 2013. Based on Pebble’s wiki, I’d have replaced the Garmin with the pebble, until I’d retired it.
Wearing a watch again, after having not for so long, it’ll take a bit to get used to.
There are a variety of watch face options available, and I’ve gone with a text one, fuzzy time. I think I had it’s equivalent on my pebble back in the day. Not the exact time, just a rough approximation; Quarter after four, twenty to five, that sort of thing. For the most part, I think that suits my needs. I rarely need to know the exact time these days.
Last night, we watched Bullet Train, and I enjoyed it. It reminded me of Smoking Aces by way of Snatch. Another friend said Lock Stock meets Knives Out.
Speaking of Knives Out, we saw Glass Onion the night before, and it was fun. Better than I had expected. The rich successful idiot theme seemed very timely, especially in light of recent events.
I’ve made plans to attend Orcacon up near Seattle in the new year. It’ll be my first convention since SHUX back in 2019, I think. Seems like it has a similar attitude, which will be nice.
I had originally planned to drive up, but I decided that I’d rather not deal with the potential snow going through the Snoqualmie Pass. So flying it is. Until recently, it had been at least a decade since I’d flown, I’d even driven to the Maritimes, rather than fly.
Friends of mine from Vancouver will be driving down, and it’ll be good to see them again.
I’ve booked my tickets to fly in the night before the convention, I’ll get a good night’s rest and then figure out how to get over to the convention hotel. I’ve booked into an RPG on the first night, but I think that’s the only game I’ve planned for that weekend.
According to the website, there will be food trucks outside, so that’ll be nice. Reminds me of GottaCon in Victoria, back when we went.
It’s Monday morning, the first of November. I’ve been awake for several hours now. I’ve managed to have some food, kill some time, and clean some dishes. The sink had been a bit overwhelming, now it’s just slightly obnoxious. My attempt at Nanowrimo seems ill advised. I don’t have a story that I feel like writing. I have bits and pieces, several from years ago, but nothing with a narrative behind it, nothing with a substantial flow. Just bits and pieces, nothing that I feel I could spin into something coherent.
Another year, another plan to attempt NaNoWriMo. I should have done some planning and some warming up, to get back into the habit of writing things. In previous years, I’ve done movie views during Spooky season as a bit of a warm up, and those have been fun. This year, I haven’t watched as many horror movies as previous years.
A big part of that is probably just adapting to my new life.
Back in April, I got married. It was a small backyard ceremony in Squamish, just the immediate family and a couple friends. We’d planned it before the restrictions had been lifted, so we’d planned it smaller than it needed to be, just in case.
At some point, I’d done my A1C and it had been high, much higher than it should be. I’d been neglecting my diet during the pandemic.
Back in August I packed up my things, put the majority of them into storage and left Vancouver. A few of my friends were available to come by and help me get it all packed away. A few things were forgotten, but the majority is safely stored in a large storage pod, waiting for the next chapter.
Next week, the house I’ve lived in for the last two decades is apparently being sold. Well, it went on the market a couple weeks ago and the offer was accepted, and next week they’ll sign the paperwork. Something like that; I’m not really in the loop on what all is going on there.
Since focusing on my diet, I’ve lost some weight. The heaviest weight I have recorded is 346lbs, sometime in 2019. Currently, I’m around 304lbs.
I’ve gotten in a few evening walks recently,
November is Capra’s 30×30, which I’ve been yearly. So I’ll be trying to get in at least a walk a day, every day, for the next month.
With this warm up mostly wrapped up, I need to look ahead. What am I going to write next month?
So, there was a note posted by the guy from my local FNGS that he’d spoken to the contact tracers at the health department and they’d reassured him that his earlier concerns and advice to get tested had been a bit excessive. He’d been behind the plexiglass most of the time, everyone had had masks, so people just needed to self monitor, rather than all be tested.
Which is basically what I had figured. I’d been self monitoring for symptoms, but with the CPAP machine causing a cough and other symptoms; it’s a bit clear what is a covid symptom and what’s just the normal daily stuff.
It’s been a week now, and nothing has gotten worse, aside from my neck muscles feeling strained, but that’s probably more to do with my reading more and my need for better pillows than anything else.
My current kindle only holds a charge for a day, so I decided to treat myself to a replacement. It should be here tomorrow.
I’ve also started converting web serials into epubs into mobis for easier offline reading.
Reading seems to be helping me to write more, though it’s too early to tell for sure.
On Monday, I received a notification from the clerk at our FNGS that he’d tested positive over the weekend, getting tested Sunday, after having some symptoms on Saturday; on Friday, I’d been in the store briefly during the afternoon.
I’ve had a bit of a cough, on and off for the past few months, though it has been worse recently. I’ve had a bit of muscle ache recently, though that isn’t abnormal for me. When I’ve checked, my temperature has been normal. When I do the self assessment, it tells me to self monitor. Maybe I need to get a test, I’m not sure.
It happened two weeks after my vaccine, so in theory I should have decent protection, and why I might only have the bare minimum in terms of symptoms. I probably need to call into the BC covid help line to get more information.
For a few weeks now, maybe longer, I’ve been thinking I need to remove a couple of people from my friend’s list, as I don’t agree with their politics. A couple of them have been commenting on misogynist posts or others that are equally distasteful.
I’ve known them several years, and over the years I’ve tried to discuss things with them, but their positions have been unassailable by logic.
People say that you shouldn’t create drama by explaining why you’ve unfriended someone or cleaned up your list.
People also say you should stand up to bigots and be clear that you don’t agree with them.
So, what is the right way to approach the problem of people you have on Facebook, whose politics you don’t agree with, who continue to post things that go against your principles?
A little over a year into the pandemic, and I’ve had my first shot. My next shot is in 4 months. So, still on the 18th month timeline I had been working with.
On Tuesday, I attempted to get a vaccine, going to a place I was told would work. They had been doing Walk-ins on the Saturday and Sunday, but were only doing appointments on the Tuesday. And for various reasons, the provincial booking system did not accept that I was eligible, despite everything saying I was, so I was not able to book an appointment.
That day, I cried a bit while driving back homeward. It had been a rough day. I’d gotten my hopes up and it didn’t work out. It very much seemed like the system was broken, and in many ways, it probably is.
Wednesday Evening, I got a call from the local pharmacy, one of the ones I had actually been able to register at, and I was offered an appointment for the next morning. It was quick and simple, just a short drive and a short wait.
There are still plenty of people out there who haven’t been able to get their first shot, and hopefully they’ll be able to get them soon. It’s a relief to finally be able to get mine, though still incredibly frustrating, the number of things that have gone wrong.
I could have flown down to the states, spent time with people who were important to me, and been able to get both my shots, before returning home, then doing the two week Quarantine, but that option was one that wasn’t available to me because of obligations that have been imposed on me.
In theory, those same obligations should have allowed me to get my first shot a month or so back, as someone who was acting as a caregiver. But for some reason, despite saying that caregivers would be given priority, most weren’t.
The system is a mess, cobbled together and running as best it can, relying on compromises between what people feel is important and the flawed ideology that our society is warped by.
Earlier today, my partner went into her office to attempt to do some things that she was unable to do while working remotely. It took her several tries to get the systems to work correctly. This was of course because of the office gremlins.
Normally, they are fairly benign and will primarily interfere with printers to gather space materials to line their nests. Especially if someone was helpful and took the paper recycling out recently.
They are known to sleep on routers and other machines that are left running, as they enjoy the warmth. As anyone working in IT can attest, a gremlin sleeping on your router can cause some irregularities in the signal strength, especially if you get a restless one who keeps shifting position. Occasional they’ll dislodge a power cord, or bump the power button, but in most cases these deactivations are temporary, due to their preference for the warmth.
They are also known to hoard office supplies, stealing pens, tape, staplers and other things that they can easily carry off. Little is known about the purpose behind these thefts, as no obvious use of the supplies has been observed. Further study has been attempted, but the cameras that were deployed kept going missing.
However, since everyone has been working remote for the last six months or so, they’ve gone a bit feral. They’d grown comfortable on their diet of leftover donuts and other assorted desk snacks, including the large bowl of candy that somehow often seemed to be in need of refilling, despite nobody ever observing anyone eating from it.
So, just a quick warning, prepare for extra time when attempting administrative tasks after the return to the office. Either that, or bring a box of donuts and tuck it somewhere out of your line of sight.
Back at the end of June, I was finally able to get in to see an eye doctor for a post operative care appointment. My vision is now confirmed to be 20/20.
Since then, I’ve bought some nice sunglasses. A few pairs of Goodrs. I like them. Maybe I’ll post pictures.
About two years back, I stopped working for the place where this blog had been hosted. And with the future of the hosting in question, I lost some of my motivation to maintain it. I’d made some efforts to get it moved somewhere better, but until recently, those efforts hadn’t borne any fruit.
Well, now they have, the site’s future is “secure” or at least it should be.
So, I got frustrated today, and ended up not coming back from my lunch time walk. I had been tempted to do that the day before, but I forced myself to go back in. Today, I wasn’t able, or perhaps willing, to do that. Instead I took a longer walk. (more…)
Got my blood sugar metre, connected it via Bluetooth, so the results would be stored. It has a decent app, and it looks like there are other apps that’ll interface with the data. It’ll even send emails/texts like this one:
Last blood sugar reading: 5.4, After Meal, In Range
Date/Time: 01 Jun 2016, 10:11
It’s a Bluetooth link, and I’ve a habit of keeping my Bluetooth off. Thinking I’ll get a RFID couple of stickers for the case, tap the phone, unlock it, enable the Bluetooth, then tap the phone against the case again to shut the Bluetooth back off. Something to look into.
Beyond that, I’ve got tools now, which means I can track things better.
I’ve been tracking my walks on my phone via the onboard pedometer and GPS, but I wonder if I should get a fitbit or something more accurate. I’ve got a good Garmin watch, that I should reinstall on my new pc, now that I’ve managed to free up some USB ports.
Jeeves, add that to my to-do list and remind me to do it in 6 hours.
51st State Master set, arrived in the mail yesterday, got in two games of it last night. Despite the similarities to Imperial Settlers, it plays fairly different. The limit on the tokens you can convert per turn changes the dynamic. You can’t just work with the raw materials.
Innovation, twice over the weekend. It plays fairly quickly, though it gets a big chaotic with 4 players.
Shipwrights of the North Sea. Sunday night. Drafting ships and workers, with limited space. Workers are your income and base material to convert to other goods. It’s interesting. But seemed to stall midgame.
A recent facebook post a trio who saw someone drug a woman’s drink and then told her about it got me thinking about social conditioning. Specifically that for the most part, people don’t intercede in things. There are a few exceptions, who have that protective impulse that overrides the Someone Else’s Problem Field that so often protects the perpetrators.
Would it make any sense to create a group that operates something like improve anywhere, but with a domestic abuse focus? Creating scenes in public and seeing who, if anyone, intercedes, and then perhaps talking to the witnesses about it afterwards?
I can see this having a few legal hurdles and a few ethical ones. Some people might find being exposed to such things to be triggering. Overall though, would it be worth it? I think if it contributed to the dialogue, it might be.
A recent reddit thread, people were talking about how it didn’t matter who they were, if they left their drink unwatched, they pitched it out. It felt like it was implied that not doing so was foolish, which to me feels like victim blaming. Often times, that seems to be where the conversation in society is at when it comes to domestic abuse, various forms of rape, etc.
Part of that is sadly just the nature of the offense. If the perp is anonymous, it is hard to mentally assign the blame to them, and for many people, the residual blame will just drift onto the person who disturbed their quiet illusion of a safe world, the victim. And in cases where the perp isn’t anonymous, but is someone that you don’t want to believe would do such things, it’s hard to accept it. Another comfortable illusion at risk, the trust you had. The person wasn’t the monster you were expecting. They did monstrous things, but there wasn’t all the warning signs that you were taught to expect; they were just too normal.
Of course there’s also the sort who have a reputation and are known to be a problem, but action isn’t taken against them, for various reasons. Those bother me the most.
It was suggested earlier that I should consider doing a podcast. That I take my gift for writing and create some decent serial content.
This means I need a writing partner, and a session partner. Any volunteers?
Also, there is a suggestion to create a series about using esports to influence frat boys into rivalries in a series of vaultec style experiments. Monoculture and tribalism.
I need to be working on more of my fiction. I need to be reading and writing on a daily basis. I haven’t worked on much fiction lately, and I really should be. The only way to become a better writer is to write, to keep putting words down. Minimal edits for clarity, rather than writing and rewriting the same chunk over and over again, until you bugger off from frustration.
A few months back, I killed my fetlife account, ceased being active in the community, and basically put that aspect of my life on the backburner, including dating.
There were a few things that caused this, one factor was my continued discomfort with the toxic masculine behavior I kept seeing online. The final straw though, was lack of reaction from the community to an act I considered to be unforgivably wrong by someone else in the community.
Last weekend, a local promoter called me, because he thought he needed a last minute favor. I agreed, showed up, helped with things. Didn’t attend the event, just helped with the setup. I thought about, but decided against it.
Later in the week, I helped with the load out, showing up with the van to move the gear. On the way back, we had a conversation about the event and various things. Some of it reminded me of what I’ve been missing about the community.
So, I’m trying to figure out how to go about it. How to reactivate my account, how to reconnect with people, get myself out there again. In the meantime, I’m focusing on my health goals in the background.
I’m still having the same issue with dating that I was having before. It’s hard to explain, but basically it boils down to this. There are plenty of aggressive and abrasive assholes out there, hitting on women, both within the community and in the general online community. It bothers me, though it’s hard for me to articulate exactly how and why, beyond the simple “Treat expletive-ing people with respect, they’re people, expletive for brains.”
I don’t know how to stand out from that crowd, when I’m uncomfortable enough wading into that cesspool in the first place. Mostly what I do well, is writing. The problem is, writing isn’t really something people appreciate these days, as people tend to TL; DR most of it.
My brain keeps bouncing off a brick wall when I try to figure out how to best express what I am. Especially since I keep feeling like I need to distance myself from the toxic ideals that I keep seeing. I don’t know how to explain that part, though perhaps by saying I’m not suffering from “Nice Guy Syndrome”, but at the same time, I’m generally a nice guy.
Right! This is an issue of semiotics; specifically shorthand, expectations and frames of reference.
So, I hiked up the TransCanada trail, from the base of SFU, over at Dalla Tina Ave, up and around to Cardiac Hill, and back down. It was about 9km, over the course of 2 hours. I went with a small group, a couple friends from work, some others who were in the area. I lagged a bit behind for most of it, the rest of them in better shape.
Afterwards, I had intended to be social, but that didn’t work out. My legs were a little too sore, same with my feet. But I’ll probably do something similar next week.
So, tonight I’m headed back to Club 23. Now known as Hindenburg. It was a place I spent more than a few nights over the years. Some good times, some rough times.
I’m going to be working it, moving furniture, helping with getting an event up and running. For a community that I’m not sure I’m part of anymore.
I am fond of the people who have asked for my help, which is why I’m doing it. I’m just unclear if I’ll fit into things these days.
I killed my fetlife account, after a promoter who used to work at this club posted a link to something I’d written and tagged my real name on the post.
I’m wondering if I should bring back the account.
I’m wondering quite a few things these days.
I’m dealing with the diabetes, though I lack the equipment to really understand the effectiveness. Though that’ll change soon. Next month, I get my diabetes daycare classes.
Well, I’ve been watching my diet and I’m back to walking around 30 minutes a day. I’ve dropped down to 345lbs, which is surprising progress. Surprising enough that I am doubting the scale currently.
Other than that, the weekend was a bust again. Didn’t manage Shadowrun, which was expected, didn’t manage the backup plan either.
Did play some video games. The new episodic Hitman is pretty decent. Though it seems like I’m having issues with getting up to the third floor on the Italy level.
I need to be writing more, I think. But I’m often lacking in inspiration these days.
Not a bad day. Spent some time playing with Andryoid and bluestack, found it runs the pathfinder adventure card games decently. Then I had a thirty minute walk. Partway through I was asked if I wanted to do some gaming. Picked up my copy of don’t turn your back, a deck building game by the evil hat guys, in the insomnia fueled nightmare city setting that they created for don’t rest your head. It’s interesting, I enjoyed it, though the card draw engine is unsuited for my preferred strategy of card cycling. Hopefully tonight I’ll get a chance to play millennium blades. It’s a meta tcg board game.
But first, another thirty minute walk.
According to the tracker over at fit.google.com, I’ve gotten about 9 and a half hours of exercise in the last week. I’ve been making an effort to go for a walk during my lunch hour, on sunny days. I can get a good 3Km walk in, from Royal Oak Station to Edmonds station, then the train back to Royal Oak. that’s all I can manage over my lunch hour.
After work, I’ve been heading home so I’m eating and taking the metforin at roughly the same time. I should be going for a walk after dinner, but I haven’t really been up for that for various reasons.
Another alternative would be to get up a bit earlier and get some exercise before I shower for work. But I’m not sure how well that would work.
I’ve been writing for a while now, and while some point love my ability to take a conversation or an idea and turn it into something concise on the page, I lack the skill to do the opposite of that. I seem to lack the ability to write characters who have believable dialogue or believable motives. This may be related to social awkwardness that I’ve suffered from, or perhaps a yet to be diagnosed position on the autism spectrum. Some of the reading I’ve done lately suggests that I have a tendency to make mistakes that are common among those who are on that spectrum. There was an interesting post on reddit listing a dozen or so common mistakes that get made, mostly relating to matters of social conventions.
Generally speaking, when someone asks me how I’m doing, I reply, “Not dead yet.”, referring both to the character getting thrown into the charnel wagon in Monty Python, and to the quote from Herodotus, “Call no man happy until he is dead.” In essence, I’m saying that I could give you a complicated answer, but I think you’re just asking to be polite, so I’ll give you something that sounds amusing, though the implication is that there is more there, if you want to know. Often, people don’t. They’re just asking because it’s how people interact. Sometimes, they do want to know, and then I try to explain it to them. I tend to have more woes than can easily be encapsulated though, so this tends to go flat rather quickly.
When I was writing at Douglas, my classmates found my dialogue to be a bit too overthought, or overly intellectualized. At the time, the conversations that I was having that weren’t basically functional, tended to be of that nature, so it was hard for me to understand that complaint.
I am trying to express my difficultly in natural communicating with others, both in my life and between my characters in my writing. I am acknowledging this, and I’m making a note to be more aware of it in the future.
Also, apparently I shouldn’t end sentences with periods when texting, as that comes across as abrupt. And use more emoticons.
The alcohol and late night triggered a serotonin drop, which resulted in SSRI withdrawal syndrome. That’s why I’ve nausea and dry mouth, to go with the previous heavy sweating I’d been experiencing.
I’m currently suffering paresthesias, a strange tingling feeling down the sides of my face.
My mood is good, overall. Aside from feeling sick to my stomach, I’m relaxed and somewhat hopeful.
The final Noir was rather crowded. To the point of being uncomfortable. The end happened, so everyone and their mule needed to be there. There was a line down past the dessert shop. A friend of mine was in line for about two hours, waiting to get in.
It was a proper send off, a proper end to a chapter. Reive worked his ass off tonight, keeping all the balls in the air, and hopefully he’ll enjoy his well deserved rest.
Tomorrow is the last Noir, an event run by friends of mine. An event I’ve helped out with for a year or more at this point. It’ll be music and people, in a concrete bunker. Some aspects of it I’m sure I’ll enjoy, like spending time with friends and the music. On the other hand, it’ll be loud, and I’ll likely have the same feeling of not fitting in that I’ve had for ages now.
Sure, I have a solid understanding of bdsm, kink, fetish, etc, but beyond mentoring, I haven’t engaged in any of it in ages. I have attended things, but not engaged in them. I’ve literally moved furniture more often than I’ve used it.
That’s my contribution to the community, a community that I’m only vestigially a part of at this point.
I’m sure there are reasons that I’ve failed to connect with anyone in recent years, not the least of which being my growing insecurity with toxic masculinity, something that causes me great discomfort and leads to me double thinking my flirting, to the point where it often doesn’t happen.
I have internalized that the majority of people I meet will not be interested in me, for various reasons. Some of those reasons are perhaps a tad shallow, while others are written deeper into the soul; the validity of the reasons are not mine to question. I can merely accept them and avoid making people uncomfortable, by treating them as people, regardless of any possible interest in them, since the odds are good it won’t be mutual.
None of this is really new material. I’ve said it all before. I’m cranky because my skill set goes to waste, because of all the various factors. A few appreciate my skills, mostly from a far. I’m cranky because I see individuals who are less qualified in a variety of ways leveraging other traits into chances that they appear to fail to appreciate. Or more significantly, that they fail to respect.
Alas, sour grapes and further alienation. Further disconnected from a community that I have consistently attempted to be a part of.
So, a few weeks back, I got a renewal of my prescription for cipralex. But I misplaced it. So I never bothered to refill it, and when I got down to a handful of pills left, I lowered my dosage, so I wouldn’t be going off them cold turkey. I believe I’m starting to feel the effects of no longer being on them, but its hard to be sure. My tolerance for incompetence, rudeness and general disrespect have gone down a fair bit. In theory, I should notice other emotional responses, but at the moment I haven’t really encountered them.
I may take a few sick days to assist with finding my equilibrium, and I may need to find a new job, as I suspect I won’t have the fortitude to continue to ignore some of the things I’ve been ignoring for the past however long.
I forget how long I’ve been on these for. Certainly long enough that there are people who only know who I as who I became after I began taking them. Those individuals may be surprised at who I’ll have become when I come out the other side on this one.
I didn’t care enough to make the effort to find the paper to renew the prescription. That’s a surprisingly clear reason to get off them, in my opinion.
So, next time I have a lack of motivation to learn a new game, rather than looking on Netflix, we’ll put on Until Dawn or Contradiction or Her Story. Video driven games that work well with an audience.
I got a message this morning from my mother. She’d been able to see the thread that I had previously mentioned. She’s aware that I’m involved in the kink community, so this wasn’t a shock to her. Had the situation been different, that could have been rather stressful. For many people, what I’ve just described is a nightmare scenario, and is one of the reasons people have cited that they aren’t willing to stand up for their beliefs in the community. I had been aware of the possibility, since horror stories of outing as a weapon have existed as long as I’ve been a member of the community.
Based on his writings, he doesn’t feel he has outed me, since I was already out. Well, I have always thought that an individual should get some discretion over how out they are, and if you aren’t sure, you should probably ask them. That generally works better when you have respect for the person that you are arguing with. I don’t know that this applies here.
I had just two days ago said I was no longer going to be sanitizing these posts for any given audience, but I’ve already had demands that I change details of what I’ve written. And)
I’m finding myself choosing my words carefully, since it seems like whatever is said will be taken in a manner other than the manner in which it is written.
I suspect that I’m not aware of the emotional flavour that I layer into my writing. I was unaware that my distrust of this individual would be so clear as to taint what I felt was a neutral statement of “at one point, I actively recommend (this event), back when I attended, these were the reasons I recommended it back then. I no longer attend for personal reasons, so I can no longer recommend it, as I lack the required information.”
Apparently, if you have a perceived past bias, people assume you mean more with your words when you say, even when you don’t even care enough anymore to hold an opinion.
I was already burnt out and planning to leave the community. I had promised I’d help with one last party. Now, I’m not even sure I’ll bother with that. I’ve been told people want me to attend, but given the vitriol about me, I’m feeling unwelcome.
I’ve been battling feelings of alienation for a long time now, and I think I’ve reached the end of my ability to cope with that.
I suspect if helping my grandmother to maintain her independence wasn’t an absolute priority, I’d likely be a suicide risk.
Well, originally today’s post was possibly going to be my grumbling about the difference between short term skills and long term skills, with regards to relationships, and to BDSM in particular, and how mistaking short term skills for long term can lead to a fair bit of trouble. Or possibly about the whole community charity moving thing that I’ve been working on, since apparently I haven’t done enough to promote it.
Instead, it’s going to be about paranoia and vendettas, and outing people. I wrote something on Fetlife about how I no longer recommend Sin City to people. At one point in time, it was in my newbie guide, as a good starter event. Since I no longer attend the event, I no longer recommend it. I’ve no knowledge of how the event is run these days, or the competence of the current staff, just that the people I’d have trusted to handle things are no longer involved.
This was taken as an attack by the event host, who proceeded to post on his page about my attacking his event. This wouldn’t be too bad, except he decided to use my actual name. I’ve a personal policy that I try to keep my Fetlife and my Facebook somewhat separate. I don’t post anything kinky with the world privacy setting, only the friend’s only setting. This is because I have a belief that one good way for Facebook to make money would be to charge companies for Social Media checks. And if not Facebook themselves, there are plenty of other individuals who could provide that service. So, I’d prefer to keep these things separate.
Isaac ignored that. I don’t think he understood why what he did was a problem, which is part of why I have said I don’t feel he is part of the kink community, just someone who profits from it.
I attempted to defend myself in post, but he has decided to block me. Personally I find blocking people to be a cheap trick. I prefer to have the conversation. If my opinion isn’t strong enough to stand up against opposition, I should reconsider it and the thought process that led to it. I understand some people don’t agree with that, and prefer to limit the dissenting voices that they are exposed to. I understand it, I just don’t really respect it, unless it’s for medical reasons.
Currently his cult is making personal attacks against me, which I suppose allows him to keep his hands clean.
I plan to write more often, I’m aiming to write daily, and I will be ranting more. Likely I will offend some people. Consider this your disclaimer.
When I first created this site, I wanted a place where I could speak my mind freely without it impacting on the TOU of a few sites or on friends, Reive in particular; Erotic Vancouver where I’d been writing before was his brand, and I worried about tarnishing it.
I let the fact that this was posting to Facebook taint the purpose, since I let myself worry about the audience again.
Well, in 2016, the gloves are coming off. I’ll probably need to change the way snippets from here are posted to facebook.
My copy of …and then, we held hands. has arrived.
It’s a strange board game, and the writings about it have mentioned this. It can be played in silence, with both players showing what they have, attempting to work together to reach a common goal, for if one of you can’t use their cards to move, you both lose.
I think Reive and Moondancer would be interested in it.
So, last night, at around twenty to midnight, there was a brief thump or rumble, as a M4.9 earthquake happened about 23Kms north of Victoria, about 45Kms underground. Relevance of the details? Well, the fact that it was deep underground means it probably wasn’t a prelude to the big one that people have been predicting.
The reactions have been mixed. Some people are posting photos of minimal damage and saying we will rebuild, making light of the possible impact. For some, that’s the easiest way to cope with this fear that we’ve been all generally been ignoring.
Others are looking at what they can do to prep for something. Most of those people will forget about it in a few days, though some will be more long term about it, especially those who had the power outages recently. Will this mean a decent percentage of the population is prepared? Probably not.
What should I be doing? Well, I should make sure I’ve got a better first aid kit, and probably more supplies in the basement and the garage.
Starting the year off with the end of Noir. Probably my last kink event for the foreseeable future.
While I enjoy spending time with some of the people in the community and have the wisdom to might come in handy for some people, I seem to be lacking in some aspects that seem to be required.
Aspects of bdsm are still something that I think will probably need in my relationships in the long term, but I suspect it’ll be something of a slower developmental nature. Though currently my thought is that at some point I became a type of person who doesn’t interest others, perhaps in part because they subconsciously they feel rejected by how insular I’ve become.
In the meantime, I can be found on steam, and local gaming events.
Well, I just did a training scenario where I had a man in high gear with a rubber knife stab me multiple times, with my objective being to kill him before I passed out from blood loss. Apparently I did pretty good at it. Had I been smarter, I’d have removed my glasses first, but losing them mid fight didn’t slow me down. Apparently I got in a few more kill shots than I realised, though I was clear when the scenario had ended. I think I was done slightly before “redredred” was called.
My knees are not happy with me, neither is my toe. I don’t think my adrenaline response was as bad as some of the others, a couple of them were shaking pretty hard.
After I’ve had a bit of time to recover, I should write up a piece on the class. It was definitely a solid 6 hours, and I’d recommend it to anyone.
So, with everything that’s happened at work, I’ll be working day shift for the next while, which actually works really well for me, in theory. It is very different, since I’ve been working the evening shift for at least 9 months now. I’ve gotten used to not having a social life, not being able to attend the weekday game nights, missing the weeknight dinners, etc.
It’ll mean getting up around 7 am, which means I’ll have time to have breakfast with Gram. Getting off at 6 pm instead of 9 pm, means I’ll be able to have dinner with her more often.
In the mornings and in the evenings, I’ll be taking the bus during rush hour, which I’m not really a fan of. So far, it hasn’t been too bad, and I’ll probably be fine, since I’m before Brentwood, which is where most of the BCIT students get on, so I should be able to get a seat. I do have the option of just going to the turn around spot, getting the 130 there, where I know I’ll get a seat, and I might do that.
Mondays, which are the Ink Club thing, which AredBaroness wants me to attend to improve my writing.
Tuesday, I’ve got the Netrunner thing at Lion’s Pub, downtown. I’d like to get back into playing that.
Wednesdays, I can’t recall any specific event, possibly Netrunner at Magic Stronghold.
Thursday, I know there’s a munch some weeks, and there has been one Doomtown event that I’d like to attend.
Fridays, various things happen. I’ll probably find something to do.
Saturday, not much should change, though it might be a bit easier to get up. There’s at least one possible game that’ll be taking place on the Saturdays.
Sunday nights, I won’t be staying up late, but I haven’t been doing that for ages anyways. In the afternoons on Sunday, I will probably try to play some board games.
This week, on Sunday I’ve booked the Waves from 1 pm – 5 pm for Dark Moon.
Overall, I think this means I can have a social life again, though I have to be careful about getting enough sleep, since I’ll be needing to be in bed by 10-10:30, to be able to get enough sleep to get up for 7 am. Which means in most cases, I’ll be leaving wherever I am by about 9:30, if not earlier.
I’m sure there are other things I should add to this list, but that’s what I’ve got for now.
So, I’m sitting here, on my “long” weekend, doing nothing much, waiting for the clocks to align so I can proceed. I’m going to be heading down to OV soon to pick up the Van, taking it to the lock up, loading it up with furniture, and then driving that down into a back alley, where people in tattered clothing will drag it down underneath a building and arrange it into a configuration. Afterwards, I’ll return the van where I got it, head home, relax for a bit, then eventually make my way down to said building, be social for a bit, then climb into a tiny car to cross a bridge to fetch the large van again, to repeat said process in reverse. Then I’ll potentially go be social some more, or more likely, go home and rest.
After that, I’ll in theory gather people to play some board games, but more likely nobody will show up. So, I’ll probably manage to play some of the new Mad Max game, which should be entertaining. Or maybe I’ll play something else, or do some more writing.
I’m a bit frustrated right now, over various things. One of those things is the Vancouver Zombiewalk. Yesterday, I once again went into work to avoid attending the event. It was a good thing I did, because a few of the things that came up where things that the weekend staff should probably be able to handle, but haven’t been trained for. Well, I wasn’t really trained for them either, but I managed to figure them out at some point, so I can handle them.
Apparently Zombiewalk went well for the most part; with a few complaints. I could rant about why the whole frustrates me, but then I’d be ranting about contributions and the difference between community focus and ego stroking. The whole thing would just be kinda asinine of me.
I’m a bit frustrated about my dating life, or lack of thereof. I attempt to communicate with people, but it seems like I’m on the wrong page with most people.
Orphaned by choice. Today, I’ve added the majority of my family to the block list on my phone. If they want to contact me, they can reach me through email.
The obvious exception is Gram.
I’ve done this because my interactions with my family have been a negative experience for me for nearly as long as I can remember. There have been benefits, mostly financial, but there have also been detriments mostly to my emotional state and mental health.
They’re in the final stages of moving to Squamish, swapping their living arrangements around. Prior to this, my sister was living as a tenant in my parent’s house, and maintaining it for them while they snowbirded. Now, the house will be hers, and they will be her tenants, when they’re back in Canada.
This arrangement creates a nice buffer. Gram is local, every one else is at least one bridge away.
You may recall I had been looking into heading to Toronto for a while. I had some concerns about not being local for Gram, and this has magnified those concerns.
There is plenty more of this on my mind, but it’ll take me a while to express it.
I feel like if I vent, it’ll be seen as whining & whinging. That by expressing my emotions, I’m somehow being immature about things, despite the fact that the ability to process emotions constructively is sign of maturity.
My parents tend to tell me to grow up, but they have a very odd definition of what being grown up means, I think.
I don’t really understand their values, when I reflect on them. At some point in my development, I rebelled, probably for the usual reasons, and that somehow changed things. Somehow, the post rebellion reconciliation never really solidified. There were attempts at it over the years, which were partially successful, but it was never sustained long enough to develop a permanence. It would get disrupted and pulled apart. Like a shattered bone, never being given enough time to fuse properly, or an object d’art being impatiently restored, with not enough time for the adhesive to harden.
The biggest reason for this is perspective and values. They are so far apart that communication is difficult. What is seen by one side as a minor imposition is a herculean task by the other side, at times. In other instances, both sides will see something as a favour to the other, and then be annoyed at the lack of gratitude.
This lack of common framework, is the source of many of the communication issues.
Garth and I are sitting here, having a beer, watching Youtube and doing some writing. We just watched the Suicide Squad trailer, and I was reminded of a previous script that I’d intended to put together ages back.
So, the final lines in the trailer, are Joker saying, “I’m not going to kill you, I just want to hurt you.” And while that’s a cute idea, it doesn’t really suit me.
I had an old script idea about the serial killer collective, brought together by social media and blackmail, dragged into a contest, where they split into teams, film their kills and then screen them for the other members, before releasing them unto the internet as darknet torrents. It’s not a bad idea, and I should do some work on it again some day.
Anyways, the Joker line reminded me of something with a Shadowrun flavour, someone who “didn’t plan to kill you, didn’t really want to hurt you, but needed to upgrade you.” He had criteria for his victims, and he upgraded them, installing his own attempts at cybernetics into them.
And part way through the story, he’ll find someone else who believes in upgrading people, who will join him, and give him access to new ways to upgrade people.
(Garth Spencer):
Something like this has occurred to me, although the story idea hasn’t quite gelled. Start with the philosophical issue: we are not, yet, entirely adapted to being “intelligent” beings. I put the word in quotes because whether we are really a thinking, rational species has yet to be proven; in fact it’s a lot easier to prove we are irrational, and fundamentally a believing, even superstitious species.
Considering the challenges we face to survival, someone who decided to play god with humans might well decide to upgrade us. Mentally. Biologically. Or, at least, with cyborg implants, for proof of concepts.
Item: thinking ahead. Have you ever suspected that engineers and industrial investors suffer from an extraordinary level of suboptimal planning? Even, an extraordinary aversion to thinking through the consequences of half-assed industrial processes? And now we have a universal level of toxins and industrial effluents in seawater and water supplies, and marine garbage patches the size of Australia. Plural. (Isn’t anybody going to capitalize on this? Where’s the IPO?)
Item: social perception. You know and I know and your maiden aunt’s little doggie knows that there are pretty inconsistent and irrational inputs to everyone’s education, especially the unconscious education about how to read people or succeed in business or battle the international threat represented by the underground worldwide Cult of Kali, and its famous fronts the NRA, and ISIS, and the Conservative Party of Canada. (I say nothing about the U.S. Republican Party, nothing at all!)
Item: Why are almost all the elected representatives or candidates for elective office THAT WE HEAR ABOUT unqualified for running a Sunday school class? Because they’re almost all fronts for the Belgian conspiracy to achieve worldwide domination? (Today, Europe; tomorrow … ?)
Item: If I’m so smart, why ain’t I rich and famous and basking in the love of fair women, plural?
Answer: because I haven’t sat down and written everything I can. That answers everything.
(/Garth Spencer)
And that’s the commentary from Murderhobo.Club’s first guest writer.
I was less than 20 when I moved out of my parent’s place. Before that I’d moved from the upper floor, where everyone lived, down in the basement, probably when I was still in elementary. So I’ve been moving away from my parents for probably about two-thirds of my life now.
Still, I’ve used that address as my home address for the majority of my life. It would have been 3rd grade when we moved into that house. And now it has been sold. That link to my past, will cease to be.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. In recent years, I’ve always been fairly uncomfortable when I’ve been over there. Partially because of the renovations that had taken place, and partially because of the somewhat strained relationship I’ve had with my family.
Since I link this to my facebook, my grandmother will likely read it, and she’d rather I not go into too much detail about my relationship with my family. She sees that as airing dirty laundry.
On one hand, I can see her point; on the other hand, this is my place for catharsis. This is a place where I can put my thoughts into order and perhaps untangle some of the knots that formed inside my mind.
Without saying too much, I can say that the relationship is perceived differently by all parties involved, there is very little agreement regarding common structure. This is somewhat magnified by the fact that the personalities involved are all fairly strong.
As a stew, it doesn’t work, too much conflict in the flavors. Perhaps it works better if spread out more, and mixed with something to cleanse the palate. I suppose that’s where my brother-in-law comes in.
So, weekends, they’re a time to relax from the stress of the 40+ hour work week; Down time.
This weekend, not so much. I was asked to dogsit for my parents, since everyone was out of town. Then I was told that the dogsitting also included taking the dogs for a 2 hour walk, during the open house that they’re having. Their neighborhood, isn’t really fun to take walks in; too many hills. Moreover, this walk needed to happen between 2pm and 4pm, which meant that there was a distinct lack of shade.
Anyways, add to that the fact that this was a Noir weekend, and Reive was in a car accident on Thursday, in which his truck was totaled. So, my bailing, which might have been possible, became a rather bad idea.
So, Friday, after work, I headed over there to check on the dogs. I found out that the amenities I expected to find, weren’t there. The apple TV had been removed, along with my brother in law’s playstation. All packed up for this move. So much for getting in some gaming time over the weekend. Not that I really had much time for it, as it turned out.
Of course the Noir setup and the Open House were both going to happen in the afternoon. We managed to move it to a bit later, so I’d have some time to get there. Of course my parent’s place, being the suburbs, isn’t really good for transit, and Noir isn’t back at Chapel Arts yet, since it’s still being renovated. So my usual 30 minute trip down to help with setup became a 90 minute trip down to help with setup. After which, I needed to get back to their place to let the dogs out and put them to bed, so they wouldn’t be a problem. I grabbed a Modo car, so I could head down to the event, but the Modo coverage in my parent’s area is pretty bad, so instead of the usual 15 minute walk back from returning the car, it was closer to 30 minutes. And of course in the morning, the dogs wanted to wake me up for breakfast.
At least this time, they didn’t bark at random strangers. Oh, and waking up on Sunday morning, I noticed my legs were sore. I’m not sure what happened, it might have been the walk back from the Modo, or the walk to Robert Burnaby park, or sleeping funny, or something. Either way, I was limping around today.
So, rather than taking the dogs for the walk, I got a ride back over to my place, with KW, who was there with Sara, who’d been over helping prep the house for the open house, on both days. So, I got the dogs over. I’d been thinking I’d take them for a shorter walk in the flatter area, but my legs were still giving me grief, and I find out that there’s been a bit of a screw up with the whole tear down for the event. So, I grab a bit of rest, make sure the dogs are fine in the backyard, and head down to the event. Only a 45 minute commute this time, not too bad.
Get the vehicle, get down there, get into the underground lot, find out that it wasn’t just a volunteer shortage, it was a volunteer absence. Staff only, excluding myself, two of which are nearly crippled from recent events; though maybe I am staff at this point. Anyways, it wasn’t as bad as I expected, we managed to fit all of it into the one load; though it was pretty tight. Had we disabled the cross, we might not have been able to fit it in. Of course we couldn’t do that, because the socket wrench had magically gone missing. That’ll be a job for another day. And likely won’t I won’t be able to help with, since I’ll be at work til 9pm every day.
So, we finished that up by 8pm, got home by 9pm, found out that the dogs are still tied up in the back yard. Original plan was for my sister to pick them up around 6pm or so, but issues on the Sea to Sky highway prevented that. She just showed up a few minutes ago, and managed to accidentally illustrate why Gram has been so opposed to letting the dogs stay over at her place, when Mr G ran up the stairs after Jay, into the house, at a speed which would have knocked over someone who was having balance issues. At least it was G, who doesn’t shed much. If it had been the other one, there would have been tufts of dog hair around the house to clean up also.
Oh, and I’ve got an odd lump on my back, which seems a bit large for a mosquito bit, and I’ve noticed a bit of numbness/tingling in my fingers, which is not a good thing. I suspect I’ll be much better after a good night sleep in my own bed; which is next on the agenda.
(TL;DR: I had a rough weekend, and I need some downtime.)
So, my pre-order of Ashes is officially on it’s way here. Its been shipped out of Snakes and Lattes in Toronto. So, I’ll have a copy by Wednesday or Thursday night. This means I need to plan a session for Saturday/Sunday.
Many years ago, when asked why I didn’t date a particular girl, I used the term scencest to explain my discomfort with dating someone inside a small and insular community. Too many crossing paths, too many common friends, or worse too many common ex’s.
The BDSM community has grown a bit since then, but I find I still have that discomfort. How does one get over it, or it it healthy to maintain it?
I suppose it doesn’t help that plenty of the guys in my community tend to crowd around the attractive newbies, which tends to scare them off and that just makes the problem worse.
When a couple breaks up, odds are good that the male will stick around, and the female will either leave or get a ton of messages.
I’m old, grumpy and bitter, I’ll admit. But how much of this problem is in my head, and how much is what you also see?
I think I’m pretty awesome, but I’m having trouble finding someone who agrees and I have chemistry with. It seems that either we have chemistry and they hate me, or we are fond of each other but it isn’t anything more.
My fear of being a toxic misogynistic asshole has led to me double thinking my flirting & generally just being too damn disengaged to connect with someone.
My job keeps me busy til 9 pm on weekdays, so I’ve had trouble meeting people at the casual events.
Even then, I’ve been involved in BDSM and the local Goth scene for a decade and a half, but I hate dating within the community. The whole scencest dynamic and drama… It doesn’t work for me.
So I look for someone who suits me in other places. I tend to find people who fit me in random places. IRC channels, MUDs, volunteering, here on reddit, etc. It has been a while since I’ve found anyone, so I’m trying something different.
I spend too much time online, either on my laptop or my phone. I do far more writing on my phone than I should. Including writing this. Lately I’ve noticed that I don’t really have anyone I’m taking to. It would be nice to have someone to talk to.
I spend a decent amount of time on my own, mostly listening to podcasts, because listening to people having interesting conversations is my best substitute for having interesting conversations with people. Horror show Hot Dog, Slaughterhouse Princess, the Giant Bombcast, the Dice Tower, the Secret Cabal, Apropos of Nothing, to name a few.
Oh right, I should focus on the BDSM bits… I am into BDSM because I have a tendency to lead, and that works better in the BDSM community than in the rest of the world, or at least that is my terribly misguided assumption. I also like the clarity that comes from proper negotiations. Oh and I’m a bit of a sadist.
The other day, I cited material possessions as the chains that bind us to our ruts, or at least me to mine. My biggest chain would be my board game collection. It has grown large and menacing over the last few years; were it to pounce on someone, that person would surely be crushed under the weight.
There is also a smaller collection of books, and some DVDs. The majority of the books have been replaced with ebooks. There area few of sentimental value or that would be a pain to read digitally, but for the most part, they’re not something that would need to travel with me. Same goes for the DVDs. Netflix would cover most of my movie needs.
Beyond that, a few knickknacks are scattered around, but I’m not sure if any of them hold any real attachment.
A few pieces of art, I suppose I’d miss those.
My pile of monkeys and other fuzzy friends. Leaving them would be a bit strange.
Then there’s the tech, though plenty of it is irrelevant. I’d be happy with a Chromebook for most of my projects.
A decent gaming PC, it’s an expensive replacement, but doable in time. Especially given how little I actually play games these days.
I suppose it would make sense to keep a console, but none of them really inspire me to bring them along.
The 3ds gets packed, I suppose. Its light, has a few games, and doesn’t take up much space.
The final pieces of tech are the monitors. Expensive, but not really portable. Pretty easy to replace, I suppose.
Clothing, some costumes, but really not much there that matters. Mostly just t-shirts that I liked. Like my KoL Bonestar shirts.
Yeah, reflecting on it, the board games are the big obstacle. Though I suspect I could find a good home for them, if I wanted to go traveling.
Stunning bout of depression/apathy has hit me hard over the weekend.
I’m suffering from a serious lack of motivation. Partially this is related to my realisation that the rut I’m in is much deeper and harder to get out of than I’d previously understood. It is partially because some aspects of it have been established over the last decade and a half.
What can be done?
Untangle the material chains and drag myself out slowly.
Start burning the chains randomly and hope I survive the fire.
So, my sources tell me that a masked vigilante is out there, in the city. Well, that’s nothing new. This one, is perhaps a bit different though. He’s driving an electric car, wearing a wrestling mask, and carrying a sawzall. He’s been seen parking in front of houses that are watering their lawns excessively, in clear violation of the water restrictions. He’ll walk up to the house, turn the tap fully off, and then with his sawzall, he’ll cut the head off the faucet. Then he’ll apply a sticker to the side of the house, before getting back in the car and driving away. The sticker is printed with a copy of the current water restrictions and an oddly deformed smiley face at the bottom.
Strangely, the rumours about this man differ greatly. Some describe him as 5’5″, blond hair poking out from the mask, chain smoking, while others have described him as 6’6″, a big bear of a man, who drinks from the hose before he shuts it off. One person even stated that she was sure that the vigilante was in fact a woman.
In any case, my lawn has gone brown and grey, and will stay that way.
I’m thinking I should put together a page that lists the various characters who appear in this list, separating those who exist from those who don’t and providing as much or as little real world context for them as they feel comfortable with.
This was motivated by aRedBaroness joining the board games and DerBlob having a handle that I am having a hard time associating with him.
So, if you want to volunteer your context, let me know.
Dimestore is our shadowrun GM, a regular board gamer, a scholar and a gentleman.
John Duggan, when he appears in the blog, is a fictional interpretation of a real person, who I never spend much time with. Less of a scholar, but no less a gentleman than Dimestore, he has serious obligations that tend to interfere with board gaming.
Reive Doig has been a figure in the Vancouver kink scene for a few decades now. He’s something of a pioneer, with a passion for community building and education. He is part of the team behind Noir and Erotic Vancouver, which I help with. He tends to have too much on his plate at any given time.
aRedbaroness and I have known each other for years, since I dated one of her friends. While that ended with a bit of a flat note, the friendship has remained. We’ve recently started to collaborate on some projects, as we both have a strong focus on the written word.
mogdoll, the henchmuffin, is a great minion.
I’m sure there are more and more details will be added, but this was what came out of my head on the ride to work.
So, it sounds like we’ve for enough players to actually have a Sunday shadowrun start up again. aRedbaroness has an elf adept she’s working on, specialising in some variant of killing hands. DerBlob has a Dr.Nick style streetdoc he’s building. I’m probably doing a face mage again, probably face secondary. Hopefully this time it won’t be a slippery slope into blood magic depravity.
We played a round of five tribes, and apparently I didn’t explain the game very well, because people were realising midgame some of the rules. But everyone had fun, so that’s not to bad.
After that, DerBlob and I played a round of Imperial Settlers finally. I now understand why people like that game. The drafting mechanics, the tableau building, the choice to convert a card directly into resources, and the empire building. Over a period of 5 turns, making a game session less than an hour. Definitely one I’ll want to play again, now that we have the hang out it.
Didn’t get a chance to play Spyfall or Dead of Winter, though Spyfall is now prepped for next time. Well, partially. We’ve decided to upgrade it with manilla envelopes for all the mission sets.
Left work more than half an hour late, after a long call with a customer who couldn’t accept that his issue was not really something we could support. DNS issues, and he can’t log into his router to change the DNS. And he’s managed to wipe the settings from his ata (analog telephone adaptor), which can easily be set up, if you can receive email, which he also can’t, though he denies this. The computer and phone didn’t ding, so he hasn’t received any email. Even though both are connecting through his router, which currently isn’t functional. Hmmm, possible connection? Eventually, he gave up.
And then I left. Wandered homeward. Well, vaguely. I decided to go elsewhere first, to get my mail.
4 kms, to there. Then another few kms, depending on my route. Eventually home.
I haven’t been writing much lately, partially because I had a major technological failure the other day and managed to have both my Nexus 5 and my 14″ chromebook cease functioning.
My ancient macbook doesn’t really have the battery to be of much use as a writing tool, if it isn’t plugged in someplace. My desktop is an option, but the chair in front of it doesn’t seem conductive to great writing.
The backup cellphone, currently can’t log into wordpress, as it lacks NFC, so my security protocols won’t let it on. I could bypass that, but I haven’t really felt it was worth the effort.
I keep thinking about replacing my chromebook, but I can’t decide on a particular flavor, and I keep hearing that the new specs in the fall will be worth waiting for. Though with a chromebook, the specs aren’t overly relevant.
I liked the 14″, but it was a bit big, even if it was lightweight. I could go with a 11″, but will the keyboard be wide enough? My hands are rather large.
My specs are pretty simple. Lightweight, comfortable keyboard, long battery life. Screen quality doesn’t matter much, processor isn’t a big deal; overall, cheaper tends to be better.
Yubikey and LastPass, are a pair of services that I use for storing my passwords and personal data. The Yubikey functions as an authentication token for the LastPass login, and is used to decrypt the password vault.
In theory, I should consider a service where the passwords aren’t stored on their cloud, even in an encrypted format. However, I like LastPass, and I like their software. I like that their password validator seems to actually give accurate ratings to the various passwords in the vault during their security check function. Some sites will fail simple passwords that actually are very hard to crack, simply because they don’t fit a scheme. The fact that the tool also monitors for duplicate passwords and sites whose passwords have been compromised; and then request that you change those, also really handy.
The Yubikey is a little plastic dongle that plugs into your USB drive and acts as USB keyboard, typing out a One Time Password (OTP) as if you’d typed it into the keyboard directly. The chip on the Yubikey is set up to do a few fancy things to ensure that the password is hard to spoof.
There are some potential problems with any password scheme, especially the sort where there is a single point of failure. Using the Yubikey to generate the OTP for the LastPass in theory, makes it much more secure, since in order to access your Password Vault, they require both the digital key and the physical key. So, that’s what I had been using for my personal passwords for the last year, but I hadn’t been able to convince too many other people to switch over, until recently.
When I first got my Chromebook, I was slightly annoyed that there wasn’t a way to use the Yubikey to log into it. Then, by accident, the other day, I found out how to manage that. The Yubikey configuration tool has the ability to set up what is stored in the two slots on the Yubikey. In the main slot, is the OTP, for doing the main login. In the second slot, a variety of different configurations could be set up. The only option that made sense for my purposes is the Static Keystring.
By storing a preset keystring of up to 38 characters that will be typed in whenever I activate the second slot on the key, I have a password that I can use to log into offline devices. The activation of the secondary slot is simply holding down the button on the yubikey, rather than tapping it. I can use this preset key to log into a secondary gmail account, which logs me into the chromebook. Once inside that gmail account, I can log into the lastpass browser plugin, verifying with slot 1 on the yubikey, and open up my gmail account. This whole sequence can be done fairly quickly, especially if the lastpass browser plugin has been told to save the master password, so the login sequence becomes essentially boot computer, long press on the key, wait for the screen for the Yubikey OTP, short press, and you’re logged in. That system, as long as you aren’t worried about losing the key, is actually pretty secure. It does have a few obvious flaws.
Though, with a few minor alterations, can be made considerably more secure.
The first main flaw, is that with the key and the knowledge, anyone can get in. Convenience has compromised the security. The single press a button bypasses the first login, and the second login is saved, the third login is just another button press.
So, what’s the easy way to fix that? Pad the static keystring. Have a few characters that need to be typed in manually, before you press the button. That means even with the key, they’ll still need to guess that initial password, before it’ll let them in.
This actually also helps with the second flaw, which is that since the static keystring is static and emitted whenever the button is pressed to activate that slot, it’s easy to steal. That’s why I’m not using it on my main gmail, but on a secondary gmail that really only exists so that it grabs a copy of the LastPass browser plugin from the chrome store when I log on.
Beyond that, I’m sure there are plenty of other flaws, but these are the ones I’ve discovered so far. And since my google account has other forms of verification on it, specifically the whole two-factor authentication whenever you log in from a new device, I’m not currently concerned.
I know someone could compromise my security, if they had reason to, but for the moment, I doubt there are any with the skills, malicious intent, and motivation. I am sure there are some with two of the three, but I can’t think of anyone with all three; most would only have but one.
Earlier tonight, while discussing ideas for potential new products, I think we accidentally stumbled onto something big. Something that could be worth building. Something that could actually be worth putting together a kickstarter / indiegogo campaign for. Something that is keeping me awake, so I’m going to type it and hope that clears my head.
A piece of modular hardware, built on a combination of open source software and proprietary hardware, creating something that is both extremely flexible and extremely secure.
The basic concept is an office-in-a-box, a thin client based set-top box/system on a chip, with an attached hardware VPN router. This little box plugs into any HDMI based TV, accepts standard Bluetooth & USB interface devices, and has an onboard ethernet & wifi network card. Similar in function to the Apple TV, Chromecast, Steam PCs and various other set-top boxes, this one is designed to function as an office. It connects to available Wifi or Ethernet, opens a VPN connection to either the main server or to your own personal server, and then loads the thin client interface, which is basically a preconfigured (but easily modified) software package. Something similar in nature to Google’s Docs/Sheets/Drive/Calendar/Etc or Amazon’s cloud Workspaces, or Microsoft’s Office 365. One major function that I think would be worth adding would be a dedicated SIP client. SIP clients are used for phone calls, and ideally this one would be combined with a virtual PBX. When the box is active with a solid connection, you’d show up as a valid extension to be called. When it was on a bad connection, you’d show up as being only available for Voice/Text Messaging, and when you were offline, you’d be available for forwarded calls.
Beyond the basic idea, we’ve come up with a few ideas for building this and making it workable. The protoype SOAC would be put together on a Raspberry PI for the full box version and a Chromebook for the Laptop Variant. The basic operating system would be open source, for flexibility, probably working with Open Office and Asterisk for the basic functionality. Given that it would be web based, there would be the option to access web-based services like the Google, Amazon and Microsoft cloud services. However, that would be at the discretion of the user.
The VPN could be done in a few different ways, currently I’m thinking a customized firmware on a Mikrotik routerboard. I’m also thinking it would be nice to have an OTP solution integrated into it, something that supports FIDO U2F.
One of the biggest selling points of this device would be that when the customer was using the provided office software, their data would only be travelling through the VPN between their virtual office and the server at the other end, be it their own, or one that we’ve set up. In the case of ones that we’ve set up we’d nationalize the server for the client.
In our case, given that we’re Canadian, we’d have our servers here in Canada. In theory, this means that the data would be kept within the country for legal reasons. For professionals who have legal reasons for their offices to remain within their own country, this would be an obvious advantage over other cloud services.
Given that the VPN is already encrypting all data passing through it, all calls made using the phone system would also be encrypted. For customers who have two of our boxes, the entire call would be handled within the internal network and thus be very difficult to intercept. For calls outside the network, they’d be able to be intercepted at the point where the server connects to the normal phone system.
Given that we are in the age of 3D printers and rapid prototyping, I see no reason we couldn’t develop multiple variants of the basic box for different client needs. The two basic versions are a set top box and a dongle that plugs into a netbook. It would be easy to develop additional versions based on the needs of the customer.
Given the range of configurations that are already possible using Raspberry Pi, such as the version with the 3.8″ touchscreen, I can even see a variant of this box that functions as the modern equivalent of a pager. Running on battery power and a WiFi/cellular connection, it would alert on you the touchscreen if someone wanted to reach you. You’d be able to tap them a quick message, and then if need be, plug it into your monitor and switch to full office mode in a matter of moments.
Given that it’s a set-top box, it could also be configured as a media centre, with the added functionality of letting you know when something had happened that you needed to be aware of. Watching Netflix while waiting for an email, the box pops up a window letting you know that a message or call has come in, and then you decide if you want to switch modes.
On some level, there isn’t really much that is revolutionary about this idea, it’s simply evolutionary. Combining good ideas in new ways, building something that has functions that you want.
Still, I think it’s an idea worth exploring, and I think I need to reach out to some of the people I know to put this idea together. I think together, we could put together a nice little crowdfunding campaign and build a product that people will really appreciate. And right now, that’s what people seem to be doing. So why not us?
Open Source software allows us to adapt to your needs in the most cost effective manner. Proprietary security software and hardware keeps our systems, and your data, secure.
Recently, I began taking steps to change some things in my life. It’s unclear what all I plan to change, but I believe that I’d like to have more options. One way to get those options is to remove the obligations I’ve got. So I began searching for someone who could pick up the slack, if I decided to retreat into the shadows.
I’ve done the front and centre thing, and at some point in the last few years, when I reflected on how I was coming across, I decided to tone things down a bit, and that’s resulted in my coming across more serious. Beyond that, I’ve also become less likely to connect with people. I’m not entirely sure of the source, but I seem to be far more reserved in some respects than I was in the past.
In any case, when I’ve said I’m going to fade into the shadows, I don’t mean I’m going cross the eternal veil, I mean something far more mundane. There has been some concern over my mental health, and as far as I can tell, my mental state is functional but drained. I need to find more things that envigorate me, though I’ve no clear idea how to do that.
I suppose the writing helps sometimes, as I go from being distracted and unfocused to a state of sharpness. Though that state is still lacking something.
I know many people have turned to music for this envigoration. Hell, there’s even a playlist function for it on many of the streaming services. The problem is I find music hard to engage with. In many cases, the songs are about something I can’t relate to.
Currently, I’m listening to Repo, the Genetic Opera. It has a certain intensity to it; something I can’t put into words. Other pieces I enjoy are of a similar genre. Reefer Madness, Jesus Christ Superstar, even Wicked.
I’ve gone far afield. I meant to say, I plan to change my life, not to end it. I might wander off in a different direction, but I don’t plan on closing any doors or burning any bridges. I tend to save the burning for those who’ve earned it, and it’s usually my preference to let them light their own pyres.
Saturday Afternoon, I headed over to Magic Stronghold, to check out the new Doomtown : Reloaded Organized play sessions.
I was late, because of the events of the night before, and the extended period of taking care of Nikita and Guinness, over at my parent’s place. And the transit problems created by Hat’s Off Day, and the related road closures.
Had I had more sleep, and had more time to properly rebuild my decks, I’d have enjoyed the game more. The deck I built, terrible design. Not enough starting influence. Maybe I should use other people’s deck designs off Doomtown DB, until I get better at it.
That’s the big stalling point of Doomtown, the deck construction is just a little too heavy, when compared to every other game out there. Balancing the deck structure and the draw structure, balancing influence and bullets. Being sure to have enough starting influence and enough money to keep working on the game. It’s tricky.
Again, I recommend watching Willingdone’s videos.
The hosts was a friendly guy, I’ve proposed we do another game in a couple weeks, and hopefully that’ll get things ready for the tournament he wants to run next month. Hopefully that gives me time to get a decent deck built. Still, $5 entry fee, so no big deal if my deck isn’t strong.
There was trouble nearby, so I went to save the day.
Summoned by the cries of a damsel in distress.
An outcast, who has been banned from a few events, is being creeperly to a newbie. And someone who I’d brought the hammer down on, called me for backup, mostly subconsciously.
I’d been in bed, reading, getting ready to sleep, but duty calls. So, I get up, throw my clothing back on and I’m out the door.
I get there, and I take up a position to keep an eye on things, and check in with the girl who summoned me. She provides details while we observe.
No negotiations, hardly any discussions… It is not a good start.
His technique is … Just sad.
The need for control is there. Too desperate, too needy.
The newbie seems into it, her more experienced friend seems concerned.
Roughly an hour passes, and #translack has ceased being an option. I tell the friend that it’s time head out, and this manages to get the newbie ready to go.
We head out the back way, walk north to the Co-op car. Along the way, the two of them talk, and the newbie’s attitude quickly changes. She goes from being happy with the activity to regretting it. How much of that is caused by her friend’s disapproval is unclear, how much is caused from coming out of the scene, who knows. It reminds me that there are too many possibilities.
On one hand, this fellow has been banned from a couple of events; on the other hand, I’ve said a few times that I distrust promoters because there are several of them who I don’t think would be welcome at events, unless they were running their own event. It’s a complicated subject.
Either way, it’s a 20 minute drive to get them back someplace safe, then another 30 back to my place.
An hour driving, an hour at the thing. At least two hours past when I’d planned to sleep.
Why do I do these things? What part of me is broken so I’m compelled to do so?
I have trouble dealing with passive aggressive or deceptive individuals. If I get told something second hand, whether or not I accept it as the truth depends on various factors, but if I find out that it was manipulation, and someone attempts the same play again, it’ll irk me. In theory it should anger me, but it doesn’t.
It instead creates a certain comfort; establishing a pattern. And since they’ve established a pattern; they’ve given me something I could use against them, should things escalate to that level. It then becomes a question of what response is appropriate. In many cases, while there is a temptation for confrontation, it is wiser to consider the how to diffuse the impact of the their manipulation, or to fold that energy back into a new direction.
If they’ve lied to you, they’ve lied to others; a subtle knowing word, something that’ll speed up their understanding of the situation, without tipping your hand too much. That seems a wise course of action.
If the lie has created friction with others, as it did in the original example that I am deconstructing, then the obvious first step is to accept your failure, admit your foolishness, and offer apology to those who were on the wrong side of your misguided actions.
For many, that step is a difficult one, but it is an important one. You have to admit and acknowledge the problems your actions created, without passing the blame back to the original source of the mistake. You can acknowledge that you were mislead, but you must own your actions. After that, reparations, repairs, and generally learning from it.
At that point, you have earned the ability to be honest with others about the manipulation, and in so doing, create exposure for the deceiver. This must be done in the right manner, as done wrong it will harm you more than the one who misled you.
While there is always the option of confrontation to bring about change, through conflict, rendering your adversary impotent is often wiser.
In some cases, when the person has established themselves, or has established a cult of personality, this can be difficult, and perhaps nigh impossible. Still, patience and solidity should endure over the slippery tongue.
Over the weekend, Dimestore, Thike and I got together for some gaming. We had a game of Legendary Encounters Alien, where we won for a change. This was likely because Dimestore was playing the commander role and his main move was to collect up all the sergeants, allowing him to grant us an extra 2 purchase credits during our turns, or giving me an extra two damage when I was using the mercenary. It was definitely much easier than in the two player games.
I think it was also less fun for me, as I was playing as the mercenary, and most of the time I’d sacrifice my purchasing power to be able to damage the aliens that were coming at us. I almost never purchased anything good for my deck, and it was definitely something I noticed. The deck felt weak, or perhaps lacking in development. It felt like I wasn’t seeing any cards other than my basic starters, with the exception of one coordinate card I’d picked up. I think that’s a weakness of the mercenary role.
Legendary is a decent co-op game, and I’m going to enjoy playing more of it.
We’d intended to play Doomtown, but didn’t have decks built for it.
This will probably get converted from a post into a page, to make it easier to reference, but I was checking reddit today and was reminded of a podcast I’d listened to but I’d lost when I’d swapped phones. So, this will be a list of podcasts I recommend, which can also double as an easy place to reload my podcasts if I swap phones again.
Giantbombcast. – Solid Video Game discussion with a mix of interesting personalities and digressions.
Stop Podcasting Yourself – Vancouver-based comedy podcast, with Overheards, material taken out of context.
Kingdom of Loathing Podcast – Where the guys from Video Games Hot Dog came from, fairly interesting, some material is only relevant if you play the game.
Low Player Count – Board games discussion with a focus on smaller groups.
Critical Glitch – Shadowrun podcast, with a focus on teaching and public gaming.
The Arcology Podcast – Shadowrun podcast, focus on 5th Edition, and some recorded play sessions.
Harmontown – Only recently added to the roster. The brains behind Community, and they do some live Shadowrun, so it’ll likely stick around.
8-4 Play – Video games podcast, focus on Japanese gaming.
There are probably some that I’m missing, as I lost a bunch when I swapped phones recently after my nexus 5 required an RMA. For whatever reason my backup didn’t preserve the podcast software’s subscription file.
So, the last while… things have happened. Nothing major, beyond Gram coming back to the house for at least one night, and maybe more. That’ll be a bit different. I suspect I’ll stress in the evenings for a bit, til I get used to her being back here. Mostly just not sure she wants to be alone for that long. Though I know she’s got plenty of friends who will come over and visit, if she lets them know she wants company. For now, I think she’ll want just piece and quiet.
I ended up getting some new hardware, a spare tower from Chris at work, which I’ve yet to actually move components over into. That’s a project I should have worked on today, but I didn’t. Instead I built another website. My third or fourth this week. Though really they’re just wordpress installs that I’m setting up with some minor bits and bobs, and are fairly barebones at the moment.
One of them I set up for my friend Kylie, as a birthday present. I bought her a .ninja domain. I’ve still got a few things to do to get that up 100%, but for now, it’s a start. When she has finished celebrating her birthday, we’ll actually get all the functionality working. aredbaroness.ninja, for the curious.
Today, while having coffee with Julia, and telling her about the site I built for Kylie, we decided to build her a site, so we built juliarants.com, a place for her rants. It’s lacking in content, but given Julia’s passion, I don’t expect it to stay that way for long.
I built a site for work the other day, that I won’t link here, which is going to be a knowledge base, with some internal and external facing bits. I’ve yet figure out the long term of it, but in the short term, I’m happy with it.
Prior to that, I built a site for Nick Black, because he’s been asking for a site to be built for a while now and while I think I’m not worth paying, he was happy with what I was able to build for him. And despite his initial protests that he’s not any good with it, he picked up the basics of WordPress pretty quick. It’s one of those things that is far more intimidating in people’s heads than it is once you sit down in front of it.
While I probably could have billed him for hours and hours of updates, but I’d rather just get him comfortable putting up his own updates. I’m perfectly happy getting paid to create content, but for some reason I’m not a fan of getting paid to move content from one place to another. I think it’s a moral objection. Either I’m not getting paid enough for it to be worth my time, or I’m getting paid far more than the job is worth, and neither of those appeal to me.
Anyways, enough rambling. I’ve built blackandbluebdsm.com for Nick Black, and I’ll be working with him in the future to develop and promote it. My 2/3rds of a marketing degree are going to get put to good use.
My next project, is probably to learn more about how SEO works. Since that’s something I’m fairly clueless about. I should also work on adding the internal sections to the secret new work site, and figure out the security bits on those. Having an easily update-able page for “Known and Suspected Issues” seems like it would be a good thing. Or maybe just a category with posting functionality. I need to figure out the best solution. Well, that’s what experimentation is for.
I’ve entered into a phase of high productivity, insomnia and mild mania.
I’m unclear as to the catalyst to this state. I’ve no illusions that I understand how to maintain it, no solid predictions on the duration or the potential aftermath.
I notice I’ve become less detail oriented, more absentminded, but for now this is compensated for by the drive forward. Momentum over precision.
Forget a required piece for this step? Work around it. Hit a wall on one project? Bash head into wall until cracks appear or something shiny interrupts. Chase the shiny.
Stumbling into the darkened kitchen, I noticed a shine on the table. Flicking on the lights, I found a hastily scrawled note. “The door locks from the other side now, here are the keys.” The keys lay there, reflecting the light.
Before foreign architects included water features in designs for their buildings, Canadians needed to travel into the wilderness to take part in recreational ice climbing. Now that many buildings include them, urban Canadians can enjoy a nice climb during their lunch hour. The practice has become so popular that a some restaurants have included a “winter entrance”.
Well, last weekend, I managed my 30for30 on the first day off, but not the second day off, as I spend the day buried under the blankets with a sore throat, drinking fluids and generally trying to conserve energy. That carried over for a couple more days, and I didn’t continue my post work walking, though I should have.
So, I’ve failed the challenge, though I’ll be trying to get back into the habit of it soon.
My hours at work will be changing. I’ll be doing the Monday to Friday, noon to nine shift. I’m going to try to walk home after, which should be good. Or at least walk as far as BCIT.
I’ve got an invoice for a PC I built in 2012, for around a grand. I want to figure out what’s the best upgrade path. Aiming for playable Star Citizen at 1920X1080. Any thoughts would be welcome.
The parts list from the invoice:
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 823MHZ 1024MB 4GHZ GDDR5 SLI Ready 2DVI Mini HDMI PCI-E Video Card
Antec Truepower New 650W Modular Power Supply ATX12V V2.3 Active PFC 80 Plus SLI Ready 120MM PWM Fan
So, I thought I had a shift tonight and so I showed up at the office at 2:30, only to find all the desks were taken. But, we’ve had busy evenings lately, so they figure I might as well stick around. After about an hour, the morning shift clears out and I get my desk back. Not long after that, one of the regular night shift guys finds himself developing a migraine. So, it worked out. I finished a full Friday shift, and headed home.
I’ve got Sunday booked off for recovery after helping with the Noir Setup and Teardown. I’m hoping that my friend doesn’t bail on our Saturday night plans, as currently I’m going to require her assistance to get back from parking lot after I drop off the van. The vehicles for this time lined up in the wrong ways, which has complicated things. Worst case, I’ll get creative.
Or get some late night exercise in.
At some point on Saturday and maybe Sunday, I’d like to get some gaming in. Possibly some solo LotR on Saturday morning.
I still need to play Dead of Winter at some point, but it needs 3-5 people.
The other day, I picked up a copy of the Lord of the Rings card game. It’s a co-op LCG, where you run a trio or sextet of heroes through a series of encounters on their way through the events of various sections of the LoTR mythology. The starter box comes with Through the Mirkwood, where you face off against the giant spiders, and two other scenarios. I’ve done about half a game of through the Mirkwood, attempting to get a feel for the game. So far, I really like it.
I picked this up after listening to the Low Player count podcast. It was the favorite game of two of the three hosts. I’d also watched through some Watch it Played, to get a feel for the mechanics. They’re similar enough to the mechanics to Magic to be familiar, but also unique enough to be interesting.
On a whim, I also bought a copy for pair of old friends who I never spend time with these days, as they tend to be busy raising their daughter. I figured since they both enjoy LoTR and this is a good co-op, they might enjoy playing it together. They just picked it up from the Post Office last night, and I’m curious to hear their first impressions.
Amusingly, while I initially bought it on a whim, I found out the next day that it was her birthday. While I rarely actually send people birthday gifts, as I have a strange policy regarding birthdays, this case of synchronicity worked out nicely.
I suspect this will become a series of short articles regarding my thoughts on the LoTR LCG and on the whole solo/single co-op aspect of board games. I’ve got a few I’ve picked up over the years that are supposedly playable as single co-op, and as I rarely have much social gaming time, it might be nice to enjoy the mechanics on my own.
After writing my article yesterday, I had enough time for a nice walk down past Dick’s Lumber before catching my bus. I’m not sure exactly how much time it took, but I left my place just after 1:10 and I arrived at the bus stop at 1:53. I’m used to being able to check the Google Fit record to see how long I was walking for, but I don’t currently have that option. Today I’ll get a walk in before I head over to visit Gram and Carol. And tonight I think I may end up soaking in the hot tub.
Last year, I met up with Gem from Rascal’s club after Taboo to talk about her upcoming events. The Ms. Rascal’s Pageant and their Kinky Camping. Both were great events, and this morning I met with Gem over coffee to discuss her plans for this year. Well, that and to catch up on all the latest news from the various corners of the community. One of the topics were got talking about was Markus and his VR Porn company, MetaVerseXXX.
The change we had discussed last year, where the Ms. Rascal’s Pageant will include a Mr. Rascal’s title, has come to pass. But more on that over on Erotic Vancouver.
I didn’t get my full walk in before work, so I figured I’d do what I’ve done lately and walk home via BCIT, getting in a good 30-50 minutes of walking down a rather quiet bike route. This plan was sidetracked by the gremlins deciding to take the life of my celllphone. It’s stuck in rebooting when powered up loop. So, I had to head home to switch to my backup phone before continuing my walk. But, I managed to get my 30 minutes in before midnight.
Day 12, I had a coffee with a friend. Well, sorta. She ordered a basic cold green tea and I did the same; instead of my usual mocha frappe. It was different, not sure how likely I am to order it again. However, still an improvement. After that, took a walk around the heights, playing some ingress in the process. Ended it after I’d gotten my required 30 minutes because it started to rain.
This morning, I’m going for a walk before work, despite the rain. I’ve put a work shirt into my pack for changing into after I get to the office.
Also I’m keeping my eye out for any Mormons so I can get a copy of the Book to read. Though I might ask them for a copy of the Book of Arnold.
Over the years I’ve heard my share of horror stories about the BDSM community. Many of the events that become the stories are probably avoidable though education and negotiation. An aspect that is often neglected in that regard is mediation; an attempt to discover how things went wrong and grow from them. In some cases, meditation won’t improve matters, as the intent behind the violation was harmful. In most cases however the intent to harm isn’t present; but misunderstanding can result in demonization as an attempt to rationalise the harm felt. Overlooking this can result in both division and gossip, something that can actually create a smokescreen within which the real predators can hide.
In order to promote this harm reductive approach, it was proposed that we develop a code of conduct and encourage those so inclined to join a collective dedicated to that end. A society for ethical tops. While I think I’d prefer a term with a different connotation, something closer to brotherhood, I dislike the assumed gender bias that might come with that term. Members across the gender spectrum would be welcome, and of the various orientations, with the caveat that the organisation is limiting its scope to the actions while responsible for others. A different group would be more suited for the oversight of the actions of the other party.
A suggested code of conduct:
Always obtain informed consent.
Negotiate all potential activities prior to playing. This includes aftercare.
Never renegotiate when consent cannot be obtained.
Admit your mistakes, attempt to resolve them in reasonable fashion.
Do not misrepresent yourself or your skills.
Do not allow style to countermand substance.
Cease play when a safeword is used, ensure others do also.
Ensure that your partner is properly monitored whenever they are in an altered state.
You are responsible for your own mental state, take reasonable precautions.
Do not intentionally or deliberately cause unwanted damage, be it mental, physical or emotional.
Inform your partner when you have concerns.
Ensure your partner always has a method of communicating with you.
Last night, I walked home from work in the rain. It was reasonably intermittent, so I didn’t get soaked. I made it down to the bus stop by Deer Lake parkway, checked the time til the next bus, it was long enough that it made sense to walk down the hill to the next stop. I probably could have made it one more before the bus, but it wasn’t worth the risk of missing it and having to wait 30 minutes for the next one.
Today, it’s a nice sunny day, I’ll go for a wander around the heights and play a bit of ingress, before doing a longer walk down along the waterfront trail.
And then tonight, I go see the Book of Mormon with Dimestore and co. I haven’t decided how formal I want to dress.
I’m suffering from some serious gremlins lately. The mail server at the office had issues, google thought I was in China, my cellphone just decided to crash and go into a state where it wouldn’t boot, and other tech has been acting up. Oh, and that nice ADSL outage and ERX server issue the other day.
I’d blame a technomancer, but I haven’t seen any evidence of resonance.
Working in Tech support, I’m supposed to deal with other people’s technical inabilities, not be suffering from my own unexplained ones. Well, at least I’ve got the training to make them work again without bothering someone about it.
Longer walk tonight. Two short walks during the day to visit gram and then to get to work, then a 45 minute walk down to Goard way stop after work. The timing meant I didn’t need to wait long for the bus. Then another 10 minutes after the bus to get home.
Thinking about installing the zombie! run app and doing that over the weekend, since I’ll have the time and it’ll be something different.
Laggy day before work again. After work, headed north along a north south bike trail that goes down to BCIT. Had a nice 40 minute walk to get down here. If my bike was 100%, I’d consider riding to/from work. I need to get the chains checked and oiled before I take it on long rides. Oh and of course get some practice riding on the weekends to be sure my muscles and balance will handle riding for an extended period.
Took a walk this morning. Miscalculated the route, should have taken a different one to catch the 123 after I finished it. Oh well, 40 minutes is decent.
It’s Monday, the start of another work week. I’ll be working til 9pm every night this week, so that limits what I can plan.
I’ve got my #30for30 going on, so I’ll need to be getting in at least 30 minutes of exercise every day. That means a walk every day before I head to work, preferably before I shower, so I’m not offending my coworkers.
I’m thinking I might try for more, during the evening, after I have my dinner, since I haven’t done night walks in a while, and I kinda miss that peacefulness.
I’d like to get some Shadowrun planned for the weekend, but it seems unlikely. But that’s up to Dimestore; though I guess I could try to have a character building session without him.
I’ve been craving some board games lately, so I’m thinking I’ll set up either Mage Knight or Robinson Crusoe on the downstairs table and leave it up and running as a solo game. Could also do this with Eldritch Horror or some of the other Co-op games. Maybe the Pandemic dice game. Though Robinson Crusoe and Mage Knight are considered the most challenging and engaging in this category.
On an unrelated note, my scars are itchy recently. Mostly the ones from my Gallbladder surgery a few years back. No idea why.
My attempts to write something for EV have been kinda blah lately. I should get inspired to write something, but I’m a bit lacking in inspiration.
Same goes for my attempt to write fiction, though I have a recurring character rattling around in my head. A journalist with a mysterious curse that ensures that he’ll always awaken to the sounds of conflict. He’s adopted the nickname Warzone, since that’s where he keeps ending up. The problem is, I don’t see how to fit him into anything.
