Done last week (20171218Su - 24Sa)
I'm taking a "vacation" -- actually a staycation with enough housework and other difficult tasks to make it more likely something I'll need to go back to work to relax from -- between now and next year. This last week was pretty relaxed at work; there was a group party on Monday, and I gave a short concert. Mostly funny computer songs, as one might expect.
We're doing the holidays a little differently this year, because N and her kids are out of town until Monday. So we had my kids yesterday, doing nothing in particular today, and doing the household celebration and gift exchange tomorrow. Boxing Day is traditional for that in some cultures, and besides it's Hanukkah, so that works anyway.
As part of the downsizing process I'm moving the household fileserver into a smaller case. I'll be going back to the Intel atom mini-ITX board, and I found the case I'd been looking for. It's just tall enough for two 3.5" hard drives, and two stacked card slots which I probably won't have much use for unless I decide to put the mirror drive in an eSATA box.
Emotionally (and it still seems odd to be writing that word, because alexithymia) it's been something of a roller coaster. A woman smiled at me and said hello on Tuesday; I noticed that I was unreasonably happy about that. Not sure why that seemed notable at the time, but it was. On the other hand I had a couple of severe anxiety attacks (or something -- all I'm really sure about are the physical effects). Actually, come to think of it, they often occur after I've been frightened, when whatever scared me has gone away. So there's that.
I'm constantly on edge, often irritated at nothing at all, and feel kind of -- is "fragile" the right word? Sometimes I scare people. I hate this.
I've gotten a little more used to the idea of retiring and moving, but I hate that too. These things are probably all connected, and connected to Trump as well. I guess it's good to have somebody to blame who's really evil enough to deserve it.
Have a happy Christmas, merry Hanukkah, or whatever else you're celebrating.
Notes & links:
1218Su * Up 6:15ish; W=206.4; laundry, dishes * 15min: some mail sorting (old); to.do maintenance (recurring/goals annotation) : N and kids leave for NY * Found the other slim case. It will hold 2 3.5" drives, though without the ability to quickly remove one. So we'd need an external backup drive, but that's ok; backing up on a 2.5" bus-powered USB drive makes more sense, and the 750 will do fine. OTGH only the lower drive mount has shocks. @ Nine Ways to Oppose Donald Trump - The New Yorker 1219Mo * up 6:15; W=206.4; dishes * Credit holiday party - * lyrics, * music stand, * and microphones Cicero, When I was a {Boy, Lad}; World Inside the Crystal, Ship of Stone ! A woman smiled at me and said hello; I was happy. I _noticed_ that it made me happy. I'm not sure why that seemed like something important, but it did. : Colleen was upstairs in bed when I got home. Scared me, because downstairs was basically abandoned. % anxiety or something attack after coming back downstairs. Because I told her that I needed to go back down and have dinner instead of keeping her company in the bedroom? Damned if I know. But the thing with abdominal muscle contractions; still haven't figured that out. Reaction after being scared? Maybe. Requires me to concentrate on relaxing in order to stop. @ In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds while the other rests. - so there's a name for what N and I do! ( maellenkleth) 1220Tu * Up 5:45; W=208.4; laundry & failed my "pull the cord" throw, so got off the bus at the next stop. Which, being the 21, was pretty far up Aurora. So had a nice walk back, and grabbed an apple fritter at Top Pot because I was going that way and figured I'd damned well earned it. : Higher wall between us and the PMs. Might help a little; it's only ~5' high. * set up monitor stand. The arms weren't quite long enough to handle both monitors; used one for cable control. Still really nice having lots of space under the middle monitor. * Gift from $BOSS: big box of European cookies. : It is entirely possible that the reason there was no mail in the mailbox was that the front gate was jammed -- I had to come in through the side gate. % came home and promptly lost it after helping Colleen find her phone and stepping back onto Desti. Who wasn't injured, but I lost it anyway - started sobbing, and when Colleen asked "what's wrong" and I shouted "I don't know". Or maybe the sobbing was after that. I don't know what's wrong. C says I get this way every Christmas, but I don't remember it being this bad. I was ok all day. Right until I got to the gate. % have left the Rainbow Room because C is making phone calls. This sucks. ! I am apparently feeling something, but I have no idea what. That is upsetting. Is it possible that I'm getting something positive out of it? Weird. There's also the fact that I'm having trouble breathing. % cold may be involved, too. Damned if I know. Feels like I may have gotten triggered, but I don't have any triggers that I know about. So... WTF? 1221We * up 7:00; W=209.2; laundry, ..., dishes @ Everything in the world appears to be wrong, and I cannot seem to fix any of it. ( [psych, curr ev, Patreon] Long Night (Staying Woke) - Sibylla Bostoniensis) @ Achieving simplicity and greatness [LWN] " Something that repeatedly comes up about free software projects is how much it's possible to achieve. Can you write an operating system from scratch? That's been done, several times. A desktop environment? Been done. A complete toolchain (compiler, linker, essential libraries)? Yeah, done. These are all examples of large, impressive systems that have been made by one or a small number of people, even just in their free time. How is that possible? Here's a couple of ideas. " Lars Wirzenius @ pinpoint - A tool for making hackers do excellent presentations @ The 5-year Experiment - sacha chua :: living an awesome life [LWN] (emacs-news) 1222Th * up 5:40; W=209.2; laundry @ Surveillance Self-Defense | Tips, Tools and How-tos | EFF @ The Great A.I. Awakening - The New York Times : Colleen ordered Chinese for dinner : 7pm LJ is down. They had some downtime scheduled, but I believe this is outside the window they gave (which was 4? 6? hours starting at 1900Z, IIRC) -> came back around 9:54. 1223Fr * up 6ish; W=208.4; laundry, dishes @ cybersafer.info (moem) ! furious at myself - had my Christmas order cancelled because my balance was low; would have fixed it if I'd been keeping up with ALL of my email. The gifts for YD and N won't be here until Tuesday. Will have to give gift certs. Which I will have to print before tomorrow afternoon. And C wants to go out shopping. : the transfer from Morgan Stanley arrived a day or two too late. Meaning it took a week. Exactly. ! I want to scream. I can't put a name to this one; it may be a mixture of frustration, self-hatred, anger, and something else I can't identify either. ! exasperated (does that count as a recognized emotion?) - G' left the FIVE BAGS of clean laundry up in our closet. And I know she was up there because she put another load in. % I seem to be in a "don't talk to me" mood. Absolutely anything will set me off. How the fuck am I supposed to be social tomorrow? : in other news, it's been determined that the increase in deaths around the holidays is not due to the weather -- there's a noticable blip in Australia as well. 1224Sa * Up 5:40ish; W=207.2; shower, laundry, dishes % Ticia has a habit of waking me up somewhere between 4:30 and 6. It's adorable, and I get some lovely kitty-cuddle out of it. But... 4:30. % Desti not only understands English, she speaks it (as well as a cat can). When I fed her this morning, she said "meow meow" in the exact same cadence and intonation as "thank you". So I asked "'Was that a thank you'?" She answered "meow" for "yes". @ A Minority President: Why the Polls Failed, And What the Majority Can Do « George Lakoff f(?) * Last minute shopping trip with Colleen to get gift cheese-and-sausage packages for the crew. 6 packages came out a bit over $40/person, which is damned good when you compare it with what you can get for that if you order a gift box online. * ham needs to go in at 2 to be ready around 4. (Actually ended up ~4:30) * Got the mini-ITX atom board (the once and future Nova) ensconsed in the new case. Had to look up the front panel pinout, which fortunately Intel has standardized across all their motherboards. Should have left Polaris where it was, though, and could arguably have left the atom board where it was and simply put the original nova back up. % what does the introvert in the family do during parties? Dishes. * Great party. Both kids over, plus E's outlaws; ham Sang -- "Bigger On the Inside", of course. Had to print a copy because my songbook is totally disorganized right now. Finally sent Kat off with her remaining box of books and shoulder bag * 7ish - leftovers put away and and dishes gathered up. Took three or four sessions. @ Comic: The weirdness of being black in white spaces after the election | Fusion ( Amid the pod people - Bitter Grace) % can't take much of either FB or Quora these days. On Q the stupid is simply mind-boggling, and on FB I have trouble controling my blood pressure. Gaaaak! * 9ish - dishwasher emptied; most glasses loaded. plates & flatware pending.
[Crossposted from mdlbear.dreamwidth.org, where it has
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