Hey, y'all! I've been pretty absent from Hubski since the curtain really fell on working from home and social distancing. I've gotten a few PMs from people wondering where I'm at and wishing me well, so I figured I'd jump on Pubski and let y'all know that I'm still alive! Working from home has had a weird effect on me mentally, and it's only within the last week or so that I've felt truly adjusted to the whole situation. Call it a side-effect of my office being the same room as my bedroom? Sorry I haven't been around - I haven't been suffering or anything, but I've had almost no motivation to do much of anything until recently. In the last few weeks, I've been consumed by a hellish project at work. Being at home, I work longer hours but I'm unfocused for nearly all of them. In order to meet the promises we made to our client before quarantine really started, I'd been working insane 16 hour days. April just disappeared, quicker than I'd realized. I'm doing much better now, though, as I'm on a different project with a different manager and I'm managing my time much more effectively! The last few weeks have been much more normal, working closer to 8 hours in a day. Since the hell-month, things have been pretty stable! I've gotten into bike riding recently, since my birthday present from my family was a mountain bike that my dad found and repaired! It's a rusty little thing and the gears don't shift reliably, but it feels fucking incredible to use it right now. Moving fast, being outside, and tiring myself out is just the best cure to cabin fever that I've found. I didn't practice the guitar much in April, but I've picked it back up since then. Progress is still slow-going, but I'm using it as an outlet for creativity and stress more than a tool to create art with, so I don't really mind. I started an embroidery project, too! It's going to be a gift for a friend when it's done, but it's been...Slow going, to say the least. Who knew that sewing cloth to itself could be so laborious? I'd love to show y'all what I've done. Is there still interest in craft threads? I'd love to pick those back up, if people are still crafting!
There's a weird thing with physical spaces and productivity that seems to be more pronounced in quarantine. Also, a couple pubski's ago it seemed like everyone was starting to get hit with a delayed slump/stress/depression from the whole thing. I know I'm getting more of that now.
There is always interest in craft threads. You may find that your area considers bicycles to be "essential members of the transportation sector." We were able to buy my kid a bike three weeks ago. I say this because a cassette and chain are probably all that bike needs to shift reliably and although they aren't difficult at all to change out they're hella easier with the tools.
Yeah, that's happening to me too. Most people I work with also.I work longer hours but I'm unfocused for nearly all of them
Hi Everyone, My experience with the virus has been a bit odd. Mostly, it has mostly not affected me as I am in home isolation due to my medical situation (awaiting liver transplant), but I am also greatly affected as any further steps in my treatment have been paused. For example, as a final stop to prepare for surgery I needed an anigiogram but no one was doing them. We finally managed to get in for one (quite odd waking up in an empty hospital ward) but it was pretty stressful as it ate up a 3 week window when a potential donor may have been available. Based on my O- blood type and chemistry the donor pool is pretty small. My one brother was just notified that his apnea makes him unsuitable so we are moving on to testing my sister which takes 6-8 weeks. Oddly enough, I come from an adoptive family and we are not bio related but do have an initial match. Regardless, there is only about 20% chance of her being suitable so looking for a healthy liver is still my full time job. My team is located at Toronto General, which is literally the best place in the world for living donor transplants. (And 4th best in world overall.) 800 performed so far with no major donor complications. As the liver grows back to full size and function in about 2-3 months I am really just looking for a loan! As one part of my efforts, I have set up a website (savedanslife.com or .ca) that has had 40K or so unique visitors so far. Awareness if nothing else is a very good thing. My team has also suggested, and I agreed, to get on the list for a Hep C liver from a deceased donor if one becomes available before a live donor is cleared. Experimental surgery but the theory is I would be way better off with a dead diseased liver than the way I am living right now. I had no idea how important the liver is and it is almost totally debilitating when it fails. I intended to keep updating hubski on the reg but after I get my other shit done I just don't have the energy. I went for a one hour power walk three days ago and I am still hurting! Ridiculous. lol Hope things are going well for you all of you! sgfc
Thank you for the update SGFC. You sound like you have an awesome outlook despite some challenging cards dealt. I'm a firm believer that outlook/attitude are powerful contributors to favorable outcomes, even in health. Godspeed!
I am 45 years old, and my RC car is no less fun. It has been dormant for about 27 years. My daughter and I are souping up her little Nikko RC buggy. I used a frequency app to determine that her current motor runs at about 8000rpm, and ordered her one that is 25000rpm. Let's hope the gears can handle it. We also gave it a custom paint job. It's been one respite to all-day Zoom calls.
Well now covid so they are probably shut down or on the way to bankruptcy. I do wonder what it’s like to race in a club environment seems like everyone into it has a 800-$1500 car and is super hardcore about it. Honestly I think it would me more fun to race low end cars with kids and adults from the neighborhood.
over the past couple days i've been thinking that there's a pattern in my life where i go "the situation i'm currently in is causing me to feel this way, but once xyz happens it'll be better" and i think a much better explanation is that i'm depressed i guess i already knew that, but it might have just sunk in i've been on antidepressants for 2 years and as i've previously talked about that's basically when my life restarted - i've been back in therapy for the last couple weeks seeing the therapist who had seen me just before heading to uni. as i was talking to her about feeling uncomfortable being back with my parents she said something that really hit me, which was "two years really isn't a very long time. it makes sense that you'd be still affected by the bad things you experienced back then." from how much my life has changed it's easy to forget how little time has passed since that conversation a couple days ago, i've been able to consider / think about some things that i haven't processed emotionally or resolved in a satisfactory way from the past that i've been able to push away it's rough but i feel like it's a good development
Only the tiniest of things matter to me anymore. Lots of my time spent feels fruitless outside of them. The big things take care of themselves, more often they don't and we give things the Fremen ending, chopping at a thing unfinished and saying "It is complete because it stops here." Is there seed in the bird feeder? Did my friend the juvenile woodpecker stop by this morning? Can I have dinner ready when my significant other gets home late? Can I deliver another bag of flour and some starter to a friend safely? Am I able to lift another piece of salvaged wood today? Do my tools stay firm in my grasp or slip and wobble? Am I finished? Not yet apparently.
If I ever get a Dune-related tattoo, that quote is in my top 2. But I think what you're seeing is how life actually should be.
I installed Folding@Home on the Pro Tools monster to beat Coronavirus. Then I installed Ubuntu in a VM to fuck around with crypto for a while. Then the motherboard fried. I have since bought two soundcards, returned one, spent a dozen hours on tech support with four different companies and have gone from 40 faders of Pro Tools domination to zero. I have about 130lbs of technology in boxes up on eBay right now. It's fucking with me. 'cuz you can't buy shit right now because every out-of-work gamer is spending his stimulus check on chips and every tech company is building servers. Meanwhile I had to call out Native Instruments on Twitter to try and get them to un-fuck something they fucked to deal with Apple fucking them and I haven't opened Logic in three goddamn years. Theoretically I'll replace the monster. Theoretically I'll replace the faders. But I'm realizing that I specialize in dead industries. Jewelry. Watchmaking. Audio mixing. I have been fighting with my coworkers about whose responsibility it is to make sure we don't all die of Coronavirus. My argument is "the union" and their argument is "we don't have time for that" and it's like nobody is going to fuckin' die if we don't make a fuckin' TV show. Meanwhile I've become the veterinarian at work. The animals all hate me but they need their shots so every time I show up six women who are actually cats his at me from behind the couch cushions.
It's been something. I realized over dinner that the only devices not in open rebellion are the ones I have already had open and replaced board-level components on. Unless you count the Mac Mini, whose hard drive was replaced with an external Thunderbolt three years ago.
I decided to dig into the dead PC because fuck it's sitting here like a lump of shit in its spendy-ass custom case. Discovered that it'll wake up enough to tell me that the CPU heat alarm is triggered... sometimes. Okay, if it's doing that having sat not moving for a while we'll assume it's the mobo. Especially since I did a power supply test and according to Corsair, the power supply is f'n fine. Also discovered that Anandtech's prices are per thousand so I don't feel so bad paying $600 for a CPU that supposedly only costs $450. Also discovered that yeah AMDs are cheaper but only if you're buying bullshit guttertrash chips; up here in the rarified air where our computers work for a living the price difference is pennies. Also discovered that in 2015 I paid for 128GB of RAM... to put on a motherboard that will only address 64GB. So on the one hand woot woot I'm about to double my ram for free but on the other hand sweet jesus fuck if you pay for expertise (dipshits actually build PCs for Pro Tools for a living!) you expect to receive it. Changing out the CPU and motherboard because the options for the socket I've got don't lend themselves to doing this shit one at a time. A thousand dollars later let's see if we can remedy some shit. Also that KVM was fuckin' $450 in 2016. It was $450 in 2011. It's $450 in 2020 but it's been nine goddamn years so you can buy 'em 2 for $70 off eBay 'cuz bloody hell I be wantin' a spare now.
My daughter woke me up this morning because the internet was out. Our network was offline. Suspecting that the UPS in the gear closet had powered down (it had done this once before, I thought it was a fluke), I powered it up again. Yep. Took the whole network down rather than going into battery backup. Checked on the NAS. NAS was mad because it hadn't been shut down properly. Also wanted more storage space. It's got bloody 28TB but apparently when you get within 20% of it it starts giving you warnings. So I told it to empty its recycle bins. UPS killed everything again. "Okay, time for a new UPS," I say to myself and power stuff back up, this time with the intent of powering down the NAS and leaving it down until the UPS shows up. NAS COMES UP AS A CRASHED DISK ARRAY. Yeah apparently it doesn't matter if you've got two drives of redundancy; if that file server is moving files around when the power goes out? It'll just garbage the whole thing. Spent a couple hours replacing the UPS with a power strip and checking my options (Synology says "data recovery services") and then recalling what on the nAS wasn't straight-up backup. 90% of it is but I'd gotten complacent and was using parts of it as a file server because in 5 years it's never given me a problem. Decide "fukkit if it's dead it's dead" and power it back up. This time it comes up without a complaint, mounts the file system and acts all happy. So I am copying everything that isn't backup onto an external hard drive (I'm the kind of guy who has about 15TB worth of empty disks) so that as soon as I'm done I can power the dumb thing down and say "boy I sure learned my lesson!" Change your batteries, kids. And fuck Cyberpower.
Kia ora kotou katoa Hubski! With Reddit frothing on both sides of the fence whenever New Zealand gets mentioned on the site, I have backed away a bit from the internet and just focused on things I can control. I still browse Hubski but I very rarely have anything relevant to say, so lurking is the style for me. But as of 1pm today we have 1 active case remaining in the country which is pretty sweet. I started a hefty whisky collection while in lockdown. Alongside some basic spirits so I could make some nice drinks for my partner and I after a hard day of doing my civic duty, by doing sweet fuck all. I am about to launch into the Highland side of things, so wish me luck. Recorded a lot (hours and hours) of videogame footage with my friends, am now making some fun videos with them which I've found really entertaining. Currently working on videos of our exploits in Sea of Thieves. With the gym reopening, I got to experience what 8 weeks away will do - a shitload of DOMS. Some mild strength loss, but less than I expected thanks to the bodyweight routines while at home. Hope you're doing okay, nga mihi nui
You know, I had made peace with the idea that I'd likely become infected - hoping that my youthful immune system and a good dollop of luck might mitigate some damage. Turns out I only even knew of a few people catching it. I'll take some strength loss and week long DOMS over your experience.
In an ocean of things across the internet and of the internet that make me deeply concerned about the future of humanity and of our ability to responsibly use technology, Hubski/weather is an oasis that makes me really happy. Thanks for putting that together, mk.
I took three days of PTO prior to the long weekend, so I had a 6-day run of not working at all. First time since my return from vacation back in March... and to say I am completely checked out and couldn't give the slightest fuck about work, is an understatement. I don't want to work again. For anyone. Ever. This is weird for me, because I have spent the majority of my life BEING my work. I had little to no life/identity outside of my various jobs. They were me, and they were what i did with my time. So to turn 180-degrees on that way of being is ... disorienting? Frustrating? Add that on top of the stress/depression of All This Shit Right Now, and the fact that my dog appears to be in her last phase of life... well... fuck. But I had a great time yesterday at my sister's 50th birthday social-distancing party. And my wife is wonderful. And my family is healthy. And the weather is gorgeous. Life is complex; and the complexity only increases over time. I'm tired.
I've been thinking about doing the same thing. I don't have any grand plans for my PTO, but having just a few days of not work sounds incredible. This virus has made me hate my job, but I think I would hate any kind of work that keeps me stuck at home like this - I don't mind being home for long hours, but I can't stand working here and sleeping here and eating here. I'm with you. I don't think I've ever BEEN my work in the same way you have, but I've always been a hard worker, and I can't be that person right now. That mindset is totally inaccessible. Like you said: saying that I couldn't give the slightest fuck about work is an understatement. I don't have anything to offer you but commiseration. Maybe I'll come to have some complex thoughts about this with time, but everything happening right now has completely drained me.
I don't know that I/we want/need anything other than that, honestly. Deep down I know that I am all good, and not actually suffering from anything uncurable. It's a malaise. It's frustration. It's annoyance. It's boredom. It's the unsettled nature of everything, and feeling like there is no firm ground to stand on. Just knowing others are feeling the same things can be a kind of comfort... a de-isolation... a shared feeling, even if the someone you are sharing it with is some weirdo behind an online username. There are so many fragments, now. Where do we stand on firm ground, any more? "I don't have anything to offer you but commiseration..."
Started a new internship yesterday, working remote. A small satellite startup doing really, really, interesting stuff. Closed series A, the people are brilliant, and it seems like there's a good roadmap for the future. Also had a little watch party (at least until the scrub) with my new coworkers (over videochat) for the SpaceX launch this afternoon. Looking forward to Saturday. Stuff I worked on is finally sending people to space!
They first 6 weeks at home went super smoothly for me and it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I had a bunch of "nothing should feel normal everything is bad" days with hardly any sleep. On the whole things have been going better this week. I planted a garden the weekend before stay at home orders started here. Yesterday we ate the first green beans. We'll have some tomatoes in about a week I think. We're getting a real piano today, which is exciting. It's a fairly nice spinnet in good condition and we're getting it for just the cost of delivery. One of the perks of my wife knowing dozens of music teachers. A 10yo backup drive started giving errors, not letting me copy files off, and running super slow. fsck.ext4 is currently at 3.9% after 18 hours. Thankfully important stuff is backed up other places. But there's a bunch of old junk I would like to keep if I can. The old laptop I use also somehow has a borked disk. I think some data could be saved but it's not worth the trouble. Yay backups! So now I have a 1TB laptop ssd and a 3TB nas drive headed to me from the newegg daily specials. Once they get here I've probably got a whole day of hard drive shuffling because the ssd is going to upgrade my wife's laptop and her old drive is going into my old laptop. And the new nas drive will upgrade my backups and that drive will become my miscellaneous media/junk drive.
Killed fsck and started copying files skipping the read errors because it's probably gonna die first anyway. It just copied 12MB in half an hour, which is to dial up speed from the Y2K.fsck.ext4 is currently at 3.9% after 18 hours