Words are inadequate

and ... done?

2025-06-25T00:13:58Z

I ... I guess that's that.

My group members stepped up at the last minute and helped out with the paper, so I turned that in on Thursday. I also explicitly abdicated all responsibility for putting together the five-minutes-each video recordings for the group presentation. I recorded that last night, realised this morning that it was actually under five minutes but also how to fix it, re-recorded it, and sent it off. And just now I hit Submit Quiz on the final.

I'm ... done? Grades will be out at some point to confirm that I did in fact pass, both "sufficient unto graduation" and "sufficient unto my own arbitrary standard". (Pretty sure I did, but grades for this class have been Not Terribly Forthcoming, so there's the possibility of an unpleasant surprise. Not at all likely, but possible.)

Onward. After credential: chop wood, carry water. Time to get (more) serious about ye jobhunt.

You cannot know what happens next.

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time marches on, time standing still

2025-06-19T00:24:41Z

I'm ... approaching done with coursework? I just turned in the practicum report and timesheet. Left to do: finish and polish a groupwork report (due tomorrow); record a five-minute presentation that someone else will stitch together with the rest of the group's presentations (gonna try to get that done by end of Monday); final exam for final class (before end of day next Thursday). Oh, and submit my Application For Credential, I should do that tonight or tomorrow.

It feels a bit of a relief, and a bit of "what next?" and a lot of frustration at the state of the world / economy for having gotten worse since April 2023 when I decided to hide out for two years. It feels more like an Accomplishment than I expected it to, but not much like one. But then very little ever feels like an Accomplishment, except in deliberate retrospect.

Counseling last week and this has been a lot of deep diving into my inability/reluctance to be proud of things I've done. This is gonna require some retraining of my brain. I grew up inculcated with a firm belief that the standards were different for me. Doing something 'normal' is not worth mentioning (though failing to do it is deeply shameful), and doing something extraordinary is worth at most "i knew i could do that, i am Living Up To My Potential." The agon of the Gifted Child: you must do Great Things because you are Gifted; but because you are Gifted, anything you do is no more than what's Expected Of You and thus insufficiently Great.

A couple months back, on the death of Val Kilmer, a friend wrote "The most important moral lesson of Real Genius is that failing to live up to your gifted-kid potential is praxis." I appreciate this a great deal.

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making cookies and thinking too much

2025-04-08T00:27:47Z

Cripes, it's been a month. I knew I'd been doing poorly but hadn't realised it was quite that poorly.

I've been telling myself I've just been head-down on my practicum, which is true but not ... not an answer, not a reason, not complete. I've been head-down on my practicum, working full-time while also taking an advanced-level class (Databases 2, aka "big databases and how they store geographic data"), and that's a decent amount of work output. The practicum has taken particular effort to Keep Going, for reasons I'm not wholly clear on but which therapy has given me at least some insights into.

But everything has just been Difficult and I would rather sit on the couch and Not Think about any of it. I need to start looking for a job, which means I need to figure out where I'm looking for a job, since the BC Public Service is not even considering hiring anyone at all until probably July at the earliest. Add to that all the nonsensical horror / horrific nonsense from Down South and, well. Much easier to hide in front of the television.

So, this is the last week of my practicum. I'm making cookies to bring in to the office tomorrow, partly because I haven't done any baking for work at all and partly because making cookies is making a thing and that at least feels like ... progress, or accomplishment.

I'm pleased with what I've gotten done for the practicum. I spent the last three months creating new fire-centre maps of the Provincial radio repeaters, so that folks going out into the field will be better able to tell which repeater they're supposed to be talking to. It's not nearly as much as I'd wanted to do, or expected to do; institutional barriers and my own inexperience both worked against me there. But it's a start, and what I've got will be helpful.

It's also been feeling pointless, and it took me til today in counseling to work out why: not pointless in the sense of "the work is pointless busywork that no one will use," the way too much of my work for the last twenty years has been, but rather in the sense of "i will likely never see these people again." I'd wanted my practicum to be a first step towards BC government employment, and that's not happening, or if it is it's not for quite some time. So: marking time, staying apart, not getting involved, same military-brat playbook I've always run when it's spring and we're moving this summer.

I am proud of the PDF maps, though. Eventually they'll be up on the Provincial radio system website, and I'll put up a link then.

The Databases course is done (88%, coincidentally the same grade I got in DB1 under Stupid Rob). The only coursework I have left is Management Issues In GIS, aka "how to deploy an enterprise GIS system," and a final recorded-presentation and written-report on the practicum.

And then I'm done with schoolwork, again. I don't know what happens after that, other than "I look for a job in what seems likely to be an abysmal economy." I'm pretty deeply worried about that part but on the other hand there is literally nothing more I can do about it, so, shrug-emoji.

I'm going back to Niagara in a little over a week. I'm also nervous about that: making a land crossing in upstate New York with an X-gender passport does not thrill me with anticipation. I guess I can continue to be a useful coal-mine-canary: if I, a pale-skinned US citizen, get any trouble, that ought to indicate something.

I'm letting several folks, on both sides of the border, know when I'm crossing, and will ping them again once I'm through. I wish I thought I were being paranoid.

I love you. Stay safe and take care of each other.

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ongoing

2025-02-19T22:12:25Z

Well. After that I had a nasty breakdown last week. I'm, hm. I won't say I'm fine now, but I'm certainly out of the worst of it and I seem to be doing alright. It was a particularly nasty combination of acute depression (state of the US, digging into some rough stuff in counseling) and difficulties in keeping going on practicum stuff. The acute depression passed eventually as these things do, and I managed to drag myself out of the avoidant part of 'difficulty keeping going on the thing i'm supposed to be doing,' so that's all for the good.

Registered for my last class this morning. Bit of drama in that; I went to confirm the amount I owed and they'd stuck a $4900 "Technology International Fees" in there. Spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what that was, including an hour on hold. It got mysteriously removed about ten minutes before they connected me with someone who said they'd mistakenly applied it to all student accounts. Frustrating to have wasted my time chasing it down, but at least it wasn't a real thing. Four more months, and this will all be over with. Need to figure out what comes next, I guess.

I've made a space on the table for Mr Tuppert to sit next to me while I'm working, in the hope that he'll stop biting me for attention. This ... sometimes works. In general we're getting along better. He'll come sit with me when I watch TV at lunchtime as long as I put a blanket down for him to sit on, etc. I'm glad he's here.

I watched the first two seasons of Black Lightning, and now I'm watching Arrowverse again in half-season increments (because they put the crossovers in the middle of the seasons). Black Lightning takes itself pretty seriously, but it's about Black issues so it's got a good reason to. Arrow just takes itself more seriously than it needs to. As I recall this season of Flash is angsty as well (I got about three episodes in before Erin gave up). Looking forward to Legends, and Supergirl, to break that up somewhat.

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GIS continueth

2025-02-10T03:41:15Z

Weird to think that I'm already halfway through my one course for the term. But the midterm went up on Friday, and I just wrapped it. Feeling reasonably good about it. No doubt there were a couple questions I missed, and a couple where I overthought the question and will have gotten "wrong." C'est la guerre.

Looking at the schedule, it looks like I'll have a couple of weeks between winter and spring term this year. Eh. I guess it'll be nice to have the course complete before the end of my practicum, and not have to worry about any coursework while I'm wrapping that up and putting together my presentation.

The practicum itself has been more frustrating than I'd hoped. The data I'm looking to read and update is stored in a Microsoft Power App, and I have yet to figure out if there's any API access so I can talk to it in ways other than "Excel import/export". So I may be spending the next month or so making something that looks pretty and is only incrementally better than the existing static PDF. Argh and oh well. Useful reminder of what working in real systems is like.

I'm doing ... okay? Remarkably okay, I think. I have things I want to do, and the ability to do some of them. I don't know what happens to me in six months and that's worrisome. I do know I run out of money in two months and will need to raid my retirement fund again, and that's more worrisome, but at least the money's there -to- raid. For now.

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argh

2025-01-18T06:04:29Z

I'm personally unfamiliar with the word 'practicum' so I've been describing it as "an unpaid internship."

Noel just pointed out that it's actually worse than an unpaid internship: I'm paying for the privilege of providing unpaid labour. And since I'm not a wet-behind-the-ears college student, they'll be getting a decent amount of actual labour out of the process.

Sigh. At least there's the credential at the end of it.

(Starts Monday, with a week of actually-in-office.)

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coursework ongoing

2024-11-25T16:20:59Z

Coursework continues, though it's nearly done with: everything is due Thursday night. Stupid Rob's stupid database class has morphed into stupid Rob's stupid web-programming class, which makes me genuinely irritated. Partly because I am dead certain there's more about databases I would like to learn beyond "here are a couple of javascript calls for getting info out of them, wrapped up in a bunch of other javascript you now have to learn" but mostly because stupid Rob's stupid programming lectures and quizzes are abjectly terrible for my learning. The lectures are repetitive and still manage to miss out on useful basic information (and were actively Wrong at least once last fall, which was fun). The quizzes are nitpicky, concerned with things that were covered briefly in lecture and not at all on the slides, and in some cases explicitly testing our ability to read Rob's mind.

Two more lectures, one more lab, one more quiz, and gods willing I will never have to deal with stupid Rob ever again. Databases 2, next term, is taught by Chris who also taught the Intro To GIS course last fall; it was pretty easy even for an intro course, but I have really no idea what to expect. But At Least It's Not Rob. (Or Josh, who last winter threatened me under the BCIT Student Code Of Conduct for griping at him in code comments about his uncompletable-as-designed lab and, separately, expressing my opinions on the use of "AI" "assistance".)

My practicum is also secured, through the BC gov. I'll be designing an interactive webmap of mountain-top radio repeaters throughout the province. I'm looking forward to this. Just have to get through the process of writing up the proposal, to include breaking the whole thing down into tiny tasks and assigning a time to each. Ugh.

Databases 2 starts on 10 January (Friday); the practicum starts on 20 January (Monday). Both of those run through the end of March, and then I've one more class starting the first week in April through mid-late June. And then ... done, I guess. Time to start seeking gainful employment, assuming the practicum doesn't wholly sour me on GIS work.

Overall things are okay, I think. Not great, but okay. And hopefully better after Thursday. I'll take it.

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head up for a moment

2024-11-18T19:52:16Z

Been a minute. Have a ramble.

I spent last week up north with Erin, which was ... it's good to see Erin, and the critters, but the weather was mostly grey above and rainy and muddy, which all makes it hard for me to, well, function. In my own space that manifests as just kind of zoning out a lot. Around someone else or not at home, that's less of an option, so it was hard. But there was tasty food, and snuggling, and talking, and overall it was much better than not.

Now I'm back and have a bunch of classwork to get through in the next week and a half: four lectures, three assignments, two quizzes for stupid Rob, and a video presentation and a practicum proposal for the other class. Doable but I'll be busy.

Canada Post workers are on strike. I'm planning to go out and support a picket location on probably Wednesday, will be good to get out for a bit anyway.

The strike, and the fact that the union and management are apparently pretty far apart so it will either last for awhile, or they'll get ordered back to work, is colliding in my head with the recent elections (etc) and the way that lots of folks I know are having a particularly hard time the last while. No particular coherent thoughts, and certainly nothing actionable. Just noting that civilisation, society, is in fact slowly crumbling as all the money concentrates at the top.

I read David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks a couple of weeks ago (on William Gibson's recommendation, whenever I heard him speak at the one VCon I went to), and it was quite good. The part that stuck with me is the last section, 2045, set in a rural community in Ireland where the civil government is collapsing and pulling back, and people are struggling to Make Do as the twilight deepens. It's sort of hopeful, I guess, overall, on a longer timeframe, for other people. Felt real and immediate, though.

My passport has made it to the passport office in Philadelphia. An acquaintance observed in passing that there's a good chance that passport renewals with X-gender that aren't processed before mid-January could be held indefinitely, so maybe that was an error. Guess we'll see.

I did bring a big jar back from Erin's with me, so this weekend I was able to put up my cinnamon to make into extract. That'll finish out, mm, four to six weeks, so either just before or just after solstice. (Cinnamon extract is supposedly good in anything you'd use cinnamon in, but especially in things where it's nice for the cinnamon to dissolve, like french toast.) The vanilla from June is still going; decided to let it keep soaking. I'll decant it this spring and make up sugar then, and it can be 2025 xmas presents or something.

Right. Lunch, and then back to presentation work. I hope you're doing well, and keeping warm physically and emotionally as best you can.

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a dark autumn

2024-10-23T03:08:52Z

Election's over. I mean, not OVER over, we don't even really know who won yet. But barring something seismic it's another NDGreen like 2017. That one worked out alright at least.

Mostly I'm disheartened that the US "culture war" nonsense has finally spilled over wholeheartedly into Canada. For a long time in BC the Fiscal Conservatives ran things on the right and the Social Conservatives were sidelined, but a couple years back my former MLA got himself kicked out of the Fiscal Conservative party and decided to ~~form his own party, with blackjack, and hookers~~ revive the Social Conservatives. Meanwhile the Fiscal Conservatives were busy driving themselves into irrelevance, and finally hung up altogether six weeks ago.

Now if we're very lucky the Official Opposition in BC is ... well. Same sort of shitheads one finds south of the border among my blood relatives. If we're unlucky, a couple of close-race recounts will go the wrong way and they'll be the Government instead. The trend is clearly favoring the shitheads so who knows. (Answer: us, as of this time next week.)

Saturday night was not a good time, is what I'm saying, and that's without accounting for nine and a half hours of workstress preceded by eight hours of workstress the day before getting all the equipment loaded out and polling places set up. I have no real regrets about this job but it has for sure been more stressful than anticipated.

It's also just been a difficult month and a half. An uncertain and full work schedule means not being able to schedule social things, and then I end up being too ... something, tired, wrung-out, something, to do them even if I'd scheduled them. Result: tired and lonely, which is a bad combination.

I don't know that it's depressed but I don't know that it isn't. I slept poorly last night and it's been rainygrey for the last week or so, and those both contribute heavily. But: feeling withdrawn and anhedonic today. Decent amount of "oh yeah i remember liking that, maybe i should do that" followed by not doing it. Hoping that getting some sleep tomorrow, and not going to work for a few days, will help matters.

I'm "keeping up" in classes, by which I mean I'm keeping up in the one that's not got a lot going on, and have done about a third of the work for the other which is a little over halfway through. Credit where it's due, stupid Rob's stupid assignments etc have no due dates other than "end of term", so I'm still in okay shape there.

And I managed to get a practicum (unpaid internship, required for graduation) with BCGEO, the GIS arm of the BC government. Still not sure what it is I'll be doing, but I'll be doing it from mid-January through early April. That will overlap with Databases 2, which I believe will -not- be taught by stupid Rob, so hopefully that will work out okay. And then in the spring there's "Management Issues In GIS" and then ... I'm done. Time to find a Real Job and all that.

Honestly I'm a little worried about winter term. Not about the class, not really. About being able to handle a normal 40-hour work week while maintaining my own health and happiness. The class is just the cherry on top of the anxiety sundae.

But I'm also ... curious, and a little hopeful, about the actual work. Which is nice. Not something I've ever felt about a tech writing job, for sure.

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employment GET, etc

2024-09-02T00:04:51Z

I'd poked at the Elections Canada website a couple of weeks two ago but there weren't any job openings. Over last weekend it occurred to me that that's because the upcoming election is provincial, not federal, and it's Elections BC that I should have been looking at. So I put in an application for various electoral-support positions in all the electoral districts within about a half-hour drive of me. I knew it was kinda late notice: the election's on 19 October, so they're at the very tail end of hiring. But hey, they were all still accepting applications, maybe I'd luck out.

In the event I got an email early Monday morning from the North Surrey office saying "hey can you come in for an interview this afternoon." I immediately said "sure" and dug up some vaguely presentable clothing.

Thank gods for West Coast casual. I am just about dead certain my actual suit doesn't fit me anymore, and neither do my two sport coats. But I do own long pants (black), and a long-sleeved shirt (also black; I have one or two in other colours but "bright satin silk" seems counterindicated for employment-seeking). My ties are mostly meant to go with a white shirt and dark suit but I've got a nice dark red one that I'm pretty sure I bought explicitly for my Le fils de l'homme Halloween costume. It wasn't until I was actually out the door that I realised I'd reflexively put on my sandals, and had forgotten entirely about socks and nice shoes. Oh well.

I got there exactly on time. The office is in a warehouse/industrial stretch; I drove past it once, expecting it to be, I don't know, bigger, or more permanent, or better signed. They let me in and put me through about ten minutes of grueling Generic Interview ("describe yourself in five words" type of thing). I stumbled over this somewhat: I'm used to "convince us you're able to function in an office environment" and "convince us you're able to write" interviews, not ... whatever this is.

At some point while I was stumbling through "three strengths, and three weaknesses" ("well obviously Talking Off The Cuff is a weakness but I can do alright if I know what I'm doing and basically prepare myself a script beforehand") the lead interviewer started nodding and maybe smiling a bit, and eventually held up her hand and said "I'm gonna ask you a question, and you absolutely don't have to answer, but ... are you neurospicy?"

Record scratch, freeze frame.

Thought process:

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DISCLOSE
What the fuck positive relevance could it even have?
She said 'neurospicy,' that's a shibboleth
You know, whatever, if this loses me the job I didn't want it anyway.

"Yeah, I am."

Ice completely broken. "Yeah, I thought I recognized that. I am too, and so are three of my five kids. This is a neurospicy-friendly office."

... well alright then.

We talked through some slightly more job-relevant things ("if someone comes in to the office to register to vote and gets really agitated about the requirement to show ID what do you do?" "I go get my supervisor!" etc). They showed me the big training room, which was warehouse-y and full of VERY LOUD fluorescents, with "if this is a deal-breaker for you I totally understand." If I had to do office-type things in there all day it would be a problem but as it is, I can handle it for a couple of hours at a stretch.

I left feeling pretty confident that I'd done well but not at all confident about getting the job. They only had the one position and had had an awful lot of applicants. But as it turned out at 10PM I got an email saying "you're hired, send us your references so we can check them."

As of today, nearly a week later, they still haven't called at least one of my two references. I'm probably bottom of the list, though. I guess we'll see. My official first day is 15 September. Things will ramp up from there through the election on the 19th and then taper off again pretty quickly. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing, even, other than "voter registration" and "tech support for the voting teams." But it'll be good to have an actual income again, if only for a little while.

Still no real word from the BC Ministry of Forests on getting a practicum placement for spring. This is way over in the category of Stuff I Can't Affect at the moment. Classes start in just under two weeks as well; hopefully the Project/Practicum Prep course will include "how to get a placement".

Other than that? I'm doing alright, I think. Happy meterological autumn.

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it ain't the heat, it's-- nevermind, it's the heat

2024-07-08T03:59:43Z

It is Hot here, thirties today and tomorrow and Tuesday. I broke out the cold robot a couple of days ago and it has been a lifesaver.

The thing about it being Hot here is that I can turn the AC off at night (it hasn't been so hot I need to run it overnight), and leave it off in the morning. Once the apartment heats up I can do a round of Warm (not quite Hot) Yoga, and reactivate the AC while I shower. Yay problem-solving. Useful while my bike is in the shop getting a tuneup, and also while it is honestly too warm for me to want to go out riding.

Classes are done and I did in fact do almost exactly well in them as I expected. This time next year I'll have my credential and hopefully gainful non-tech-writing employment for the first time in twenty years. I'm looking at contract tech-writer work for an indefinite amount of time this summer/fall/etc. It's giving me the twin sensations of "yep, i can do this" and "i really do not want to be doing this." I have some hope that GIS work won't provide that experience. At least it will also involve some "i have no idea how i'm going to do this" which will keep things interesting.

For now I'm keepin on keepin on. Trying to convince Mr Tuppert to be a lap cat in places other than "bed", which has had some minor success. It's too warm to cook on the stove but maybe I'll do some lentils in the instant pot tomorrow. Yoga, viola, books, maybe some writing tomorrow. Will see.

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consciousness stream misc, and books

2024-06-27T02:38:21Z

I am home, after having been away for two weeks, which is (it turns out) a long time. Mr Tuppert has mostly forgiven me for the twin indignities of leaving him alone and then brushing him vigorously.

In Minneapolis I visited Uncle Hugo/Edgar's Bookstore(s) and met some of Steph's friends, and also her two cats. Then in Fort I petted a lot of cats and not a few dogs, and stacked wood and fed geese and pigs and helped plant some ritual-space trees. Also I made a second key lime pie (with normal limes instead) and it turned out pretty well.

I finished my classes and I believe I passed them all, for credential-granting values of "passed." Pretty sure I did quite well in three and acceptably well in a fourth. As for the fifth, I consider it a triumph that I managed as well as I did. Bah. And I have at least one and possibly/probably two more classes with this instructor.

I have also received an unexpected US$2000 check from the IRS. I have no idea why (I have a couple of theories but that's all they are) (UPDATE: It is in fact the stimulus payment from 2020/2021 that I missed, plus interest), and after spending an hour plus getting Verified, the account page is useless. So tomorrow I will spend some time On Hold figuring that out. Tomorrow is also for groceries and journaling.

Tonight is for petting the cat and staring at the wall. And also blathering about books, because Wednesday.

What are you reading now?

Deadhouse Gates, Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen #2 of 10 and then some. This one has taken a bit to spin up, I guess in the same way that Gardens of the Moon (#1) did, but it's rolling along quite nicely now. I'm enjoying most of the characters and much of the complex worldbuilding. My sole problem is that I can't tell if I want to be reading an ebook or not.

What did you just finish reading?

Rereads of Gideon/Harrow/Nona The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Gideon remains a triumph of imaginative storytelling, narrative deftness, and voice, and I unreservedly recommend it. Harrow feels sluggish and pointless until three-fifths through (specifically, page 302 of 500ish) but the last two hundred pages are worth the price of admission. Nona does almost exactly the same thing but on reread I find Nona hanging out with the kids to be less annoying than Harrow's angst. On the other hand, to quote Douglas Adams, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic." If I wanted to read far-future sci-fi with crypto-Catholic mysticism I'd reread Gene Wolfe. And sometimes I do want that! Here it just annoys me. (Granted, I am partly annoyed because Camilla Hect, the absolute best character in the series, has been SPOILERed.)

What do you think you'll read next?

Deadhouse is gonna occupy me for awhile. If I'm wanting something hardcopy I might dig into The Saint Of Bright Doors which I picked up in Mpls, after seeing recommendations from a rather diverse set of people. Or I might get into one of my Silvia M-G books. Or I might reread Fonda Lee's Green Bone books. Who knows.

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not depressed(?) but still not writing (etc)

2024-05-29T03:10:19Z

Not journaling is a bad sign but usually I read it as a depressed bad sign, and I don't think that's what's going on right now. So I've mostly I guess ignored it. "Well, I'm not writing, but even accounting for my resistance to admitting I'm depressed I don't think I'm depressed, so it's probably okay?" There's something going on, though. The last ... week and a half, since Erin went back home, I've been feeling exceptionally unfocused.

Maybe before that as well, it's hard to tell from here. Before Erin came down in early May I felt like I was keeping together pretty well, though. I got my classwork done ahead of time so that I wouldn't have to worry about it while we were down at Sherry's. And then ... the chaos of the next week happened and it feels like that threw me just completely out of whack, and I haven't managed to re-center myself.

I am ... let's say 'not falling behind in a damaging way' in classes. That is: I'm doing fine on tests/quizzes. As for assignments: of the five, I'm keeping fully up to date in two. A third has moved into Group Work mode; the first of two assignments there is due later this week and it's complete, ready to be submitted once the other members of the group say "yep, looks good to go." The last two are Rob's two classes, in which I am behind but for which due dates are more like suggestions. I do exceptionally poorly with trying to -learn- from Rob's fragmented lectures. I got by in fall because I already knew half and could functionally teach myself the rest. The 'already knew' part is much smaller this time, so the teaching-myself is correspondingly larger. But at least the dates are flexible.

Apart from that. I went to a small larp on Saturday and had a great deal of fun. I'd like to get that written up in more detail but, again, difficulty Sitting Down And Doing It. Food last week was extremely catch-as-can, and I overcompensated by Cooking All The Things over the weekend and yesterday: cookies which went to larp and to Julianne who's gone back east (her mother is in hospital and may or not be coming back out again), freezer burgers, more bread, a pork tenderloin in the fridge to make into sammiches.

Money's been bad/scary, in both the short-term (running out of funds with no job relatively soon) and long-term (having done math it is unlikely that BC Gov, my desired/preferred employer, will pay me enough to live on). Doubtless some background stress around that kicking up, as well.

I have not missed feeding the cat, since he lets me know when food is supposed to be and conveniently it is also at my food-times, but I have missed the litterbox, more than once (not more than once in a row, thankfully). I put off going to get more cat litter for nearly a week, unrelated to not cleaning the litterbox. Objects are beginning to pile up on flat surfaces.

I seem to be not doing well and I don't know what to do about it.

Deep breath.

This is all sounding like at minimum a resurgence of ADHD problems. It's entirely possible that I need a meds adjustment. I am on not quite the lowest possible dose of Concerta, and I do notice a difference on big-pill days vs small-pill days.

Mm. Noted: This is not good. Will attempt to get a meds adjustment this week: calling tomorrow morning.

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time with greenie

2024-04-03T18:05:41Z

Erin came into town the weekend before last, which was lovely. I am still unaccustomed to people actually coming to see me; my mental framing, which has held sturdy since at least 2006, has been "people don't come to me, i go to them." But now that I've had two in the space of six weeks, plus Mya coming over I guess once a month or so for dinner, I should perhaps re-evaluate that.

As a result of Erin driving down, I now have a fridge filled with eggs: two dozen chicken eggs, nearly a dozen duck eggs, and unsure but probably not quite a dozen goose eggs. In my experience duck and goose eggs are great in baking (one goose egg is about three chicken eggs, depending) but have a weird texture when cooked on their own. Will see how long this lasts me.

I also had my first cookie fail (hubris ftl): creamed the butter and sugar, added in the (duck) egg and vanilla, and then let it sit for half an hour or so while we had dinner before finishing it off. Result: dry and crumbly cookie dough, dry and crumbly cookies. Ah well. I'm assuming this is a result of leaving it to sit rather than the duck egg. Will conduct further experiments (involving duck eggs rather than "leaving to sit") to determine.

Sunday the weather was quite nice, and we went and hung out in Pier Park with a bunch of mugs and a butane stove and a kettle and some tea, and some folks dropped by and chatted and drank tea and went home with mugs. Erin's been doing pottery fairly intensively for the last ... while, I guess, several months? Which means that she ends up with an awful lot of different pieces, mostly mugs, in different glazes. So some of them found homes over the weekend. It was lovely: beautiful pottery all shimmery and bright-coloured in the sun, and tea, and people I don't know terribly well but generally like.

On Tuesday we drove north, for a generally good and low-key not-quite-week. I managed to forget my toiletries, which meant that I got to once again experience several days of beard growth. This is definitely Not For Me. I like the look of a goatee, but that takes actual effort and morning thought to maintain, so it just all comes off. Quite relieved to be home to my razor on Saturday evening.

More importantly I also got to experience life without ADHD meds. It's hard to say what effect this actually had on me since there wasn't really much that needed doing in a specific timeframe while I was there. The main thing I noticed was a return of sugar craving. Thankfully a couple days back on the Concerta has squelched that down again.

Winter term is complete; spring term starts tomorrow, and on Friday night I fly out to Ohio to hang out in what looks to be heavy cloud cover for a total solar eclipse. I am of course pleased that folks in Niagara will get a clearer view but also irritated that it had to be -this year- that I'm missing it. C'est la guerre.

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sun sun sun

2024-03-19T21:54:41Z

On the one hand, I have more to do this week than I expected. Stupid TechIssues final is this week not next, plus needing to watch another group's presentation and compose a reasonable question about it. And the Arc2 homework due Friday looks to be intense ("make a GIS webapp, whatever you want!").

On the other hand, I missed going out in the Nice the last two days, and it's supposed to get cloudygrey again tomorrow.

Meh. I'll finish Remote tonight. It is Too Nice Out There.

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food, also for thought

2024-03-19T02:12:53Z

My ability to make consistently Quite Good cookies is, I think, a direct consequence of a) a good recipe (Betty Crocker, in this case), and b) measuring by weight and not by volume. It's also just easier, at least for me: no digging around to find the right size scoop and hoping it's clean, just leave a 1-cup in the flour and a 1/3-cup in the sugar.

(My mnemonics do annoy me: a cup of flour is 5oz, a cup of sugar (brown or white, I forget for powdered) is 200g. But I'm usually adding flour and sugar at different times, so it's not as bad as it might be.)

Good tools help, too. Stand mixer for creaming the butter and sugar (overkill), a ridiculously overproduced paddle for mixing the flour and then the chips (do not use the mixer for the flour, you'll overwake the gluten), silicone baking mats for my trays so I don't have to deal with parchment paper, a cookie-baller to make them consistently the right size so I don't have to mess around with two spoons or hand-rolling things. I kind of wish I had a full sheet baking tray so I could do them in two batches instead of four, but where would I store it? "In the oven" is absolutely the wrong answer.

Also it appears to take me about twenty minutes to go from "I should make cookies" to having the first batch in.

Stupid presentation for stupid Josh's stupid barely-a-class is done, another group member uploaded it an hour ago. Spent today wrestling ArcGIS into submission for a Cartography project. This is using a bunch of stuff I've learned in several classes, which is nice. Feels like I'm actually learning how to do things. It will be messier than I'd like by the deadline tonight but I'll get good feedback from Tony and then the actual final thing will be decent.

Part of why I've liked Tony's classes (Arc1 last term, Cartog this) is because they're project-focused. I'm not just going through exercises-- well, Arc1 mostly was, but the final project was "make this map" and the final exam had a practical "use Arc to solve these problems" component that I quite enjoyed. That's been mostly lacking from my other classes. Feels ... well. Practical. Able to be put into practice.

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hey i don't know your business, i don't know your grading policy

2024-03-17T16:06:57Z

Yay none of my courses next term are with Josh who I can't stand and vice versa!

Boo two of my (five) courses next term are with Rob who irritated me last fall. Including Arc3 which I expect to be Difficult. (Also Python2 which I am less afraid of, possibly with less reason. I really wish I'd been able to take Python2 this term following straight on from Python1.)

On balance, works for me.

Don't mind me, I'm spending today working out how to babble for five minutes about Why Spatial Autocorrelation Is Hard. The short answer is "because it's iterative matrix math, and GIS datasets are Really Big Matrices." The long answer is ... well, it had better be five minutes long.

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blargh rant class, also books

2024-01-31T22:36:56Z

Just got done writing a program in Java that encodes a text file using 'run-length encoding'. Simple but kinda interesting. Marred by the assignment's insistence on COMMENTING EVERY LINE (heck with you then, you're getting comments on my open and close braces) and on the class's non-ChatGPT policy: "If you choose not to utilize generative AI tools to assist in completing this assignment, provide a separate reference document indicating this. Also, provide a list of the resources (course materials and/or external) that you did use and how they were used." I USED THE PDFS YOU PROVIDED BECAUSE THAT'S WHY YOU PROVIDED THEM.

Rob's two classes last term annoyed me. Comp in particular felt like he'd done a half-assed job of slapping something together from previous notes and just kind of left it. This (non-Rob) class is making me actively angry. Between the 'generative AI' stuff and the fact that there are only four lectures in a twelve-week course (one week each for midterm and final, which, fine, and the rest are for "group work") I am unclear why I have paid money for this. Apart from credentialism, yes yes.

Spoke with the ADHDoc today. She re-upped the Concerta and we'll talk again in three weeks, which should be plenty of time to decide if I want to up my dosage.

And also books.

What are you reading now?

Beasts of Ruin by Ayana Gray. Pan-African-inspired YA fantasy, sequel to Beasts of Prey. Good worldbuilding and atmosphere, decent characters and plot, okay writing. I'll read the third when it's available but I'm in no particular rush.

Also one chapter left in Polywise, which is unsurprisingly quite good if not as revolutionary as Polysecure.

What did you just finish reading?

Mm. System Collapse, the latest Murderbot. It reads like a coda / second-half for Network Effect. Suspect I will consider those two as a unit, in the same way I consider the first four novellas a unit. Annoyingly this means that I will now be reading Fugitive Telemetry in chron order (before Network Effect) rather than pub order (between NE and SC). Pro: going straight into SC from NE means all of NE is fresh in one's mind, which is helpful since SC really does read like a second half of NE. Con: the ending of both Exit Strategy and FT feature fights with nonsympathetic bots, which feels less repetitive when there's NE to break it up. Oh well.

Murderbot is coming to terms with its massive untreated trauma. I think I liked SC not quite as much as NE but NE was so very good that that's a high bar. Also, with Murderbot hacking governor modules / teaching other SecUnits how to hack them, it feels like we're moving towards some kind of world-shaking tipping point. Very curious to see where things go from here.

Before that, Scholomance 2 and 3. I continue to love these, between El's voice and the way the books make their commentary on modern (western?) crab-bucket society ever more overt. ("Oh, it's Omelas," I said when I got to a certain point in the third book, and then a chapter or two later IT LITERALLY WAS OMELAS.) The third, which takes place out in the Real World and away from the Scholomance, is ... certainly different, and maybe feels overcrowded? Suffering from the corresponding lack of tight focus? I dunno. I'm vaguely unsatisfied by it and I'm not sure why. Will need to reread at some point and see what I think.

What do you think you'll read next?

Nth reread of The March North, because I'm traveling north myself next week and want ebooks, and because it's been too long, and because Rachel Manija Brown wrote a great review of A Succession of Bad Days. "In a world rendered post-apocalyptic by thousands of years worth of warring Dark Lords, a group of adult students attend magic school to learn how to do civil engineering with magic. ... It's the sort of book bound to attract a following whose numbers are inversely proportional to their enthusiasm."

After that, if I don't just keep rolling on the Commonweal, likely either Discworld (Men At Arms) or Craft (Full Fathom Five). Probably not an immediate reread of Scholomance but no promises.

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everything dies and everything flies (economy)

2024-01-26T21:56:09Z

Oh hey, it's been a minute.

( ADHD )

( Classes )

( Cat )

( Travel )

Overall? Things are good, I think. I'm worried about money and the future but that's a future problem. Right now I'm ... mostly happy. It's nice.

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first term down

2023-12-09T00:41:37Z

This week was crappy on a couple of fronts but at least classwork wasn't one of them. I took my Mapping final on Thursday, and it ... it felt more like an exam than any of the others. Might be because those have all been tests where either I knew the answers, or I knew pretty well where to find the answers in the lecture notes. This... some of it was reasoning through things, and some of it was complicated math problems, and very little of it felt easy.

It lasted two hours and I ran out of time with about a question and a half unanswered. Pointswise that was around ten percent of the final. So, another five percent of my final grade in Mapping has flown off to join the 15% from the missed midterm. Having said that, I'm still relatively confident, I've just adjusted my expectations way downward. I need about 40% on the exam to pass the class. I am pretty sure I'll end up with at least 70% and possibly as much as 85%.

Other class grades are mostly in: 95% in ArcGIS, 89% in Python and in Intro, and 77% in Computing, which for a class that I stopped being able to make myself care about three-quarters through seems reasonable. I'll take it. (The only one of those that's official is Intro; the others are based on coursework grades as recorded in the online course, so might be off by a percent or two.)

Could be worse. I have no idea how an average of ~80-85% translates into being able to get scholarship-type money. Guess I'll find out in a month or two.

And... that's it, all over for a month and then I do it again twice running. Next term Tony my Arc instructor is teaching Cartography & GeoVisualization (the InterCaps are in the course title), someone I don't know is teaching Technical Issues In GIS, and I have no idea who's teaching ArcGIS 2 and GIS Remote Sensing but it is almost certainly not %&$ Rob. Small favours.

I am honestly somewhat nervous. I was running out of steam by the end of November here. Hoping that between fewer courses, a lack of the most difficult-for-me instructor, and whatever assist I can get from the ADHDoc in two weeks, it'll go more smoothly.

In the meantime there are packages to ship and Murderbot to read and a somewhat bitey cat to pet. Winter is wintering.

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school and pie

2023-11-29T03:45:38Z

As of yesterday I'm back in the prime of my life.

Intro (technically "Fundamentals of GIS" but I've been calling it Intro) is done; I turned in my presentation (ten percent) last Thursday and took the final today. Mapping and ArcGIS are done except for the final (a two-part final in the case of Arc, half exam and half practical). I'm not totally sure what Rob's two stupid classes (Comp and Python) have left but it's at least one quiz apiece. At least I think they're quizzes and not an actual comprehensive final.

Rob's classes frustrate me for a lot of reasons. Comp in particular feels like a class that he's slapped together as an afterthought. I am at least unconcerned for my grades: this is all material I either already know or have picked up mostly on my own well enough to do (and, fair play, learn from) the weekly assignments. I've left him scathing course feedback which I expect no one will read for Comp and I'll do the same for Python later this week.

It's weird to think of the term as nearly over. I get a month, more or less, for winter break, and then I do it all again twice in a row (no break between winter and spring terms). And then I figure out what I'm doing for summer and the next year, when I'm taking one class a term plus the very large "project/practicum."

A couple of weeks ago I made myself two quiches, on account of having a) some cream and b) two storebought piecrusts in the freezer. They turned out well (including the one that I froze and thawed out this week for breakfasts) except for a metallic tang to the crust. That was unpleasant enough that I'm finally looking into making my own pie crust.

For my birthday I made a cinnamon creme pie, with a crust using this completely ridiculous recipe for French pastry dough. Seriously, "boil the butter in the oven". I can confirm that it works shockingly well but is maybe not an ideal pie crust. Then again for the blind-bake step I inexplicably turned the heat down to 350 instead of leaving it at 410 (I must have been thinking of the instructions on the storebought ones, or something), so that might explain the "doesn't cut properly, sticks a bit to the bottom of the pie pan." But the recipe does say it's not ideal for a "thin custardy filling" so maybe that's on me.

I also wanted dessert NOW so I made the mistake of cutting into the pie before it had cooled all the way from baking the meringue, and it lost some structural integrity. So: tasty but not at all photogenic.

I have my grandmother's pie-crust "recipe" that came on the bottom of the recipe card for the cinnamon creme pie. I put "recipe" in quotes because it's ingredients and temp and time, which is probably enough if you've made pie crust before. Thankfully the internet can probably provide actual instructions. I may try that next week sometime, I've still got some cream left for more quiches.

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[GIP]

2023-11-19T17:04:07Z

The worst things about mapping:

Degrees/minutes/seconds. If you can use metric measurements you can use decimal degrees LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. Bonus: my calculator (recommended by Scott the instructor) will convert freely between decimal degrees for calculation and DMS for final answers... but it only gives seconds to one decimal place and Scott wants two. So I still have to do the "subtract the integer, multiply by sixty" dance.
Coordinates are given north-first, east-second, in violation of all the math I have learned since I started learning Cartesian coordinates in sixth grade. Arguably this one is Descartes's fault and he should have put X as up and Y as right so it would line up with the existing use-case.
Relatedly, azimuths start from north and go clockwise, while polar coordinates start from the x-axis and go counter-clockwise. My painstakingly drilled "x = r cos theta, y = r sin theta" from tenth grade are also wrong.
Adding and subtracting angles. This is exacerbated by use of DMS (see above) but just on its own it is a Problem for me. Turns out I don't actually have an instinctive grasp of "left" and "right," I just have heuristics that have done well enough up til now. (Scott's "think about it like adding or subtracting time on a clock" was actually really helpful.)

The best things about mapping:

Getting to use trigonometry in real-world applications. Trig is beautiful (if messy) math and I have always admired how much information you can get out of one angle and one distance.
Universal Transverse Mercator, a coordinate system of map projections with minimal, calculable distortion and consistent, useful labeling.

(Icon is a 5000km circle centred in Paris. Stupid Mercator.)

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five things etc

2023-11-05T17:45:19Z

This morning, not for the first time, I had a brief flash of "I wish I could tell tam_nonlinear about that," and was a bit sad. Then it occurred to me that even if I'd ever found out whether she accepted my last apology, she would 100% have Taken Sides post-divorce. And like literally every other person who explicitly took sides, the side she took would not have been mine. So that was cheery. But to the left, Abby was nothing if not consistent. Why, what could she have done, being what she is? / Was there another Troy for her to burn?

(Yeats was an absolute tool and there's a lot about the sentiment of that poem that unintentionally says more about the poet than the subject. He did have a way with words, though.)

I've been trying to engage with Mr Tuppert more, in the hope that keeping him more stimulated will go some way towards diffusing his biteyness. It's working, maybe. I've successfully redirected him from "attacking my hand" to "attacking his catnip fishy" a couple of times now. Yesterday I replaced the batteries in the laser pointer, and it has once more become a highly effective distraction and cat-exhauster. My mother brought him a rather nice jumpy felt spider on a stick but he's mostly been uninterested, alas.

As part of the ADHD screening process I completed a half-dozen mental health questionnaires a couple of weeks ago. Based on interpreting what they're looking for from the questions asked and how I answered them, I exhibit some symptoms of ADHD pretty strongly. I also exhibit quite a few symptoms of depression at varying levels. This is I guess not really a surprise? Turns out that on some fundamental level I didn't really believe my depression diagnosis from when I was eighteen. Or I thought I was handling it better, or something. But: it's there, it's not going anywhere, I'm gonna have to do something about that too. Bah. Will see what the doctor says when I talk to her in a month and a half.

My parents also sent along all my childhood medical records. I bet there's some interesting stuff in there but I do not currently have it in me to decipher handwriting. Maybe next week.

On the classes front: everything is I believe sorted out regarding next term registration. My mapping instructor has softened his "no and fuck you for asking" stance enough to move ten percent of the overall grade from the missed midterm to the final, which is decent of him: I'm now only losing fifteen percent overall. And I am currently Caught Up on everything except Computing, which is what today's for.

I'm honestly starting to get a little worried about next term. It's only four courses but they're all upper-level. Much of what's being covered thus far is either review, or fundamental concepts that make perfect sense. Curious -- and nervous -- how I'll do when it's actually new and difficult material.

Tomorrow evening I fly out to Tampa, for several days with Steph. She's got a work conference, so I shall hole up in the hotel room during the day to do classwork, and spend time with her in the evenings. Should be alright. I'll miss my kitten, though.

I'd hoped Erin would come down in late September or early October, but for a variety of reasons that didn't happen, and I've thus far been unable to plan a trip up north for Yanksgiving-tide as well. Hoping for Solstice; school will be done, so it'll be a bit of an easier lift, maybe.

Right. Back on my head.

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classes continue, i think

2023-11-02T03:25:52Z

Fee deferral has gone through and I have not yet been dropped from classes. Will see if there are more hoops I need to jump through: I don't see any on repeated inspection of various web portals but it wouldn't surprise me.

I am done with classwork up through ... well, today, really. Which is okay. I deal with Computing homework by grumping about it for several days until I've built up enough steam to just power through whatever this week's nonsense is. Hm, looks like it's "playing with QGIS (open-source GIS software) and javascript". Might not be too bad. Two weeks ago's PHP was particularly obnoxious; last week's "javascript and mapping" was only marginally less so.

I mean, it probably doesn't help that I am feeling the need to Be Extra in both Computing and Python. "Oh, I see how I can make it be a little cooler / a little less wrong"... and there goes another half hour.

Suspect the Dark is getting to me, too. It's at least been sunny the last several days but I think that's due to stop ... tomorrow. Yay.

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jazzfish @ 2023-11-01T11:44:00

2023-11-01T18:48:09Z

No makeup credit available for the missed mapping midterm. So I guess I can stop stressing myself over getting good enough grades that someone will love me enough to give me free money.

(That's a JOKE, son. It's WITTY. I am constitutionally incapable of avoiding stressing myself over getting good grades.)

Still no word on registration, either way. I don't appear to have been dropped from any winter classes yet at least.

I am very distinctly In A Mood about all this. Trying to distract myself by doing this week's Python.

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