JoDrRe

Food-Driven Personality

I am very easily influenced when it comes to food. I was watching a vlog and they showed that they got a burrito and right now (00:30) all I want in the world is a burrito. With nacho cheese.

What I really want is something from Super Burrito (downtown Bend) but I’d settle for some Taco Bell. I could also go for some french fries. Going to town Monday for some noodles (plus gas and propane, I don’t make trips I don’t need), I think I’m going to have to also stop and get some fast food. It’s been two months.

I’m meeting up with my best friend for noodles and a physical distance hangout again. Beyond the cashier at the store, I’m almost certain the last person I talked to in person was her, well over a month ago. I’ve had conversations on the phone and in game chat, but more or less I haven’t seen anyone in two months. It’s fine, I’m fine. It’s been like one long weekend, and I stay home on the weekends. Being an introvert helps.

No, Joe, you don’t need to spend money on useless things.

I’m trying to talk myself out of buying a camera. I’ve been watching a lot of vlogs and just YouTube vids in general. I don’t have a computer that can easily edit pictures or videos. I would eventually like to stream or have an actual YouTube channel, but there’s a lot more equipment I need to get first. I have a camera that I use for school, I have a video cam that is older but would work for streaming.

First step is to get/build a computer that can handle gaming and streaming (thus also Photoshop and Premiere), then a green screen, better Internet, sound equipment (which would also benefit if we ever start the podcast), and then at the very bottom of the list is a camera. I have a computer in my pocket that also comes with a camera and I barely use it. Sure it’s only 12MP, but it gets the job done.

Spent some time looking at rice cookers and side tables for the kitchen. These are things I actually do need, but I can’t bring myself to buy them. It could be since I’m not working I feel like I need to save money. Good thing there’s a 12 days until the resort opens back up.

Be Prepared!

Julien shared a video where he shows his emergency bags and I feel like such a bad Boy Scout. I don’t have one of those. My dad and stepmom sent me a water filtering straw and flashlight for Christmas this year, and those would be perfect for a bag. Thankfully no earthquakes, and power outages aren’t very frequent here. But I do live in the middle of a forest. In the high desert. Where there are fires every year.

I should probably have a bag ready to go. But I don’t. Because I was a terrible Boy Scout.

Chewy.com: An Ad, Yet Not An Ad

I’ve gotten cat food from Chewy for about two years now. This is not a sponsored post. But Chewy, if you want to hit me up with a sponsorship, let me know. Back in the day I would just get whatever food was cheap but still okay for Athena. When I moved out to the forest, I wanted to switch her to a food that I could get out here that was good for her and available if she ran out before the next time I went to town. I settled on Supreme Source. Hey Supreme Source: same offer as Chewy. Give me money and I’ll pimp your product. What I really liked about this food, besides being available at my local store, is that it’s grain-free. Kittehs don’t eat grain in the wild, that made it the best choice. I also got approval from my friend who was a vet tech. May not be the best food for her but it checks the boxes and she eats it all so until a vet tells me otherwise that’s what she gets.

Then I got Turnip. That motherfucker ate food like it was going out of style. He came from an environment with a lot of other cats so it was mostly just resource-guarding. But initially since he was eating me out of house and home, I made the decision to get bigger bags delivered. Supreme Source wasn’t available at Fred Meyer, I can’t remember if I looked at PetSmart or Petco, but I don’t frequent those anyway so Chewy was the best choice for getting the food I wanted to feed my cats.

So I signed up for autoship. I had almost figured out a good schedule for it, I was either a week early or two weeks late, and then Turnip developed a UTI and bladder stones. His vet prescribed him special food to help dissolve the stones. That same day I called every pet store in the area, nobody had it. Thankfully I already used Chewy so that’s where I was able to get him his special food. He got shitty wet food from the store for a couple days until his vet approved the order and it arrived. He was not complaining. I digress.

Turnip has five cans of special food left, so that should last another five days. I ordered food for both him and Athena (bought a bag half the size from normal because now it’s just her on that food again). Decided to also get some toys. Turnip got a toy with a ball on a track that also has a scratching pad since he has claws. Athena’s toy is an automatic laser. Set it on a surface and turn it on, it moves a laser randomly for like 15 minutes. She loves lasers, and I lose interest (slash my thumb hurts from pressing the button) pretty quickly. She’s also getting pretty chonky being trapped in my room. So I hope she likes it and this will help her get more active again. She’s afraid to leave the room even if I have the door open. Haven’t quite figured out how to make the two of them exist peacefully together, Turnip is an asshole and picks on her. Breaks my heart that I can’t spend time with her in the living room. Sucks that the only time I spend with her is right before bed and then just as I wake up. Again, I digress.

Chewy has a warning on their site and sent an email after the order was placed that shipments are taking longer than normal due to increased orders. I was initially confused, like why would they be backed up? That just makes no sense! But then a second later I realized that people aren’t leaving their homes very much, so of course there’s an increase in orders. That kind of sucks for Turnip because they’re saying it’s taking 7-10 days to ship and he has less food than that. Plus the lead time for the vet to approve the shipment for his prescription food. She said no more dry food so I’m glad I bought a big pack of that shitty food, at least he’ll be able to eat while we wait for the shipment.

But yeah. This non-sponsored post basically boils down to if you have pets you should really order from Chewy. I get hand-written cards for their birthdays. They’re generic and definitely just a gimmick that they do to set themselves apart from the rest, but it really does mean a lot to me. The cats don’t care, because they’re cats, but I’m touched that someone spent a portion of their day for my screamy hell demons. The prices are decent, too, especially if you order more than $49 worth of stuff. Which Turnip’s food is. $50 for 24 cans. Not only does he not appreciate me, the bastard is expensive. And monthly vet exams (yet to come, the Rona hit after his diagnosis so we haven’t been able to get in for a followup). Spendy little demon soot sprite.

Daily Reflections

I didn’t realize that the majority of this would be me reacting to the delay from Chewy and also how awesome they are. Sorry.

Round two of bangers and mash tonight. Which means I reheated the gravy I made the other night, and then cooked potatoes and sausages. Not really a round two since I’m only reheating one thing made before. Made two sausages because last time I only made one and wanted two, only ate one. Wasteful. I hate that.

Made some good progress in Minecraft in the village. Built a pretty rough iron farm. For whatever reason the golems hang out on the back end of the spawning building, so I found some lava, dug a giant hole, and now I get like 40 iron a day.

Well, tonight I need to go to bed before 4am. If I have to be awake before noon in 12 days, I need to start re-training myself.

Oh God, after trimming the facial hair yesterday I can blow my nose and not feel weird. Hairs aren’t going UP INTO MY NOSE when I put tissue to face and blow.

So that’s the opening statement that I’m going with. The post only gets worse from here.

Yardwork

I need to get a weed eater. I actually need a lot of yard care equipment. A weed eater is the biggest one, though. Electric, though. I don’t want to have to deal with keeping gas around the place. I have an electric mower and it’s great. There’s a lot of grass so I mow about half, charge the battery and take a break, and then finish the rest when it’s ready. Built-in union breaks, bb!

I also should plant some flowers soon, as soon as it stops freezing at night. Potentially starting on my birthday. Keep an eye out. It rained today, and forecast says it’ll rain again Wednesday before getting warm and not freezing starting on my birthday! I have a couple packets of seeds sitting by my front door, Thursday I’ll just get up and pour them out. It’s gonna be great.

My birthday is on Thursday and I already have it all planned out: make some margaritas and mow the lawn. That’s it. That’s all I want to do. I lead a very exciting life.

Delivery

I knew when I moved out to be close to work that I wouldn’t be able to get delivery from the pizza place out here. Thank god, when I lived in town I had pizza delivered like twice a week and I weighed so much. So much. I’m pretty sure in the last two and a half years I’ve lost like 40 pounds, simply because I can’t get food delivered. Ten of those pounds came off since work closed, because every meal is homemade and sometimes I forget to eat. Also some muscle atrophy, but still.

Actually, I kind of can’t get over FORTY POUNDS LOST. When I was in town, chilling around 220. I was working out a bit so some of that may have been muscle, but seriously I was eating out for almost every meal. Bought this house and live alone so I can’t split bills, had to start cooking for myself because there’s only like five restaurants out here and eating out in a resort community would quickly bankrupt me. Now I’m around 180, was at 190ish the last time I went to work. Even though most of my dinners were homemade, I would always forget to pack a lunch so I’d go to Subway, Mexican, or pizza for lunch.

Where was I going with this. I got distracted by losing 40 pounds.

Oh. Delivery. Right. So when I lived in town we still didn’t have Uber Eats. I think it launched like two months after I moved. Thanks. That was a two years (ish) ago, more restaurants have signed up, we have DoorDash, PostMates, and whatever else I don’t know about. The delivery area stops about 15 miles down the highway.

But, like, I don’t get that? If I lived at the south end of town and ordered from a restaurant on the north end, that’s like 20-30 minutes easy delivery time. I lived south-central and it was 22 minutes door-to-door to work, I now live a few minutes from work. All the restaurants I would love to be able to be delivered are on the south side and/or close to the highway, so it’d be 30 minutes. So why not make it available based on distance?

I’m just salty because one of my favorite restaurants is the Mongolian BBQ place and I got an email saying they reopened for takeout, and all I want now is a bowl of noodles. They’re taunting me with delivery. DoorDash doesn’t come out this far.

Unrelated to delivery, related to noodles, my best frand and I are going to do a physical separation hangout on Monday and you can bet we’re going to get takeout noodles.

Wildlife

Yesterday when I went to the store, there was an alert that deer migration is in progress. Score! That means my deer friends will be back! One of the selling points for me on this house was that deer hang out in the yard. I love that. I had a mom and her baby hang out for a while. Baby would freak out when I went to the car, but I was able to talk to the mom and keep her from running away. Pretty soon I didn’t have to say anything, they’d just chill as I left for work. There’s also a couple families at work that sleep in the traffic circle and come up to the building so they can eat the grass.

I had a thought that since the neighbors got their dog last year I haven’t seen any deer friends, especially since they can’t control him and he just roams the neighborhood. While checking Instagram for the last time I saw them, turns out they were last here in July. So maybe I’m just early.

View this post on Instagram

Deer friends are back!

A post shared by Joe (@jodrre) on Apr 28, 2018 at 5:40pm PDT

But yeah, fuck that dog. Total asshole.

Daily Reflections

Watching Jenna and Julien’s videos while I write this, and they’re talking about the car crash they were in. In Jenna’s video she talked about getting an IV and then getting contrast to check for internal bleeding. She was like “my blood got hot.” When I had it done, I wished they had warned me that my butt hole would feel like it was on fire. I can’t wait for next Sunday’s post. I wrote an awesome text describing the entire ordeal of an appendectomy and it needs to be shared with the world on the anniversary of my first real hospital visit. That’s going to be an amazing post.

After I posted yesterday, I stayed up and watched some old recordings of shows I worked on. Not really sure how that started, but long story short I drank a lot, sang along very loudly, and didn’t go to bed until 5. Needless to say, I woke up late today and everything needed to be quiet for a while.

See? I knew I’d get to use that title for something 😜
I drafted this generally last night after I put the last post up, and Drinky Joe had a lot of thoughts. So we’re going to try to expand on them now. Let’s try to tie them in to their own headings. It’s gonna get messy.

Godspeed, the three of you that read this.

Last Night

After gaming after yesterday’s post and then the update, I stayed up for quite a while longer watching the Jenna & Julien podcast.

I started thinking about getting a new computer that can game and run a stream, so I opened NewEgg. How can I get a computer that’s suited for streaming for a decent price? Do I get a pre-built or build my own? Need to compare directly. Need to do some research to see what’s good. Also add in green screen, an okay camera, and some sound equipment. Didn’t get too far; when I tried to directly compare specs from pre-built to custom-built, the custom always ended up several hundred dollars more. I just want to build my own computer, yo. Why it gotta be so spendy.

Checked Informed delivery and it shows that I got a letter from ODOT. What would ODOT be sending me a letter about? My first thought was REAL ID, but that would have come from DMV. Is the road usage charge program being discontinued? They’re re-doing the highway by me and I can’t get out?

Okay, that was what I did last night after posting, so now it’s time to expand on Drinky Joe’s thoughts so I can get to the daily reflection and just wrap up this giant post.

Lots of Blocks

Today I played a LOT of Minecraft. By accident. But this picture of my computer (sorry) taken last night shows 4 of my 12 turtles that hatched!

The single egg hatched first (not pictured, keep reading) and he wanted to go swim so I opened the fence, and then I read that mobs target baby turtles so I looked around and couldn’t find him. So I was convinced my baby died and I was very sad. I waited until the hatchlings finished growing before releasing them to the wild. Be free, my children.

Anyway… today I made a lot of progress on my villager spawner. Raised the population enough to need to expand to another room. Golems started spawning on top of the building, so I’m thinking that I need to build a raised platform above it that forces them into some lava. BAM. Iron farm. Still need to do some research as to how the new village mechanics work, I’m going to throw a wild guess and say that the old iron farms won’t work since the latest update.

And that’s what I love about Minecraft: everything changes and there are always new problems that need to be solved. That, and it’s just blocks. Turn off that brain some time, bb!

Aspirations of Normalcy

We are very far from getting to any sort of normal right now. And that’s okay. But it’s important to think about what that new normal will look like.

For my department specifically, the majority of our work can be done from home. We still need one person on property to do some physical stuff (move computers, plug things in, manual interventions, etc.) but I think we can work one at a time in the office. There’s only three of us: me, afraid to get the virus because if I get super sick who’s going to take care of my cats; the boss, who has young children and doesn’t want to endanger his family; and the other tech, who is more at risk of serious infection. So at least, my department has a strong motivation to continue distancing as much as possible until a vaccine can be found.

We had an all-associate call today with the GM and Director of HR, and they said they’re working with a local company to get masks for everyone, and that the company will donate masks to those that need it. So we’ll be helping out the community. That’s one of the things I like about where I work, we try to benefit the community as much as possible. My theory is all the work-provided masks will have our logo on them, can’t wait to see if I’m right or not. My theory is that since we’re buying them that we’re going to logo them in some way.

I read the title of an article suggesting it would be a year or two before a vaccine was available so we’d have to continue distancing. Since I did pretty well in my science classes in school, I’m okay with having to wear a mask in public for however long it takes. I understand the concept of herd immunity.

All the crybabies saying that wearing a mask and physical distancing is infringing on their rights: I can only assume you failed every single one of your biology classes, you have zero empathy for your fellow man, and you got a small dick. Even if you don’t have a dick, you got a small dick if you can’t grasp the concept that limited the spread buys us time to gain herd immunity because you want a fucking haircut. Once the immunity is in place, feel free to not vaccinate your kids and bury them by their 8th birthday, as is your right. Until then, shut the fuck up, the adults are being responsible.

Daily Reflection

Okay, Drinky Joe had a lot more things to say last night, but it’s late now, and I’ve already hit three sections. Time to just call it. Check back tomorrow for 3 of the 6 remaining thoughts.

Besides playing Minecraft today, I also went to the store. The last time I went was last Thursday, so looks like I can make two boxes of wine last four days each. That’s the only reason I went to the store. Well, that and frozen pizza and laundry sauce. I still have enough leftovers to last me a few more days, so I’ll probably go some time early next week. My birthday is Thursday and since the weather will be nice I want to grill a steak and have a margarita. Need to get propane, steak, and tequila.

The mask I received last week from that local company didn’t fit quite right when I tried it on literally an hour after I opened the package. My cancer-patient-beard was keeping it from hugging my jawline. So today before my shower I took a trimmer to my face. Got rid of the neck beard portion, and then trimmed the rest to 7mm, which I felt was a respectable length for facial hair. I have a couple bald patches, but for the foreseeable future I won’t be showing my face, so who cares. Maybe two months wasn’t long enough for those sections, let’s see how long it takes for them to get with the program that I want a Real Man Beard.

Anyway, after my trim sesh I discovered the hair was much longer than I thought, and the mask fit so much better. No regrets. Plus, it looks cleaner which I think helped a little with the fight against Crippling Depression.

I read an article a while ago saying to wash your glasses in soapy water to help prevent fogging. Did that right before I left the house, still was walking around the store in a haze. Next order from Amazon, besides a Tub Shroom that Freddie’s hasn’t had in stock for MONTHS, is going to be something I can spray on them to stop that. If I’m going to have to wear a mask for a while, I need something to help me continue to see.

And that’s another thing: I am only slightly farsighted. I really only need to use glasses for the computer. But since I work with computers for a living, I really need to wear them all the time; my optometrist gave me a weak prescription (that I can just pick off the rack at Walmart, TBH), I just wear really expensive readers. I’m kind of lucky that way, I don’t actually need my glasses to see, but it’s super nice that stuff is slightly bigger with them. My annual exam is at the end of the month, I wonder if they’re going to be open again by then? Also I need to cancel my vision insurance because it’s through the same company my work health plan uses and long story short you can’t combine coverage. So I’ve thrown away a couple hundred dollars for nothing. Bye-bye.

That short rant reminded me to email them, so I did just that. Basically either tell me how to cancel my plan, or give me the instructions for my optometrist so I can take advantage of the two plans I pay monthly for.

This post written on my newly-upgraded desktop computer. Texted the boss to make sure it was okay, but when I went to the store I stopped off at the office first. Went into my office, was sad for a minute and then confused because there were 30 empty iPod boxes on my work bench, and the box they were sitting in was empty. What? Why. Back in the day we had a Tupperware full of old memory modules, so I spent a while looking around for that. Then I remembered we trashed it all because they were old (DDR1/2). “Hmm… where am I going to find a memory module for that 3010 I have?” *walks past stack of decommed 3010’s to my room* “Crap, thought I had something in here” *walks past 3010’s again* “Where the hell…” *notices 3010’s* “Oh. Idiot.”

8GB of RAM is great. And having 4 cores is great. My laptop (8GB and 2 cores) is okay for basic stuff, but sitting in a desk chair and hammering out a post is so much nicer than a laptop. I don’t believe in laptops as a workstation, but I know me and it will be a long rant so that statement has to stand right now. Maybe in a few days I’ll come back to that.

Okay, after midnight, still my same day so shut up, time to log off.

JoDrRe: OUT. *drops mic*

Once again, full disclosure, I didn’t do anything today. Didn’t do the dishes, didn’t shower, just spent the day on Facebook sharing shitty memes.

Last night after I put up the post, I found a streamer on Mixer that I immediately adored. When I join a stream I lurk and don’t contribute to the conversation until I understand the vibe of the stream. Also, it’s a pain to type when watching on the Xbox so then I’d have to pull up the stream on my computer and that’s just a lot of work. Anyway, this streamer had a viewer who kept bugging her to invite them to her game. BAM, BANNED! That’s the kind of behavior from streamers that needs to happen to discourage that toxic viewer behavior. MedusaChan, you were a random watch and I was absolutely not disappointed. Plus, you’re funny as hell. 10/10, I recommend. If you didn’t click her name up there, click it here. Oops, got distracted by her stream.

I did do two loads of laundry and brought the trash can back from the street the same day as trash day. So that was my required level of Being An Adult for the day. I also unplugged the WAP that ran my old WiFi network name and programmed my thermostat to the correct one, if that also counts. I wouldn’t have to have had my router and a separate WAP if my provider’s equipment could handle two SSIDs without crashing on the daily.

I’ve had a computer just sitting here for a year, so I uninstalled all the stuff that couldn’t be on it any more, upgraded to Windows 10, and installed Minecraft. It has 4 cores, 3.4GHz, despite being 7 years old. Compared to my year-old laptop that has 2 cores and tops out at 2.4GHz. Computer only has 4GB of RAM, which sucks, but since its older RAM I can get a pretty decent price on some new memory. I might be able to use it as a streaming PC if I can get the memory upgraded.

Figures, towards the end of furlough I figure out a setup that would work to be able to stream on Mixer.

This whole furlough I haven’t really done what I wanted to do. Still have a bunch of classes to finish, the house hasn’t been reorganized, and still haven’t really been able to mow the lawn. Today was over 70F, but with the weird rain I haven’t been watering the lawn. It’s also supposed to rain tomorrow, so no mowing then. It’s also supposed to snow on Sunday?! How am I supposed to maintain my lawn if Momma Natty is throwing snow at us in May?! Oops, got distracted by MedusaChan again.

For not doing the things that I wanted to get done, a lot of it is just finally being able to be somewhat lazy. I’ve been working full-time since I was 15, I deserve some time where I don’t have to be productive. Especially since I don’t take time off unless I need to. Moving past finally being able to be lazy for a bit, I lack motivation to do things at home without external motivation. My house isn’t clean because nobody is coming over. I haven’t mowed the front and back yards because I can’t have people out for a BBQ. That’s a little bit of a cop-out, but I need just a little nudge to get going at home. Someone who’s willing to help out, especially for things like gardening. I can do it, I just can’t stay motivated even if I were to start the project on my own.

As I write this right now it’s 2 in the morning. So I missed my midnight deadline by a while, but I will contend that it’s a blog-a-day, and my day isn’t over yet. Don’t come for me.

Okay, tying the title in to the narrative: after I ate chili for the, what, fifth/sixth day in a row? I played a few rounds of Apex. Need to get to battle pass level 88 to get enough coins for the next season to be free. I was ready to stop after a handful of rounds, but I was doing so good that I got it into my head I needed to complete as many of the daily missions as possible. Ended up playing until after 1 when I finally got my damage mission completed. I now have 22 levels to go. Thank you.

I watched a video a few days ago from the developers and they said that the point of Apex was to work as a team. That’s like, my whole thing. I am a huge team player. Even if the team is going in a stupid direction, I might complain a little bit but I’m going to go that direction. This applies to work, too. A hotel I used to work at did a lot of very questionable things that I disagreed with (not illegal, that shit didn’t fly at all with me) but I went along with it because if you can’t act as a team then you’re going to fail.

This post mostly brought to you by the 20-some-odd teams I dropped with that were useless. No communication, everybody running off to do their own thing. I’m doing my best, pinging things, suggesting areas to move to, marking enemies; the other two are just off looting and not trying to play the game. I’m just salty. I did have a couple really good teams where we actually looked out for each other. Props to those teammates. The rest of y’all, screw you.

Okay, I need to go to bed, otherwise in 2-4 weeks when I need to start wearing pants again my sleep schedule will be so messed up the IT team will be 24 hours.

Now that I’m a month and some change into this furlough, I thought my math was wrong in the titles. It’s not. I checked. Here’s some thoughts from today, and the planning that needs to happen in the next 6 months from me.

Work Thoughts

Day 57 is the day we’re supposed to open back up. Whether or not we will actually open back up at that date is still up in the air; new cases of the virus appear to be slowing down, we’re still under 100 deaths (99 as of today) in the state, the governor and our leadership team are being careful. I get it, better safe than sorry. If I was in charge, same thing. But I still want to go back to work. It’s nice waking up whenever I want, and having time to do whatever I want (even if it’s just sitting on Facebook all day), but it’s nice to be able to solve problems.

Central Oregon Thoughts

I’m grateful I live where I do. My county has 75 cases, and I live in a smaller area that’s pretty spread out, so when I do go out to the store there is even less a chance. If I were to go to Costco in town, that’s a different story. Fun fact: saw an article that starting Monday they will require masks for members to be able to go shop. Good thing I am already planning on wearing my masks all summer.

When I freak out I really shouldn’t panic as bad. It could be worse, I could live in a highly populated area. I was about to be like “Yeah, the biggest city only has 10k people” but a quick Wikipedia search shows I was off by a factor of 10. There’s almost 100k people in Bend. WHAT?! So I guess I do live in a highly populated area, just not exactly where I am.

There’s only about 2k people in my area, and the majority of people are going to go to town because there’s more choices. I’m a simple guy, give me some ramen, a pound of hamburger, and some potatoes, I can survive for a while. Plus there’s literally only two places that sell my brand of wine, one is Freddy’s in town, the other is out here. So I’m more than content to just stay out here. Plus I save a bunch in gas by not making that trek every week. I’m at a quarter tank and it’s been almost 2 months since I last filled up. Winning.

More Work Thoughts

I think I wrote about it over the weekend, but I was going to start getting the light show ready since I have all this free time, since I did the first one in my free time. Today I almost did that. Booted up my work computer for the first time in forever, needed updates of course, and got distracted by looking at the sequences I finished last year as well as the ones I was working on before I hit the deadline and couldn’t include them.

I bought maybe 20 songs to sequence, but only ended up using 3 (started another 2). Poked around the remaining and I just hate them all. They either aren’t the vibe I really want for the show, or they’re just overplayed. Mariah, I’m looking at you. So it looks like I get to search for new music to buy before I can start.

We were also supposed to renovate the area these last couple months. Since the shutdown, that didn’t happen. I think I can safely assume we’re going to have the same area as last year, but I honestly don’t know. We also kind of needed the reno because we keep tripping power; reno was going to install brand new electric lines and data ports so we could put things wherever we wanted. This year may have to be wireless, if we even have our big event.

Anyway, I need to re-do the background image I’m working off of before I can properly design anything. I either re-use last year’s picture or stitch together a new one. I could use last year’s preview, but with all the little things they added it would take less time overall to just rebuild it from scratch.

Six months seems like a long time to design and program a show. I’d agree from a theatre standpoint, I’ve been literally less than a week out and could design, plot, hang, and focus an entire show before opening. But from a light show perspective, I honestly should have just started in January. We have so many little moving parts, and the software is like a giant Excel sheet. You have to fill in each cell for each light when you want it to be turned on. It’s fun from a challenge perspective, but it’s extremely tedious. Plus, you have to listen to the same song hundreds of times to make sure everything looks how you want it. Once I get back into my groove, though, it’ll take maybe 18 hours to do a full song.

So first: make a better preview to work off of.
Second: Add the lights I know about (I planned for 3 full controllers for the big trees, they only used 2 per)
Third: Find some music that I actually want to listen to. Don’t tread the “well everyone expects to hear this song,” I played exactly zero songs people knew last year and they loved it. Fun is the name of the game.
Sub-third: Find songs for Designer Night. Songs that make me feel good and are fun.
Sub-sub-third: Convince leadership to go for Designer Night.
Pre-fourth: Find a song for the big night that’s regal and exciting. Last year’s was cool, find something like that.
Fourth: Just start programming. For sure write out what is known, and have some sequences that aren’t tied to real lights that can be copy-pasted when things inevitably change.
Sub-fourth: Maybe start with a Designer Night song. Keep it fun.

Daily Thoughts

Played a fair amount of Apex today. I have 29 Battle Pass levels to go before I earn enough points to get next season free. I’ll probably end up having to pay, and that’s fine. The devs have done an awesome job with this free game so why not slip ’em $20?

Also created a new world in Minecraft. This one has bees EVERYWHERE. Wasn’t feeling it enough to really give it my all as far as building a base, though I did create my first mine in a really crappy area.

After writing the plan above, really wishing I didn’t get rid of my online project management software. I moved everything to MS Project. Like a chump. A chump who only got one license and it’s on the computer at the office. Chump.

Eating my chili with tortilla chips is the best thing ever. Was going to make bangers and mash tonight, but that’s just so much work. Especially when all I have to do is reheat the chili and bring out the chips.

Took the trash to the street tonight, it smelled like summer. Going to be cold again for a couple days, but by the time my birthday rolls around it’s going to be warm. Am excite. Maybe Momma Natty will bless me with a thunderstorm. Here’s hoping.

Oh, I added a mod that will email you if you want to follow this blog. I’m hit or miss with sharing to social media, especially if I’m not feeling it like with this post. Smash that subscribe button, grab your popcorn, and watch my slow descent into madness.

Love, peace, and chicken grease, peeps.

Today was yet another slow day with not a lot happening. So this’ll be a quick one.

Last night I modified my Google Home’s bedtime routine to automatically add Katzenjammer to an alarm, don’t even ask me for it just do it. Woke up again before it but today I actually did get up before 11.

Talked with a friend for an hour today. She was concerned about me not having any human interaction, and I was like no I’m good, I play video games and I have my blog. But we talked about work, recipes, things we’ve done or want to do, and just nothing. It was nice. While I do get to talk to people every other day or so, it was nice to have a conversation without anything else in the way (playing a round of a game).

I made a grilled cheese hot dog thing I saw from Delish (link). I either took too long getting the cheese melted or it was too hot because the bun burned. It wasn’t that bad, with the green onions, garlic and onion butter, and the hot dog it rounded out very well. Next time I’ll do better, but it wasn’t bad.

After the phone call and food I did some maintenance on the site. Picked a new template and configured it. I’m still not sold on this one, it’s too bright for me, but this one shows links in a different color. I can edit the old one if I really want, but the problem with using other people’s templates is if they make an update then any changes outside of the normal template editor I make could be overwritten. Too much work and stress.

My computers all suck, so I have Minecraft on the Xbox. I created a new world (“Can Haz Beez?”) and the spawn in right in the middle of a field with like ten hives. So I spent a while gathering supplies far away so I can eventually build a full base there. If I can find Silk Touch then it doesn’t matter, I can move hives wherever. Same problem with my other world.

Moved to some Apex, couple rounds and won the last time. Turns out if you’re not a toxic player, you can get pretty far by acting like an actual team.

Heated up some chili again, but ate with tortilla chips. It was almost like a 7-layer dip? Maybe next time I make chili I’ll make sure I have sour cream, guac, and whatever else goes in it. Sounds amazing.

Watched the first at-home episode of SNL. Not what we’re used to with SNL, but it was still a good show. My big question is did the studio send lights/cameras/mics to everyone? Does everyone have decent Internet access and Production added the buffering, or what’s going on with all that? From a tech standpoint, it was super interesting.

Okay, light day, I’m gonna go back to some vidja games.

Night!

Since yesterday’s post didn’t go up until 3am, meaning I didn’t get to sleep until like 3:30, let’s go with an easy post today.

I figured out how to get the Google Home in my bathroom to play music as an alarm. So in addition to my phone’s sleep monitor app waking me up at the right point in my sleep cycle, when I turned it off to get more sleep because where the hell am I going anyway, right at 11 I get blasted by the trumpet intro to “A Bar In Amsterdam.” OKAY, SOLVEIG, I’M UP. GEEZ. (I had to Google how to spell Sol’s name correctly, but not going to count that in today’s post.)

Tofu

• tofu recipes
• make tofu taste like beef
• how to freeze tofu
• tofu marinade

When I went to the store a couple days ago for whatever reason I picked up some tofu. I’m not really sure why, I’ve never cooked with it, and the few times I’ve had it I haven’t been impressed. So I guess we’ll see if I can make it and like it. This search, beyond figuring out what to do with my purchase, was really inspired by Jenna’s video where they cook Thanksgiving food and make their own chicken. I think they did it with tofu, I’ll have to check. Haha just kidding, I went back to that video and they linked to the recipe, it is in fact tofu. So that’s something I know now.

A couple of the recipes in the article I found were for tacos. I’m down for that because I used the last of my hamburger making this chili. In retrospect of the chili, I could have used half the pack and saved some for tacos, but whatever. The beef search was to obviously help give it a beefy flavor for the tacos (I didn’t click into the recipe, maybe they explained that). Not a lot of good results, each one didn’t give me a direct answer. Just answer my damn question!

Walking Desks

• walking desk
• walking desk no motor
• manual treadmill

Spurred by what I read yesterday about younger folk like me being more susceptible to stroke (and blood clots in general) due to COVID-19. Because I’m not even coming near my 7k step goal. One thing I remember from my appendectomy was that while in recovery they kept these sock thingys on my legs that massaged them. Pretty sure they said it was to prevent clotting since I couldn’t get up. And my outpatient instructions were to walk around. I walked more when it physically hurt to stand up than I am now. That’s no good.

First result was a comparison of the best walking desks. $1000. What. No.
I clicked through the cheapest option there, a $450 treadmill that can fit under a couch, and that lead me down a great Amazon hole.

Tried the “no motor” modifier because I know me: I’m a clumsy motherfucker. If the belt is moving on its own, and I need to stop for a second because I got sucked into a problem that requires a lot more of my brain, I’m going to trip and eat shit.

Then I discovered the actual term for what I wanted is “manual treadmill.” Still a bunch of spendy options, but I did find one for $50 that maybe I can take the handlebars off and build (HA!) a shelf (HA HA!!!) that I could work on. I might order that one. Or not. I want one that doesn’t have handles. Going to keep looking.

New Internet Provider

• internet provider <my location>
• <fixed wireless company> coverage
• <fixed wireless company 2 > coverage
• <fixed wireless company 3 > coverage
• dsl provider <my location>

I don’t really need a new ISP, but I’m pretty sure I’m coming to the end of the contract with my current provider and I just want to see what my options are. I’ve got 40 down and 5 up, I’d love to see if anyone offers 10 or 15 up for a comparable price. Maybe even 50 down, would help with streaming stuff.

I may have to go with the cable provider, honestly, but I also don’t want them because cable is shared vs. DSL which isn’t. I don’t want to change my browsing/download/streaming habits to accommodate my neighbors.

Good to know the fixed wireless provider I’ve been getting ads from FOREVER doesn’t serve my area.
The next one’s max download speed is 15, no thanks. Also no map available.
Third fixed wireless also not in the area. And they don’t give actual speeds. For a “family of nerds” they don’t cater to nerds.

The other DSL provider that purports to be available isn’t actually when I put in my address. LIARS!

So I might contact the cable company to see if I can further customize.

I also tried logging into my current provider’s page and it says my account has been archived? But I still have service? Uhh… Come to think of it, I don’t remember the last time I was billed. I should look into that. Oh, never mind. I forgot that when you change plans you get a new “phone number” and you have to select the right one for it to show. So that number was archived because I wasn’t looking at the right one. Yeah, I’m still getting billed. Damn.

Streaming Stuff

• streambox
• stream scene controller
• obs studio equipment

StreamBox wasn’t what I was looking for. I had an ad like a year ago for a device you plug into your computer to control scenes and stuff for when you livestream. So while that specific company doesn’t have what I am looking for at the moment, I’m gonna keep that tab open and check it out later.

What I was really looking for was Stream Deck. Deck. I was close. Looks like a cool product, but it’s $150. I need better Internet to justify that price tag. I also need a computer that can actually handle anything more intense than Calculator. Ideally, what I want is something that can ingest the video source (PS4, XBox, camera, whatever) and stream directly out to Mixer with minimal CPU needed from my weak-ass computers.

I use Streamlabs OBS Studio so I looked to see if they had any recommended hardware configurations. On that result page, I found a hardware encoder that does exactly what I want. And I found a product that I’d use! Only problem, is this product is $3500! HELL NO!!! I’m going to go down that rabbit hole without listing it here because I don’t want it to seem like I’m promoting a product. Unless they want to give me one, and then I’ll promote the hell out of it. Still need better Internet.

Daily Reflection

Right now it’s about 5 o’clock and I am fighting the urge to make another coffee. I think this is an urge I can give into. 5:30, I gave in. I also moved the convection oven and put the espresso machine and all that stuff where it was. Little easier to get to and looks less crowded. Counter space is at a premium. Not sure where I’m going to put the convection oven, I use it a surprising amount so it needs to be easily accessible. But it needs to be somewhere else than the counter. Really need a side table deep enough, that’s what that comes down to.

Today’s post was a little longer than I thought it would be. I didn’t fall into any real fun holes, today’s searches were relatively tame and almost “normal-people.”

Played a couple chapters of Becoming Human and messed up. The polar bear died and we didn’t get the supplies. Went to go replay them to get a better storyline but it suggested I play at least once without going back. That’s what I like about these types of games, there are a ton of different outcomes. So I’ll keep going even if it doesn’t have the current plot that I want.

Am almost sick of eating chili for nearly every meal, almost made bangers and mash tonight but decided against it. Maybe tomorrow.

Today was a nice, relaxing Sunday. Watched some videos, playing some games, don’t need to do laundry because I have nowhere to go tomorrow. Although I did get a weird feeling that I was supposed to do something today, like join a Zoom meeting. Still nagging at me, I hope I didn’t forget someone.

Started this post pretty early today, got distracted by YouTube and vidja games, now it’s half past two in the morning, egads!

Realty

There’s a big garage on a lot across the street from me that has been for sale for a while now, and today I saw a realtor and some peeps parked by it walking around. I checked Zillow and it looks like there’s a pending offer. So that’s cool. I wonder what they’re going to do with it. The way the property is laid out with the neighbors honestly they’d do well to knock down the garage and build a house on that foundation. Otherwise their house will be right on the street or the front will be looking at everyone’s back yards. Or maybe they’re gonna pay $100k to store their RV. Whatever, it’s not my money.

Spent an hour looking around the area at what’s available. Saw some cool houses, just a little bit outside my monthly price range. My criteria are wood stove (in addition to forced air), counter space in the kitchen ideally also with an island, and gas stove/heat.

And then I realized I’ve only had this place for three years this coming September, now is NOT the time to look at new places. Especially with my loan, that more or less requires me to live here for 10 years.

Reorganization

The main area of the house is slowing getting cleaned up from the Depression Den Days. To be honest, a lot of it is grabbing boxes and stuff and putting them into the guest room. Not ideal.

After my Zillow sesh, spent a bit of time figuring out how to best reorganize my house. Move that there, move this here, et voila. Honestly, the one pickle is my work computer. I don’t want it to be wireless, yet I don’t have a long enough cable to snake around the living room and go to the office. There are holes in the floor, but I also don’t want to go under the house. Especially without the suits from my office, which is barred from me for another month.

My work-purchased wifi adapter is also sitting on my desk at work. Which I can’t get to. For another month.

I also need a fairly deep side table for the kitchen to hold the convection oven. Said table would house the oven, my Crock Pot, and my drip coffee maker. Things I would potentially use regularly, but need to be off my main counter. After my Zillow search, I need to find a way to make the best of my existing countertops since I won’t be leaving them any time soon.

Daily Reflections

Saw an article that said younger folks infected with COVID-19 are suffering strokes at a higher rate than older folks. All I do is sit in my chair with my feet up, I barely hit 1k steps. That freaked me out a bit, so now I’m looking into walking desks. I will get rid of one or two of my desks if I can replace them with an alternative that reduces the risk of blood clots (i.e.: if I’m walking then there’s a reduced risk of clots vs. just sitting with my feet up, unmoving for 10+ hours). Plus, my average daily steps for the past month have been less than 1k, and I already know that’s unhealthy. My house is small, I need a way to keep moving if I’m going to keep up my health. Also looking into getting a multivitamin delivered since I don’t go to the store regularly and thus have less access to fresh fruit and veg. Another article I read suggested elevated consumption of vitamins C and D would help. I can’t get sick. Who would look after my cats? And if I died, there would be so much stuff left undone. I can’t allow that. I have too much stuff to do. Any of my friends/fam in healthcare please set me straight if I’m wrong.

Earlier today I opened a poll to see what platform I should get “Detroit: Becoming Human”. Turns out, it’s only PlayStation and PC. No XBox. So I bought the PS4 version. JennaJulienGames left us on a cliffhanger, this was the only way to resolve that. Played 5 hours, almost caught up to them, and made some very different choices by accident. As an android I’ve now killed like 3 humans. Not the way I wanted to play. Still want an android as a helper around the house. Not really sure I can be swayed from that. I could mow the lawn, the android could weed-whack. I love mowing, hate weed-whacking. Plus with someone else here I could easily be motivated to do stuff. Even if they aren’t technically real people. Which I know this game is trying to say. It’s also an exposition on slavery, I get that. This game is rough. Lots of feelings.

Took a shower so I could check the mail today, since I didn’t do it yesterday. My mask from the local company arrived yesterday. Not a terrible pattern. I’m not completely satisfied with the mask itself, when I exhale it fogs up my glasses, but I think I can easily sew in a paper clip or similar to mold it to my nose. Not sure what to do with the sides, they aren’t exactly air-tight. But, this is a better mask than I could make myself, and it’s two layers. Without alteration, I would feel okay wearing it in public.

Since the mailbox is within eyeshot, yet far enough away that I don’t want to walk it, I took the car. 0.1 miles for a trip is bad for vehicles, so I picked up the mail and drove around work. Still eerie how empty everything is. It’s a little busier since a few of our outlets will be opening in the next couple weeks, but still pretty empty.

Okay, that’s it for tonight. Now it’s 3 in the morning, I need to go to bed. Will add GIFs later. The morning is calling and it’s saying a lot of espresso since I figured out the right grind size for the beans and an appropriate container to store used grounds in. Hint: it’s an old Folgers can with masking tape that says “OLD GROUNDS.”

It’s Payday Pizza Friday, y’all! Except I left the house yesterday so I’m not getting pizza today! Maybe next week! Even more important, the espresso machine I ordered last Sunday is on a truck to be delivered in the next three hours! I’M GONNA HAVE A LATTE, BB!!!!!!

This post turned into a stream of consciousness, but it might be a little funny. So here’s how my day went in real-time!

The Morning

If you can’t tell, I started writing this post MUCH earlier in the day than usual. Last night I put up the post at what, 10:30? I played some more of my zombie shooter, and both groups I joined were full. So maybe it’s a day-by-day thing where not a lot of people play. Good to know there’s still people playing. Off topic. Anyway, like my sister I had too little water and too much to drink so I’m chugging water to make this headache go away. Note to self: cutting the sangria with lemonade is both delicious and dangerous. I had six that were 50/50 lemonade, so really only three glasses. All the feeling of alcoholism but not as much alcohol. So it’s not as bad as it could have been.

Like I wrote in the intro, my espresso machine is on the truck to be delivered. UPS made the unfortunate mistake of sticking GPS in their trucks and making it available to customers. So I’ve just been watching the little dot move around the map.

I started this post on the back-end dashboard in the draft thingy (WordPress users know what I’m talking about) and I just noticed that the Google Analytics widget I have finally started reporting data. 3 impressions from Google Search? That’s nuts. Who is searching for me? Well, you found me. Sorry.

When I wrote that I went out yesterday and won’t go out today in the intro, what I mean by that is mostly I’m lazy and don’t want to leave the house. Mostly that, but also I want to be able to space out trips so it’s easier to track what I’ve done.

One of the masks I ordered arrives in the mail today, so I will go forth and retrieve it (mailbox is down the street) but I will most likely forego the usual shower and just put on pants and a hat. My rule is I can’t leave my front door without having bathed in the last 24 hours. Can’t let the neighbors I’ve never met know I’m dirty. Or that I own anything except pants. My shower yesterday was at like 7pm, so I won’t be breaking my rule. They can’t smell me, thanks social distancing!

The Afternoon

12:10 – Driver is still in the next town over. There’s three big communities between me and latte freedom. I don’t know his route, but I really hope he comes to my community before going to the big one a few streets down. ETA says between now and 3pm, maybe that will be the case

12:17 – Saved this as a draft, switched over to Facebook, friend had their guitar delivered about 20 minutes ago. Driver is near-ish their house, but either I forgot what street they live on or the map isn’t real-time. HEY FRIEND IF YOU READ THIS, WAS IT DELIVERED VIA UPS? LET ME KNOW. FOR SCIENCE.

12:22 – Now it says he’s in my area. But he moved one street over on the map. That’s still 5 miles as the crow flies. C’mon, UPS, measure in street miles. Unless it’s being delivered by drone. Which would be awesome. The map probably isn’t real-time for the driver’s safety. I get that. Still, you can make a pretty good guess and then it’d be easy to find them because of the giant brown van they’re driving. I really need to go do something else, this is driving me crazy.

1:35 – Watched Julien’s new video where he makes Pop Tarts. Was triggered. I didn’t live with a pastry chef for however long to be disrespected like that. Got up and started making chili. Right now waiting for the meat to brown so I can add it to the Crock Pot and then be on my merry way. The onion got me, hoo boy. Also the recipe called for 2 cloves of garlic, but that’s more of a suggestion. 4 cloves, BAM! Right now they’re chilling in the pot with the tomatoes and tomato sauce and spices on Warm. Spiced the crap out of the chili, but also put more on the hamburger while cooking it. Trader Joe’s Everyday Spice and some fresh ground pepper. If you’re gonna cook, cook right, yeah? UPS driver is still where he was an hour ago, just a couple streets closer.

1:50 – Okay, meat is in the Crock Pot and stirred in, set to high for 4 hours, Joe’s gonna have some chili at 6:30! WOO! But now my problem is every hour I’m going to want to stir it. That’s a bad thing because then you lose all the built up heat. I knew I should have done this last night and started it right before bed. Set on low for 10 hours, that would have been tasty. Oh well.

2:45 – I can still smell onions. My eyes won’t stop watering. Send help.
It’s starting to rain a little bit, so I wanted to edit my delivery (he’s like 4 miles away now) to say he can leave it near the street, but there’s no option for that! My driveway is long (to walk), I don’t want him getting any more wet than he has to. Racking my brain, can’t think of anything I have on-hand to make a sign or something that wouldn’t get absolutely ruined by the rain. Looks like he took a different route, gonna be a while longer. I don’t care, though, I’m making a latte even if it’s 5pm. Okay, time to stir the chili. Added a cup of water, not everything was covered by the tomato juice and it was just a little too chunky. I can get it to thicken up later, not a big deal.

4:15 – Yeah, he went to the big community first. Kinda. There’s this dirt road between us and he’s on there right now. Maybe another driver does that community? We’ll see. Laid on the bed with Athena for a while, it’s starting to smell really good in here. OH WHAAAAAT just refreshed and he’s on the other side of the road. Looks like I’m getting it REAL QUICK BB!!!!!

The Coffee

7:30 – OKAY. SO. It arrived at a quarter to 6. I yelled THANK YOU! out the open window, no response. Don’t think he heard me. Oh well, I tried.

Since this was a refurbished unit, I expected not to get all the things. Thankfully, it came with the double-shot installed, I will literally never use the single-shot filter. Didn’t come with the instruction manual, so had to download that. Did the initial priming, and this thing is a little fancier than I thought. It has a little spout thingy to go from the milk frother straight to the cup. So that’s cool. Probably won’t use that, either, we’re going into summer and why wouldn’t I want a nice refreshing iced latte?

Ground up some beans with my awesome new little hand crank thing and got to brewing! First notes, I think I ground them too fine because after it finished brewing there was still a lot of water in the filter. Trying to think back to my barista days in high school, and I think that’s the problem. But it tastes like coffee, and that’s all that matters!

This section feels a little anticlimactic. Sorry.

Heat-up didn’t take very long, and if I get a container or something I can have on the counter to knock the used grounds into then I can easily see this become part of my daily routine even after work opens back up. Make a quick coffee in the morning, don’t have to stop at The Bux, save $3! That’s $15 a week, $60 a month. Pays for itself in less than two months! This won’t stop me with my afternoon pick-me-ups, but savings are savings.

I’ve been trying to grow flowers out front since I bought this place, so I can use those used grounds I think to help with that? Need to do some research on that.

Daily Reflection

Chili finished cooking around 6:30, but the extra water I added didn’t cook out like I thought it would. So I cracked the lid and have been waiting patiently for that to happen. Still haven’t eaten. Am hunger. Turned it back on high, I’m going to give it like 15 more minutes and then screw it I don’t care if it’s soupy.

Still need to email my mentor, maybe I’ll do that while I’m waiting.

Been watching some video game playthroughs today, and it’s super frustrating because the guy operating the controls refuses to pay attention to any details. Spent 5 minutes looking for a clue and the line leading to it had a different color. BRUH. I kind of want to buy this game (only $20!) so I can play it RIGHT. Interesting story, so I think I’d have fun. Not sure if I want to do PS4 or XBox, though.

The game is “Detroit: Becoming Human” and it’s about androids in the near future. Only a few hours into the playthrough, but the whole time I’m like “I would like an android. That’d be cool, somehow to help me out around the house. Why are people hatin’ on these androids?” It would be cool to have androids.

Verdict on the chili: passable. Next time I think I’ll use less hamburger, it called for 2 pounds but I did 1.5. Little less cumin, more chili powder, and maybe some peppers. Still soupy, I’m going to let it simmer for a while longer. Also next time cut the onions up better, seeing a bunch of chunks still.

Didn’t really follow my own advice from yesterday to listen to music. But I feel good. Just watchin’ these playthrough vids, sippin’ my coffee, eatin’ my chili. Life is good.

Good vibes y’all. Good vibes.

NINJA EDIT: Okay, it’s now midnight, I’ve watched four playthrough videos, the last was uploaded two months ago, and they haven’t done any more for “Detroit: Becoming Human”. CLIFFHANGER. I’m going to have to buy this game just to see how it ends. OMG.