Thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I'm behind on the very tail end of Inktober and want to finish that first.

And really, this year, Thanksgiving is going to be the 'big' holiday since Trina, Ben, and the boys will be in town then and not for Christmas.

But with all of that said, I know I can 'win', and I kinda want that.

I first attempted NaNo in 2008, and it was a rough attempt. I mean, I started at least a week late (though memory says more) and with tremendous support from Jill "xtingu" Knapp I still almost crossed the finish line.

So it's kinda stuck in my craw ever since.

I've only made half hearted attempts in subsequent years.

I think that, as I'm writing this, I'm 'talking myself into it'.

Well, I guess I better get my Inktober images finished. I've got a lot to get done in the next 24 hours.

It will almost be something fantasy or urban fantasy based, but what do you think I should write about?

I'm back to work updating OnePo's codebase to modern standards on the server side. Specifically async/await as opposed to callbacks. it's BOOOOO-RINNNNG. But I have "only" one file left. Of course, it's the one where most of the code is.

So after that I should refactor that file as well. Also BOOOOO-RINNNG, and yet somehow satisfying. Then maybe crank up eslint to call me on my shit. Poor man's typescript. Then maybe typescript?

Then rethink the frontend code. Using [ugh I will not even think about choosing a framework today].

Of course OnePo is still a tiny, tiny place. As in "I've never bothered to index the database collections for performance" tiny.  I may need to dial up the disk space just a tad soon though.

"But Tom, aren't you gearing up to welcome former Twitter residents?" No, not really, although the six people who will actually leave in this, the most recent of many outrages are warmly welcome.

Moderation of a successful public social media site is a huge, unsolved problem. As others continously have pointed out, the real challenge for something like Twitter is moderation, not engineering. Yes, it's bad that Musk's plan is basically to fire the moderators.

But I'm in no position to improve on that. There's no moderation in practice on OnePo at the moment, although I'm pledged to supply some in the event of certain types of abuse.

What we have instead is an invitation-only model and a predilection toward thoughtfully locked posts, which reduces (though it absolutely does not eliminate) the likelihood that someone you're connected to needs moderating... at least from your perspective. So far this seems to work OK for our needs.

But, a system like that cannot function as a public square. If we indulge my ego in imagining OnePo writ large, we wind up with a worse echo chamber than Twitter, because it's so difficult to discover new people and the general habit is to limit audiences for things.

Also, OnePo is just a whole 'nother idiom. The intersection of OnePo and Twitter is a ridiculous idea. That would be... uh... BeReal, actually. BeReal is pretty fun. But it does one tiny job.

Actually I kinda like the idea of doing one tiny job. OnePo's one tiny job is allowing friends to know and support each other better. That's fine for what it is, which is a lot.

PAM, TIM, I AM OWAT.

Who are Pam and Tim, and why do they keep saying "Woohoo"?

EDIT:

I wrote the below sometime last year, apparently (December? 2021?) and...forgot all about it. I totally forgot that I had the draft sitting there. I just rediscovered it and decided to post, so as to clear the decks and maybe, like...write some more?

It's so weird to read this now, in October 2022.

Hi, self, it's STILL A PANDEMIC, 10 months later.

Still Omicron, but now, there's all these variants of it, each one worse than the other, apparently.

You just got the NEW bivalent booster for the Omicron variant, about three weeks ago, or has it been a month now?

The director of the CDC just announced she has Covid, and the agency is messaging about the importance of handwashing rather than acknowledging the fact that this thing is airborne and we should still be wearing masks most of the time and we need to figure out how to make the air in public spaces safe again but apparently we're just not gonna do that so we're all doomed.

You have :knock on wood, and don't even want to say it out loud for fear it'll jinx things: not come down with the panini. (You just typed "yet" and then erased it immediately, thinking, wtf, does this mean you believe you WILL eventually?! Ugh. Don't do that.)

You did NOT get a new desk or new chair, but instead you got a foot rest thingy that goes under the desk, which sort of mostly helps but mostly, you just got used to this keyboard.

And I didn't do an end of 2021 thing, obv. Will I do an end of 2022 thing? Only time will tell.

*** below written in Dec. 2021, I think ***

So, I just got a kickass new keyboard and kickass new mouse and extremely kickass new computer (lucky lucky lucky me x infinity!) and thought I'd test them all out by writing a post here. I've been thinking I should do some kind of year end thing anyway.

It's about to be 2022. It's still a pandemic. The pandemic appears to be never ending, and now we're on the Omicron variant, which is hyper transmissible, and apparently on the way to becoming the dominant kid in town with lightning speed--but I've also been reading that the effects, if you're vaccinated, are less severe?

I'm not so sure about this new keyboard...I think it's highlighting the fact that my desk is too high and my chair is too low and the only thing I can do about that is get a new desk, I think, because the chair is new.

The desk is old--literally, it's about 100 years old, I think. Not meant to be a computer desk. The new keyboard is ergnomic, split, with a built in wrist rest thing, so it's meant to put your arms and hands in the right position.

I'm having a tough time enjoying the first two episodes on their own merits.  The departures from the book seem to grate me more than, say, the first season of American Gods (of which i was reminded by the intro sequence, same feel, except for the bit they lifted from The Expanse's intro).

Back in May I backed a new phone via Indiegogo called an Fxtec Pro1x (it's got a physical keyboard), but it's being manufactured in China where they keep shutting assembly lines down due to their Zero Covid policies.  The Fxtec folks keep apologizing for the delays, which I understand isn't really within their control, but maaaaaan.... bitch need a phone!

Unfortunately, my trusty 2017 Blackberry KeyOne officially bit the dust last night (no amount of strategically-placed rubber bands and binder clips can get it to acknowledge the charging cable), and my backup 2015 Blackberry Priv only holds a charge for about 2 hours. I can't live like this, and tonight I had enough.

I decided that the fastest way to get my Pro1x delivered is to admit defeat and just buy a damn Google Pixel. I'll bet $20 that my Pro1x will arrive within a few weeks, because I just threw in the towel and bought a Pixel 6a about 10 minutes ago. Sunk Cost Fallacy be damned.

I feel so defeated. This is the first time since 2004 that I will have a phone without a physical keyboard. I'm heartbroken.

So now that I just dropped $399 on a Pixel 6a, my Pro1x will undoubtedly arrive any second. ((eyeroll))

I considered getting a new Motorola RAZR so I could at least have a quirky phone, but naturally it doesn't play nicely with Verizon.  Then I thought maybe I'd get a Motorola Stylus phone, but it's HUGE and I can't deal with a phone that's almost 7" diagonal. I'm a chick, I have small pockets.  

First world problems, I know.

I'm way more bummed about this than I should be. I should be excited about getting a new phone, but all I can do is be sad that it won't have a keyboard. 

/venting shitpost

In other news:

Starting this past spring, Matt and I have been really into disc golf. He played it a lot back in his late 20s and early 30s, and then he stopped. But now we have a small group of friends that we play with roughly every day, and it's sooooo joyful. It's a great way to walk a few miles, get some fresh air, be away from your phone, and laugh at yourself.  I suck at disc golf, but I love it anyway.  But!  Three days ago something just kinda clicked, and now I no longer suck. Today we played a hard course and my score wasn't laughable. Yay!  

I have other updatey topics (music, new music collaborators, teef, sunscreen, house stuff), but I'll save those for another time.

I hope all is well!

I heard this one on the oldies station and was struck by how well it fits the genre.  Performed by a much-mocked artist with over 75 million records sold, it reached #8 on the Billboard chart and earned him his only Grammy award.

As for the moral of the story, I find "don't fall in love" problematic.  Perhaps it should be "don't initiate violence unnecessarily" or "don't drink yourself blind in a vain attempt to forget your sorrows"?  Alas, those don't fit the meter.

Only one death, but maddeningly earworm-level peppy. ***

I turned to spouse the other night and wondered out loud who was going to die next. And said I was tired of people dying. And wondering who would die next.

This was the saved draft in this app, which I have not opened since September 2021. I opened it back up today because I wanted to think about this statement "Grief is disrespectful. It shows up unbidden. It interrupts dreams, work, joy. People say it’s messy and I get that, but mostly I think it’s uncontrollable" from AHP's newsletter today.

Earlier this year, I tried to find a therapist but remote therapy did not work for me. I might try to pick up again with the woman I was talking to, if in-person seems rational, because as I talked about nothing from a safe screen-shielded distance, she interupted me to say "this sounds like you have a lot of unresolved grief."

And this is true. But as I was telling my mother the story (we were sitting in a beautiful bar at an extremely posh resort where I finally caught Covid, despite the entire course of vaccines), she asked "did she give you suggestions for how to resolve it?" and I had to say no.

So this is what I've been thinking about and where Ive landed is: there is no way to resolve grief. It's that F, hanging out in the C Major chord for the rest of your life. 

in her head, and a popular song by The Police. 

I pity the fool who stands so close to me. 

For my out-of-state friends, Ian tossed some small tornadoes and some rain at me and then took off to the north.  The tornado warnings were rather fun as most happened while at band practice, so five phones going off with Emergency Alerts!  None were actually near me nor did I hear any reports of damage from them.  Gator-natoes.

The storm smashed the west coast of Florida and then headed to Orlando, where my middle child lives, currently without power but also without any damage to the condo. The clock is ticking till when they show up at my home with their menagerie.  I think they'll stay put if they can get some ice, as UCF has stated that classes are back on starting Monday.   This is patently ridiculous given that there was flooding in some of the surrounding neighborhoods.  I'm talking air-boat-rescue flooding.  Some of the worse flooding was in an apartment complex that I briefly sublet in 1985, chest high at least.  If your car and laptop were submerged, I'm not sure how you could be expected to complete the semester.

My parents in Cocoa Beach also made it through without much fuss, not even losing power.  My mom slept through it.