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(kinda) got answers about my knee. it's not a bone problem, and it's not an artery problem, so i've been taking larger doses of ibuprofen and got a better knee brace for cycling. so far, so good!

little dog got her first agility ribbons! border collie is probably getting her trick title soon, and we have our first lesson with a new agility trainer wednesday morning.

went bike camping over the weekend, which was nice. just a short ~13 mile ride there and a single night. i felt strong, knee held up well, and we had excellent weather and a fun group. RAGBRAI is only a couple of months away, which means i gotta get serious about riding my bike longer distances. the good news is i think i've only missed three days of biking so far this month (yay, bike month)!

Group project is due tomorrow, including the presentation of the completed animation to the client. After one person on the team (who has been thoroughly documented in these threads over the last six months) got caught lying about how much of his sequence he had done, he was given an ultimatum: a hard deadline that passed fifteen minutes ago, and if he failed to meet it, someone else is doing his scene and his name is getting taken out of the credits. We could justify this as he hasn't contributed significantly to any other part of the project.

He failed to meet the deadline.

I would like to note at this point that his scene is two shots totalling about 15 seconds. My scene was eight shots totalling 45 seconds and I was done last Friday.

We have another assignment due at midnight tonight, which I sensibly/foolishly completed and handed in on Friday. Since everybody else is finishing that assignment this evening, I am the only one with any time available to animate and render this scene, I get to rig and animate the final scene of our animation. That's why we can't just cut the scene and work around it: the story would not have a conclusion without this scene. In retrospect we probably should never have trusted him with it, but it's not like there was anything else that was short and simple he could have done.

I am very angry with this guy, and I'm not convinced I'll be able to hold my tongue if he turns up for the presentation tomorrow.

Lots of programming actually. Rewrote a thing from scratch and now it's so much better. Feels good. :)

Been a while since I posted one of these, things are going well, work is keeping me busy and my free time is kept busy by my girlfriend. Time is just flying by, but it's fun at least.

It's been more of the same, but that's not a bad thing. I've been remembering my food prep, hitting by gym goals, and even drawing a little bit. Just sketches of my own characters and some embarrassing nude studies, but sketching is the fun part anyway.

I did get into an argument at the start of this week and in hindsight it was completely my fault. I notice that I'm a lot better at talking to people when I'm on adderall; I have an easier time listening, and I can think about what I want to say clearer. I only have it in my system for about four hours a day, though, so I'm gonna start being more careful outside that window. Never realized I had this problem until I suddenly started having better conversations with my coworkers.

Getting a little restless as they just told me that I need 22 more weeks of refinement on my dental aligners. I get insurance through my work so I can't quit until I'm finished with all my dental work, but I'm so ready to go to tech school!

I'd say it's going well! The sun decided to come back out, literally and figuratively, which is great for my new plane photography hobby lol. Mother's Day was alright, we went to my aunt and uncle's with my dad to barbecue. First Mother's Day without my mom, which was rough, but it's just a celebration to capitalism more than anything, so keeping that in mind helped when seeing all the cards and flower displays at the store. I did allow myself the opportunity to feel sad by walking up to the card section and picking out the one I know I'd have gotten her (it had butterflies, which she loved).

Thanks for letting me journal like this. It really does help to write it out, kind of like writing a letter and not sending it to anybody.

Anyway, have some pictures. I'm getting into photography again, and I'm excited to share :)

Some level of melancholy interwoven with frustration.

Which has persisted for a few months now due to a fun mix of physical health woes which initial tests have yet to uncover anything about + ADHD meds abruptly ceasing to work with all that that entails + likely moderate dissociation.

Then had a very old friend, who is ostensibly the love of my life, spout stuff suggestive that they've bought into TER ideology. For now am giving the benefit of the doubt, encouraging them to read other perspectives & to seriously examine the likely consequences of their friends' views on the safety & wellbeing of all, but I've a feeling they've either rejected sense already or are unwilling to examine their beliefs and that this therefore is the end of the line for us. Most of all, am frustrated that I lack the mental or emotional energy to walk someone through trans-inclusive feminist thought & practice.

Meantime an ex that I have a great platonic relationship with was moderately injured in an accident recently, further setting back their chances of getting their home into a safe state, which in turn impacts their chances of a good recovery. Am not in a state to physically assist myself just now, and their sense of things interferes with their ability to accept let alone seek assistance from elsewhere. More positively, they do seem at last to have developed some sense that things have got wildly out of control & accordingly am seeing some signs that they're becoming less resistant to the idea of accepting help.

Rest of it is a bit heavy.

What's been ok? Reading anarcha-femininst stuff, watching a documentary series about an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, which is a blatant recruitment drive thing but am a sucker for many aspects of the show, and getting talking to a really lovely couple outside a local pub last Friday.

Really good, I'd say. My tech support job has gone great and I have plenty of spare time to code my own projects. Sopuli is also doing great, the performance problems have been gone and there hasn't any need to adjust settings. And the weather is getting warmer!

Today is our Thursday, and we got our butts handed to us again, which is good seeing how last year May was our lowest revenue month. Ramping up to the season in a good way prep & stock-wise, and overall better than last year.

Oldest is in town to help him get his shit together as far as job & school hunting goes, he needed a break from his place (and his brother flatmate, lol). Got some good applications in to various schools in Ireland to transfer to, some already contacted his references.

Also just got my steam deck today, pretty psyched...son set it up and left it with him at the end of the night so he can put it through its paces...I'll finish my setup with it on Wed. (our Saturday).

✌️

I'm back in Vegas visiting my folks for Mother's Day, which was yesterday; Happy (belated) Mother's Day to the mothers and caregivers out there! Anyway, it's a nice change of scenery.

Work has been crazy last couple of weeks. We're getting close to launching a project I've been working on for two years. So lots going on with that to get everything completed on time. We've started vendor-led staff training on it, which is taking up a lot of time. In addition, we purchased another service, so we have training on those as well. So practically everyday, I have like 3-4hrs of trainings. We also have our big annual event coming up, so I need to start focusing on my responsibilities there. It's normally busy this time of the year, but I'm not normally juggling three big projects at once. Maybe I'm just a baby, but I'm not used to it. Either way, its not unmanageable. Yet. Hopefully it won't be at all.

The nice part of being in Pacific time zone is that I finish my day around 1-2p local time (I'm normally Central time zone). The downside is that I'm having to wake up at 4-5a local time to get going, get ready, have coffee, etc. Oh well, at least I can still roll out of bed over to my laptop.

Looking good so far, Better than last week when I have a breakdown and can't function at all. So I'm looking forward to the rest of the week and more! I'm hanging on, but also getting better 😄

Figured out how to set up a youtube stream with moderately non sucky results, which is impressive with the hardware I'm working with, so I'm looking forward to streaming to nobody LOL (No, but for real, have you seen some of the random youtube shorts streams? It's wild how many viewers some of these random channels have. Just gotta find a fraction of their momentum, and I'll be set)

I'm practicing some unhealthy levels of faith that I'm going to succeed if I keep going. So let's see how far that gets me haha.

Mmmm, otherwise I played Little kitty big city this weekend, which was a short but charming indie game.

OH, and recently, I saw a video that talks about a piece of software that can convert n64 games to native PC applications, which sounds so unbelievably cool. I'm hoping tons of cool stuff gets made with it.

Edit: I went live and had at least 1 viewer for half the stream. I consider that a win.

Last week was horrible. I almost ended up destroying my house. This week is going quite well so far. I'm still stressed as a Poly Bridge lowest budget solution because can't wait for my first sim racing setup (that I was dreaming about for like 6 years) to arrive but I guess everything else is finally getting better.

Also now it's kinda cold here where I live and I love it

Went out with family to a Sunday market down in Oregon and absolutely decimated my diet in the process. I also tweaked my knee in the process while being an idiot. Hooray!

In more exciting news, I bought my first gun: a Glock 21. My pickup date is next week. After that I'll be off to lessons because, while I'm familiar with handguns, it's also been a while since using one and I don't feel like somehow blowing a hole in my hand on accident.