Rooting for you. Even if you don't get it all together, at least you're taking steps.
just let me tell ya bout/this fuckin' day I'm havin'. Sailing along midday when a patient's dropped into one of my rooms: left-sided weakness, right-sided facial droop, disoriented to time/place/situation, found by her friend on the floor, last known normal yesterday 1pm. So we're thinking stroke, although left weakness and right facial droop make no fucking sense for stroke but whatever she's out of the treatment window no biggie. Drag her to CT and nothing shows- she's not stroking, but she's definitely Ay-1 fucked up. Getting an IV in her takes forever because she's big and old and dehydrated and UGH so it's a good hour and a half before she's lined and phlebotomy can finally get all the blood we need; BUN comes back in the 40s uh oh Creat comes back 3.3 nonono K comes back 6.1 oh come the fuck on lactic comes back 7.2 7.2 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD back it up Lactic is an indicator of how much oxygen the cells in your body are working with. It's the best indicator of sepsis, wherein due to a major infectious process your cells are working on anaerobic metabolism and pumping out lactic acid and basically that's not supposed to happen for protracted periods of time and it's not a good sign if your lactics are high. Normal lactic is 0.6 to 1.2. So this lady is basically circling the drain and I'm in the weeds and my other three patients are just treading water while I flounder and I'm still on orientation and my nurse preceptor has to jump in and save me and back it up You may not know me at this point. I'm seeing a lot of grey names in this thread and in general and that means I've been gone awhile and there are new faces or else old faces stopped giving a shit about me which is fine. Either way, let the record show that I once said some stuff here and posted some content here and I may again at some point in the future. For the time being, here's me: A year and change ago I joined an accelerated nursing program- BSN in one year, which for those in the know is fucking crazy, the normal accel program is two years compressed from four. We started the year with 120 students, ended with 78. I made it through not to toot my own horn (totally to fucking toot my own horn) top of class with all sorts of silly awards to show for it. I managed to postpone the nervous breakdown I'd been denying all year until graduation day, which I skipped in favor of staying in my bed, terrified that I was dying. For the better part of two months. Happy graduation, I guess. Five months and a Buspar prescription later, I'm a nurse in the ER, and by God I feel like I'm helping people. 60 percent of the time. The other 40 percent I feel like I'm just constantly fucking up. And now here I am, month three into my orientation and holy hell, some days I just don't know if I can do it. Most folks on my unit started somewhere sleepier, like telemetry or general med-surg. I'm beginning to see the benefit to that. It's like picking up a pair of skis for the first time after watching some skiing videos and being like "I'm a skier now!" and then heli-dropping into some triple black diamond in the swiss alps and there are hungry bears on surfboards riding an avalanche after you. Days like today, I feel like just disappearing, not showing back up to work or anywhere day after tomorrow. And I don't have many friends and I don't have many outlets so here I am, ghosted for the better part of a year only to show up briefly to shit out my worries in the corner of an imaginary bar. You're welcome, world
Yo! Good nurses are in short supply. It's been a while since we talked, but in my own re-entry to education, I've felt some similar stuff and for my part, I wasn't able to hold it all together until graduation. But, I'm feeling better after a break. Not the point! What I will say is, I had a meeting with my advisor where I was talking about my chosen discipline (conflict resolution) and parallels to music. You are a musician. What I was saying is that I feel like sometimes in dicey situations, I have to fall back on lessons that I learned from music; I know the changes, the progressions, my own capabilities, etc. and a lot of it is dealing with the emergent as it comes. And as you know, in live music playing with other people, that means fucking up and then bending it around so that it isn't so much a fuck up. If you know your shit in nursing like you know your shit in music, are these fuckups things that will totally derail the flow? I have no idea, but you probably do. It might be hell right now, but if qualified experts said that you were cool to drop in, maybe there's something to that. On the other hand, given that you know yourself, are there things that need to happen so that you can take care of yourself and thereby be better situated to help your patients? Anyway, I hope that things work out man. Send sweet jams when you can.
It is so good to hear from you, and with solid advice and a good perspective to boot. Guess it makes sense, given your current track. I don't know half the shit I need to as a nurse yet; they say it takes a good five years before you can really even consider yourself a novice in the field. I'll get there, though. In the meantime, jams are forthcoming at some point. Hope your education is going well- breaks are not a bad thing. In retrospect, wish I'd taken one. How long you have left?
It was kind of unwilling, but at this point it's a good 4 months. It's been inconvenient and has kind of messed with my projected timelines, but it's tough to write a thesis on equity and inclusion when studying led to me excluding myself from my own life and my own relationships. Hardly a great place to write from, you know? As for how long, I don't know. I just have to write the damn thing. Man, that is a huge deal to set yourself on a path where you are helping people on less than great days in their lives. It's even bigger to realistically look at how much time it will take to earn the competence it takes to deal with that capably. Positive self-perception is huge in contributing to feelings of belonging in general and if you're really serious about being a nurse, then finding places where you can get acknowledgement will be crucial to the concretization of that identity. Build those relationships where you can, and if building those relationships is difficult, that's not necessarily all on you. There's a lot of research on mentorship being done these days in employee success. Are there opportunities for mentorship in your professional context? Anyway, I hope it gets better man, sorry it was a hairy one today.
My eyes are falling out after spending 2.5 days now wading through sequencing for the new drilling configuration we want to use with Curiosity on Mars. At the same time I'm loving it because doing this means I'll get to help write the sequence for the next phase, and then a robot on another planet will be using code I worked on. Life goal close to complete. I need to get back on board with wedding planning - got my dress, the venue and what he's going to wear, which is pretty good for a year out, but I don't want to be rushing around mid-2018 trying to get things planned at the last minute. Also I made yogurt from scratch this week, so that was tasty. Going to try using goat milk for next week's batch and see what happens.
Hello lovelies, how are ye on this fine autumn day? As usual, I have little in the way of news, but then no news is good news. Tomorrow a friend and I are flying out to Amsterdam so I'm pretty excited about that. We still don't know what we're going to do there - but then it's best to just wing it when you're visiting somewhere and do your own exploring. There are a few good suggestions I've so far received, though, and I've a couple of people I plan on meeting. In other news, my sister's house is almost ready for her to move into. To reiterate, MY SISTER'S HOUSE IS NEARLY FINISHED. I've spent five days a week with my dad down there and soon it's going to be done and I'll never have to go down there again except to visit. I still need to navigate my dad carefully, as I suspect he might try to rope me into helping him out down the store - and don't get me wrong, I don't mind helping out at all, but there isn't enough work for two people, I don't really know anything about plumbing, and there's a huge amount of standing around while he talks to customers (he's notoriously hard to get away from). Also, like, I don't get paid a shilling for the time I'm with him. I was getting a little bit of money for working on my sister's house, but the last time I saw a red cent was back in April. I get it - I'm an unskilled labourer, essentially a gopher - but he has no concept of the amount of time I've spent down there. Real time for nothing. To my father, my time is completely disposable. It's my own fault for only being working part-time in the pub, but ultimately the only escape will be moving away from now. I'm planning on leaving sometime early next year and probably working in a pub because I guess that's what I do now! Anyway that probably came off as a bit whingy but everybody needs a good vent, you know? So that's me. Looking forward to making myself a mean ham and cheese toastie when I get home. It's the little things!
Do you have the intent on owning a pub sometime in the future? Congrats on the sisters house. Having occasionally helped out, and very occasionally born witness to, a complete interior remodeling of a house, that is no joke of a task.
I've been reading up on diet. Elimination of artificial colors and sodium benzoate seems to make a significant difference for a minority of children. This is about the only diet thing that has been confirmed by reputable science. If you kid is in that minority elimination of these substances is about one half to one third as effective as Ritalin without side effects. Omega 3 and 6 might be helpful and might not, can't hurt to eat fish twice a week. Studies are being done but the studies so far aren't conclusive. There are a bunch of hard to follow diets which have been studied none of which seem to have as much efficacy as gypsies curses. Parents have reported amazing improvements in their child's behavior under strict regiments of placebos. Clinical analysis reports no observable change in the kids behavior but the parents think it is a stone cold miracle. It seems that a little caffeine can help which makes some sense to me. If you are low on dopamine and caffeine makes it a little easier for those neurons to fire it could be a mild boon. The other thing my reading has convinced me of is that there are parenting techniques that can help kids develop effective self regulation. Parental training is the most effective non-drug intervention. It's probably the most work. My mind has been blown by what I'm reading. I realize now that I was an ADHD kid. My mother and my teachers at school did a super shitty job of dealing with it. Punishments were often a tad sadistic, like being grounded for an entire school year (not allowed to go to friends houses, have friends over or watch TV). Take a kid who is acting out because he is, for one of a few reasons dopamine staved and crave stimulus, remove a bunch of stimulus as punishment, and watch they act worse than before. This was my life in a nutshell. Lot of other dark bits related to all this and other unrelated dark family shit, not exactly happy childhood. Luckily I found books and checked out of the real world that hated me for who I was. They got me through high school and out of my house so I could find out who I was after being harshly poked at for a dozen years. Each generation of my family has treated their offspring significantly better than the one before it. This is my time. I'm not going to let anyone grind my daughter down and at the same time I'm going to do my best to help her be a happy and effective person who takes responsibility for her behaviors in the world at large.
Hey, so as someone who is realizing their place in a similar cycle, good job, and in a roundabout way, thank you for helping break bad cycles.Each generation of my family has treated their offspring significantly better than the one before it. This is my time. I'm not going to let anyone grind my daughter down and at the same time I'm going to do my best to help her be a happy and effective person who takes responsibility for her behaviors in the world at large.
ADHD is a dopamine thing? What about exercise? I'm the last simulated person in the world when I'm running or on a strenuous hike.
Just fucking stop. It's your kid. It's your life. It's your plan, it's your pain, and do whatever the fuck you want. But recognize that when I say "my wife sees this a lot" and "diet can help" the rudest fucking thing you can do is whip out witch doctor claims. There is no aspect of diet you can't change, you can't experiment with, you can't try out. I got friends whose kid will starve rather than eat foods with color. They've spent the past six years going to a therapist twice a week. Know how much "reputable science" there is behind that? fuckall. So a lot of it is n=1 experimentation to see what works for your kid. I mean, seriously. Go stroke your fucking chin in the corner for the rest of your life and get all uppity about "gypsies curses" and shit I give no fucks. I hereby solemnly swear I will never fucking offer you advice again.Elimination of artificial colors and sodium benzoate seems to make a significant difference for a minority of children. This is about the only diet thing that has been confirmed by reputable science.
~General Question~ A friend of a good friend is going through a depression, and while that friend is getting help I don't know what I can do for my best friend. It's clearly not easy for him too. Any advice? ~Movies~ Go watch Blade Runner 2049 in theatres if you thought the original was cool, avoid the damn trailers, they promise a movie that doesn't really happen. I watched it earlier this Saturday: ~Work~ I'm slowly collecting job offers here and there. Partly because I don't really know what I want, partly so I can get multiple offers and use them as leverage in negotiations. Yesterday I had two job interviews. Man is it ever exhausting to have two hour-plus long, hyper-focused conversations where I need to make a great first impression. I think I did great though, I asked good questions and both companies definitely want to continue the conversation. One was for a GIS consultant position at an IT company, the other was for '(geo)data scientist & consultant in sustainable urban planning projects'. The former doesn't really do me much, the latter company and position almost seems made for me. But I'm not jumping at the first thing I love, I want to keep my cool and take my time deciding what I want to do. Especially since I also submitted my application for the PhD position I mentioned two weeks ago. While I made a pretty strong case for why I'm a good candidate, I have a lot of doubts about the position, both whether I even can do something like that and whether I want to do something like that.
Bought evening tickets for Blade Runner 2049. I've managed to avoid most of the trailers. CANNOT WAIT
INTERVENTION TIME This is your family. You guys aren't being honest with each other. You've reached the point where you're performing intelligence analysis, not sharing family news. Once you're on a distrustful footing, you will continue looking for reasons to distrust your mother and your brother. This is not a road you want to go down, particularly when health is on the line. Tell your mother "I've taken to writing down our conversations and cross-referencing them because I think you're hiding stuff from me. Even if you think you're being completely honest, I need you to do whatever you can to convince me you're being completely honest because I don't like being in this position." Or words to that effect. You guys are going through some shit. You need to go through it together.Thank goodness I started to record those chats so now I can trace when she slips.
Hedz up: elevated CRP and ESR are considered nonspecific indicators of inflammation, not necessarily infection. There are better indicators of sepsis, i.e. WBC count and lactic levels. High ESR/CRP and low PLT post chemo may both be expected depending on the agent used. Hope your brother is okay.
It's rough that you have to piece together your brother's results. I don't know anything about it, but I imagine it might be best to ask him how he's doing yourself, I feel as though the information over how he's doing is something he'd like control over.
FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS The California Porsche fell through... sort of. I offered an earnest payment of $500 and the owner doubled it to $1000. Then they wanted a wire transfer to a branch of Wells Fargo that the Internet assures me is in Maryland. Then when I suggested escrow they argued we didn't need to put up with that (despite my offering to pay the fees). So I called up the dealership on the service records (which, after I got Internet Detective on them, were aliasing differently at the name and phone number than everywhere else; I could literally tell from the pixels) and said "I'm going to read off the name and phone number I have on some service records of yours. If they aren't the same on my copy as your copy, I suggest you contact the name on your copy and let them know someone is trying to sell their Porsche." it took three or four iterations of this before the service manager understood I was attempting to do a good deed, not make them an unwitting third party to an internet car transaction (a position in which they'd been sued twice). Once he understood that I was acting out of altruism (or, more specifically, out of a desire to make internet scams harder to perpetrate thereby improving the ecosystem for all honest dealers) he became my new best friend. Called up the actual owner of the Porsche and asked him if he wanted my number so that I could transact with the actual owner. Upshot: the service manager of one of the largest Porsche dealerships on the West Coast thinks I'm a hero and I am in contact with the owner of the car, and the car is cherry (and heavily vouched for by the service manager, which is pretty damn ironic considering how much he bent over backwards not to endorse anything). This took the better part of five days to hash out, though, during which time I tried to drive a beater '99 down the street. They wanted about double the going market rate. We sat in it, the aircon didn't work, the engine ran rough, and when I said "let's take this thing for a drive" the lot lizard said "not until you agree to purchase it." So I turned off the key and told him to fuck off. He said there was no need for profanity. I told him "no, but it feels goddamn good." I opined that if I were looking at a used Subaru for $27k they would have let me drive it without so much as signing a slip. They didn't disagree. So on the one hand, I hit a dealer close to my house who thinks you need a mink stole and big chains to be worthy of driving an 18-year-old Carrera. And on the other hand I went to the spendy part of town and was encouraged to drive an 8-years-newer Carrera 4S, all 400HP of it, around residential corners at 30mph over the speed limit to see what the car could do. I was wearing a t-shirt from a graffiti collective and wearing jeans with paint spots on them. I'm experiencing an identity crisis. It's ridiculous - the crazy Porsche could be mine for less than the price of a new Miata. I was on the verge of buying one in nice shape for less than a Kia Rio. The one in Cali? Less than what rd95 paid for his FR-S. But I become that guy. I drive a '95 Dodge. Nobody thinks that's pretentious. When you get out of a '95 Dodge with a ponytail and paint on your jeans everybody knows you're Joe Dirt. Get out of a Porsche? Who are you trying to fool? I ultimately decided against the spendy Porsche not because I can't afford it, but because it doesn't belong in my neighborhood. There's a totalled '05 Focus across the street and the hoighty-toighty car in the neighborhood is a new Civic sedan. Up the street around the corner? Late-model Lexii and Mercedes but they drive through as if they think they're going to be carjacked (twice nearly killing my daughter on her bicycle). I realized I'm going to feel less self-conscious about the Cali porsche because it'll be older and less assuming. But I'm still going to feel plenty self-conscious AND I FUCKING HATE IT. It bothers me to no end that I feel guilty about having my kid doing daycare at a private school even though it's a non-profit and we're on scholarship and that I'm wracked with guilt over the thought of buying a 16-year-old sports car even though it costs less than a mutherfucking Prius. And I don't even know who to be mad at. Took apart more watches last night. Everyone else got some ancient heavily-filigreed American pocket watch. I got "the Swiss." Which has no ornamentation on it anywhere, which is beat to shit, and is held in utter contempt by the instructors because it's "the swiss." To the instructors, the ultimate success is getting to shoot the moon and fix watches for Omega. The fact that I'm friends with the guy at Vacheron Constantin has gone unmentioned and undiscussed, I think because it's proof that I don't know my place. My buddy with the kidney got laid off last week. Or, they tried to. They mentioned to him that it was an at-will state and they could do whatever they wanted. He mentioned that they probably don't want to expose themselves to that level of ADA complaint so now both sides are lawyering up and here I am having a metaphysical meltdown over buying a used car. My daughter is 4. Day before yesterday, out of clear-blue silence, she said "My pants look like Jackson Pollack." She was right. They were very artfully covered in spatters and lines in primary colors. On the one hand, I'm incredibly proud. On the other hand, I'm cognizant that she sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit about insufferable rich yuppies. WTF am I gonna do when she says it from the back of a 911 Carrera Cabriolet. share some music you've been into lately _______________________________________________________________ Hey Internet Sleuths The Swiss wasn't completely without ornamentation. Apparently I'm the first person to discover this in 20 years of classes, but when you take the main bridge off and look real close you see this mark: WIlliam Tell was Swiss, after all. Nobody knows what that mark is. I spent an hour on the Internet trying to find it. It's got a Reed regulator which means it's after 1886, once you take the 1868 patent and add 18 years. I'll say that "apple" "watch" "hallmark" are about the three least useful search terms in the world. 
DUDE I think I found it!? It looks a lot like the Fontainemelon trademark that you see twice in this list, registered in 1880 for the region in Switzerland. Found this by Googling 'Schweiz uhrwerk apfel' and it was the first hit. It actually does lead back to that site of yours when you Google for Fabrique d'Horlogerie de Fontainemelon SA. Check that advert, it has the logo! edit: hah, wasoxygen was slightly faster. Damn ninja!
Fuckin' badges for everyone. What's fuckin' weird is that the FHF logo is backwards from what I saw. So... is it a fake FHF? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT It's a 13-jewel movement with a counterbalanced pallet fork, but it's the least ornamented caliber I've ever seen.
Fuck. I'm thinking about buying a house before selling my condo mostly because it's just so much easier than dealing with showings while living here. I don't know how I got in this position, but I did. I'm self-conscious about it and don't know what to do about it. The only people I can kind of talk about it with is coworkers, but even that's hit-or-miss depending on their own personal lives as children and other obligations may not give them as much flexibility. And at the same time I constantly worry it will all come crashing down. But then I read articles about most people not knowing how they'd pay for an unexpected $500 expense, and it's like, what right do I have to worry if my income will remain? Or if I should buy a house?But I'm still going to feel plenty self-conscious
My dad is with this lady. Has been for like six years. She's a low-level office flack at the job he used to work. Makes about $38k a year. In the runup to the 2008 crash she bought five houses. Five. She still owns three. She's still underwater on all of them. How does she pay for them? She doesn't. My dad does.
Damn. The timing. fistbumps back. Guilt is a useful thing. Having an overly sensitive guilt function can be debilitating. I think your situation is a little tougher because you have more fun money. Granted... I was essentially just gifted a house. Out of a taxpayer funded subsidy program. That came about because of the '08 crisis. Caused in part (I'm guessing) by Morgan Stanley. What would winning guilt free look like? There's hardly such a thing as totally independent bootstrap-pulling. There's just the suburbs where you're aren't daily reminded of the slow decay of Western society.
My financial planner pointed out that country clubs exist so that you can hang out with people who don't remind you every day that Porsches are for rich posers. Not the exact terminology he used, but effectively that: "We wall ourselves off from your suffering because we want to enjoy our success in peace." Our 30-year mortgage became a 15-year mortgage because TARP. The bank knew if they gave the money to the people who needed it they'd never see it again so they gave it to us because they had to get rid of it somehow. Saved me about $75k, and I had to chase them off three times before I listened. And I only listened because the above financial planner let me in on the scam. Pinker talks about cognitive dissonance and the rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrip that happens when you switch teams. If you shop at Whole Foods, give to the ACLU, and are suspicious of the establishment, you might begin to think that vaccines are bad. Once you've committed to the idea that vaccines are bad, giving up on the idea that vaccines are bad makes you question Whole Foods and the ACLU. Giving up on Whole Foods and the ACLU means your entire worldview changes - I mean, are you going to have to join the NRA now that you're vaccinating your kids against measles? It's really hilarious that you think my porsche selection problems are somehow "tough". Some friends asked how I was doing the other night. I said "I want a Porsche convertible but I only have a 1-car garage." They said "you're doing fine, then." I said "If more people had my problems the world would be a happier place."
It is probably a softhearted projection of mine. I verbally hand-wring when I'm going through something tough, and by column inches I took your pains to be quite large. =)It's really hilarious that you think my porsche selection problems are somehow "tough".
Hmm. Why feel guilty about the private school thing? Especially since it's a nonprofit which I'm sure is doing a lot of good work for the community it serves (or, at least, I hope it is). The Porsche thing I can kind of understand, given appearances.It bothers me to no end that I feel guilty about having my kid doing daycare at a private school even though it's a non-profit and we're on scholarship and that I'm wracked with guilt over the thought of buying a 16-year-old sports car even though it costs less than a mutherfucking Prius. And I don't even know who to be mad at.
Something unusual has developed for me. I might get an internship (which is tantamount to a job) at Morgan Stanley. The prospect of working for a Wall Street firm is causing massive cognitive dissonance. Now while I don't have a comprehensive understanding of which bad Wall Street actors were baddest (is Morgan Stanley worse than, say, Wells Fargo? Bear Stearns?), I can't shake the feeling that they'd all absolutely plunder the world if they could. The cold-blooded profit-seeking that is a hallmark of those firms reminds me of the narrator from Fight Club describing his job: I might be getting way ahead of myself. I haven't even done the interview, let alone completed the internship and gotten a full-time offer. But. I did have a casual and free-ranging half hour conversation with the hiring manager at an information session yesterday, wherein we discussed the merits of Dodd-Frank, the role of good writing in creating company policy, and some Baltimore history (they have an office here that is expanding). We were downright chummy by the end of it. And also, his division is the one I'm most interested in: legal & compliance. Specifically the global financial crimes unit. You know, where they bust white collar crime. Maybe this might be worth it? (nota bene: the GFC unit protects the firm first, not Main Street. It's not an analog to the FBI, but it's an interesting start.) *** In other news, my gymnastics floor routine is coming together. I haven't performed in fifteen years, but the skills are all coming back--today I started add a twist to my back layout. I think a teammate took a video, I'll see if I can scrounge it.A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
I say go for it join the evil empire and be like the rest of them steal everything that's not nailed down, if it is nailed down grab the crow bar. Seriously if you don't loot my pension fund someone else will and I'd rather you get your cut. The thing to be careful is to not get sucked into that cycle where you keep needing more money to sustain a lifestyle. Get in, do your time then get out before you burn out
Thanks dog. It is very kind of you to offer me to help myself to your pension. That's what they say: stay off that hedonic treadmill. I have some practice living and being happy on the cheap, but I wouldn't be the first one to escalate my spending and think it perfectly justified. I'll definitely try to keep it under control. Live independently and retire early.The thing to be careful is to not get sucked into that cycle where you keep needing more money to sustain a lifestyle. Get in, do your time then get out before you burn out
To counter _refugee_, I think there's a difference between knowing you're an unwilling participant in the system and knowing that you're more active than most in perpetuating the system. Now, I'm not saying "Go all anarchist" or anything, but I am saying that, if for example, you think systemic debt is part of the reason for some of society's ills, maybe you'd want to consider whether or not your job is counter to your values. I know a guy who used to work at a gunshop, until he turned Buddhist. I also know a few conservative Muslims and Christians that work in grocery or restaurants and have to ask their coworkers to sell alcohol in their place because it's against their beliefs. You're not gonna see a pacifist join the military, you're not gonna see a vegan work at a slaughterhouse, etc. etc. So the real question is, where do you want to put your boundaries, and why?
So., what I would say to that is, do all Wall Street jobs necessarily perpetuate a negative, harmful system? Cuz I'd say I really don't think so. And I guess that's part of the reason I'm not fond of gallows-dwelling artists -- just because you work for a bank doesn't mean you're doing bad things, or hurting people. So it's possible to work for "the man" without being "the man," I guess. Or while trying to be a better version of him.
Hmm. I'd say it's best to look these things in layers. Let's skip Wall Street and Banking in specifics, not because I'm willing or unwilling to discuss them, but because I don't want you to think I'm digging against you or your peers. Let's take environmentalism and consuming beef as an example. I'm gonna exaggerate and over simplify, but it's for the sake of illustration. Beef is more nuanced, just like banking, after all. I'm also taking this from a perspective that "Beef = Bad" which I wouldn't take in real life, but once again, this is just for illustrative purposes. Cattle farming has a ton of problems. As far as resources needed to produce beef compared to calories actually received, it's woefully inefficient. It's a cause for deforestation in the Amazon. Our inflated demand for it is a cause for factory farming. It's a cause for uneven international trade deals where some people come out on top and some people definitely don't. I could go on, and on. If we were to say that the beef industry is a source of social ill, it would make sense that we could say the guys at the top are the most culpable for blame. They're the ones who make the business decisions that lead to deforestation, exploitative trade practices, etc. etc. They have the most power, their activities have the most impact, they have the most responsibility to behave in a proper and socially productive manner. The guys who cut down the forest? The guys who work industrial farms? They're also engaging in immoral behavior that leads to environmental damages and animal suffering. While they're not making the most important decisions, they play a crucial role in the industry. We can also say that while they're doing this for a job and might not have better options, maybe what they're doing isn't the most healthy thing for the world around them. They may not be worthy of condemnation, but they may not be angels either. Their actions though, support the guys at the top, and perpetuate the beef industry. The guys who sell the beef? The restaurants and grocery stores? They're a lot lower on the totem pole. This time though, they're getting to be pretty distant from the source. They're not making policy decisions. They're not actively deforesting the rain forest. But, at the same time, they play a crucial role between the people who produce beef and the people who consume it. They're still supporting a socially unhealthy industry. So what about the guys who purchase the beef? They don't make policy decisions. They don't cut down forests. Heck, they don't even sell the beef. All they want is a damn, good burger. On the one hand, they're not actively doing any of the potentially immoral behavior as listed above. On the other hand, it's their active demand for beef that necessitates a need for the beef industry to begin with. So the question becomes then, like I addressed to blackbootz, where do you draw your moral lines, and why? At the top? Somewhere in the middle? Or if at all possible, do you try to cut yourself out of the equation completely? How much do you want morality to factor into things? How much do you want practicality to factor into things? When you know that the consequences of your actions aren't binary, but complex and layered and constantly in flux, isn't it often less about any individual choice you make and more about the position you put yourself in that affects the choices you can make?
Is it really so cognitively dissonant? We buy into Wall Street every day. Even the most green, organic, anti-vaxxer out there has a bank account. Or a credit card. Or a loan of some sort. A 401(k)? Sure, right now you might not literally have-a-job-there-work-at-it, but you & your money already feed Wall Street every day.
Certainly doesn't undo my point. If you're honest with yourself, how is working for Wall Street any more off-putting than what you already do? Might as well get paid well while you're doing it. I mean, Wall Street's living off of you - might as well as not live off of them, eh? I just don't have very much tolerance for "sticking to one's artistic morals and refusing to work for the Man" when hey, you already work for the man, and b, all that really means is feeling proud of yourself for getting paid a pittance without sick time off, health insurance, or 10 federal holidays a year.
No, you're right. While I admire people who live by their principles, I don't pity starving artists. (I'll just buy some art.) My lack of pity probably stems from the fact that Baltimore is so goddamn filled with them.. By not collecting a paycheck, there's a very plausible deniability that helps assuage cognitive dissonance. And I have a rather comforting amount of plausible deniability that I'd be trading in. I don't think I'll be too hard on myself but I don't know if that's a rationalization or a reasonable conclusion.I just don't have very much tolerance for "sticking to one's artistic morals and refusing to work for the Man" when hey, you already work for the man, and b, all that really means is feeling proud of yourself for getting paid a pittance without sick time off, health insurance, or 10 federal holidays a year.
I think I'm falling down the 3d printer rabbit hole. Right now I'm sorting through various reprap plans trying to figure out which one is the one. Right now, 'tis this one. Qualifications for being the one: cheap enough, and well documented enough. EDIT This one is also in the running. Delta printers are soo much more scifi to me, though.
Further proof that Denver is lame. There's five up here right now. Including this one, which is also on ebay. In fact, eBay has 188 used 3D printers at the moment.
Got my teeth clenched hard enough that I feel like I'm about to pop a molar. One of these days I'm going to have matured enough to dump all these rotten, stinking corpses I'm dragging around behind me. Until then I clench my teeth and otherwise make disgusted faces, I guess.
I hope you learn that lesson earlier than I did so you don't end up with a permanent scowl of "I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU" face like what happened to me. heh. From your writing here? I have zero doubts.Until then I clench my teeth and otherwise make disgusted faces, I guess.
One of these days I'm going to have matured enough
I had this idea for my training site at work and decided to remake the whole thing. I'm on week three of the redesign and greatly regretting the decision. But it's also a great decision - I'm using a lot of the theories from Understanding Comics to add some personality to the self-paced training modules. I don't know how well it'll work, but it already feels a lot more personable. I think this project is also heavily tied to my feeling of worth. With everyone leaving, I feel like things are uneasy here and I need to be prepared for anything. It's time to turn my 3 years of experiments into a unified product that I can peddle internally or externally. Home life is pretty good. My wife has been doing freelance grant writing for almost a year now. She's amazingly brave for striking out on her own and I'm super proud of her. The business is doing well, but the social aspect of being so solitary is starting to get to her. I'm not quite sure how to help with that. Things are good though.
There's something wrong with one of my power amps. It makes a terrible buzzing noise after it warms up. It isn't the power tubes or the rectifier. It probably isn't the low power tubes. It's probably a bad capacitor. I just hope it isn't the power transformer. It probably isn't. I have a spare everything else from an amp I never repaired that had a bad power transformer. I really need to get around to fixing this. I briefly thought about selling it. I have other amps (in various stages of working), but this is really my dream setup. I think I'd be disappointed. It's a pair of McIntosh MC30 power amps and a McIntosh MX110 preamp/tuner. It's a really fun setup. Time to find my dummy load, variac and multimeter. First things first: what are the voltages at each tube?
Pet Names My buddy, who just got married recently, confided in me the other day that he feels awkward calling his girl "his wife." I told him to give her a bad ass wife term then, something sci-fi or military or something. I used the example of "Spousal Unit Alpha Zero One." He fucking loves it. Feeling Happy I'm getting better at feeling happy lately. Not that I've been unhappy, because I've been happy, but very discontented in life. Mostly job and money related. I've been feeling better lately though, because I think I'm starting to come to terms with where I'm at in life and being okay with it while still trying to be better, but also because I think I don't think I need that stuff to be genuinely happy. Dala and the dog are both great and I'm reminding myself more and more how much I really appreciate them. My buddy who's back from the navy now? Hung out with him twice. Catching up on missed years of chewing the fat and friendly shit talking and just really enjoying him as a person. Every day that I have a day off, I pick a random contact in my phone and give them a ring, just to have a conversation. That's done a lot to pick up my spirits. Little things, you know? Know what the biggest thing is though? I've kind of given an emotional middle finger to my job without actually letting it affect my work. I still, in a day, do more than some of my coworkers do in a week. I still show up on time, work my whole shift through, clock out when I'm supposed to, and basically be a fucking champ. But man, I'm not letting it drag me down. The other day, one of my bosses tried to call me in on my day off and I said "Nope. Sorry, plans already made for that day." Even if that wasn't the case though? I'd probably have still said no. Don't take me wrong, I usually enjoy my job, and Ialways enjoy working, but shit, there comes a point and time where being the constant "go to guy" just isn't fulfilling anymore and I'm there. Know what my plans were? Play Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of buds and eat wings and Taco Bell. Know what I did? That. No what I didn't do? Work. Know what I didn't think about? How I should be at work. Know how fucking amazing that is in retro-spect? FUCKING AMAZING. I mean, I literally got wrecked by a four legged gargoyle to the tune of 120 plus damage in a single roll, and I was laughing my ass off with glee, I was having so much fun. Speaking of Dungeons and Dragons One of my friends just got a job as an activities co-ordinator for a senior living facility. I told them they need to teach all of the residents how to play D&D. Shit. When I get old and senile, I want someone to play D&D with me. Dark Souls III SHIT! This game is addictive. People say it's NES hard. That's a lie. Compared to Castlevania, this game is easy as balls. That said, it's a shit ton harder than say Halo or Fallout and because of that, it's so satisfying and I'm just loving every bit of it.
I think nursing homes are going to look VERY different by the time we're of an age to live in them. WiFi is going to be a must. Video games and online activities are going to be constant, residents will have their own electronics and they won't be as dependent on staff and family members to have their needs met. If we can manage our weight and deal with any sensory issues as they come up (cataract surgery, hearing aids, etc) I believe the current crop of under forties will be the least affected by dementia so far.
Yeah, I think from a mental health and social interaction perspective, I could see how video games and online activities would make aging easier. For the most part, those types of activities tend to be low effort/high reward, which, let's face it, is part of the reason they're so popular now.
In an odd place with the lady friend, hearing back from her once every couple days rather than hours of late. The story I'm telling myself is that we left off in an awkward place last time we met (around a week ago now), but she's saying she's been busy with two huge presentations she's putting on today and next week. Doesn't compute to me, and I'm getting mixed messages from people in my life: - "You barely know each other, what do you expect? You don't owe each other anything." Valid, nonetheless a bit saddening. - "You don't want someone who isn't communicative. She's not worth your time." Seems like the other, equal and opposite, reaction. I guess my question to pubski, how much benefit of the doubt is worth it? Extended an offer to a volunteer event where we'd be helping make food kits for people affected by Irma - which I know we're both invested in. My other guess is that this'll draw a clearer line. Bottom line: regardless of these to trains of thoughts, I'm still getting responses, so there's something. The week I stop getting anything, I guess I'll know - I'd like to not need to guess. Despite advice to voice "This is the story I'm telling myself [...], does this ring true to you as well?", I think 3 dates might not warrant that level to exploration. That or I'm undervaluing those experiences. What a bunch of schmootz.
Trying to move towards not taking things personally. A lot of that change is stemming from the impossibility of getting people to come from Seattle to anywhere that's not Seattle, and also a recent event wherein a friend is putting me in a position to chose between a couple of different things when we had already made previous plans. It's nothing about me, against me, it's about them. People make their own choices, and they are responsible for them. And that's okay, just have to keep living my life.