Lost

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Ian
A building with crumbling yellow paint that flakes off the brickwork. A beat-up old volkswagon is parked behind it, half-covered by the bushes that have grown over, under, and around it.

Photo by author.

Apologies if this post is a little ramble-y. It’s here pretty much as it came out of my brain.

I’ve officially been unemployed for too long. The days have started blurring together. I have volunteering, so I’m not completely without structure. I have something to do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at set times. I have a carpool schedule with Peter for now, which entails leaving the house at a certain time each day. But once that’s done, once I’ve dropped Peter off and/or finished my volunteering hours, I just have a huge stretch sitting in front of me. Time, one of those things I’ve always wanted. And I’m not sure what to do with it.

Part of it is my chronic tiredness, which I believe I’ve mentioned before. I don’t sleep well, especially lately, which makes any downtime I get feel like nap time. Sometimes I resist, sometimes I don’t. Usually, when I don’t, I just feel worse. But that doesn’t stop me from making the choice to “flop down for just a minute,” even though I know how that ends.

It’s not like I don’t have projects I could be working on. My novel rewrite’s coming along well, but it’s not done yet. Which should make it a prime candidate to get done. But I’ve found I’ve gotten weirdly picky about where I work on it. I want to be in the right “mood,” even though I think that mood might just be “oh hey I started writing.” I haven’t figured out how to bootstrap into it. Continue reading →

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Week Wrap-up: 09 July 2018 – 15 July 2018

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Ian

Image of a closed 11" thinkpad's lid with a Mastodon sticker stuck in the lower-left corner and a rainbow ice cream cone sticker from Molly Moon's in the upper right.

The Good

  • The Dungeon World game I’m playing in continues to kick ass. Playing a fighter is fun, y’all. (And that’s something you don’t normally get to say in a tabletop RPG…)
  • My buddy passed along a copy of Scum & Villainy, a Star Wars-y take on Blades in the Dark, for me to look at. I haven’t gotten a chance to start in the past couple weeks, but I’m excited.
  • Been thinking about finally getting some games rolling as a GM again.
  • Much progress has been made on general cleaning, and the tilt is about to made into having it be more decluttering-focused. I’m especially excited to have all the kit (finally found a tripod in a thrift store) to document my old paintings, so I can dispose of the originals and free up a ton of storage space.
  • I put stickers on my laptop. Stickers are good.
  • I got some freelance transcription work and both enjoyed it and was told I did a good job! Which is good to hear, given how many names of small towns and geographic areas in Canada I’m sure I slaughtered, spelling-wise. (Luckily the person I was working for is a native of the particular area and was more than happy to correct my errors.)
  • Have a couple of interesting longer-term project ideas. Most promising so far is a blog that’s essentially the non-toxic-masculinity version of Art of Manliness. Continue reading →
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Week Wrap-up: 02 July 2018 – 08 July 2018

Posted on July 8, 2018 by Ian

Jabberwocky the iguana, sleeping blissfully on a ramp in her enclosure.

This week’s felt really long, though much of that is probably because I’m tired and suggish as I’m writing this. Still, some cool stuff happened this week:

  • Boyfriend’s birthday! Happy birthday, Peter!
  • Got to play Lifeboat, a card game I haven’t played in some time. I even managed to win.
  • Finally hung some small shelves I’d been meaning to put up forever.
  • One of my houseplants is managing to recover from being almost completely dead (don’t hang your vines above a heater, y’all), and is shooting off new leaves.
  • Received an invitation to interview for a job.
  • Made significant progress on the rewrite of the first several thousand words of my novel, which is the last thing I need to finish before sending it off to a beta reader.
  • Fixed the hard drive on my linux desktop so the dang thing boots again.
  • Got to meet several excellent cats at one of the local cat cafes. My favorite was Robin, who was very determined to get the whipped cream from my drink and was very sweet in her attempts to bribe me into giving it to her. (Unfortunately, I was not allowed to give her any.)
  • Sort of got on a more regular sleep schedule.
  • Finished reading a couple of books I’d been working on forever, which means I’m in the clear to start new books! Yay!

Of course, no week is perfect: Continue reading →

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A Century of Job Applications

Posted on July 5, 2018 by Ian

A close up, black and white image of two stacks of folders, files, and paper, with a small gap between them. They reach up past the top of the photo.

As of the 3rd I’ve hit 100 job applications filed this year (including following up on leads that didn’t involve a formal application).

So that’s a thing. Continue reading →

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Programming for Everyone

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Ian

Two nurses working at a computer in a nursing station in 1987.

So I read a post over at Jason J. Gullickson’s blog about how FOSS Isn’t Capitalism. It’s an interesting quick history of how computers have becoming far less empowering to end users and how the Free and Open Source Software movement is repeating (intentionally or not) some of the same behaviors that commercial ventures engaged in to make computers (and the web) that way.

One thing the article calls for is putting some engineering time into making programming more accessible again, so that people can make their own solutions to their computing needs rather than relying on commercial software that they might not even have access to. It mentions BASIC as a form of this, but says there’s no modern programming language that does the same thing, a statement I agree with.

Our current programming tools aren’t accessible to anyone who isn’t already very comfortable with computers, and who are able to deal with learning complex, unnatural syntax. On top of that, because operating systems don’t ship with programming tools anymore (or they’re very buried, if they are there), you also have to deal with setting up a development environment, a whole extra hurdle that I imagine turns some people off, and definitely discourages casual exploration.

With all that in mind, I started tooling around in my mind with how I would go about designing such a programming language. Two things to keep in mind: I am in no way an expert on this branch of computing, and I’m writing this off-the-cuff. It’s hardly going to a complete specification, just some noodling that might hopefully be useful to someone (maybe even myself) in the future. Continue reading →

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Week Wrap-up: 18 June 2018 – 24 June 2018

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Ian

Jerry the leopard gecko. He's asleep, and just visible as his snout and head are barely sticking out of the front entrance of his hide. He is adorable.

Bits and bobs from the last week:

  • Writing continues apace. Found a project that’s relaxing to work on, which is nice, and put in a few thousand words on it. Now I just need to figure out what length the intial draft is trying to be.
  • Started the job hunt up proper again. Applied to around 10 new positions, I think. Hoping I get some call-backs/interest next week.
  • Many accidental naps were taken.
  • Started playing Stardew Valley again, as a bit of a break from Fallout 4. It’s working great for that, and I’m finally starting to get the hang of some of the gameplay loops. (Winter, the season my game is currently in, was especially good for that, as I could do a ton of mining and start building up some monetary and construction resources.)
  • Was generally kind of disorganized as far as getting stuff done.
  • Had a reasonably promising date. We’ll see where it goes, but it was nice.
  • Saw a friend who I don’t get to see in person that often. Talked about politics in a relatively non-stressful way. It was like the opposite of the Internet!
  • Entertained the idea of throwing my phone into the ocean, again.
    • More seriously, found out that the 2G network coverage in my apartment is actually fine, so if I want to get a dumbphone to use sometimes that is actually practical!
  • Downloaded Elder Scrolls: Legends on my phone. (It’s the card game based on the series.) From the first, like, five minutes, it’s actually pretty good, and has so impressive production values. I’ll have to give it more time sometime soon.
  • Was bummed that my little clip-on MP3 player seems to be MIA. Not too expensive to replace, thankfully, if it doesn’t show up. I really like having it so I can use my phone for fewer things, though.
  • Got really salty at pretty much every social media site I use. Some of it’s on me for being a grumpy gus, for sure. Still, I think I might need to take an actual break from all of it sometime soon.
  • Avoided doing editing/re-writing work The Shivering Deeps because I am intimidated, y’all. It might be so much work aaaaaaah. (I need to rework the first section before I hand it over to my beta reader.) Hopefully i will sleep better and have more brain this week, and can start powering through.
  • Lifted heavy things for STR+

How about you all? How’d your last week go?

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Writing Reminders

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Ian

Two easter rabbits hugging in the grass, next to a pair of easter eggs.

This is your reminder that:

  • You can can be happy and still be a writer
  • You don’t have to kill your characters to create conflict
  • You can write happy, fluffy stories and still be a “real” writer
  • Write what makes you happy, not what you think will sell
    • (Though if those happen to overlap, great!)
  • You can be unpublished and still be a writer
  • You can have lots of time between publications and still be a writer
  • You don’t have to write every day
    • You don’t have to have a wordcount goal for every day, or a wordcount log
  • You don’t have to torture your characters
  • Not every story needs life or death stakes
  • You can write a story with zero conflict that’s still a good story
  • Your fanfiction is real writing
  • You don’t need any particular software (or software at all) to be a writer
  • Just because someone doesn’t like your work, doesn’t mean it’s bad

Hang in there, everyone. <3

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Un-Marketable Job Skills

Posted on June 19, 2018 by Ian

I applied to a bunch of jobs today, and it reminded me that I have a whole bundle of skills that, while I’m very good at them, will never help me land a job:

  • Losing every pen that has ever come in contact with me
  • Inexplicably roughing up even the toughest objects
  • Ability to remember tons of information about magazine/website contributor lineups
  • Ability to remember a bunch of information about the hosts of podcasts
  • emacs
  • Remembering reviews written about games I never ended up playing
  • Tracing back to an academic source I forgot to record by remembering the exact search terms I used to find it
  • Near-mastery of the game Snowboard Kids 2
  • Ability to fall asleep almost anywhere, at almost any time
  • Iguana wrangling

Alas! At least I can assume everyone else has some equally useless skills. I hope.

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Week Wrap-up: 11 June 2018 – 17 June 2018

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Ian

A close-up image of the keys on a vintage mechancial typewriter.

This last week was actually really uneventful? It was sort of nice. I haven’t written one of these in a while, but I suppose those other weeks will just be lost to time. How sad.

Anyway:

  • Still waiting to hear back from Google. Excited about the possibility of moving forward, nervous about the possibility of not, and feelingi the need to start applying to other gigs just in case.
  • Had a lot of non-productive down days due to depression, exhaustion, or both. Way too many accidental mid-day hour+ long naps.
    • I did start working to unfuck my sleep schedule again, though. It’s not at 100% working yet, but I’m already feeling a lot better than I was.
  • My decluttering project made some nice strides as of yesterday. I sorted through three boxes of papers and ended up with a lot of recycling, an alarming number of now-blank notebooks/spare sheets of paper/printer paper, and a much smaller stack of papers to store.
    • At some point I want to digitize all of my papers except for, like, old character sheets and other stuff I might want to physically interact with again. But I haven’t figured out a great workflow for that, so that project’s being saved for later.
  • I installed a keyboard drawer, which was a bit of an adventure but should be good for keeping my wrists in better condition long-term.
  • One of my cockroach colonies has gone off, and I need to clean it out. That’s all the detail I’ll go into, but I’m scared, y’all.
  • I did do a lot of writing this week, which feels good. Not sure any of it is marketable, but it feels good to get in the words. Continue reading →
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Liminal Life Space: Jobs Edition

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Ian

This was supposed to go up yesterday, but then life happened. Whoops!

I’m trapped in a Jiffy Lube waiting for my oil to be changed. The TV was an endless infomercial for a tai chi DVD set aimed at the elderly, with lots of dramatic recreations of falls. Dick van Dyke showed up at one point. Now it’s golf, and that is sadly way more interesting.

Anyway, perfect atmosphere to make a blog post. Especially one about job searching. Obviously.

Editor’s note: Reminder that you can hire me for all sorts of things, from copyediting to tech support!

Google Interviewing

I had what felt like a pretty successful second technical interview with Google about two and a half weeks ago. I’m waiting on pins and needles for them to get back to me, because I do think I would like that job. Plus, I know I’m going to hear back either way. Still, money’s looking like it’s going to get tight relatively soon here, which is ratcheting up the stress level. So that’s fun.

Great job if I can get it! But I’m running out of time to have that interview process be my primary focus. Continue reading →

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