echo (border collie) passed her community canine test last thursday. 🎓 pics in a separate post when we get our certificate later this week. also got to meet one of the other foster dogs (buck, pictured below) in our program, and he is a beautiful dog. very driven and toy-motivated. gonna make a nice sport dog for someone.
rode to the other town over on greenways on saturday (~50 miles) with a couple of folks, then met up with some friends for dinner/drinks. took the train back home; it was all pretty chill.
finally hung a bunch of the artwork in the house over the weekend. feeling much more homey now.
heading to the beach this weekend, which i'm looking forward to. it'll be echo's first time there! 🏖️
welp, time to explain why I don't have a desktop after my post two weeks ago that I had to put new parts in.
the short version is that the motherboard's AMD bracket was covered mostly by a plastic piece that said "REMOVE" so I did that, but it wasn't clear that I was supposed to put it back on. ultimately when I kept trying to put things together and they didn't work, some of the motherboard's CPU pins got crushed, and now I have to hope I can get another. I'm trying to return it to amazon and use the money for a second one, but we'll see how that goes. the CPU itself might be damaged too, it's not clear, and I have no way of testing it without the motherboard. I feel really dumb for not knowing that the bracket was supposed to go there. and I can't just buy a new one right now because being on disability sucks.
originally I thought it had been the RAM since I was told the motherboard was finnicky with it, but I had to take two sets of it back after I found out it was the motherboard. thankfully my cousin looked at it and is willing to put things together for me again. it's just waiting on amazon is killing me. I spend a lot of time at my desktop (especially because it's going to be over 90 degrees here for a while) and my laptop is a low end gaming one from 6 years ago. it can't run much, including my favorite game, although I can play it for very short periods of time. I broke out my nintendo switch to play, but that's not helping the depression too much.
some issues with my partner popped up, as well as some with my mother, and I just don't feel great. been trying to do what I can for that (like making some posts here) but it's a battle and I wish I didn't have to have it. I hope the week improves but I'm just tired already.
It sucks when life feels like a smash mouth song and the hits don't stop coming. Hope you can fix your mobo/cpu problem without spending any extra money. Sounds like things are tough right now, I hope your week improves too :)
Not bad - chuffed to bits that my daughter got a 'First with honours' in English and Creative Writing. No idea what that means* apart from it's an excellent result.
*I left school at 15, before taking all my exams so that I could start work in a factory. So very proud of her ;-) Her substack is here
Suspect your daughter may be downplaying things a bit here...
She got the top result possible. Students who achieve First with honours (sometimes written as 1:1) have to be even better than excellent across their entire degree.
Some years nobody on a particular course will do this well, because it is reserved for the exceptional.
Pretty great actually. On my first relaxation vacation with no specific agenda in several years. The beach is gorgeous, the breeze is cool and the drinks are flowing. Life can be good, sometimes anyway. Trying not to think about the work stacking up that will be waiting for me on my return.
Idk. I was feeling very bad recently but some great people helped me a lot so now I feel better but idk if this improvement will last for more than a few days (usually it doesn't). I'm really depressed because of the state of the society
Keep spending time with these people! In some ways the state of society certainly does suck, but finding our people who go against that grain has the potential to make things better. At the very least, we can make some things better in the small ways we can, and that's still something important.
I agree but seeing 2/3 or even more people act not good and everything getting worse every year has a stronger impact on me than seeing and interacting with great people. I guess it's a pretty uncommon thing. I also have personal issues that are really serious and I can't even talk about it because it's very intimate. And smh every time I say I feel better, I feel worse again in a few hours. Very supernatural looking this one.
I'm feeling the need to do a social media detox, including Beehaw. Pro-AI techbros are getting me down.
Shockingly, keeping Instagram active. My feed there is nothing but frogs, greyhounds, and art from local artists, and detoxing from stuff that is improving my mood rather than making it worse seems unnecessary.
This is one thing I noticed as well. I only have my Instagram profile to check on others but whenever the algorithm feeds me something it is always cute animals.
I really don't like killing things, but ants have literally invaded my home, so I've had to do something.
Sprinkled some diatomaceous earth today. Watching a few stragglers just kind of meandering and basically not knowing what the fuck to do while they dehydrate and succumb to death has depressed me a little.
On a basic level, the way it works, it's just cruel. Yeah, they're not "sentient", they're mostly drones, etc., but still. Seeing this lonely ant kind of just... slowly dying and not knowing what to do is a bit heartbreaking.
Work still sucks, haven't found another job, but we're supposedly getting acquired by a larger company and that's going to trigger a restricted stock unit payout. I've been here for a while so maybe I'll get a nice chunk of change out of this debacle before I get fired.
My week is going good. I loaned two books at the library yesterday. I am going to my grandmother and grandfather this weekend to celebrate my grandmother's birthday. Furthermore, I might get the result of my last exam on Friday.
So I thought I was good to start a new job (though I've yet to set a start date), as the HR person assigned me said it was all good about a month ago, but then today he me tells me there was "a problem" with my drug test. A drug test I took 3 months ago. So I need to take another.
While I've only taken a few drug tests for employment during my career, they've never taken 3 months to get results. Like 2 weeks at most. Something tells me my HR person screwed up (which isn't surprising), got this notice a couple month ago, yet just now noticed this. Hate to say it, but typical government. The irony is that I'll soon be a govt worker. If we can get this straightened out.
On a more positive note, I just paid off one more student loan! After 19yrs of paying and thousands of dollars in interest on this one -- more than the principle at this point -- it's finally done. I had to get a hefty loan from my parents, but their terms are much better: 0% APR at the Bank of Mom & Dad versus the current variable 10.02% APR with the bank. Though I still have lots more students loans to go. Such a shitty, shitty system. At least I'm lucky enough my parents can help in this manner.
Stay in school, kids. But only if you don't fuck it all up like I did. I may be paying student loans til I die.