Yearly Archive: 2019

I get to visit the aliens for a probing tomorrow. They operate out of a facility within the University of Tennessee Medical Center. I’m supposed to do this every 10 years, and I’m overdue, although I’ve heard some people say their doctors tell them every three years. I’m getting a bit dizzy right now due to a lack of solid food. The fun starts tonight when I have to start drinking the solution. And then my wife will need to drive me home from the probe, during Knoxville rush hour trafficf.

I checked my paycheck. O’Reilly’s was nice enough to drop an extra $50 on me. The listing said “HOL GIFT”.

Better stop typing now. Dizziness often reveals itself in less than balance…

I hope everyone is having a good holiday season. Good health to all.

Huge hippo hugs,
Me

My boss finally heard me say that I needed 4 days of work per week. He scheduled me Mon-Thu this coming week. Hope it continues. We’re about as low as we can go and still keep our bills paid, although we are dropping more into debt on the gas card.

I have now been a real podcaster for over a year, started last October. I even started my own podcast back in April, and the reception has been better than expected although not exactly overwhelming– we have yet to get close to 500 downloads, but that’s still 400 more than we thought we would get when we started. It’s just me and my friend Tony Hughes in England, rambling on about different distros of Linux, so of course it’s a niche of a niche of a niche market; our other podcast is averaging over 3,300 downloads.

Just keeping up day to day stuff, and getting ready for my annual trip to Atlanta in January. I’m serious considering taking only one guitar and the harp, although I’ll probably take two.

My birthday is Wednesday. I’ll be nearly twice as old as I ever thought I’d be. Yeah, my family generally is long-lived but I’ve been the exception to everything, the idiot sheep that everyone gave up on and let him roam off. I think Suzanne and I will go to Maryville next Saturday to hear an Americana singer-songwriter who runs the MeWe songwriting group I’m in, would be good to get out for a change. Hope I don’t go all autistic on the crowd size, but maybe it won’t be too bad.

I’m starting to think that I have multiple emotional states/ages. Not personalities… things trigger me to how I would react(badly) at a certain age. I can be trying to have a conversation over a few other tasks I’m doing, and then one more question will trigger me and I start screaming. I don’t engage in name-calling but I do scream or yell. I don’t know how Suzanne handles it, and somewtimes she doesn’t, but she understands it as it is demonstrably consistent. I don’t know how to manage it, although I’m going to ask someone I trust if he can help me. This is a new thing, just the past 3 years, maybe something about Suzanne is triggering me; I don’t remember having this issue in ast relationships. Forget you ever read this, it is too personal.

Well, my coffee is ready, I’ve had my shower, and it’s only a few hours until the podcast. I am so very grateful for my listeneres, they have been gifting me with cool computer stuff and even a little money, and it always helps to know you’re doing something which someone out there appreciates. I have set up a place online where people can become patrons of my podcasting work, although nobody has yet joined; thought it was worth it to give them options.

We just had our first snowfall of the season. Got maybe 1-2″ all over the cars and porch… didn’t stick in road areas so much. We did drive to Rutledge and turn in some paperwork. Very little traffic on the road.

And to top it off, here is a shot of our new kitten, rescued from a life as a frozen feral cat. His name is Gremlin.

I’m getting lots of job offers from phony compnaies, and the only actual job offers I’m getting are from companies which did not bother to read my resume (i.e., sales organizations and call centers).

I’ve received yet another Raspberry Pi, this one a 3B from my friend Tony Hughes in England. That is the 3rd Pi I’ve received, and still have these last two, the other being a 2B+. I am getting a lot of love from my listeners, for which I am quite grateful.

I’m reviewing Zorin OS this month. I’m finding it to not be as advertised — it is supposed to be a Linux version of Windows, but instead it’s a Windows-like re-theming of Gnome. There are so many differences between Gnome 3 Desktop and Windows Desktop, mostly in that a lot of things work differently and there are a lot more things hidden in the interface.

I started my 7-day every-two-week vacation. I should be grateful, but I’ve asked for more hours and my manager seems unwilling to even consider the possibility. Today we did a bit of shopping, it was drippy. We each called our surviving parent. We watched  lot of TV. We got no calls for jobs.

I got a nice comment on the Jupiter Broadcasting Telegram group, that my opinion could have been valuable on a just-recorded show. Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 007 is already over 300 downloads, in about a week of being available. There really are good things happening, but in true Moss fashion, none of them appear to head toward me being able to support myself and my wife any better. I hope I’m wrong about that.

Mom is out of the hospital again and in Southland Rehab. She may go home, we don’t know.

I have a job interview today, and, from the look of things on the website, it may be lower pay and worse conditions than what I have now. What fun.

I installed Ubuntu Budgie on my former Ubuntu MATE partition, and don’t get boot at all, except I can get there with Esc > exit, which brings up the Linux Mint Grub Customizer boot menu and that works.

Our new kitten had his mother visit us. She sat out on the driveway and glared at the house for about an hour. I guess she missed Gremlin, but he’s ours now. Cecil and Narasimha don’t like the new addition, and have not been nice to him yet.

I sent out an email to all active members of Triad Bardic College. Hope it gets response. I need to get out from under my difficulties and get to work on TBC. Also my music.

We’ll be recording (Tony and me) Distrohoppers’ Digest on Wednesday morning. Yay!

Lots of stuff going on. I’m loving my two “new” laptops. I’m having issues dealing with UEFI that I hadn’t dealt with before using Legacy Boot, but I’ll learn.

Sometimes I just get so upset with myself. People try to explain things to me and I just can’t understand it. Although usually there are 3 or 4 people trying to explain it to me at the same time, and I just get confused, even when I fgure out what to try it seems I’m not smart enough to figure it out. Sometimes someone just has to give me line by line instructions. And even then I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can at least describe it to them when it doesn’t work.

And someone is always telling me what I should do. I’m barely coping with life now, but I should add 30 hours of class and study to my life. I just don’t have the energy.

End of whine.

A listener to my podcasts donated a really great laptop computer to me, without asking or even giving me a warning other than that I would be receiving a package from him. I then negotiated with him and swapped an item I had for sale for another computer, better in some ways and what I was looking for. I now have better computers than I have ever had, even though they are a few years old. Everything I ever wanted, from a company I would even want to work for if I could bear the altitude.

I have mostly set up one of them to replace my Lenovo ThinkPad T430, and put that one up for sale on eBay. It probably won’t sell right away, as I put the price a little on the high side and had bad pictures, also I should probably put Windows on it for a quicker sale.

In so many ways, my short podcasting career has been such a blessing. But it does constantly emphasize how poor I am compared to most other computer people. I need a good-paying job. Preferably in computers.

I had a lot of fun doing my monthly Distrohoppers’ Digest podcast yesterday. Then I had to get back to work, applying for whatever I could — jobs, help — to get by the next few months. It was exhausting. Sure wish I could justify podcasting for a living, and making one at it. Well, I have taken a step in that direction, as I now have a Sponsus account so people can do monthly donations to my podcasting work, which will get me more decent gear to help with the podcasts. But it’s back to work today, and I really don’t want to do it.

I got a day off. I was supposed to get 2 days off, but I did take most of Tuesday off with dental problems and my team member has family issues, so I’m going in to work today. I’m planning on being on the next episode of mintCast, although I’m not sure what I will actually contribute other than my dulcet tones. And Wednesday is another episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest. We are more broke than I could imagine. Suzanne is taking a class in income tax preparation, so in a few months she might have a job. We discovered last night that our new printer does a nice job of two-sided printing. We went to Sevierville PNO last night and visited with Rick and Ruth, as we do nearly every month.

My new job, which other than being full time while slated for part time was wonderful, has just gone to part time, starting next week. But my wonderful manager is also gone, canned by our slimeball DM and moved to another store. I don’t have a good read on the new manager yet, but at least I’m finally part time. Even so, the culture at the job was supposed to be “Honesty, Integrity, Courtesy” and has changed to “Watch Your Back”.

Something got me back into wanting to play music, and I instantly found two great songs to learn, one by my oldest friend, Blind Lemming Chiffon, and the other by an old folkie, Dick Pinney. And then I bought the local newspaper (a weekly I haven’t gotten around to buying in a long time) to discover there is a nearby open mic (the last of the year, sad to say). So I’m going out tonight to play, hope it goes well.

I have a lot of life to reassemble which had been sidelined by the full-time-ness of the new job. I’ll need to get back into mintCast, but need to miss one more show to get rested up. The Bardic College is just sitting there doing nothing, but that’s approximately all it had done for years earlier so I can still find a way to resurrect it when I have time to do so.

I’m still a difficult husband. But my difficult wife is figuring it out better as we go along, and we’ve stuck together for nearly 3 years now.

I still have to figure out what to do with this Raspberry Pi I was given, and have to put together a fundraiser for the Distrohoppers’ Digest show. I have a pledge of $50, a donation of $30, only need about $120 more and I’ll have the laptop I really need.

Hope things are going well for whoever may be reading this. Feel free to comment.

Huge Hippo Hugs,
Moss

I survived another week. And while the other part-timer has been hired at my work, the full-timer has to take off next week as vacation or lose her days off. So I’m still working full time yet another week. I’m still on sabbatical from mintCast, and it has impacted the team somewhat. I’m also getting a lot of thank yous and support from listeners of that show. This is very gratifying, and lesses my experience of Impostor Sydrome — I’m actually providing value in some peoples’ lives.

This weekend is not long enough. I’m still very tired after doing mostly nothing on Saturday, But the light at the end of the tunnel has not been switched off yet.

Suzanne may be starting a ta preparer’s class for one of the bit names on Monday. While that won’t pay anything until she graduates and gets hired, it’s a step.

My distrohopping came to a weird point this month, as I have 3 distros loaded which we have not reviewed and deserve to be so, but I can only review one per month. My listeners are voting on which one I get to review. And Episode 004 of Distrohoppers’ Digest exceeded 400 downloads! Episode 005 is well over 200 already.

Getting ready to take a drive in the woods. Hope that helps relax me.