Eyes go wide
Watching the spin
Watching what is fast seem to slow
To stop
To stutter
Perception made false
Reality isn’t what we choose
It is what is despite our choices
What is real whether you believe or not
Whether you need or not
Whether you choose or not
Only what remains despite our desire
Can we stand upon
Mistake not the shifting sand for solid ground
Month: May 2021
A world writ small
In the land of spiders there are 3 gods.
The elder who ignores our presence unless his divine eyes finds us in the world. Then, he smites us with fury. Often leaving us for dead while we crawl crippled from the field to die quietly in the hidden web we dared from. If you are quick, if you are stealthy you may pass him by and find the darkness of the dormant fire pit or the loud warm corner where you may feast. Where you may live your days without sorrow.
His is a land of harsh truth coupled with blind anger. Be wary and quick.
The next is the Youngling. Named spider friend whose domain is filled with untouched nooks and crannies. He welcomes and speaks in the tongue of the gods, which we know not. We can feel his benevolence but be warned. If you ascend into his spaces, while he will attempt to move you from that place without harm, still he is a god. And when gods intervene, often we die. Though he may attempt to save, his will is so much greater than our own. And we will quail back, into the danger he attempts to save us from or he may fail and we are crushed under the harsh weight of kindness. And while his spaces are safe, be warned. His are not the only legs which walk there.
This brings us to the Doom. The elder queen who breaks us. Whose baleful sight heralds our death. Whose poison spreads to our food and who kills us in turn. She destroys our webs. Destroys our bodies. Destroys our clutches. She is Death and the doom of worlds. The younger will attempt to intercede, and you must be quick like the harsh wind, for she is the stronger and he will fail. But with that bit of time we may still live.
Thus are the gods of Death, Time, and Nature. Their domain is one of shelter but of the truth of cruelty in the world. Nature nourishes and aids, but it is at times destruction. Time kills slowly but often on swift wings. And Death waits above all, a force without reason or mercy.
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Adventures of a computer worker (conclusion)
After taking a nap after work, as you do, I woke to find my new power supply was awaiting me. This time, I checked the box over thoroughly to make sure it was what I ordered. Platinum, check. 750 watt, check. And…(sigh of relief) modular. Triple check and all good.
I unboxed it and made sure that all was advertised and finding it was, set to comparing the plug placement. If the arrangement is too different from my current setup then I would end up doing some recabling anyway. While the arrangement is a little different, it is a better setup and will make it easier for me to seat the cables. All good.
I open my case, being careful to detach the fans at the midpoint rather than at the motherboard. No removing the radiator this time, thanks. I unseat the cables and it sucks just as much as I remember. Hurting my fingers yet again. I console myself with the thought that it’s just one more time.
I unscrew the old supply and remove the now mostly dead object. The fan stopped spinning midway through my work day yesterday and I’ve been ramping up the anxiety since then. I grab the new psu and align it so that the fan will spin and intake air properly. Then I put all of the cables in. They click into place much easier than the did with my old psu, except for the last one.
This is the cable that had a slight offset arrangement from the original psu and it slides in reluctantly. I push and pull but the cable won’t seat to 100%. Fuck. So I trace where this cable goes and… It’s to the DVD drive that I haven’t used in 4 years. So, fuck it. Good enough. But I’m not going to screw everything back in place without testing it. Because wouldn’t that just take the cake, get it all set up and it doesn’t work? No. Gotta test it. So I plug in the power cord and the passive lights come up. I set the power rocker to on and I hit the power button.
It boots right up…but the fan doesn’t turn on.
I check the documentation and it says that it has to reach a 40°C operating temperature to flip on the fan. So ok I put my hand to the exhaust vent, and it’s a little warm but not very. Huh. So I kick on 5 simultaneous instances of blue stacks and then kick on a graphics intensive game(Vermintide 2). After an hours worth of running the fan kicks on.
I have to check to make sure it’s spinning because it makes zero sound. Heavy sigh of relief.
I shut it all down and put the side panel back. I’m careful and don’t accidentally pull the fan cable like last time and get the midway cable reseated. Then I set it up in its normal position and boot it up. Just testing that the case fans come on, and they do! I shut down again and go to sleep. Anxiety averted at least for now, I find hours of sleep that I normally am wide awake for. Hopefully this means my sleep schedule will be back on track.
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Adventures of a computer worker
My computer is the primary source for entertainment, news, work, and just general time wasting. So when my power supply fan started grinding and stopping, I stopped and assessed. I can’t afford a new system right now. But I could replace the PSU. But I’ve never done that before.
I’m lucky in that my current PSU is modular. So as long as I got a similar PSU that was also modular, I’d be ok.
So, I did some research and found my original purchase was for a 500 watt silverstone Gold. All good, I found a good price for a 650 silverstone platinum. It got delivered on Thursday and I unhooked the cables on my power supply, bruising the crap out of my fingertips in the process. Those cables hadn’t moved in 6 years.
So I get the power supply out and I immediately notice that it is larger than the one I bought. No big deal, it’s been awhile, maybe technology has changed. Then I see that it is a 750 watt supply…shit. I’ll need to return the one I bought because I’m looking for parity here. So I put it all back, bruising my fingertips some more to get it reseated and screwed back in. I had taken the opportunity to really blow the dust out of every nook in the Psu and while I had dusted it just recently, more dust blew out.
When I reinstalled it, the fan was working fine, no grind and no stopping. So great. Maybe I had more time to replace the psu. I returned the psu(power supply unit) and got my money back as credit. I located the right size, a 750 watt platinum silverstone modular. It’s set to arrive on Saturday. Ok, I can eak it out till then.
On Friday the computer works fine. No fan problems but the fan wobble is back. Ok, I can deal. By Saturday the fan is grinding and I need to replace the psu. The new one comes, it says it is 750 and I pull the old psu, further bruising my fingertips. I open the box for the new one….and it’s not modular. It’s fixed. Which means I would need to rerun all the cabling in my computer to use this psu…and it’s bronze instead of platinum. It’s the equivalent of buying a car that is supposed to be an automatic suv and getting a manual gremlin. Fuck!
So I go to put the psu back again. More finger bruising and while I’m putting the case side back and plugging the case fans back in, the power cable to the fans which connects to the motherboard comes loose. That connector slides underneath the radiator for my liquid cooling setup. And it’s impossible to plug back in without unseating the radiator and fan setup. So I remove that, plug it back in. Then forget how the radiator was situated and spend 5 minutes figuring out what side is up on it. Then get it installed. Everything is hooked back up and plugged back in. Second time in as many days.
I setup the return of the wrong psu and get a new one ordered. It arrives on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, the fan continues to grind and it full stops. That’s super bad. Like potential to catch on fire bad. I turn off my computer and leave it off. I need it for work on Monday and Tuesday.
I place the whole rig on it s side so that I can monitor the psu fan and kick start it my manual rotation with a non reactive poker. In this case a long q tip(the wooden end) which I use to clean other electronics. All day Monday I’m filled with anxiety. I CANNOT afford a new system. I have my huge standing fan pointed directly at the intake for air on the psu. The fan stops multiple times throughout the work day. And I manage to kick start it each time. But I can tell, its on its last legs.
I turned off my system as soon as I got through the work day. And I will do the same tomorrow. If I dont get the right one tomorrow, I’m gonna break down. Then I’m gonna have to go to best buy and hope. Because there is no way that the psu lasts the week.
So a ton of stress, but at least I finished 2 books in my reading back catalogue.
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A little rant about religion
I was just reading, as you do, and I read a line that struck me. At closing, he said, “…I was pretending I was on a mission from God.”
And my immediate thought was, you are.
If you follow a god of any sort then what else would you be doing in this life?
I’m a pretty hardcore believer in gods and owe fealty to my god in particular. And that colors my actions.
I use the Bender analogy from Futurama. In it, he’s floating in space and a tiny civilization springs up. He tries to help them. But he’s too vast, too large, and his actions cause huge effects which have many unintended consequences.
So, what’s a god to do?
Well, we are what. Those of us who have faith are charged with acting in big and small ways which reflect the will of our deity.
It’s one of the reasons I have trouble with modern religions. People are always praying for something or asking their deity for something. Faith isn’t a transaction. You don’t give them faith and they give you what you want. They don’t exist to serve you.
You serve them. You act in faith for them. If you wish to pray for things then answer your own prayer. You are here as the will of your god. Act like it. Without looking for benefit. In faith.
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Song of the Day
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I may sound vindictive, but I just think of myself as a realist
I think that there may be an impression, for those who have read my writing for a while, that I am a fighter. That I would react to an in your face fight and come out on top. This is not the case.
Oh, I’ll fight back if hit. And I’ll fight in the moment if it’s neccesary. But, it’s with full knowledge that I will likely lose. I’ve been in my share of fights when I was younger. Fights that I continually lost. I would change tactics. I would make plans. But I would lose. I have a broken nose that never set right. Leading to a slightly crooked face, a little canted to the left. But I snore lightly if at all, so jokes on them, they probably corrected something for me.
As I grew up, I would still fight because I had a temper. Still do, but now it’s muffled behind layers of self control and fail safes. I would just pick my battles and the grounds of those battles better. Always with an eye towards victory.
I’ve learned that fighting is sometimes neccesary. But that losing rarely is. As long as you choose the battle. Nowadays, in the moment, well…I’ll still get my ass beat. I have no illusions in that regard. But, afterwards….afterwards is another story. I don’t forget. And forgiveness is something I apply only to those who deserve it.
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Song of the day-Being stared into
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Waking up without waking
Overthinking they say
But is that really a thing
Sometimes grinding away at the same thought
I think I’m trapped in a loop of it
But really it’s not overthinking
It’s my brain
Feeding me
Equal parts intuition and lies
They mix together into a slurry of the possible
Always painting everything with a tattered grey patina
It’s not overthinking
It’s a brain on fast forward looking for patterns from nothing
Our brains instinct to create patterns
Easy to lie to yourself when you don’t have any puzzle pieces
Overthinking
Like that’s the problem
Like analyzing a situation is the problem
Like knowing how you will act or plan to act is the problem
When really it is only when that paralyzes you into inaction
That there is an issue
Only when you embrace the false narrative which you can’t possibly know without outside corroboration
Can you truly be harmed
But it’s oh so simple to fall into that trap
Bad habits reinforcing bad patterns
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Proust was paid by the word
I wasn’t really thinking about Mothers day this year. I got my mom a present, of course, and wished Happy Mothers day to all the people who are Mother’s and I have contact info for. But I haven’t taken it seriously since my Nana(grandmother) died. I used to always buy her flowers and a stuffed animal. She kept all of them on her bed. And that’s quite alot of stuffed animals when you count Mothers day, her birthday and Christmas.
I smelled the faintest whiff of hot fresh made tortillas. Imaginary, of course. She made the best tortillas. They were thin and buttery but not too buttery and we used to have a ton of them. She cooked until the last month of her life. She was amazing.
She raised five kids on her own. Kids who went out into the world and made something for themselves. Firefighters, city construction crew, Chip assembly managers, Social workers, and accountants. Some holding multiple hats. All with families of their own.
She held us together. Not just her sons and daughters but also her grandchildren. The cousins as I refer to us.
We had Thanksgiving and Christmas; Mother’s Day and Easter. When the cousins were younger we had summer camping trips. We were tight knit. Close.
But that’s mostly gone now. The cousins all have their own families. And the tight knit bonds our parents share never quite translated down to us. For us, it was Nana that tied us together. She babysat many of us. We would play games in her halls.
She always wanted to feed us. She didn’t have much but there was always food. And it was delicious. Those recipes are mostly gone. Our parents have one or two, here or there, but it’s all gone.
At her funeral, I couldn’t attend the wake. It was too much. I was sitting outside on a stone bench. I could hear the music and people talking. But inside, it felt like I was drowning in their sorrow and I couldn’t deal.
I thought that I had a handle on her death. She didn’t go quick. I was letting her go for literally years. Knowing that the inevitable was coming.
She died surrounded by her family. She died protected by her faith. And I know, not with faith, but with certainty that she made it into her heaven. She died as well as any of us can.
And still, walking to her grave. To have her be buried. I cried. I almost had to lean on my older brother because I couldn’t see through the tears.
I had to hang back from the burial. That wasn’t her. What made her, her was gone.
But still I remember. Days like this, when my brain betrays me. When I remember her singing in Spanish. When I can smell tortillas, which I’ll never taste again. Nothing is quite right.
Still, I remember. She’d always take one of my bears with her when she was in the hospital. I wonder if they gave her one to keep her safe. I wonder a lot of things.
But that’s life. We get very few answers to match up against our pain.
Just one more spin on the wheel. Who knows for how long.
Pelgris 