work

Just one more hour

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I’m procrastinating. Procrastinating going to sleep because tomorrow I have to work. If I had the day off, I’d be sound asleep.

Because that’s the trade off. Sleep means less time for myself. Less reading, less me.
Unless I’m relaxed, in which case, it means dreams and other lives.

But I’m not relaxed. Tomorrow I work. I have it better than many. I work from home. My work is remote and its all mind, little physical. I have a good boss, a good team.
But my time, my life is not my own. And that’s hard.

Vacations don’t help. They merely serve as counterpoint to work days. Throwing into stark relief the difference between my own recognizance and work hours.

The truth is I’m burned out. Not by work necessarily, but by life. This endless grind just to exist. I want more than that.

But find myself tied down by responsibility and reality in equal measure.

I feel like screaming, STOP!!!
Hoping the world will just freeze. And for a time, I can just be. So I can heal.

But I don’t think it will ever happen. I’m too burnt out for hope.

The endless grey

Pelgris9 Comments

I want to write something epic that grabs you by the heart and only let’s go once you are bleeding.
But I’m too empty now.
Too tired from working long hours
From still being at work 12 hours after I started.
Instead, I’m taking a beat to write this.
To decry and lament being unable to reach that aspirational dream of you, my dear readers reacting with the emotions that overwhelm me
But which instead lay dead like a caricature of a fish
Painting the page in reek
What is it to yearn to connect but only to find empty?
How do I after years of pouring out my lifeblood find I have so little left?
Is it burnout or just being burned?
Wondering if I’ll be able to steal some time before I sleep and it all starts again?
I’m trapped in this mess of a life
Some things cherished
Some things bad
And most just blah
Trapped by my own desires
By my own hand
What way could anyone see, when the path is empty, all
Destinations equidistant

Adventures of a computer worker (conclusion)

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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.

Adventures of a computer worker

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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.

Floating in the too wide ocean

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End of day
Tired and aching
Arm radiates pain
Slow down
Molten glass
Past progress
Ideas from the times before
Playlist? Or poetry
Whichever costs the lesser
Each word pulled out
Leaving exhaustion to funnel echos
Too loud
Too quiet
Sleep weighs heavy
Uncomfortable but fading in the dubious comfort of the office
Bed calls out
But people there
Too loud, too much
And wanting aches just fading
Into frantic dream
Lost in these moments
Without

A hug may be required, but not yet

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All relationships are hard. They require a personal commitment to another person to be available to that person. To talk, not just when it’s convenient. To think of others who are important to you even if circumstances change and you aren’t able to be by their side.

And that’s difficult. It requires making the conscious choice to take time out and use it to maintain your relationship. I’m not always great about that. I’m aware of it and I try to work against my impulse to isolate and hurt instead of addressing the problem.

And in these times where isolation is literal life and death, it behooves us to use the technology we have to reach out and maintain those relationships. What are we fighting for if not each other?

This isn’t a choice

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Stress doesn’t make for great artistic endeavors
People say starving artist likes its a good thing
Like hunger and strife makes art
That flame out make it or die passion works
Occasionally
Just enough to make it seem real
Enough that it leaves a blood trail leading to LA and NYC
Enough that doe eyed innocents are fed to the blades of the art world
And occasionally one makes it out and occasionally that work is significant enough to actually last instead of making a profit
But art is rarely popular or profitable in the time frame its born in
But it still needs to be
To be painted
To be sung
To be written
To be performed
And that means blood must be spilled
But it’s always the artists blood
It’s always the balance between an art world that glorifies the new and tattered
As if it did not create the atmosphere which kills art itself
And the desire to make rent in a world not built for dreams
Not even small ones
Like wanting what the next day holds
Like eating regular meals while not depending on family to thicken up the margins
Like having the choice to make art
We are burning our dreams for warmth
And eventually we run out
So we burn our blood
And when we are too full of ashes
We fade
Becoming the grey
Our voices lost
Forgotten
As if we never were