IRL – Page 6

How Can One Be Bored?

Over the last month and change, people all over the world have been self-isolating and/or forced to stay in their homes to stem the tide of the coronavirus. Along with that came torrents of social media post proclaiming how bored people were now that they were confined to their homes.

To that I say… how?

I genuinely don’t understand. Last week I was on vacation, and like most, I spent almost all of that free time at home. However, I had so much going on to keep me busy that I didn’t even make time to write up any blog posts. There are dozens of other things on my to-do list that remain undone, because even when you aren’t losing a third of your day to work, there just isn’t enough time.

Report on the ‘Rona

I wrote a couple weeks ago that I was someone worried about the state of the world, due to the looming threat of the novel coronavirus. That threat is no longer looming, but rather is completely wrecking human society. With over 14.million people infected and 80 thousand dead (that have been reported), it’s not been a good time. That and life as we know it has been so radically altered by the need for social distancing. I can’t help but be concerned about what the fallout is going to look like.

But there’s no way to control how any of this madness is going to play out, and the only thing you can do is try not to get too upset about it, and keep on dealing with each day as it comes. Also, trying to look on the bright side helps a little, so today I’m going to make a short list of all the ways my life has improved thanks to COVID-19.

Gas is now ridiculously cheap. Kind of moot, because I don’t really have anywhere to go, but it’s nice to be able to have a consistently full tank without feeling a financial sting.
My workplace is locked down, meaning no outsiders can enter, and I’m stuck on my floor. So I can’t get away from my desk for lunch, but that’s offset by every day being casual day! Being able to dress comfortably makes going to work every day that much easier, and I don’t have to worry about making sure all my stupid dress clothes are clean and wrinkle-free.
So many people are working from home (or unemployed) now, the busses are basically empty. It’s not a huge save for the ride to work, but the ride home was often standing room only. Now I’m one of maybe six or seven people on the bus, and it is glorious. Roads are also significantly less busy, but like I said before, I’m not driving anywhere anyway.
I’ve finally started to warm up to the idea of pre-ordering fast food via apps. I would still prefer to go in and order my food from a person, but I can’t deny that mobile ordering is darned convenient. Definitely not something I should be getting used to.

And, well, that’s about it for now. I’m sure I’ll start cursing COVID-19 as soon as people I know start getting sick or losing their jobs, but for now I’m just going to make the most of it. Life isn’t going to go back to the way it was for a long, long time, so you’ve really gotta appreciate those little things that much more.

A jorb well done

I don’ t type much about work here, mostly because I like to keep work life and blog life separate. But also because my job isn’t especially exciting, at least from a “stories to tell on the internet” perspective.

But today I want to write a very small blurb about work, because I had a really great day today. I completed two smallish (half-day each) analysis projects that earned big kudos from my bosses, so I’m really, really happy right now.

I usually think of myself as the kind of person who doesn’t really need or want recognition. I prefer to keep behind the scenes. But damned if it doesn’t feel really nice to be told that you’ve done a good job. Especially since I also suffer from crazy-low self esteem, so I’m always very concerned when I turn in work that I’m going to have completely missed the mark and wasted a buttload of time. I actually get super bad anxiety about it and it causes me all sorts of issues.

But today, I did good! Hooray me! Take this moment to feel a little pride, Ryan. You’ve earned it.

Migraine Watch: Mar 16, 2020

You know, my last recorded migraine was in September 2018. That’s really good! A year and a half free of horrible cranium pain? I’ll take it!

But the good times never last. Monday was just another day at work. I was doing my thing, and had just come back from a lunch hour study sesh. I sat down at my workstation, intending to get at ‘er, and then suddenly I noticed that the letters and numbers on the screen were becoming hard to read.

“Oh dammit. I remember this.”

A fun twist to this particular migraine is that I tried to sit through a conversation with my boss as the auras were coming on, and I almost wish that I could have recorded myself trying to explain what was happening to me. I could tell that the words coming out of my mouth weren’t quite right, and so we ended up wrapping up and I went to sit at my desk until it was time to go home.

It was about 2:30 when the auras started to appear, and I think maybe about 4:30 once they had dissipated enough to become functional again. So I got in a solid half-hour of work that afternoon. Not that I could do much about it. I’ll have to refer to my previous notes, but I seem to recall that the aura, in whatever shape it takes, generally hasn’t persisted for two hours. I thought they went away faster, but it’s been so long that I’m not sure.

On the other side of the coin, the actual headache portion wasn’t nearly as bad as I’m used to. I was actually up and functional throughout the rest of the evening, as opposed to getting home and going straight to bed for the night. I made dinner, I played video games, I watched TV. I didn’t dare try to work out, because jostling my head was still a source of major pain.

As for causes? I’m going to pin this one squarely on COVID-19. Mostly because I’ve been uncharacteristically stressed out and worried about it. It’s just… kind of a huge deal. I’ve already detailed many of my thoughts on the pandemic panic, and they haven’t changed appreciably since last week. I did wake up at 1:30 AM on Wednesday morning to a single cough, and then proceeded to freak out for the next two hours over possibly having caught the virus. Mostly because the idea of unintentionally missing two weeks of work gives me serious anxiety. I’m not the kind of person who would typically prescribe myself a chill pill, but these are trying times. Oh and I have a tough final coming up on Monday so that’s not helping any.

I don’t think there’s much else to note here. Aura was aphasia with blurred vision and a little bit of travelling tingliness. Cause was stress almost without a doubt. Aura was extended, but the headache afterward was mild and was mostly gone by the next morning. Overall, not a bad migraine. A little embarrassing, but not bad.

Serious Time

Okay, so it’s not really this blog’s place to talk about Real Issues, it’s a place to talk about fun things. But I think that for posterity, I should take a few moments to discuss my thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic. Best case scenario, it’ll be fun for Future Me to look back on how terribly misinformed I was. Worst case… I’m dead and it’ll be fun for you to look back on how terribly misinformed I was.

COVID-19, as I’ve learned, is a totally new virus that the world was understandably unprepared for. To a degree, I guess. While obviously it’s going to take time to study, understand, and come up with a vaccine, a few news articles/tweets I’ve read have suggested that the infrastructure to get out ahead of something like this just doesn’t exist. Or we reacted too late? I really don’t know. I’m not going to claim to be an expert. It just seems to me that maaaybe this is a good opportunity for governments the world over to be more ready for this kind of catastrohpe.

And I don’t think that catastrophe is hyperbole. While a huge percentage of people who contract the virus do recover, it’s still killed thousands, and those numbers are just going to keep going up. Schools are shutting down, offices are issuing work-from-home mandates, major sports leagues have suspended their seasons, the stock market is crumbling to pieces. The entire country of Italy is closed for business. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like the backstory to a dystopian movie or something. I’m actually a little frightened of how much worse it’s going to get, and what that’s going to mean for human society.

And that’s my main fear. I’ve made it no secret that I’m not terribly fond of the human race, but that doesn’t mean I want to see it suffer like this. And maybe it really won’t be all that bad. Maybe everything I know is just a product of the overreacting that the internet is no fond of. Entirely possible! After all, I’ve only been keeping up with the goings-on from news reports and Twitter. Only one of those is even semi-credible.

But the other thing I worry about is that someone I care about will be afflicted. Myself? Not so much. I’m young(ish), I’m in the best shape of my adult life, and I have no existing medical issues. I’m near the bottom of COVID-19’s hit list. I beat pneumonia as a weak little 9-year-old, I can beat a beefed-up version of it now. (Of course now that I say that, I’m as good as doomed.) But I have a lot of family members who are up in that 65+ range, many with existing health issues. And I genuinely worry for them. I’m hoping for the best, and am ready to help out in any way that I can, but I’m still deeply concerned about all of this.

Anyway, it sounds like this is really all just getting started. Like, it’s going to keep seriously affecting the world for months to come. I’ll admit that I didn’t take it very seriously at first, thinking it would pass fairly quickly and that it was just media blowing something out of proportion. But now “experts” (I put experts in scare quotes because I haven’t investigated the source of these claims) are projecting a death toll of over a million in the United States alone, so… yeah. Maybe it’s time to stop joking about people hoarding toilet paper, and start being one of the people hoarding toilet paper.

A dream, that I am living

Last fall, I was presented with an opportunity to live out a life-long dream of mine: to dress up in a mascot suit and do mascot things. For the sake of preserving said mascot’s secret identity, I won’t say exactly which organization I have been mascotting for, but I will hint that it would surprise literally nobody.

Since that time, I’ve continued to don the costume for numerous different events: sports matches, fundraisers, meet & greets, etc. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve learned from observing other mascots that I’ve got a lot of room for improvement. Even behind the mask, I’ve had a somewhat reserved personality. I wave and pose and sometimes even dance a bit, but I don’t think that’s really enough. There are antics to be had! Being animated and outgoing is the core purpose of mascot!

Another thing I’ve learned is that I’m woefully out of touch with today’s youth. This is no surprise, but still makes me a little sad. This mostly comes in the form of me not knowing any Fortnite dances, thus disappointing many teenagers who shout indecipherable requests at me. I like the little kids who run up to give me hugs and high-fives, though. One kid even told me that he sees me in commercials all the time, which made me happy, because I knew that at least one kid out there actually watches TV instead of just YouTube.

I’ve also been doing this pro-bono, giving up my precious, precious time for no material or financial gain. I was given a gift card once, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it and have never asked about being compensated. I like being able to consider this as volunteering. It’s not really a “for the good of the community” kind of volunteering, so I’m not sure if it would make a good bullet point on a resume, but it’s still something I can be proud of myself for doing.

I guess there isn’t too much else to say on the subject. Even everything I’ve typed up so far doesn’t really need to be said, but I figure it’s an interesting little footnote to my life. And, I’ve got this blog… so I might as well make use of it. If nothing else, it may help to bore any would-be cyber-stalkers away.

Ryan’s Big Weekend Adventure!

You know what I didn’t do over last weekend? Study enough.

“Well duh” you all say.

What I did do, however, was all sorts of other things. I want to write about them briefly.

Saturday I got a haircut. There’s a story there, but it’s probably fairly embarrassing for a party who is not me, which makes me feel like I ought not to tell it. So I won’t. Sorry for the tease.

After breakfast I did some coursework for a while. Good old responsible me. I took a break after a couple hours to go visit with my grandparents. They gave me several tins of baking and couple jars of soup. Nice! There’s another mildly embarrassing story here that I don’t think I’m entitled to tell to the internet at large. Aren’t you upset that I’ve gotten so considerate in my old age?

I went back home to do some more book learning, which lasted about an hour. All in all, I made it through about a quarter of the homework questions assigned in a cumulative three hours. That’s not great. I hate school and cannot wait for it to be done forever.

Over the course of the weekend, I “snuck in” just enough video games time to finish playing the Squaresoft PS1 classic, Threads of Fate. You’ve probably never heard of this game, because Squaresoft put out like a billion RPGs on the PS1, so a few of them had to fall through the cracks.

Threads of Fate is an alright game. It’s a dual-protagonist game, and the plot isn’t the most creative, but it’s fun. One character has you working towards world domination, while the other is searching for a way to revive his friend. The characters are mostly archetypes, but they have big personalities and a really good script, so I ended up liking most of them quite a lot. Also the soundtrack is darn good, and the graphics are top-tier for a 3D game on the original Playstation.

However! The gameplay is… questionable. The controls, physics, and hit detection are all just a little bit off. This makes any precision-platforming sections much harder (and frustrating) than they ought to be. Combat is mostly a non-issue, but several bosses are stupidly hard until you figure out the right rhythm to beating them. Overall, it’s not a game that needs a remaster so much as a tune-up.

I also frittered away a whole three hours on Pokémon GO on Sunday, as it was January’s Community Day. Got a whole stable full of shiny Piplups, and that’s really about all. While I was out, I also got to try all of the fancy new “dream donuts” that Tim Horton’s is currently selling. I’ll type up a full thing about them (probably), but the TLDR is that they were not so good that I was able to justify having eaten three donuts in a single sitting. Oink oink.

After all that, I ended Sunday evening the same way I always do: playing an hour of Rocksmith, then watching TV while I do my laundry. This week was devoted catching up on some AGDQ runs, while at the same time trying to fill out a little bit of my Pokédex in Pokémon Shield. I’m at 387 of 400. Almost there!

And that was my weekend. If you think I sound like an incredibly boring individual… you’re right! And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Brain Drain

I’m back in school again… in the middle of January. Thankfully it’s not an especially long walk between work and campus, because man is it way too cold to be outside. (Truth be told, I usually have to wait longer for the bus than that walk takes.)

What’s really killing me, though, is that it’s only been one week and my brain is already fried from the extra usage. Like, by Tuesday night I was already completely exhausted, and it hasn’t let up. Maybe the weekend will help, but I’m not overly hopeful (since I have to do a bunch of coursework.)

So yeah. Blah. This is a dumb post with no point. I’m now LiveJournalling.

Tablet life, v1.00001

I won a new tablet at a social a couple weekends ago, a Samsung Galaxy Tab E Lite. What a mouthful. I really haven’t used it for much yet besides learning that mobile games are still garbage even on a bigger screen.

I’m currently toying with the concept of using it for blogging (I wrote this and the previous post on it), though I’m legitimately surprised at just how bad I am at typing on the thing. I’ve needed to go back and correct at least every second word, often more than once. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a lot lf tkme to get usdd to it, but I dkn’t type nearly as pooorly on my tkny pjkne.

I purposely didn’t correct that last sentence, in hopes of really driving home my point.

I was likewise shocked to learn how terrible this tablet’s camera is. That was what finally got me to do the research and learn that this is a tablet originally released in 2014, so it’s barely newer than my piece of garbage Kobo Arc 7. It came at the right price, but man… I was hoping for a slightly more pronounced upgrade.

Ah, I shouldn’t complain. The thing works, and that alone puts it miles ahead of the Kobo. But I still don’t think I can reasonably use this for blogging.

Woes of the Impulse Buyer

As part of being a responsible adult, I set myself a 2018 budget for video games. I know they’re my largest non-essential expense (if you don’t consider internet essential), and that I am more than willing to say “I shouldn’t buy this, but f**k it” when a new game catches my eye.

Having already factored in the purchases of Pokémon Let’s Go and Super Smash Bros Ultimate in the coming months… I’ve hit my allowed spending limit. Dang! I mean, I actually have $9 left to spend, but close enough. There are several indie games on Switch that are calling out to me, and they’re all significantly more than nine bucks.

Anyway, the point is that I’m not going to buy them. Unless they go on sale for under $9. Or someone randomly gives me money as a gift (which I don’t count toward the budget). But aside from those very specific situations, I will stand strong! I must! And now that it’s down in writing for the world to see, I’m basically forced to hold myself to it.

“So,” you ask, “what was the total budget for the year anyway?”

I’m not telling. I’d rather leave it up to your imagination. But if you go over the monthend wrap-ups and count up all the games I played that were released in 2018, you could probably come up with a pretty close figure!