different tables

Today was my first real full day off in several months. It was great. The fact that my computer has stopped freezing up didn't hurt my mood, either.

I've had many (far too many) days where I didn't work over the last year, but most of them have been quickly soaked up by moving, or coping with various unfortunate events. Today I got in some actual relaxation, and with it some much-needed time to reflect.



One of the things that I've realized is that my 5-year separation from Ying has given me an intense appreciation of fairly banal activities. For example, cooking ramen, making a grocery list, and setting the table are not things that most people would consider "awesome". I imagine that soon, some of the novelty will fade. However, after years of feeling kind of stuck in a situation (and the last few months, that feeling has been very intense), it's really noticeable how much basic things like that give me a feeling of control over my environment.

Having Ying here is certainly the bulk of this feeling. Leaving out the bumps along the road, being apart when I was in school was sort of normal, an opportunity to prove that I was serious about our relationship. Being apart when I moved to Jersey was unfortunate, but a necessary part of my life's path. While I was at Origin, it was a quest. By the time I was at Ninjaneering, the distance was a constant ordeal. When I finally got here to Cambridge, it was a cosmic joke. So, now that she's back, there's several years worth of weight lifted from my daily concerns. I no longer need to figure out how and when I'm going to get across the country, or drag her. I see her every day - it's only been a week of this so far, so my subconscious hasn't fully accepted that I'm not on some kind of trip yet, and I'm not going to be returning to somewhere else...

There are other things, too, though. After years of eating at my desk, I have a table specifically for eating. Ying doesn't notice anything particularly positive about this, since her family would routinely eat in different rooms, but something from my childhood makes me view it as a sign of being well. The only times I'd eat in my own room as a child was when I was seriously ill or one of my parents was. The fact that as an adult I mostly ate by myself was when I was depressed didn't help.

This post is more rambling than I thought it would be. The point I'm trying to make is - I know many of you out there in internet-land have been worried about me. I'm doing much better. Not only am I much better, but I'm appreciating the fact that I'm much better.

Maybe the best thing about being back in a relatively sane situation was that the dramatic increase in my mental health has enabled me to fiercely concentrate on my work. I was starting to have real fears that I'd "lost it" in terms of getting productive coding done, and that the rest of my life was going to be a constant bitter struggle to force a few LOC out of my ten daily hours with emacs. If anything being depressed was more to blame for my slowdown than I gave it credit for; I've been able to consistently sit down and do something useful every day this week.

what can I even say about this?

I think it speaks for itself.

continuing catalogue

You know, "handwriting on the wall" might have been a better title for this blog.

Yesterday kazekage continued to crash unpredictably (twice in the middle of work) despite numerous tweaks to the kernel command line and several recompiles.

I think I've got it fixed, but who can tell? It ran for 24 hours yesterday without crashing, then crashed every 2 or so for a while. The IDE cable (which has now been thrown out) was probably not bad, but the one I'm using now is 40-pin, so I need to get a new one.

Also, while Ying was driving my car yesterday, the right rear tire blew out, fomenting yet another unexpected expense and inconvenience. At least she got it the tune-up that it needed.

As Promised

kazekage in action.



("kazekage" means "wind shadow" - the character is the kanji for "wind", located appropriately enough above the air intake.)

normalcy

So, the KVM appears to be not a total disaster. got a 2-port as well. When I first set it up the ghosting was so bad that my monitor couldn't autoconfigure, but some jiggering with the cables and monitor settings got it to acceptable parameters. It just so happens I had gold-plated monitor cables in reserve which fit the requirements of the new switch (M2M) and enough type-A USB connectors to get up and running. The gold-plated cables seem to produce visibly superior results to my old KVM, even though this is not such a well-reviewed one.

That's my theme for today: no total disasters. I think it's working out.

(By the way, did I mention that did a cool little case detail for me? I'll update with a photo later.)