Listening to the arcology podcast while I wait to talk to my doctor. Reminding me that I need to sort out some Shadowrun stuff.

Didn’t sleep well last night. Fell asleep early, but woke up after a few hours, took a few more hours until I could get back to sleep.

(more…)

It seems like I’ve partially recovered from the Sunday crash I experienced. The numbness in my fingers has gone away. This is something that pops up from time to time, so may have been incidental to the actual issue. Until about 2 am, the feeling in my finger tips kept me awake.

Last night, I was up every few hours thirsty and needing to use the bathroom. A couple of times, I needed to throw the pillows in the dryer before going back to sleep.

The facial tingling is still there though.

I’ll see the doctor tomorrow morning. After that, I’ll know more.

Well, it’s November again. And people are doing nanowrimo again.
November is usually a pretty brutal month for me.

This time, not so much, I don’t think.

So, I’ll give it a shot.

For the longest time, I’ve had difficulty in defining what my beliefs in a format that I was able to convey to others. All language is layered with context and nuance, and I found that when I tried to adapt or adopt philosophical terms or concepts as a method of creating a short hand or context for my personal beliefs, I would inadvertently attach some baggage that I hadn’t intended or anticipated. For the while I referred to my belief system as the phrase sentimental nihilism, as it seemed to share some common elements with the nihilistic philosophy, though taken in an unconventional direction, hence the sentimental. While these two terms conveyed the basic concept, they also brought in a certain distrust from people who had had negative experiences with individuals who used their nihilism to excuse character flaws or life choices. There was also a certain misunderstanding of how the term sentimental was being used. I had been using it to refer to the concept sentimental value, something that was often unclear. Tonight, while insomnia prevented my sleeping, I pondered various alternative phrases and one came to mind. I am actively resisting entropic principles. Perhaps I am just resistant to entropy, but that doesn’t quite feel right. It doesn’t encompass the beliefs. The entropic principle is that over time, things age and decay, unless they are maintained. Some would call this opposition to entropy the negentropic agent. Perhaps I am a negentropist.

Originally written about a year ago, just prior to the creation of this blog, and never imported into it, strangely, unlike other older posts. 

Minimal Sleep, Bad Dreams, and possible neuro-chemical shifts.

There is a small chance that today might be my last day at my current job. It’s actually probably vanishingly small, but right now the little voice in the back of my head that warns me about such things won’t let me forget it. (No, I don’t mean I hear voices, I mean I have a recurring doubt. Excuse the turn of phrase/hyperbole.)

Anyone close to me knows that I’ve got a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication, something I’ve been taking for a while, to help deal with certain things in my life that I’ve had to accept that I can’t change. I could get into them, but right now, they aren’t overly relevant to the matter at hand.

They were costing me around $300 a year, because of my medical deductible. My family doctor, being aware of this, recently switched me to a different medication. I’m not entirely sure this was the right idea. I’d been offered to switch over to the generic, which would have saved me a fair bit of money, but instead I switched to something else. In the same family apparently. In theory, I should have done more research before consenting to this switch. I should have at least asked a few people I know who’ve done some reading. I didn’t bother though. A few weeks back, my supply of the generic had been used up and so I started on the new stuff. I’m not sure if there are any practical differences, or if I’m just being paranoid if there might be. Either way, that’s one ingredient in this recipe. The possibility of neuro-chemical change, and the associated Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Next we have the dreams. I dreamed that I was going to a conference on sexuality, with a pass provided to me by Reive. He’d given me one of the ordinary guest passes to get past the door. This is in fact pretty standard, when I’m volunteering, I don’t usually bother getting the volunteer ID. And in the past, this hasn’t been a problem. Usually the fact that I’m pulling my weight means that security, venue staff and other attendees understand that we aren’t bothering with the formalities, that there is an “arrangement” or an “understanding”, there just isn’t paperwork for it, because there usually isn’t a reason for it. In the dream, I was feeling pretty alienated, partially because I was being treated as one of the gawking rubes, or as a wannabee, rather than someone who’d been part of things. Partially, this relates to my own fears of alienation and exclusion, and partially this is something that I’ve seen happen. And partially this is my ego and my vanity, seeing myself as a part of something when I’m probably not all that vital to the enterprise.

In the dream, when security had “stamped” me, they’d included notes that I was a security risk. In the dream, it had been done with yellow highlighter that was visible under the black light, and somehow I hadn’t noticed. When I’d been trying to catch up with people I’d dealt with in the past, either security would check the notes and bar me access, or I’d get blown off. When trying to network with new people, similar things. I caught on eventually and was in the process of trying to find Reive to get the matter sorted out when I woke up.

I woke up about an hour before my usual alarm time. I’d fallen asleep roughly 4-6 hours after my usual bed time. I’ve had about 3-5 hours of sleep, and I suspect I’m probably going to be in that state that I’ve come to refer to as sleep depraved. It’s a higher energy, highly impulsive state. Not really a good state for a call centre job, though it’s served me well in certain tasks in the past. How long I’ll be able to maintain functionality, I’m not sure.

It would probably be wisest for me to call in sick today, except I don’t feel that that is an option. There isn’t really anyone able to cover for me at work, not without someone taking on a fair amount of overtime. Like 5-8 hours worth. A few weeks back, after I’d had a cavity filled, I’d taken the night off, as I’d been unable to talk for a bit and then more pain than I’d expected. I probably could have worked part of the shift, but didn’t. I feel guilty about that.

So, that’s the recipe. Combine it with the events that I obliquely referenced yesterday, and you’ve got something interesting. Something the voice in the back of my head is telling me might be a disaster. Maybe that’s just pessimism. Maybe it’s fatalism. Maybe it’s my fear of failure motivating me to turn possible failure into a disaster, as a form of ego defense. I’m not really sure.

And I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it, beyond a cup of coffee and a hot shower.

24 hours later, I’m considering whether or not to post this. After I wrote it up initially, I hit the draft button, so I’d be able to post it later, after I’d reviewed it, as I wasn’t sure I trusted my judgement at the time.

In fact, that’s a big part of my concerns, is that I constantly question my judgement. Part of this is being aware of consent culture and how some of the assumptions that have developed are toxic and dangerous. Part of it is probably just paranoia, though the difference between paranoia and situational awareness is a debate for another day.

As it stands right now, I survived the day, didn’t get into any conflicts, managed to function reasonably well, and I am feeling much more functional today.

With regards to posting this, on one hand, there is information in this post that could be used as ammunition against me, such as my mental health status, and some would say it’s foolish to post such things in a place where people can easily acquire it to use it against you. On the other hand, I don’t think there is really anything here that would surprise anyone who knows me, so I don’t really see a reason not to post it. At the very least, I can at least claim the virtue of honesty in this case.

Dimestore and I should record some segments for the arcology podcast. We live lives too chaotic for regular podcasts, so this would be a way to test out some of the basics, and its on a topic we can spend hours discussing.

Shadowrun.

So, the other day, I decided to buy myself an e-reader. After considering a few options, I decided on a kobo. Figured I should go with the Canadian option, with all things being equal.

I like the way it displays text, and I’m pretty happy with how easy it is to load books onto it, when it’s plugged in. I’ve yet to get the wireless remote loading functionality working, at least for books I’ve not bought through the kobo store.

Book prices seem a bit high, but that’s probably because I figure books should be slightly cheaper without the whole printing process. That’s probably a different discussion though.

I’ve opened up an account on goodreads, to try to track things a bit better and get some better recommendations.

A few years back, I was working for staffing company, on loan to a large company, in a division that provided technical support for their point of sale devices, which were installed at retail locations. The division I was in was entirely POS support, specifically for this particular retail chain.

The company had some odd policies, and seemed to believe that their reputation and the chance to be convert from a contact employee into a staffer was all the incentive required to ensure productivity. The conversion rate was something like 1% per year, so I didn’t exactly agree, and I’m fairly sure I wasn’t alone in that. You have a few who wanted to chase that dream, but most of my coworkers were pretty slack.

I’m an ex security goon, and so I’ve got certain expectations of right and wrong. When I was on a call with one of the employees at the retail store, and I overheard him talking to his buddy about how the manager had left the computer unlocked and they could see all the rates, I passed that information along to my supervisors. Maybe that’s a dick move, but if you’re going to do something like that, don’t talk about it while you’ve got an open phone line that is being recorded.

So, I was the only guy there who had a kill count. (Employee terminated as a result of your actions.) I’m not sure if that was a good thing or not. This relates to the story, because my third kill, was embezzlement and included jail time.

There was an LPO officer from one of the stores who called in a few times, and we developed a bit of rapport. I liked the guy, so when he called in with a strange issue and a gut feeling, I took it seriously.

He’d had one of his employees comment to him offhandedly that a customer had purchased a TV with a $1000 gift card earlier than day, and he wanted me to check on the providence of the gift card.

So I logged into our interface, confirmed the balance had been a grand, and then decided to dig a bit deeper. It was 7pm on a Sunday night, and my supervisor had gone home at 6pm. I gave him a quick ping on his company issued texting account, and then a call on his cell, but he wasn’t picking up. I checked our “manual”, and there was nothing in it that would really qualify. So I took the initiative and decided to see what I could figure out.

I put in a query to our backend team, and got them to provide me with some logs from the terminals. Together, we managed to piece the plot together. An employee had found that there was a way to generate gift cards on an account that was set up for converting grandfathered rewards programs into the new program. In theory, it had been taken offline, but it still existed in the system, and he’d found it and decided to create a few gift cards using it. He’d created a small gift card, less than a $100 and tried it out. A few weeks later, he’d created a larger one. A bit after that, he’d created several more gift cards. After that, he’d started selling the gift cards.

All told, he’d generated about 34k worth of gift cards, and about $1200 had been used before it had been brought to my attention. I’d locked down the account, preventing the remaining 32k from being used.

A week or two later, I heard back from the LPO. The employee who’d accepted the $1000 gift card had been given a 3K bonus, 10% of the embezzled funds that we’d recovered. The LPO seemed rather upset about that, since he felt that I was the one who deserved the 3K, since I’d done the actual work in catching the guy, and the guy who’d received the money hadn’t done a damn thing. But, since I didn’t work for the retail chain and the LPO was expected to recover the stolen funds, we weren’t eligible.

Therefore, it went to the guy who’d promoted the investigation, even if he’d just been laughing about how weird it was and the LPO had overheard him. Still, the LPO thought I’d done a great job and offered me a job, if I’d come work for him. I’d declined, since he was someplace down in the states, and I was a Canadian.

He also let me know that he’d verified which employee had done it, the guy had been fired, and he was recommending that the company press charges.

About a week later, I got let go. I was told I wasn’t Big Company Name material. I was told by the buddy who’d got me the job that I’d stepped on some toes by solving the problem the way I did. Not only had I let the LPO know about the hole in the system I’d found, but I’d also gotten the issue resolved, rather than letting a team from higher up handle it, at their billable hourly rate.

But hey, I’d had no supervisor, nothing in the manuals about it, so I did my best, and I guess I went too far.

I really wish there was a local Doomtown league, though if there was, it would probably be happening on nights when I can’t make it out. Maybe I’ll see if I can organize something for Sunday Evenings.

Conceptually, I like Doomtown. You’ve got a posse, you’re developing a town, setting up businesses, taking over businesses owned by other players, getting a bounty on your head in the process, and sometimes, you’re having shootouts. Shootouts, which are done by drawing a poker hand, with your specific dudes effecting how many cards you draw or replace. Highest hand wins, and the difference between the hands determines how many casualties are caused. And you can decide how those causalities play out, whether they’re spread out as minor wounds amongst your guys, or whether someone gets sent to Boot Hill.

The biggest problem with Doomtown is the deckbuilding. It’s complicated. It is a bit hard to wrap your head around. Willingdone, who does Netrunner and Doomtown card reviews, made a great intro video for it, so I’ll link that here. Watch it, it’s interesting.