Satisfactory2024-03-28T17:39:17Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/tags/satisfactory/D. MoonfireCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 InternationalA Little Give2022-06-24T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2022/06/24/a-little-give/A follow up on a previous post, things have gotten better in the last fortnight and I thought I would share both what went well and where my focus remains.
<p>One of the things I learned during my late teens was that all things pass, no matter how horrific, no matter how much it feels like there is no chance for hope, it will pass and things will clear up. In a lot of ways, <a href="/tags/sand-and-blood/">Sand and Blood</a> was a lot about putting those ideas into words, to never give up.</p>
<p>When I'm anxious, the best thing to do is write. But, at the moment, I've been beyond the ability to sit down and really write something, so I'm using less satisfactory methods of relieving pressure, which is to say I'm festering, complaining, and whining a lot.</p>
<h1>Looking Back</h1>
<p>But “it” gets better. The pressure can't build forever. Fortunately for me, the last few weeks have been things resolving or completing instead of getting worse. The biggest are three major threads that I have seen as part of my <a href="/tags/entanglement-2021/">entanglement</a>.</p>
<h2>Commissions</h2>
<p>I finished a commission that I started last year. It was a nasty one, at least in terms of complexity and it was a big one to start with (50k words). It ended up being about 20k words over that, but I basically wrote a short novel. Now, as much as I love getting paid to write (commissions are pretty much my only writing income), there is just too much else going on so I asked the commissioner to hold off on the next request until 2023.</p>
<p>Now, there is another commission still undone but that one is half in limbo and half haunting me. In other words, the commissioner is willing to wait and I'm basically triaging it. They are aware this is happening because I finished the original commission but there was something they weren't happy with, so I'm trying to go back and make them happier but it isn't simple as switching out a Diet Coke for a Diet Pepsi, it was rewriting close to thirty thousand words.</p>
<h2>Appliances</h2>
<p>The other good news that has come my way is that the dishwasher was finally repaired. That was one of those “please make it simple” when it became something bigger. But, six weeks after we bought it, it works and has worked for a week. And it actually <em>solved</em> the problem that we were having with the old one which was to say it actually cleans dishes instead of just splashing water on them.</p>
<h2>Projects</h2>
<p>I'm also finally “done” with a big project at work. Not quite, there are a few minor left over and I still need someone to review close to ten thousand files, but I'm able to move to the next thing.</p>
<p>I'm so close to an item I <em>really</em> want to work on because it would benefit the entire application as a whole. That will remain out of reach for a few more months and I'm fighting upper management to keep it.</p>
<p>I only hope it benefits us as much as I hope it will. It's hard to keep the faith when struggling.</p>
<h1>Looking Forward</h1>
<p>There are still a lot of things left to get done, but most of them are “stable” in that they are pressing but not getting worse. That ends up being a big category.</p>
<h2>Derecho Repairs</h2>
<p>The last major <a href="/tags/derecho-2020/">derecho</a> repair is the gutters. I found a place that I thought would work, but then they turned around with a “we'll show up randomly” things which I'm really not fond of, but getting household repairs has always been very messy and difficult.</p>
<p>I figured I'll give it another month before poking them to do it, or start looking for a new gutter replacement service. I have the money to pay for it but I'm always worried something is going to go horribly wrong and I'll need liquid funds for that.</p>
<p>Related, I need to finish up my mother-in-laws shower stall, remove the carpet from our basement, and start to clean up my office.</p>
<h2>Flight of the Scions</h2>
<p>I'm waiting for the sensitivity reader for <a href="/tags/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a>. It was supposed to be only a few weeks but things have gotten off track. My hopes is to get it done by <a href="/tags/icon/">ICON</a> this year so I have a book on the table.</p>
<p>And that leads into the other big task for <em>Flight of the Scions</em>: redoing the cover. I wasn't happy so I've been messing around in the last few weeks to try coming up with something new. Not sure if it will work (not sure where to get a good critique on those type of things), but I want something that fits all my books, past and near future. I'm also trying to use LCH/LAB colors so they have the same brightness which was always glaring to me.</p>
<p><img src="./pov-covers-w256.png" alt="Proposed Fedran Covers" /></p>
<p><a href="./pov-covers-w512.png">Larger Thumbnails</a></p>
<p>Creating covers is difficult because I'm mostly doing it in a void. I haven't found a good place to ask for critiques. More importantly, ask for iterative critiques. Obviously, I want somethin appealing but I'm also getting closer to my skill as an illustrator with some of these.</p>
<p>The main ones are the <em>Flight of the Scions</em> and <em>Second-Hand Dresses</em> covers. I learned a new technique for doing fires and I really like how the bonfire of <a href="/tags/sand-and-ash/">Sand and Ash</a> turned out.</p>
<p><em>If you want to <a href="/contact/">give me feedback</a>, please do.</em></p>
<h2>Nitride</h2>
<p>I also want to finish <a href="/tags/nitride/">Nitride</a> because I need to convert a couple websites, including <a href="https://fedran.com/">https://fedran.com/</a>. This is “blocking” my writing because I'm having trouble getting new stories to wire up properly, so I want to fix it properly but switching to the new static site generator I wrote to solve the problems.</p>
<p>And I need to get <a href="/tags/allegro/">Allegro</a> done by September.</p>
<h1>Leaning Back</h1>
<p>Coding projects like Nitride are peaceful for me, as it working on the covers. I'm also playing a lot of <span class="missing-link" data-path="/tags/satisfatory/">Satisfactory</span> despite the fact my laptop can't actually handle anything other than 90s era graphics in the game (I have everything dialed <em>way</em> down).</p>
<p>Tweaking my website's generation is also fun.</p>
<h2>Gitea and Gitlab</h2>
<p>I also spent my anniversary weekend learning about Digital Ocean and switching to a private <a href="/tags/gitea/">Gitea</a> server. I didn't really plan on doing this, but <a href="/tags/gitlab/">GitLab</a> is switching to a new business model (e.g., reducing the number of hours for the CI/CD servers) but the way I organize things doesn't fit it.</p>
<p>I had this problem earlier when I tried to pay for a higher end a few years ago. I was a major fan of GitLab, including answer questions on Stack Overflow and telling everyone about it. But the fact I organize things into groups (one for accounting, one for Fedran, one for Measured Stars, commissions in one, one for each major OSS project) doesn't work because you have to pay “per user per group.” Well, that would mean I would need to get 6-7 user licenses for just myself. They also don't have a good mechanism for handling commissions, a single user who shows up for a few months and then goes away. They want me to pay for each one.</p>
<p>So, spinning up my own Git server. It's been a fun adventure and I have a while to go, but it was a trade-off of personal time verses having it managed. When I had the CI/CD minutes, it was not really a need to decide but there is little ground for me where I go from “the free tier” to “a few hundred a month.”</p>
<p>I could use the self-hosted GitLab, but with their recent push to limit services, I honestly don't know if they are going to do the same thing for self-hosted, so I decided to look for different pastures entirely.</p>
<h1>Trauma</h1>
<p>I'm still experiencing a lot of PTSD and trauma with all of this, mainly because I still have a lot broken that I can't fix. It's little things, like expecting the dishwasher to stop working, or the house to fall apart, or “something” to go wrong. I can't just look at a completed project and go “this is done and I am happy.” Even the new siding is still “new” to me.</p>
<p>Eventually, this will also pass. Things will stop being novel and just be the norm. But the scratches and bruises of the last few months make it difficult to look past those.</p>
<p>It just takes time.</p>
Radio Silence2022-06-06T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2022/06/06/radio-silence/I haven't posted in three months and there is a lot going on. A long summary of the crises that are bothering me, some talk about games and writing, and generally a status of my current mental state.
<p>As I was writing up today's post about <a href="/tags/nitride/">Nitride</a>, I realized it has been almost three months since I last posted. My goal was to post at least once a month, mainly because some years ago, I realized I didn't have a single post for almost two years (2009-2011) and it upset me. But, when things get overwhelming, something has to give and writing about my life seems to be one of those things that gets triaged.</p>
<p>There were some good things and studies found that ending on a high note is better, so I'll start with the bad.</p>
<h1>The Bad</h1>
<p>This has a lot to do about my <a href="/tags/entanglement-2021/">entanglement</a>, which I decided means this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A series of apparently unrelated crises resulting in cascading failure across my entire life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In many ways, “unrelated” seems to be the key frustration. COVID and isolation was one thing, but adding the <a href="/tags/derecho-2020/">derecho</a> on top of that made it worse. Having my office flooded was one thing, but then having a second flood when I ended up having a cracked pipe in my slab just added to the mix. In the last three months, I had two additional floods: our refrigerator decided to break a seal and dribble water through the walls and into the basement was nothing compared to waking up Mother's Day morning to an inch of water in the laundry room because a toilet decided to crack its seal between the tank and the bottom. The last one (flood four) resulting in water pouring into the basement in one of the few rooms untouched by the previous three which also contained everything I had to move frantically out of way of the previous ones.</p>
<p>Individually, I could have handled each one, but in aggregate, it is very difficult. Work has been remarkably stressful in the last six months and isn't going to get better until the end of the year. Earlier last month, I ended up doing a two week “death march” of 10-15 hour days trying to get something done only to have it kicked into the next release (e.g., this month).</p>
<p>The refrigerator going bad was unexpected, but I happened to get a bonus less than a week later, so that money went into buying a replacement refrigerator and dishwasher instead of trying to get out of the hole that having <a href="/blog/2022/02/16/iowa-metal-roofs/">Iowa Metal Roofs stealing $10k</a> left me in. I may have relatively poor money management skills, but losing $10k is going to make everything worse for almost everyone. I suspect it is going to take a few years to recover from this.</p>
<p>The dishwasher was included because over our nation's pseudo-isolation, it had been failing more and more. Somehow, chunky food particles had gotten into the pipes and I was unable to flush it out with water and a wet/dry vac. I even replaced the spinning blades, but they promptly got jammed in a matter of days. Since the bonus could cover it, we decided to replace that after nine months of seriously trying to fix it.</p>
<p>That ended up being an entirely new crisis. The refrigerator worked beautifully, the dishwasher ran once for the installer, then beeped, then never turned on again. I called Home Depot who promptly kicked me over to Samsung who promised a technician would get to me in 48 hours. Three days later, I had to call back to find out that service company one ghosted me. Service company two was called in and I had to wait a week for them to show up. The nice gentleman who showed up told me it needed a new part that would show up in two weeks and left. A week later, the service company said they needed another week, so my second service call ended up being a month after I got the new dishwasher installed. They took almost a half hour to say the first guy ordered the wrong part and they would order a new one… see me again in ten days.</p>
<p>Right now, Samsung home appliances suck. Their service sucks and I'm really frustrated because I just wanted <em>something</em> to be handled. Instead, its just one more tally of things that I cannot do anything about but needs to be done.</p>
<h1>The Triaged</h1>
<p>I don't let things go well. I'm very good at my job, but those skills also comes with a rather impressive set of obsessive tendencies. I remember lots of little details and usually keep them in my head so I can do my job. I have a very detailed oriented job with a good-sized code base that is reasonably close to the limits of what I can “grok.”</p>
<p>When there are things wrong, though, they keep poking me. Every time I sat down to try writing to relax, I start thinking about how the carpet needs to be removed, the shower stall has to be gutted, the trampoline has to be put up. Individual tasks for work, to keep the household running, to handle my obligations, all poking me.</p>
<p>The problem is, I can't just let something go. Dishes don't clean themselves. The weeds don't pluck themselves. Tasks don't get done. In my experience, if you ignore them, they get worse. But at the same time, I cannot do all the things at once. I try but only end up running myself ragged: remove carpet here, program here, play <a href="/tags/satisfactory/">Satisfactory</a> with Child.0, put in tiles, watch videos with Child.1, try to spend time with Partner, try not to break down at night.</p>
<p>Forcing something out of my head requires a significant effort. Just letting it go doesn't seem to work. I spent a year writing a year-long <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exalted">Exalted</a> epic, ended right before a major fight, and couldn't finish. Then, year after year after year, I kept wanting to go back and finish it. It took almost twenty years before I could finally accept, I'm not going to finish it.</p>
<p>To get around that, I have to put it behind some other task. In situations like this, where I'm overwhelmed, the ones that seem less critical are the ones that get kicked off first. Sadly, “writing for joy” is one of them. I tucked it behind finishing up Nitride because I'm having trouble with fedran.com not rendering and I don't have the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory">spoons</a> to figure out that fix when I realize there is a bigger, systemic problem with the website that Nitride should address; so to avoid spending days on a problem twice, I pushed Fedran behind Nitride and working on <a href="/tags/allegro/">Allegro</a> behind that. Since I'm mostly sticking with a single setting, that means no “fun writing” until I get the website working again which won't happen until I get Nitride finished otherwise I will try to do that while doing everything else.</p>
<p>Sometimes that works. I got the worst of the water-logged carpet out so it isn't moldy, but I still haven't done the edges of the room. It needs to get done but I'm hoping to push it further back until I get my in-laws bathroom tiled or finished the story someone commissioned me to write.</p>
<h1>The Fun</h1>
<p>Thankfully, in the last few weeks, I'm starting to relax a little. I have Child.0 to blame for that since they will come up, “I think you should take a break down and play a game with me” and I have established they are one of my big three priorities.</p>
<p>Now that the kids are out of school, they have more time to game and I've tied their screen time to finishing chores to relieve the pressure. I also set up a dedicated server for <a href="https://www.satisfactorygame.com/">Satisfactory</a> on our home network and just play a mod-free game. It has been an experience because I'm very structured in my building and I'm trying to learn how to relax about rules. For me, playing the game has a lot in common with Cueball's actions in <a href="https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/861:_Wisdom_Teeth">XKCD: Wisdom Teeth</a>, I structure and rebuild everything just to make it “neat.”</p>
<p>At the same time, Child.0 likes to stab me with a cattle prod and build spaghetti factories while Child.1 just paints everything random colors, deletes hunks of the world, and then stabs me while I'm AFK.</p>
<p>Good times.</p>
<p>I don't have the bandwidth to sit down and do “fun writing” but I'm working on the “obligatory writing” and coding projects like Nitride, which are blocks for solving some of those little pricks that have been plaguing me.</p>
<h1>The Writing</h1>
<p>Relatively speaking, despite not writing, there is a lot of writing related events going on.</p>
<p>I sent <a href="/tags/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a> to a sensitivity reader as one of the last two major tasks left on that book. There has been a series of crises at that end, so it's taking a few months longer than planned, but I'm hoping to have it in a month or two. I also want to redo the cover but then I should be ready to have it actually published.</p>
<p>There was a fund-raiser for some writers going to Clarion. While I'm having money troubles, I still try to help others, so I kicked in some money and ended up getting an edit for a novel which will be <em>Allegro</em>. Naturally that means, I have to actually finish Allegro before September but I think that's doable. I just need to get through the current writer's block which is highly related to the entanglement. Also, Child.1 was watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvipPYFebWc">Lindsey Sterling's Roundtable Rival</a> which is the inspiration for <em>Allegro</em> so that made me want to write it even more.</p>
<p>I also put money down to show up at <a href="https://iowa-icon.com/">ICON</a>. Assuming <em>Flight of the Scions</em> gets done, plus <a href="https://weirdauthor.com/author/shannon">Shannon Ryan</a> has a new book out, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59718028-merger-of-evil">Merger of Evil</a>, I won't feel guilty about showing up with the “same old stuff” for years in a row.</p>
<p>I may also throw up some books I had done for the erotic readings on the table for sale. Not sure, just toying with the idea to have “new things” after so many years of not having new things.</p>
<h1>The Inspiration</h1>
<p>In the end, there is only one thing I can do:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Just keep swimming.</p>
<p>Dory, <em>Finding Nemo</em></p>
</blockquote>