aramis87

Can we break this situation down a bit?

Re: income: You’re earning just a little too much for government aid: if you got government aid, would that aid offset the loss of income? Like, if you were earning $100 less a month but got $400 in assistance, I’d say it was worth it. Take a look at the numbers. If it’s worth it, talk with your boss and see if you can get either your hours or your pay cut slightly enough to qualify for government assistance.

Re: the taxes: in my experience, every government process (including tax collection) has an appeal process. You say your agent is relentless and merciless; get in touch with their supervisor, figure out the appeal process. Unless this is a private company, there should be a way to put this on hold; the issue is finding it. It’s a slow season right now; it might be worth it to contact a tax attorney and ask for some free advice.

Re: expenses: Check with your county social services office. A lot of places have programs to possibly help with utilities, like the HEAT program. Unfortunately, some states are significantly more generous with support than others, but it may be worthwhile. Also look into local charities that may be able to help with some kind of expense. Even if it’s not the expense you were looking for help with, any kind of expense-savings is good.

Re: mental health services: check your local universities and colleges to see if any of them offer advanced degrees (Master’s/PhD) in psychotherapy, psychology, sociology, social work, or related fields. For those that do, check if they have a community counseling program (they may or may not). If they do, contact them and see if they’ll accept you as a patient; they might, they might not, or they could put you on a waiting list. They’ll also often have sliding scale payments for therapy, like $10 or $15 a session. Yes, it’ll be another expense, but it’ll be helpful documentation for your disability claim.

If you can’t find anything locally, try farther away; most places started allowing online sessions during the pandemic, and some of them still allow it.

There’s an AA saying that the opposite of addiction is community; I find the same thing is often true of depression.

Blue. Didn’t really envision a person, just the hand, didn’t notice the potential sex. It was a billiard ball on a pool table. The ball kinda rolled gently across the table at an angle, hit the side, and slowly rolled back before stopping.

Darrow’s Barn. Seriously, if you’ve never heard it, click the link, close your eyes, and just listen.

I subbed to SuperbOwl as soon as it got posted in the new communities community :)

I’m always on All (my subscribed communities show up here as well), but I block any community I have absolutely no interest in, which alters the experience a bit.

We’re currently at solar maximum, which means we’ll be getting the most solar storms for the next few months, then they’ll start tapering off before the next solar maximum around 2035 (it’s roughly an 11 year cycle; they’re not entirely sure why, but this one is a few months early). FWIW, here are my aurora links:

Dark Site Finder: shows you where there’s historically more or less light pollution, so you can try to find a better viewing area. https://darksitefinder.com/map

NASA’s Space Weather Center: this is the link to their aurora dashboard page; you can also open up their animated prediction map, to help you figure out if you’re likely to be able to see it in your area. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental

Space Weather Live: a site with more data, useful if you know a little about what you’re looking for. It includes a helpful moon-phase indicator, because I always forget that’s something you may need to account for, depending on where you live. https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity/.html

National Weather Service: enter the place you’re thinking of viewing from then, on the results page, click on “hourly forecast” to see how likely it’ll be to have cloud cover, rain, what temperature it’ll be, etc. https://www.weather.gov/

Aurora Borealis Forecast: has a nice predictor saying things like

in 1 minutes, the Geomagnetic Activity level (Kp number) will be 8 – at STORM LEVEL! in 9 minutes, the Geomagnetic Activity level (Kp number) will be 3 – Active.

Those are the actual current numbers. If it’s cold where you are, you don’t necessarily want to be outside all the time (though if you’re in a marginal area, staying outside will help your eyes adjust and you’ll see better). I’m around Kp-7, so I can hang around outside for a few minutes, and when it fades, I can go inside for warmth or at least stop staring at the sky for a bit, then pay attention when it perks back up. They also have a 3-day predictor (less accurate the further out it is). You can also pay for their aurora alert service, if that’s of interest. https://cdn.softservenews.com/

Google News Alerts: Or you can sign up for a Google News alert for things like “solar storm”, “Corona mass emission”, CME etc - those are the things that create the aurora on earth 24 to 48 hours later. (You can set the frequency of the alerts; I’d suggest once-per-day.) That’ll give you enough time to figure out if the weather and moon are likely to cooperate. As it gets closer, you can check NOAA and SoftServeNews to see if it’ll be viewable in your area, and Dark Site Finder to find the best area to view from (I have different areas, depending on how strong the storm is vs how much time I can afford to be away from home). https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en

Happy aurora hunting!

Not mine, but the one where Michael Jackson is the love child of Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson caught my attention when someone posted it to reddit.

It was Katrina that made me even think of doing it.

Yeah, I’m not in a flood zone, but seeing things like this is why I mounted a hatchet on my attic wall. It’s pretty certain I’ll never need it, but I can live a little lighter with the delusion that I’ll be able to hack my way onto the rooftop instead of dying, unfound, in a sweltering attic.

I’ve given money to both charities and people. Here’s the thing about donating, though: you’ll get on all sorts of mailing lists and shit, and you’ll get lots more begging letters, emails, phone calls and texts. You know those PBS/NPR donation drives, where they’re like “We just need ten more donors this hour, it doesn’t matter how much!” or those charities that send you pre-printed labels and say “Hey, just send us five bucks, that’s all we need”? Yeah, they’re harvesting your information. If you even send them a penny, they’ll be back for more, and they’ll sell or trade your information to other charities.

I give money to our local volunteer fire/ems department every year, but I don’t use their pre-printed mailer; I hand them cash when Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny come through on their trucks. I have one of those pre-paid Visa gift cards that aren’t tied to an actual person; if I do an online donation, I’ll use that and give them fake information. The money is legit, the information is good enough to pass, but they can’t come harass me for more.

This includes all donations, by the way - political, religious, civic, charity, social, whatever. Do it in cash or by an anonymous Visa gift card.

That there was a disembodied head that lived in the toilet at night.

I usually try to plan a few foot-based errands in the area while they work on my car: maybe the pharmacy for my meds or some toothpaste, the bakery for a couple of these cupcakes my daughter loves, browse the bookstore, talk with the tea shop owner.

We’re always in such a hurry and complain about missing the ‘community feeling’ of ‘the old days’, yet we never spend the time to just walk about the community, doing errands instead of “running errands”, casually catching up on events and goings-on. I like to use my time for that kind of thing.

I’d visit all my old friends and loved ones; without letting on what’s going on, I’d tell them how much I loved them and the impact they’ve had on my life. Arrange the basics of my funeral. Get rid of a bunch of stuff that I like but will just be underfoot when they clear out my place. Organize and label family photos and videos. Stick post-its on things made by my grandparents, great-grandparents and other relatives who they can be passed on if desired. Put together that book of old family recipes. Give some things away to specific people to make sure they end up where I think they ought to go. Make arrangements for my cat, and tell her how much I love her and how much I’ll miss her, but that she’ll be okay.

Dealey Plaza will be so crowded!

One of my friend’s life ambitions was to own a Jaguar, and he finally managed to buy a used one. He called his insurance agent to add the car to his policy. The agent was like, “Oh, a second car, a Jaguar, no problem. How many miles do you think you’ll be putting on it each year? Five thousand should be plenty, yeah?”

And my friend is like, "No! I’m fixing it up and driving it everywhere! I need lots of miles!. and the insurance agent is very quiet and then suggests starting with 5k miles and see how it goes. Whatever, my friend thinks, this guy just doesn’t understand the allure of the Jaguar!

He fixes it up, gets it running, here about three blocks from the house and it breaks down. Pushes it home, fixes it up again, gets about five blocks. This goes on for months.

Eventually, my friend changes his car insurance back to 5k per year, and acknowledges that he’ll never ever ever reach that much. It’s mostly a garage princess, not (entirely) out of a desire to keep the body fresh, but more because it constantly needs babying.

I’m not sure your dad’s Jaguar is any better.

I agree this sounds like ADHD to me, but I’m curious and a bit concerned. You say you’re doing this to your work computer? Most places I’ve worked were committed to one flavor of operating system, so I’m a little curious about what you do [which is something you don’t have to answer, obs].

On the work side, however, this constant tinkering with your operating system has got to be affecting the amount of work you can get done. If this isn’t a job you care about, fair enough. If it is, I’d likely survey my coworkers and use whatever OS they’re using - at the very least, it increases the chances of confrere “tech support” when something goes wrong, plus the ability to share tools and methods.

If you’re not willing to dual boot, is there a chance you could set up a second PC, running one for each OS? You could get a KVM switch to swap between “instances” and save yourself this endless OS reinstallation process.