geekspeak Leave a comment

Slower Than Monkey Snot on a Frozen Banana

Even when all I was doing was typing into a search field, the lag between keystroke and display was amazing and infuriating. The only processes that Task Manager showed as consuming my CPU and Memory were Windows Defender and Google Chrome. I tinkered with the settings for Windows Defender. I installed a free antivirus instead. No change.

It had been like that for weeks. I had stopped using my 3-year-old Dell Inspiron desktop except when absolutely necessary — like for syncing my iPhone, or interacting with a website with a craptacular mobile version, or writing a blog post longer than I’d want to tap out on my smallish Bluetooth keyboard.

Yesterday afternoon, Aaron suggested I try a clean install of Windows. I’d been thinking along those lines myself, so it didn’t take much persuasion. Sure, that meant that the things I’d wanted to get done on my computer would be put off until later (No, I still haven’t finished my 2021 Year In Review) — but, honestly, not much was going to get done, anyway. Not in the state it was in.

It took surprisingly less time and angst than I had thought.

As of late yesterday evening, my computer was back up and running with a clean install of Windows 10 — and was once again bogged down by Defender. BUT! Over the course of today, I installed Google Chrome, WinRAR (to decompress all my saved installer files), my free antivirus of choice, and iTunes — and everything seems to be performing normally again.

I’m going to keep a close eye on things as I reinstall applications over time — I’m looking at you, Adobe Creative Cloud — to see if any one app brings things grinding to a halt again.

Cheaper than buying a new computer, that’s for damn sure.

caturday Leave a comment

Kittenhood

Photographing a black cat is much more challenging than I would have thought. Getting a result that looks more like a cat than a massive black hole takes a non-trivial amount of processing.

Also, Baxter is the first cat Aaron or I have ever known to play tug-of-war. Once he catches that mousie on the pole, he wants to drag it off somewhere quiet and have some alone time with his kill.

Having a kitten again is pretty awesome.

mental health, randomness Leave a comment

Lunch Break Freewriting

When I’m working in the office, I find that I rarely take an honest-to-god lunch break. I’ll eat at my desk, I’ll take a few minutes to check my phone, but mostly I’ll work through my allotted 45 minutes. When I’m working from home, I’ll set a timer on my Apple Watch and do some tasks around the house to get away from my work — unload the dishwasher, put away some clutter, whatever other randomness catches my attention — then assemble my lunch before taking it back to my desk to eat while I work.

In the Before Times, I would occasionally walk next door to Starbucks over my lunch break and do some blogging on my phone and Bluetooth keyboard while enjoying a tasty beverage. Since the indoor passageway between my building and the adjoining one has been demolished, that’s not a routine that I’ll be reviving anytime soon, since it’s 25°F outside and I’m not down with bundling up just to go get a coffee.

The blogging part, though… that’s going to need to make a comeback.

I’ve been going to a therapist about twice a month for the past six or seven months, and I really wish I’d started therapy sooner. It’s a huge help to have someone listen to me talk about what’s been going on in my life, then bring my attention to aspects of my narrative that I wouldn’t have thought twice about. The whole experience reminds me of going out for coffee with my BFF back during college: we’d talk about our problems, talk around them, dive into what their causes might be, and brainstorm actionable solutions. Adding a licensed behavioral therapist into the mix gives that conversation more direction, as she can pick out key points and lend her expertise in helping me recognize certain behaviors and reactions in myself.

In between sessions, though… writing is a valuable tool for me to get my thoughts and emotions out of my head and into a space where I can see them, acknowledge them for what they are, recognize what they aren’t, and generally get myself into a healthier headspace.

Taking time to blog is a gift to myself… and my family. We all deserve the best version of me.

memories, music, parenthood Leave a comment

U Can’t Touch Ur Mom’s Music

Earlier this month, my son Connor (age 10) was telling me about a funny commercial he’d seen, where someone had cheesy Cheeto fingers and they kept saying, “You can’t touch this.” Even though I hadn’t actually seen the commercial, I knew exactly what he had to be talking about.

So, because I’m that mom, I searched YouTube for the official music video for MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This and made Connor watch it with me. He was actually tapping his foot for most of the song, and didn’t really get bored of it until right before the last verse (“OK, Mom, I get the idea…”). I even showed him the very beginning of Superfreak by Rick James, just to give him a taste of how sampling works, but he was pretty much over the riff by then.

As the icing on the Cake U Can’t Touch, Aaron found an Old Skool Hip Hop karaoke CD at Goodwill this weekend. Looking forward to embarrassing my son with that at some point in the future.