I was going to do this weekly but my inner artist works in spurts. I might give you 2-3 posts in a week and you not hear from me for a week or 2. So get ready for the inconsistency. I would type it out in word then paste on the day I'm suppose to post but I know me I'll put that thing through edit hell and it will not be the same so here is #2 in the series. Remember I don't go in chronological order, that's boring :)
I'm out trying to find a job lately. The words "perfect fit" keep ringing in my head like a bell. Its annoying because I never see life as perfect. So why do companies keep putting it in their job listings.
I came from a situation and time where nothing was perfect you had to make do. I lived my life in misfit groups. My friends were misfits. My situations were never perfect but I always made do.
My neighborhood from when I was little until now has always been racially mixed. From my earliest times my friends were the rainbow. Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, Africans etc and I never though any different about any of them.
My schooling wasn't a perfect fit. I've had all kinds of teachers and I had to deal with it. Great teachers that pushed you and made you better, to indifferent teachers who were here to work and wasn't going to put more into it that the job description said. Lastly, teachers who seem to act as road blocks, that would bring in personal thoughts and feelings and manage their classrooms like that.
I had one of those in the 5th grade. Its been so long I don't remember her name. But she was a white lady that would do strange things. We were lining up to go anywhere, lunch, home what ever. She would say we needed to be quiet and behave and she would call us. At first me and some other black friends were always at the back of the line always getting called last. So we talked and decided to be quiet and see if we could get called earlier. Didn't matter we were quieter than other people she called before us.
Now to give you a more area overview of the situations this is how we realized she would call people. White girls first, then white boys, then spanish girls, then spanish boys, then black girls and lastly black boys. Again no matter how we acted we were always last.
Even in academics we were treated differently. By opinions of others I'm an intelligent person. Things came easy to me academically. There was no subject that gave me issues. But I knew I passed those mastery learning reading tests. Later I had to prove it but I seem to be failing which didn't seem possible. After the situation I'm going to describe below. I showed the paper work from my test and assignments to prove that I wasn't failing.
So one day we were going downstairs and the teacher were mumbling something. We heard the words niggers and wet backs. We looked at each other. My friend Ali said he is going to tell his dad. I said I'm gonna tell my grandmother and my other classmates said they were gonna tell their parents.
It wasn't coordinated but all of our parents showed up to talk to the principal about this. I don't know the details of what happened but the next day we talked into the class to Ms Bruce being out teacher.
They never told us what happened probably because the didn't feel we could understand, we did. We were happy that we effected change. a small group of male black and spanish kids fix something that needed to be fixed.
It always stuck with me. Its probably the reason for some of the future posts I will do to bring an understanding great work comes from collaborative efforts from people who may not be a perfect fit, but come together to make things work.
I'll post every week with the title "Stories of the 80s and 90s" A lot of these stories haven't been told in years. A lot of them are only known by the people involved or the few people I told. It needs to be said. See you guys next time.
I bought a laptop earlier this year. I thought I needed a Windows laptop to play games. Then work started to happen and me being a Linux guy since the early 2000s started to get annoyed with windows and with the Steamdeck getting popular and Linux gaming improving. I thought it was time to go back.
I had options, Pop OS, Fedora, Ubuntu, and a couple of Arch distros. I went in the end with Fedora. I had been using it for about a month. There had been little quirks but I figured I could work through them.
Then i did Boxes where I ran Windows 10. Works great problem solved. Then I started to see another issue. I was running out of space on my 1TB drive. WTH? So I started looking. Three things stuck out. One was Bottles and Boxes and how much space it was taking up. But the last one got me, Flatpak.
Flatpak is a way to install Linux programs.
Flatpak is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system. (1)
So its sand-boxed which means all that the program needs is included in the download. Which could lead to multiple programs with multiple instances of the same library. So if you are installing a lot of Flatpaks you could be taking up a lot of hard drive space.
I'm looking at the disk management software saying I have 3% I'm like WTH. So first I removed any VMs I spun up, then removed boxes, removed all my flatpak applications plus purged unnecessary libraries after that. I only gained back 25-30% of the drive. I'm like OK maybe I just need to reinstall but I thought about the quirks I was having with the video. So I thought about old trusty. Its not the first Linux distro I've tried but its the 2nd sturdiest behind Debian. Linux Mint was the distro I gave my mother on a laptop and she used it until the hardware broke down. She never had issues and it ran like a champ for her. (she didn't know I would ssh into it and doing updates.)
Oh, wait here is my trade off. Sound to the laptop is great but I have a speaker. I can connect wired or Bluetooth. When I was on Fedora I had a external USB-c Sound Blaster G3 that the speaker and a boom mic were attached to. It worked OK. On Mint its not working so well. I can hook up the boom mic no issue but I can't play on the speakers from it. So I just did Bluetooth and it works good except for my quirk. Its always a quirk you have to deal with when you install Linux on a laptop that is made for Windows. I have to manually reconnect every time i logout or reboot.It could be a feature not a bug but either way I can deal with it.
So everything is good for now, but with Linux change is always afoot. I might get interested in a new distro and run off to try it. For now me and Linux Mint are gonna hang out.
You know how it's said that most solutions are simple. Today I've proved it to be right again. I've been having an issue with the back of the house being too cold over this cold snap. I had been talking to friends about all kinds of solutions, insulation, fixing the heater, cement for the foundation (house was built in 1895). I never thought it was this simple.
So this morning why I was bleeding the furnace (I have a steam furnace + radiators) I was thinking why is it so cold back here? I'm walking around the basement checking where the draft is coming from. One part of the basement was like a shotgun of cold air. So I'm dumping out the water in the sink. I'm looking at that wall and saw where I put this metal plate. Then I started to wonder.
Let me give you the back story. Years ago we had a gas dryer that suddenly stopped working. Like most work done in this house we had a handiman come over and remove it from the gas and move it to another part of the basement. So the one thing that's left is the exhaust that takes the air out of the house. That's what I covered with the metal sheet. Since the time this happened 8029 Muskegon was torn down. Now there is a vacant lot. So With that all happening. The cold air was coming in the exhaust. DUH.
So I stuffed the exhaust with some old used towels for now just to stop the flow until I can come up with a better solution which may include just getting another gas dryer and using that exhaust for what it was meant for.
Now that I've done it the back of the house is warmer. DAMN! the smallest detail causes the biggest issues. On top of that it could be the solution to my how do the mice get in my house too. DAMN!
Days like this, gloomy make me feel a certain way. I feel less productive. I feel down. I wanted to go over a friends house but I can't even leave the house. I'm sitting here typing this hoping a can work up the mental energy to get dress and leave.
I think if I had the car working it would be a different thing. The issue with the car since last year was, I would drive it, it would get warm not overheated or anything and just flat out stop were ever I am. No matter what I'm doing, stopped in traffic or just driving along. I get it pulled over in half if the cases or have to push it to the side.
The first time it happened to me I was in a grocery store parking lot. I just finished shopping and went out to the car. Wouldn't start. I tried for a while. checked under the hood. I didn't see anything so after sitting there for a while I called a tow truck. While they were on their way there I tried the car one more time. It started. So I drove home no problem.
The next time it happened I'm driving on Commercial Ave it just flat out stopped in the middle of the street as I was pulling up to stop behind a car. I got some guys that were standing around to push me to the side. Again I waited, tried and couldn't get it started. So I called a tow, wasn't lucky like last time. So when i got home he was letting it down. He reach in and turned the key and the damn care started like it was nothing wrong.
I took it to a mechanic that had it for a week and couldn't find anything wrong. So I got it back drove it for a week until it stopped on my again and I just left it in the driveway.
You might ask. Why don't you buy another car? Well if you have noticed the used car market is nuts. Prices are high and these deals aren't in favor of the consumer. So I'm waiting for everything to come back down. Of course as I'm doing that other issues have creeped in. So I'm back to fixing the old car.
On top of all of that one night I heard gunshots, really close gunshots. At the time I wasn't going out a lot. So a friend told me my window was busted. Well it was more than busted. There was a bullet that hit the top frame of the door shattering the glass and making body damage to where I can't just get a window put in. Geez.
Lastly this was my mother's car, So I'm going to have to resolved that situation as I'll have to get it registered in my name in order to get new tags. SMH
Yeah its a lot but I'm gonna have to figure out my transportation issue soon. The Chicago winter is coming up and I know its gonna be harder to get a ride then.
So my doctor and I talked about both of us doing vegan for 4 weeks. I'm always willing to try things. I already tried being a vegetarian witch lasted about as long as this challenge is going to be. So I agreed.
Walking out of the office I thought aww its easy. No meat, no dairy, I didn't no meat before, I don't currently drink milk because I discovered it bloated me. So I started with a little assistance via Hello Fresh. It would allow me to have 3, 2 portioned meals a week. which would help me start out easier.
Week 1 was good but by the end of the week I had an issue. Breakfast. I noticed that the majority of things I did centered around eggs. Second I started to have stomach discomfort which in the past I would eat yogurt. Can't do that now. So I stuck it out over the weekend.
By Monday I was just crazy, I had to make this discomfort stop. I did have some Yogurt in the fridge that I could eat but that would end the challenge, I stuck it out another day. Tuesday I gave in and ate some Yogurt with some strawberries and bananas. Stomach was great but I can't act like I didn't just end the challenge. At the same time that doesn't mean I go back to the old way. So I told myself I just be a vegetarian for the rest of the time.
Wednesday, I said I'd fix an omelet. I'm not doing the vegan thing anymore. Nice omelet. I actually forgot to put cheese on it somehow, but it was good still.
Later in the afternoon. I felt like my foot might be swollen. I look down and the tops of my feet are swollen for the first time since before I started the challenge. The eggs? So I researched, while i was doing that I ran across a guys post on Instagram talking about how egg yokes can promote swelling. At first I was like ok another food is bad for you commentary. I listened and it kind of made sense. We know that "things" are given to chickens to promote growth. So those "things" get into the eggs. And I expanded on that, the yoke is a concentration thus everything is concentrated within it.
With this understood egg are on this short list of things I won't eat anymore. So with this understood I rethought what I was going to do.
I had gotten tired of eating the same things. But I can't just reintroduce meat without thought.
So I after thinking I made these changes. When making meals I think vegetables and fruits first. If after that I want to add a meat I can't but as a side not as the main part of the dish. This finally fixes the portioning problem I always faces. I looked back at my granny. Who would slave over a stove to cook for us. Fixing greens, fried chicken, cornbread, etc, etc. But when it was time for her to eat. She at vegetable first. Giving us most of the meat. It was something that made me realize why my mother and I were such carnivores. She never pushed the veggies at us, if we didn't eat them she ate them. I'm sure she didn't understand what she was creating cause she was doing it out of love and unselfishness.
With all this knowledge I continued to build. So now I'm doing veggies first, fruits then as an options a meat. Now what meat? Well pork and beef were limited in my diet anyway from changes I made before. Now they are gone. I talked about "things" in the chicken but I felt eating some limited amount of chicken is ok. Especially if I source it correctly. Turkey was another option, also correctly sourced. Last is seafood, shrimp and what ever kind of fish I wanted. I've been know to eat Whitefish, swai, Tilapia, Red snapper, cod and tuna. So with that in mind I began to make weekly menus based on my new process.
I'm currently in week two of this lifestyle change and its working great. This isn't the last change I will make as life is a progression. When I began my journey I was a meat eater supreme. I've worked down to where meat is an option. Later I might be a full true vegan. Why did I say "true", along the way I've met people that said they were vegans but I would see them with bags of potato chips and other things that just were unhealthy. I don't see this as being true. I think you also have to be healthy or what is the purpose.
My journey continues.....
Today I'm hurting after having fun online last night. It always seems to happen that way. I have fun. Then I wake up the next day depressed. I feel like crying right now but I can't. Not because I don't want to, my body isn't letting me.
I look at my life, 51, single, never been married and in a bind financial. No where close to where I imagined myself at 51. Back when I was in my 20s. I imagined being married by my mid 30s, having kids. My tech career would be going well.
Instead, I had a really terrible relationship at 33 that made me not want to date for a long time. I still ended up in a relationship that I rekindled and should have left alone. So of course it ended bad. After that I just shut down. Financially I worked at several places, none in the area I wanted. One I screwed up my chance at being in the technical group because I took a promotion. I learned a lot from the experience but of course it never lead to anything else but me starting over some where else. I didn't get into my own place until after I went to Columbus Ohio. I thought I was on my way....
Then I got sick, it wasn't easy it was life threatening. My hearts had a liter of fluid around it, I had 3 blood clot. Luck for me my doctor spotted the fluid on an xray he ordered. So sending me to the ER with the xray, I got there. Ended up spending two weeks there, 1 in ICU where I threw the clots. Thank god I was there so they could save me. If I were not in the hospital I could have been like Heavy D or anyone else with clotting that broke away. Its almost certain death.
With that blessing and my mom bringing me back to Chicago I assumed the caregiver role that has defined my life until Dec 27th 2021 when my mother passed. so from about 2009 to 2021 I was part time working and taking care of mom and granny. Now that they are both gone. I lost. At times I get a glimmer of light and some inspiration but it fade somedays into days like today. Where I feel like getting dressed, packing something in a bookbag and another bag and just walking down the road like David Banner on the Incredible Hulk tv show. Just wandering.
So that's why I say I don't know. Cause that is where I am today. I'm a rational guy and probably will talk myself out of this. Or have one good conversation with someone. Be out of this downward mood I'm in right now. Bot sides are evenly matched. Who will win?
I'm always been a guy that can crush larger goals but smaller ones give me issue. It may sound crazy to some because doing a larger goals are smaller goals that are linked together. That's true. Those goals are easier to deal with. I'm talking about smaller goals that don't link directly to larger one. Ones that will shape a larger goal but not one your actively thinking about or trying to obtain. Health is a larger goal where you sometimes don't see a small thing as effecting it until you either realize it yourself or have a friend of health professional point it out. Even worse something happens to you first before you realized anything.
This week as my friend and plumber fixed piping issues in the bathroom and kitchen to the larger goal of fixing the house. I looked at the smaller goals of getting into a routine for myself, the one thing I'm horrible at. I can take care of other, give advice but when it comes to me. I have to have my own person driving me to do stuff. Since both my mother and granny have both passed on. I don't really have that 'hard stop" in that department. I have friends that ask or see that I'm in a certain mood or doing something in particular and say something. Right now I don't have a person that will give me that look and say, stop, you need to go do this NOW. So now I have to listen to an inner voice for that. I believe its still my granny and mom talking to me from the other side LOL. I know its really me internalizing their lessons and I need to listen to that voice like I listened to them
So I have a morning habit, sometimes I break it but I go back and finish it. Old habits die hard. I'm doing it right now. I didn't finish as soon as I finish this I'm going to go back and finish. Sometimes my creative side drives me to do something now while I'm thinking about it. I only create when I'm in the mood. If I tried to write this an hour later after driving myself to do the routine I would have lost the spark and you probably wouldn't hear about any of this. As it wouldn't have flowed and I probably would have edited this into the waste basket. I do understand this and don't get down on myself when i do it. I just go back and finish. I think that's the biggest leap.
So yeah, This week coming I'm going to keep doing small projects that I can get a win at to keep the positive momentum going. Happy Easter and everyone have a great week ahead.
Some days are easier than others. The last few days have been hard physically and emotionally. My foot and lower leg swelling in the evenings are getting to be a real problem. I might wake up the next day normal but as the day goes on it gets worse no matter if I'm busy and on my feet or sitting here in the office doing tech work. I wish I could get an answer other than what my doctor is saying, it sounds so canned.
Some days my shoulders hurt, other days its my left hip. These cold days are the worse. Makes you think of all the people that retired and went to warmer weather. It might happen for me if cold is an issue.
Emotionally, I'm still not there. On those bad physical days it seems like the emotions just pile on. On days when its just emotional its like there is a brick wall in front of me stopping me from going where I'm suppose to.
The craziest thing happened while I was writing this. I got two calls (didn't answer cause they were telemarketers but I checked the voicemail and cleared it. Then I got my Amazon order of Poppi. Wanted to try it out. I like that Strawberry Lemon. So now I'm in a better mood than when I started writing.
Normally I would toss out this and either write nothing or try to start over. I think I need to stop doing that. I never have anyone understand who I am if I keep editing the story to cut out the bad parts. I guess its been my life. Its the reason people think I'm in a better position than I really am.
I've always been that guy someone can rely on. Now that I need the help I don't have that same person that can drop everything and come help me. But my granny always taught me to be self-reliant. So partly I don't worry about it until things get really bad.
I titled this some days, but that was before everything happened and my mood changed. Now I'm freely typing with now problem. Earlier I was struggling to think about what I was going to say. Its my up and down life. Its the life I lead on my own.
People who know me know I work in IT. I fix networks, I set up systems, I make sure things run the way they're supposed to. That's...
