Oh God,

I'm back on the Goulet Pens web site.

I'm normally pretty non-materialistic, but this never ends well for my wallet.

Is there a large #FountainPens community on the fedi?

Anyhow, I have a dedicated blue #Lamy Sarafi that I used to use for my #BaystateBlue ink, because it's notorious for permanently staining everything it comes into contact with. A while ago, I accidentally let ink dry out in this pen, and I haven't been able to get the feed flowing properly since. I've cleaned the pen several times and left everything soaking in water for several hours on a few occasions. I've also tried changing the nib. Eventually, I just emptied it, cleaned it out, and left it sitting on a shelf for a while.

I recently pulled it out again, cleaned it once more, and inked it up. Same problem. I'm going to leave it sit inked for a bit to see if maybe capillary action will eventually set in, but if this doesn't resolve the issue is there anything else I can try? I can always replace the pen, but I'd rather not if it can be avoided.

So my sister is confident that she can fix the bag mentioned in this post. Dropping it off with her. In the meantime, I've had to distill its contents into the absolute essentials and transfer them into a smaller bag for the day.

It's weird, but it'll do for now.

Jonathan Lamothe

2024-10-07 23:44:14

I've known I have #ADHD since I was first diagnosed in high school, but sometimes I wonder if perhaps I might be somewhere on the #autism spectrum as well. Let me explain a thing that's going on right now to illustrate what I mean.

I have a canvas messenger bag. I've had it for years and love it. I keep my whole life organized in this bag. Everything has a place and I know exactly where everything is. Recently, one of the snaps that holds it closed gave out. Within a couple of days the second one went as well, so the bag just falls open, which is fine if I keep it upright, but is kind of a pain in the ass.

The place I got it from essentially has a lifetime guarantee. I'm sure I can trade it in for another "equivalent" bag, but I'm sure they won't have this exact one since it's been several years since I bought it. This causes me an enormous amount of anxiety, because the new bag will be different, and I won't just instinctively know where all its contents are (because the configuration of the internal pockets will likely be at least a little different). It's not just the act of replacing the bag, but knowing that it'll mess me up for weeks afterward too.

I feel like this dilemma could possibly be explained by ADHD alone, but I kind of wonder...

Does this resonate with anyone in the #ActuallyAutistic crowd? I am of course not looking for a formal diagnosis or anything. It's more of a curiosity.

I love living so close to a major Oktoberfest venue. For the past 10 minutes or so, someone's been screaming at someone else, over what specifically, I don't know. I can only make out bits and pieces.

My favourite was "you can't talk like that to me!" My friend, I don't know who said what to you, but I think you've waived your right to complain about that at this point.

Another question in the "is it just #ADHD or is there some #ASD in there too" series:

I've recently learned that some people with autism have a tendency to repeat back phrases verbatim when people talk to them before answering.

I do not think this happens to me (at least not with words I hear) but I do have a tendency to do this with written text, stuff on billboards when we're driving, that sort of thing.

I have no idea why I do this. It's not like it's everything I see either. It's just sort of a compulsion that occasionally strikes for no apparent reason. Is that a thing that makes sense to anyone, or is it just me? I guess I just write it off as a weird thing my mind does when it wanders.

Looking into getting into matcha. My god there are so many variants.

I am in over my head.

Just had the biggest scare of my life.

Some context is necessary. Katy works an evening shift, so we usually sleep in to 10-11AM. She also likes to sleep in absolute darkness, not a single photon in the room. To this end, we've taken drastic measures to ensure that we can have the bedroom very dark, even at noon.

This morning (and I use the term loosely) I woke up to notice that the outlet my phone charger and the nightstand lamp are plugged into was emitting a distinct orange glow. Nothing plugged into it is causing this; it's coming from the outlet itself.

I woke Katy up with an urgent sounding "ummmm". I thought we had a small electrical fire inside the outlet. I ran to the breaker box in the kitchen to throw the breaker for the outlet and grab a screwdriver so I can get into (and hopefully extinguish) the outlet.

Turned off the power and was reaching for the drawer with my screwdriver and Katy says "I think I know what it is."

Turns out, this outlet shares an electrical box with an outlet on the other side of the wall and the sun was shining on it. In the total darkness of the bedroom, the glow I was seeing was sunlight from the other side.

Anyhow, that's how the server abruptly lost power today.

Since the spawn area's become too crowded to expand the farm, we've opened up a community garden which is accessible from the teleport pad at spawn point (in the big blue box).

Same rules apply in the community garden as in the spawn farm (e.g.: replant what you take).

Aargh! Trying to get a continuous blood glucose monitor, but my pharmacy doesn't carry any that have a standalone reader. They all need to be paired to your phone with some proprietary app. There's no way in hell I'm forking that kind of data over to a black box that probably feeds it into some corporate cloud.

There are standalone meters on Amazon, but I doubt I can get my insurance to cover it if it's not coming from a pharmacy.

Edit: typo

Thought I was maybe starting to become somewhat proficient with the #soroban. Then I saw this.

youtu.be/s6OmqXCsYt8

At least I know how proficient it's possible to become.

I've known I have #ADHD since I was first diagnosed in high school, but sometimes I wonder if perhaps I might be somewhere on the #autism spectrum as well. Let me explain a thing that's going on right now to illustrate what I mean.

I have a canvas messenger bag. I've had it for years and love it. I keep my whole life organized in this bag. Everything has a place and I know exactly where everything is. Recently, one of the snaps that holds it closed gave out. Within a couple of days the second one went as well, so the bag just falls open, which is fine if I keep it upright, but is kind of a pain in the ass.

The place I got it from essentially has a lifetime guarantee. I'm sure I can trade it in for another "equivalent" bag, but I'm sure they won't have this exact one since it's been several years since I bought it. This causes me an enormous amount of anxiety, because the new bag will be different, and I won't just instinctively know where all its contents are (because the configuration of the internal pockets will likely be at least a little different). It's not just the act of replacing the bag, but knowing that it'll mess me up for weeks afterward too.

I feel like this dilemma could possibly be explained by ADHD alone, but I kind of wonder...

Does this resonate with anyone in the #ActuallyAutistic crowd? I am of course not looking for a formal diagnosis or anything. It's more of a curiosity.

Just ran into some #Mormon missionaries in the wild. It's always interesting when they try to strike up a conversation with me.

[...small talk...]
Missionary: So, do you know much about our church?
Me: Yeah, I actually had my records removed back in 2019.
[awkward scilence followed by an abrupt change of subject]

#NotACult

I know I'm late to the #Friendica channels party, but the "Quiet Sharers" channel is really quite nice. It only shows posts from accounts you follow that aren't frequent posters, helping you to find stiff you might otherwise miss.

This is how to do an algorithmic feed* right.

* Yes, I know that sorting posts chronologically is technically an algorithmic feed.

So, I like to set filters that automatically collapse certain posts that I may or may not have the mental bandwidth to engage with at any given time. Friendica lets me do this by regex, but some of them are kinda ugly

Take my Elon filter for instance. I could filter on /elon/i, but that would falsely trigger on common words like 'melon' or 'belong'. I finally settled on /^(.*[^a-z])?elon([^a-z].*)?$/i, but that feels overly complicated. Is there a better solution?

Edit: proofreading is for suckers.