Anxiety's been bad again lately. I am moderately worried about losing the apartment. Taking steps to try to keep that from happening, but sometimes just trying to engage with the problem brings on a panic attack.

I have medication to help with that now, but it makes it hard to think clearly. I will survive this one way or another, but my life is going to have to change. I don't handle change well.

This probably won't help me in my current job search, but is it worth learning COBOL? I've heard that there are still a bunch of critical systems out there that use it, and that it's hard to find COBOL devs these days.

Is this still the case? The only downside I can see is that I'd have to program in COBOL.

Dear job posting,

If you expect me to install spyware so that you can micromanage me while I work, at least have the decency not to expect me to supply the hardware.

Went to pick up a prescription and the guy ahead of me in line was chewing the pharmacist out about the automated system, which admittedly sucks but is certainly a decision made by corporate, not her.

He repeatedly threatened to take his business elsewhere. Were I in her position, the response I'd have wanted to give was "please do".

Sooo... I have a flatpak version of LibreOffice, and for whatever reason (probably sandboxing) the spellchecker can't see the text of my document.

I may or may not have sent off a bunch of resumes that said that I "wrote technical documentaiton" in a previous job.

That's just super.

There's a job I really want a decent shot at. Thank God I caught it before submitting to that one.

Edit: I typo'd my typo. 🙃

I am in urgent job search mode, so I'm gonna throw this out here and see if anything comes of it.

I am a #Canadian, fluent in both #English and #French. I have experience with several programming languages. My strongest proficiency is with #Haskell and #C. I also have a reasonable grasp of #HTML, #JavaScript, #SQL, #Python, #Lua, #Linux system administration, #bash scripting, #Perl, #AWK, some #Lisp (common, scheme, and emacs), and probably several others I've forgotten to mention.

I am not necessarily looking for something in tech. I just need something stable. I have done everything from software development, to customer support, to factory work, though my current circumstances make in-person work more difficult than remote work. I have been regarded as a hard worker in every job I have ever held.

#GetFediHired

I've been an #Emacs user for like 20 years because there was one thing I needed to do back then that was made easier by elisp, and I just got used to using it. In all that time, I hardly ever tinkered much with the config, save a few minor tweaks it was pretty much stock. I had no strong feelings about Emacs in general, it was just the text editor I'd grown comfortable with.

I've recently been diving into #Lisp and poking around with my Emacs config, and after all these years, I think I'm starting to get the appeal. I am still a proponent of "use the tool that works for you", but I'm personally firmly on team Emacs now.

Welp, it's #FountainPen cleaning and re-inking day. #Today I re-learned why I don't use shimmer inks in my #TWSBI Diamond 580. In fact, I usually reserve them exclusively for dip pens.

Time to meticulously clean out a clogged feed. It didn't even make it a paragraph.

So, I've been taking another run at learning #CommonLisp. The last time I tried, I simply could not wrap my brain around macros. I'm reading the same book again, but this time am a more experienced programmer, and it all just clicked in my head.

I might actually end up enjoying #Lisp after all. I don't know if it'll dethrone #Haskell, but I'm starting to get why people like it.

I finally got around to setting up a gopher hole. There's nothing there yet, but hopefully soon there will be.

gopher://sdf.org/1/users/jlamothe

(Apologies to anyone with a screen reader. There will be an accessible version.)

I recently got a #Sailor #Hokoro dip pen, and much to my chagrin have found that several of my #FountainPen inks do not work well in it. It's almost like the ink refuses to be picked up by the nib/feed.

Has anyone else encountered this? Is there a solution?

Edit: the paper also seems to be a factor

Just grabbed a recipe off of gopher. It was amazing. No dodging ads. No popups. No cookie settings. Just the recipe I wanted.

This only served to reinforce for me what trash the modern web is.