A while ago I asked a question of the #ActuallyAutistic and #ADHD communities on my old Fosstodon account and got some pretty good feedback, so now that I'm back in my regular fedi home, I figured I'd do so again (as before, boosts welcome).

I find that when something is stressing me out, I'll obsess over it until I've either solved the problem or it overwhelms me to a point where I need to completely disengage (at least for a time). Often when this happens, loved ones will notice my distress and try to help in the form of asking questions or making suggestions. The problem is that if I'm in problem-solving mode it derails my train of thought, and if I'm in "disengage" mode it prevents me from... well, disengaging.

This frequently results in me responding in ways that are... unpleasant for all persons involved. I've identified this as a problem and am trying to find better ways of handling such situations, but it's easier said than done. Has anyone else experienced this? Are there any good strategies for dealing with it?

One of my pet peeves: when someone (often an advertiser) says that something is "chemical-free".

What the hell does that even mean?

Me in the morning before my #ADHD meds have kicked in:

Maybe the ninth time I walk into the bathroom I'll remember to put deodorant on.

Dear hlint:

I value your input, but in this case, I disagree.

Our local grocery store has a program where you can get a box of assorted discounted produce so long as you're not picky about what's in it. Katy and I had been meaning to try this out for a while, and it's been a pretty good experience so far. We're both creatures of habit, especially where food is concerned, and finding new recipes to figure out how to use the stuff we normally don't have has been rather enjoyable on the whole.

If keeping your grocery bill low is something you're trying to do, I recommend seeing if your local grocer has such a program.

So all the posts I've missed over the past four days during the outage are starting to pour in now. So far the new machine's handling the influx of traffic like a champ. The old one would be really struggling right now.

I am happy about this.

Hooray! I finally got the last of the systems I depend on daily back up and running.

Perhaps something I should consider is a contingency plan for the (hopefully very distant) next time my server fails.

I have a cheap multimeter because I do not require one frequently enough to invest in a decent one. I noticed something interesting though: there are a lot of seemingly metallic things in my apartment that are surprisingly good insulators? (e.g.: a (brass?) doorknob)

I thought the multimeter was the problem, but when I measure something like a wire, it seems to be okay. Is this normal?

I'll have to check if I have any spare resistors with known values laying around to better test the meter.

Just checked the mail and a day that I have been dreading is coming to pass. My family doctor is retiring.

There's a new doctor taking on his patients, but my current doctor's records are all on paper and the new one's are digital. I need to have my records digitized (at my own expense) to have them carried over.

It gets even better though. I've been assured that the company that will manage this digital transition is "physician-managed" and my records will be "stored securely". I fully trust my doctor's medical opinion, but as for opsec... well... one of the options is essentially: "please write all your sensitive PII on this request form and email it to us in plaintext." Yes, I can drop the form off in person, but that's rather beside the point.

Fine, I'll just add a pragma to ignore this one warning rather than fixing it.

It's fine.

It doesn't annoy me at all.

At all.

A piece of information that is repeated frequently enough will have a tendency to assert itself as true in the subconscious mind. This is a fact that is frequently exploited by propagandists.

Perhaps reminding people of this frequently enough will help to defend them against the tactic (with the unfortunate side-effect of being really annoying).

Oh right, the debate...

I think I'm gonna step away from my feed for a bit. I just don't have the mental bandwidth to deal with it atm.

Trying to wrap my brain around finite fields. I get how one can construct a finite field with an order of a prime number, but I don't get how it works with powers of primes. Everything I try to read on the subject eventually ends up getting into notation that I don't know how to read.

I think I get that a GF(p^n) has something to do with converting the field into a polynomial where all the coefficients are of GF(p), but that's where my understanding starts to fall apart.

Can anyone point me at something that will help me to better understand this?