Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2d ago
It's a subdued, cloudy morning here in my little corner of the world. The Kenyan coffee that I'm sipping, a roast that I've been highly pleased with, tastes just a touch odd compared to the bright, sour cherry note that has been characteristic of this particular batch, and I can't help but wonder if perhaps I didn't rinse my coffee mug well enough, as the odd flavor is close to the scent in my dish soap. Then again, perhaps the issue is an issue with the brewing--when I poured the initial 50 ml of hot water on the grounds for the bloom, it funneled straight through them and down into the cup, and I had to compensate by pouring water around the edges to bring all of the grounds into play before they behaved themselves. First time that's ever happened to me, and I know I gave them their proper shake to let them settle before pouring, but perhaps I didn't do it well enough. Regardless, it's still really good coffee.
Above me, a mourning dove coos, and one across the street gives its own answering call. I am sitting on the generously sized deck of my new apartment, a third floor walk-up, and directly in front of me is a mature maple tree that makes me feel like I'm in a tree house, my very own Raven's Nest. The dove's call tugs at my heart strings a little, and I pay attention to them, finding the familiar feelings of obligation and guilt at the other end of the strings. I like my new apartment, I'm having fun outfitting it and fitting my essential things into it, a new puzzle for me to complete with many possible correct solutions. Deeper still, I've found that my intensely painful feelings of failure, grief, sorrow, and identity loss were all acknowledged and dealt with the last time my wife precipitously separated from me, and the work I did then, when I didn't even have an answer for who I would be if I wasn't trying to be a good, supportive husband, is still here with me. Moreover, I've actually found a fair bit of excitement in the prospect of building a new life for myself and discovering who I want to be now that I've finally let go of my rigid adherence to the vows I took almost two decades ago.
Grey divorce is a Hell of a drug.
In sharp contrast to my own attitude, my wife regularly texts me with her own emotional struggles, crying herself to sleep, feeling like life isn't worth living, etc. etc., and I feel badly for her, even as I recognize that she has consistently chosen for herself the prison in which she currently abides. Still, here is the source of guilt and obligation, my old role as emotional caretaker that still wants to help and be supportive, even as the wiser parts of my brain intercede with the knowledge that the best thing I can do is maintain enough distance to let her work her feelings out for herself. I know these things to be true, and yet I can't help but feel guilty for growing enough to have accepted that my marriage was dead, to have grown enough to learn to be comfortable in my own skin.
I'm not the one that said I wanted a divorce in the first place. I'm not the one that said of my vows, "I meant them when I said them." I'm too damned stubborn autistic for that.
The particulars of our divorce have been finalized and notarized, we've agreed to the division of assets, and we are both reasonably content with our choices. All that's left for us to do is wait for our court date, when a judge will make everything official. Then, we'll be legally free to go our separate ways and live our own lives. What once seemed like an insurmountable obstacle now just seems like a good, challenging hike, even though I have not one, but several different elephants to eat one bite at a time, the largest current one the almost two decades worth of cruft that I've accumulated in our home and need to clear out. My most prized possessions that won't fit into my new lifestyle, like my home theater system, will probably go into storage, but I'm going to try my best to practice Swedish Death Cleaning and let go of anything and everything that isn't essential to me or prized enough that my younger siblings would like them, and I know that's going to be a slog.
At this stage of the game, it seems my life is being most enriched not by what it contains, but by what I can remove from it.
Despite my age, this is the first time in my adult life that I've lived on my own and truly enjoyed it for its own sake. The other two times I was following the motto of, "fake it until you make it," and while I did my best, my emotional make-up was still far too close to the dynamics I learned in childhood, namely that I needed to be a part-time caretaker for my mother's sometimes-volatile emotions. That dynamic was so ingrained in my own emotional make-up that I didn't feel complete without having a partner in my life to nurture and care for, and the lesson life has consistently been teaching me as a result is that there is a boundary at which nurturing becomes caretaking, and another boundary that separates caretaking from enabling another's bad behavior, and that my idea of nurturing is far into the enabling spectrum by default.
The question that I try to stop and ask myself when it comes to helping others now is, "am I setting myself on fire to keep this person warm?"
And the beauty of that powerful question is that it helps me to stay the worst of my behaviors, the ones that are popularly called codependent. It helps me find better choices, and as a result I'm better positioned than ever before to take care of myself first, to meet my own needs, and to live a life I want to live for myself without feeling a deep, aching need for another to live that life by my side. I still love and cherish my romantic streak, but freed from the bonds of the expectations of a relationship, I can and do find romance in many of life's small, simple pleasures, like the food I eat, the apartment that I'm renting, this beautiful treetop deck that I like to enjoy, and the unique flavor of my current batch of coffee. My next batch is an Ethiopian bean, and one that looks promising, though an oversight in my roasting process meant that the roaster glitched out several times due to overheating, leading to a significantly longer than usual roast time as the temperature dipped with each glitch. I'm interested to see how it turns out, wondering if it won't be up to par, as my general rule of thumb with my roaster is that it does best with hot, speedy roasts, or if perhaps those glitches will lead to a happy little accident of flavor that I might not otherwise have had from my coffee. Time will tell, and I expect to be tasting my first cup this Sunday.
As strange as an earlier version of me would have found this, despite the challenges and the inevitable problems and complications, for the first time since childhood, I find that all is well in my life and that I am generally pleased and often happy.
Oh, I completely agree, and this is what makes the moment so poignant for me: Harry knew exactly what we was doing when he asked, knew that what he needed, what he was asking for was completely unfair
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
6d ago
On the lighter side, continued my quest through the Dresden Files with the Ghost Story. Dresden seems to reach peek goofiness in this one, it's a fun read but in the terms of universe/character development it seems to walk in circles.
IDK, for my money, Ghost Story does develop most of the main characters of the series, It's a Wonderful Life Style, but moreover, it contains one of, if not the, most powerful scene(s) in the series at its climax thus far --
And FTR, the other two scenes that, for me, compete with the previous one are
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
6d ago
TY kind Mottizen, it's good to know that my memory isn't subtly off on every single damn thing, just a lot of things!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
6d ago
So I recently had a chance to sample the Fried Apple Pie that McDonald's brought back to celebrate America's 250th anniversary. I am old enough to have been around when the original was a Thing, though I happened to prefer the fried cherry pie. That said, my verdict is that it was a faithful reproduction of the original, right down to the box art, and the only difference that I noted was that I seemed to remember the pies coming in sleeves instead of boxes BITD, and that could well be a confabulation on my part.
I have never been so thrilled to burn the roof of my mouth in my entire life--the apple pie delivered that part of the experience as well! 10/10, need to repeat while I still can. If you're thinking about giving it a shot, just do it!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
7d ago
I'm probably showing my years here, and maybe my autism as well, but I've never understood why that's supposed to be a bad thing!
Not that I'm saying you personally feel that way or anything, just one of those things that my brain sees and says, "why, tho?"
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
13d ago
Haha, no worries, I thought I had remembered talking to you about that, and it turned out that I was right! To me, it's still creepy AF to consider the esoteric angle to Keel's hypothesis, namely that other intelligences are not only responsible for strange, not-rationally-explainable phenomena, but also the follow-up MiB visitations as well!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
13d ago
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
16d ago
I mean, I totally get that it's gone quickly, but I personally love a good espresso and I'll tell you why. The idea of espresso is to extract everything that's great about the taste of coffee into that demitasse cup and to leave everything nasty and bitter in the puck of coffee grounds that the water is forced through. A good shot of espresso will light up your senses the moment it hits your palate in a concentrated flavor burst, and can be a whole new level of amazing, especially when getting one from places that know their craft--every single sip will bring that powerful, concentrated flavor. And yeah, the caffeine does in fact hit more quickly when drinking espresso. That said, if you like to sip your beverages leisurely, coffee is always going to be a better choice. But yeah, just talking about it like this makes me want one and maybe I'll treat myself tomorrow!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
21d ago
IDK, some root beers, like A&W seem to have a little bit of a wintermint note to them, so I can kinda see it, though I'd totally agree that there's a lot more going on there, flavor-wise. Maybe it's something like the cilantro/soap thing.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
22d ago
I get why you wouldn't want to air your private laundry is what I'm trying to get at, not trying to threadjack you here.
But you're still a tease. =P
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
22d ago
I get it, no, really, I do, but those of us that are interested in such things are left hanging. Good for you for actually writing it out at least.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
23d ago
It's a very good story, it really is, and I can't be arsed to write it.
Tease.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
24d ago
There's a lot to like about Mint, to me it's always been one of the better Ubuntu-based distros! Coming back to a Fedora-based distro after about a decade plus on the other side of that software divide has been an interesting experience, and I've stubbed my toes on various things several different times, but I'm finding that I really dig the underpinnings of Bazzite much more than I expected to. But anyway, IMO Windoze will continue to rule the corporate roost for the foreseeable future since Office is still the de facto standard, but if you don't need that particular ecosystem and are relatively comfortable running a flavor or Linux, then outside of $specific_thing that can't be run/emulated in Linux land, there's absolutely no reason to suffer with M$ any longer.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
24d ago
Bazzite has generated some interest. The big mover has been Steam and Proton improving the gaming experience, combined with Windows continuing to anger tech-literate users with increasing telemetry and AI features that make people feel like they're the product.
I mean, old enough to have Zoomers as children, had I any children, but the first thing I did with my new rig was copy off the default Windoze install and then nuke the drive with a fresh Bazzite install. It's been a ton of fun to play with, and the best part about it is that it's way more trustworthy to me RN than the unholy mess that is Windows 11 and patch Tuesdays randomly breaking $Important_Thing because all M$ cares about is growing its 365 empire, old and decaying x86-based OS monopoly notwithstanding.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
24d ago
That setup I talked about wanting last week with adding a 3090 to my rig for added VRAM headroom? Yeah, I splurged and went for it and due to various snafus, such as janky motherboard cables on the initial PSU and bloody Odindamned direct signature required FedEx shipping, I didn't get my rig properly equipped until tonight. Loading the LLM on PCIE 4 4x sure takes its sweet time but on the back end, I just tested it with a 24b model at 8_0 and it was acceptably fast even before tweaking my settings any. Dropping a 3090 ti in (after dealing with the fiddly 3 pci-e power adapter) just... worked, at least for the LLM part, though now I've gotta fix up my games and tell them all to use the 5080, but still. Time to play with some bigger models! When I'm finished moving house, at least...
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
27d ago
I don't mind and no, we don't. Kids are a whole separate story, but tl;dr, my wife wasn't supposed to be able to have children but she nevertheless got pregnant early in our relationship and miscarried 20 weeks into the pregnancy, probably due to a partially detached placenta. She blames herself for the loss of our son and I'm sure that the trauma from that has had a significant negative impact on our relationship. Regardless, we tried off and on again to have another child for the next few years before she decided that the uncertainty was too much and opted for the copper IUD.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
27d ago
Thanks, fellow Mottizen, I appreciate it. It's really been inevitable the whole time, I've just spent most of the last five years struggling to accept that. I had hoped that after our last separation that she'd be ready to try and make things work but she flat-out told me recently that she didn't want to deal with her issues, she hated them, and wanted them to go away. I seem to have done more soul-searching and changing than I gave myself credit for, because surprisingly enough, I'd actually rather build a new life and figure out what to do with myself now, rather than stay in a failed marriage which had been my entire identity for all those years. And as good as it could feel to play the White Knight, the uglier truth is that I've just been enabling her behavior by being overly empathetic and not setting boundaries and enforcing my limits because, of course, to do so would have threatened or even ended the marriage. Being on the other side of that, wanting to divorce before things get any worse after all this time and all that's happened, is a strange thing, but hardly the worst of things.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
27d ago
Just cracked open (electronically) LIght on the Other Side of Divorce: Discovering the New You by Dr. Elizabeth Cohen.
No reason.
With the caveat that my semi-informed opinion plus experience will, with $7, buy you a latte at Starbucks, I think that the new fabs will help, but prices will still be above average unless an AI crash tanks the chip market in that time frame. I don't think such a thing is out of the question, and I expect some sort of market correction is inevitable in the long run, but I now grok why AI demand for wafers in general and memory in particular is so insatiable, which in turn leads me to believe that looking for lower prices in the medium term will be a coin flip at best. I'm personally glad that I went the other direction and decided eff it, I'm getting in now on a good deal and I'll let the chips fall where they may, and my only ragret is that I didn't spend the extra ~$1600 when I had the chance and go whole hog. I expect that if you're willing to buy used, you should be able to find something more than suitable when you're ready to make the purchase, and even if you want new, the budget/mid-tier stuff is plenty capable of suiting your needs. The performance of the Steam deck is instructive there.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Erm, how's it for fibrous collagen plaques? Asking for a friend, natch...
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Gattsuru has already covered this ground better than I could, but IME Q4 can be sketchy enough that I would have serious general reservations about moving down to Q3 and personally prefer Q5 when it actually fits into 16 gigs, which is... not that many models, unfortunately, hence my burning desire for moar VRAM.
Thank you, that's high praise coming from a writer such as yourself, and I appreciate it, and the well wishes!
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