Well that long concern has now been settled; I didn't lose my healthcare, I just got a new person who profits off me having healthcare. Mysterious emails and text messages are not great for morale on a topic that... really doesn't involve me at all. Nothing changed on my end. At all. Not a thing.

If you support Trump or ICE you can fuck off.

New experiment has come to mind, given that the testing folk have found it a bit of bother that these things do not automatically line up when placed on a VTT. I personally don't care about that, but we must serve the market. Thoughts emerge, but other work demands my attention in these dire times.

Well, now I have data on when to indulge if I wish to sleep. Lets file that one under good to know as a ripcord; and just pray things improve well enough to not require it. I say all this and it sounds concerning, but a 19 year old illegally drinking or smoking a weed would mock me for the amount.

Weekend was a bit of a waste, what with the horrors being what they are. Did some reading at least. My biggest regret was not indulging some weed or wine to get out of my goddamn head, but the goal was to do some work at some point. At least it snowed. That felt right.

With them both departed, I suppose I will never truly know what my grandparents were doing over there during the Troubles; save that my grandfather was a theologian and he went back there for a prolonged stint. It will always bother me though - how no one sees that side of me. For obvious reasons.

Trying to just... adjust the mental frequency wavelengths so I can focus; well aware that my meds are working but all the horrors compounding are actively the problem. Small victory that the meds are working. Damn hard to get locked in though. What with the horrors.

...A very funny distraction has removed me from the doomscroll of shortform video about the horrors; and I'm not going to comment on it because I'd like to think this person isn't being a manosphere weirdo. But if he is, he is poor casting for it. And yes, of course, this is TTRPG related nonsense.

There is a palpable dissonance that dizzies me every goddamn day I wake up. The horrors persist and the horrors persist, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. There is a profanity on display that scars me; like being near a fire too long. My apologies to clients, most of whom are foreign. We're not doing well.

I really need the libs-or-bots to leave me be. I do not know you, nothing at a cursory glance shows why you would dare to know me; and the same political points being recycled ad nauseum do not fill me with a desire to bridge that gap. Please do not make me explain my communist stances at length.

And... having words with Spectrum again.

I feel like, if one is to believe in giant spiders as a cryptid that is meat-and-bones (rather than a spiritual entity) - then one should really come to acknowledge that them being venomous doesn't make any sense. A bobcat is not venomous. We could talk about anticoagulants + bacteria though.

Dr. Cuddy, so named because she cuddy'd off House's leg. I have never seen House.

Was... literally setting up the new equipment. Come the fuck on, Spectrum.

Now I've played the Devil's game. I fell asleep at 8:00 PM. I've woken up at 10:45 PM. What a terrible curse for a night.

Really made the mistake of listening to the news today. Suppose I ought not to do that tomorrow.

Highlight of the day is that Mike and Rich love Lwaxana Troi.

The itch was scratched. I still think I need to do more generic "blank" ones, and right now we're at 21 hexes altogether. Fun as a warm-up. Also need to do some more interesting ones, or smaller filler hexes anyway, just to account for potential gaps or weird layout choices. TBD release.

So this is what 13 hexflowers looks like in terms of region-building. I'm getting better at making ones that feel appropriately nothing. I do think that this will need to be 20 hexflowers to feel eclectic to the point of utility for #FrontierScum purposes. It is scratching a small challenge itch.

Well... All that aside, the job offer situation might have been a system error, but they also might have thought I still worked for them anyway, but that means they would've realized I hadn't done any work for them for several months? Which... sounds about right. Here's hoping I'll hear something.

Put'em in Owlbear Rodeo to see if they can function - they can. Each flower is around 5.5mb, which feels... fine, for today's computing? 1400 x 900 pixels, could reduce the size. Maybe. Will look into that I suppose.

Forgot to realize I could also just... stack'em atop one another if I desired. Anyway, did five while doing some onboarding. Life's weird. Fun way to burn a few hours though. 12 feels right, might try 20 anyway.

I think the pursuit has legs, though it will need to be at least 12 hex flowers to properly give the level of scale and granularity necessary to convey there is nothing in this wasted land worth dying for. And thus traversing it becomes the appropriate misery of the circumstance.

I think there /may/ be something to this which is possible, but it is a real matter of figuring out the means in which to make vast nothingness visually interesting. Winter can have forests and the like to add contrast; deserts (especially with what I'm doing) can only really rely on rocks/cliffs.

Well, mixed messages on whether or not they want me because I'm actually great at the bureaucratic work or because they are crunching something fierce. But I'm not even onboarded yet and they want me in a meeting. Which I had to inform them is... impossible for me, because I'm not in the system.

Hm. Well let's see if this weird spur of the moment job offer actually pans out, because that'd solve a lot of issues in life really quick-like. Wouldn't that be a trip?

While I scramble back to it, figured to try out another test set of hex flowers. Realizing, in theory, I don't have to make these things work with HexKit and could just offer up these things as is for usage with digital tabletops. Might be a useful thing to consider for me, for the future.

New takeaways: - I am capable of listening to my voice for two hours. - I clearly have hang-ups about power structures. - I still care about redemption and progress (that's nice.) - I don't want to be a punk. - I just want better works in the field. - I can yap at length about empathy and despair.

Went into a discord where someone brought up my "Brooklyn accent" and they linked to this podcast I was on last autumn with @danielharila.bsky.social . Around the 1:16:00 Mark. My takeaway? Shockingly good mic quality for a crappy 20 dollar gaming headset. open.spotify.com/episode/1Fwb...

Internet is back up, so back to work on actual things; including something due at the end of the day - and then I can get back to commission work. Good to get the practice in at least. J-L and two of his contacts, wannabe teen hero Bombast; and Cable/Punisher/Libertarian weirdo, Castle Doctrine.

Well, let's see if 8-9 actually means anything - given they kept buzzing me with alerts until 2.

They have texted and emailed me now, multiple times, to tell me the internet is back up actually - and I should reset the equipment they said was broken. God help me.

Wishing Spectrum a very "choke on concrete" kind of day, for having wasted about 10 hours, finally "fixing an outage" only to then claim the wifi outage destroyed the circuitry of the modem. So now I got two people coming at two different times tomorrow to give me the same thing. I guess. End me.

Internet is still down, so spent most of the day tweaking how my current blorbo looked when he was an MMA fighter a year and a half prior. His career was referenced in a session last night, with the joke being J-L looked genuinely happy/healthy in his promo profile. Bit of a wasted day otherwise.

...quite literally cannot work in this outage. Did call and renegotiate our rate, because this is ridiculous. Dislike having to haggle, but here we are.

So, double my normal dosage, not extended release. About an hour-two hour activation time, and then it is very much a high kind of energy that feels a lot like being 18 again with regards to a sort of fluttery presence of self within the body. Less hyperfocus lock-on, more general lock-in mindset?

Doc gave me a higher scrip than my usual, so I'm vibrating into the Speedforce on the R Train. I could cackle. Helluva thing.

All right, god willingly the pharmacy calling me to say they have my medication means they have my medication. I'd love to have a working brain today.

Pharmacy told me they had everything to pick up. They did not.

Truly a lovely thing to see. It makes me nostalgic for when I first got into the field. The fun of "want to see some cool stuff I made?" that was unburdened by greater expectations. Free to just be a thing. Its like reading something which exists for the moment. Feels good to see such works again.

I need to find some of my good brushes (they're somewhere) - but I'm pretty happy with this, even if I could mix the media better. I'm in a cape game playing a former MMA-fighter who is functionally immortal. His life is in ruins. "Can't die" is a shit power. About 2 hours of being zoned out.

Mm. I dunno. Ultimately this is the issue of being in the field in a different capacity. Institutions falter, hegemony is built off authority gained in an attempt to cage the nebulousness. All the Yossarians with answers are at war with their Colonel Cathcarts. A better world looms on the horizon.

Got a declination email from a job I was pursuing and the person who signed off on it did so as Ramza. Ramza told me they'll keep me on file. I'm going to defenestrate Arazlam and burn the Durai Papers.

I don't remember if I posted this after watching the first season of the Pitt, but I'm hype for where this second season will go. I also hope Mantzoukas shows up in it so he can finally jump off the roof. I'm clearing out some old files. I make a lot of silly shitpost stuff I never show off.

I would like to think it'd be a war between "Rakehell is cozy" and "Rakehell is grimdark" crowds. I could see either viewpoint, and either viewpoint also doesn't really mean anything anyway.

Things are slowing down with my meatspace responsibilities, so I am looking for ILLUSTRATION GIGS! ALL OSR/NSR like- DCC OSE HMTW DND ADND SHADOWDARK MORK BÖRG MOTHERSHIP TRAVELLER MECHS DON'T SEE IT? JUST ASK! PRICES THAT WILL MAKE YOU SAY "WOW, ARE THESE FROM 10 YEARS AGO?!"

They took a lot of blood. I feel like... I am glad it isn't bad, why they need it. But it is silly. I am a riddle to solve an asterisk in a footnote of medical circumstances, and for this they need blood. And we all kinda know we're never gonna know anything useful and its probably mostly hormonal.

Because I got a few shoutouts and need to burn some time before I head out for a blood draw; I'm just gonna post some pieces I've enjoyed collaging over the past year or so. I'm still really proud of this Slackgaff-by-the-Sea map I did for a short Frontier Scum game/project. Plus some tests.

Getting back into the swing of things - just in time for the clinic to harvest a big ol'bucket of my mutant blood. I'll be more serious about it if/when they have an answer to my weirdness or something else happens.