Black Cat Blog

On Saturday, I took a fairly sizable risk and tried a Delta 9 THC gummy and wow do I feel like a switch was thrown in my brain. I feel so like my anxiety has shown marked improvement in a way that no prescription medication has done for me. Delta 9 is a formulation of THC which includes THC-A and THC-P. THC-A becomes psychoactive when exposed to body heat. That combined with THC-P which is already psychoactive makes for a really powerful high. It seemed to have a lasting effect on my anxiety because I still feel quite relaxed.

As a result, I am feeling much less angry and more patient with the world and thing. I noticed at work yesterday I felt more relaxed. There may be something to the use of THC for treatment of anxiety but I don’t want to be using this too often because I don’t want to risk losing this effect. It is such a nice effect that I do not want to potentially build up a tolerance to it. I have a feeling this is supposed to be used sparingly and not overused. If used sparingly, this could have really beneficial outcomes on mental health and I mean really beneficial.

I’m just waiting for some iced coffee and a coffee cake muffin from Dunkin and then I have some prep work to do for grad school. I have this 70 minute online course for prevention of sexual assault and rape. I think it is a good thing to require because this does happen and awareness needs to be spread. I am like super excited for classes to begin and I am ready to embark on this journey to become a licensed clinical social worker.

After watching some true crime stuff on TV, my thoughts are really being heavily weighed down by the war on drugs and sex work. Both are examples of epic failures in policy and are causing far more harm than any good. It is about time that the war on drugs ends and that sex work be legalized. Neither policies are about the promotion of public health or safety. They’re all grounded in rather backward Christian temperance beliefs which are causing much more harm than good.

At this point, the war on drugs is being perpetuated simply because it is far too profitable for too many corporations, too beneficial for law enforcement budgets, and too beneficial for politicians. In fact, the cartels themselves have a vested interest in keeping the status quo simply because they would stand to lose billions of dollars in profits per years should this policy end. The war on drugs has done nothing to reduce drug-related crime and hospitals and EMS continue to fight the narcotics epidemic on the frontlines.

As if this is not enough, the continued legal prohibition on sex work is actually endangering the lives of women. Yes, it’s not protecting women at all! Women have to work in the shadows of society in order to avoid arrest and prosecution. Therefore, they’re far more likely to fall victim to sex trafficking and horrific forms of abuse from sexual assault up to and including murder. If sex work were legal, women would actually be much safer. The pimping system would vanish virtually overnight. Women would not have to work within a shadowy underworld.

These concerns are just a small part of why I will never see America as great. Our own president is, for all intents and purposes, a known pedophile and most likely guilty of multiple counts of sexual assault as well. The fact that America still does not take the protection of women seriously is astounding. And all these incarcerations for drug use and possession. If someone wants to use drugs, who are we to tell them that they cannot. We should not be legislating what a person can or cannot do with their own body. Prohibition of alcohol failed, why are we repeating history!? Does anybody else see the irony of the MAGA contingent touting our country as being the freest in the world while also having the largest incarcerated population? I just can no longer drink this kool aide being served by the government.

I know I should try and get some sleep but I’m afraid to. I’m afraid of the night terrors. The last 4 nights they’ve been very bad. My greatest fear – really and truly – is homelessness. I fear sleeping out in the open with no protection. I know I would be a victim. Lately these are my dreams. I’m sleeping on a park bench and I get assaulted badly. Or I’m desperately trying to hide in an abandoned building. I keep being startled awake. In one dream rats started eating me alive. In another, lightning struck me. I remember begging for admittance into a shelter; pleading with the staff only to be turned away.

My other dreams were of my brother rejecting me and no longer wanting me to be a part of his life. I was pleading with him for another chance. This dream had no real basis in reality. My brother and I are closer than we’ve ever been but the night terrors are bad. I’m fighting against sleep. I’m fighting hard. I don’t know what to turn to.

My eyelids are growing heavy and I am getting tired. I think tomorrow will do the best that I can

I have to write another blog entry tonight because I am feeling chock full of rage. I need to vent some steam in a healthy-ish way because I’ll explode if I don’t. I am feeling boxed in by poverty, the encroaching fascism in the United States, and a general feeling of living in a prison sans walls. I feel like I am living in the illusion of freedom and it’s absolutely making me crazy with rage right now. I can understand why people simply snap. Now before y’all get concerned, I am not going to snap and go on a mass shooting. Thankfully, I am nowhere even remotely close to that point and thought of slaughtering my fellow working class members is horrific to me.

Instead, I am trying to channel my rage to subverting the system in any way I can and assisting others in doing so. The goal is finding positive ways to channel the anger. I just wish more folks would be on board with active subversion of the system. Although I do understand and get the apathy. The apathy comes from feeling powerless and feeling like one lacks agency in own their own life. I certainly am no stranger to feeling like I lack agency and that’s one of the things that makes me stark raving angry.

I think if I could get some folks interested in computers, networks, and information security, I think I could shake them from their apathy and actually give them some agency in their lives. I would like to convince them of the value of learning to give them agency, or at the very least, help protect them against the evils of the Republicans and the MAGA Christofascists. Again, I am trying to channel my anger. It will be a challenge at any rate. I have some ideas. On Friday morning, a kind stranger is going to donate some old HP Compaq 5700s that he has lying around gathering dust. I am going to press them into service as routers and DNS servers for my experiment to see if I can’t begin a little something.

I’ve been reading about what NYC Mesh has been doing with some interest and I’ve reached out to them on Mastodon for ideas. I’d like to do something similar in Wilmington, DE. There is a lot of poverty in Wilmington and a lot of folks are using cell phones or tablets for accessing the internet. In my mind, this is completely inadequate and robs the person of the true experience of learning to use computers and technology. I wonder if it will be possible to get something like this off of the ground in my community. Verizon and Xfinity are greedy and resource hoarders. Wilmington is ripe for a major positive disruption.

I am sure I could get corporations to donate cast off, e-waste equipment to the cause. After all, they’re always looking for a tax write-off. I just don’t think people can depend on libraries alone for internet access. Besides, I’ve noticed that libraries in my community have actually begun logging and censoring people’s activity all in the name of safety and security and some legitimate websites have been blocked as a result. I know that I cannot reach my Mastodon instance from the public libraries in my county. They’ve blocked the .social domain entirely. People need internet access in the privacy and sanctity of their own homes or dwellings without the surveillance of government.

I guess before I get this far, I have to do some experimentation and learning about network building. I’ll need some help with that and I have to find some people willing to help. That will be the challenge. I don’t know of anyone off the top of my head with the both the skill and willingness. Well, one step at a time I suppose.

This morning I had to face the fact that the PTSD-related nightmares have returned. I knew that medications are not perfect but about 80-90% of the time they worked to keep them away. For the post 7 days, I have been having breakthrough nightmares every night. This means that something has to change because the medication regimen is no longer working. I reached out to my Psych PA over the patient portal to let him know what’s been happening. I really like and trust him so I am certain that he will respond soon and the two of us will hammer something out.

These dream are awful, almost like a horrific real life Salavador Dali-like painting; highly surreal dream of all the worst rejections in my life. I wake up panting, sweating, and completely startled. They’re so bad that I am almost afraid to go to sleep at night because the dreams are just that bad. The medication regiment I was on, Clonodine and Topamax, worked beautifully up until now. It seems like they just simply quit, almost like a switch got thrown and my evil brain said, “HA! I am not going to listen to that medication any longer. Here’s your horror movie!”

It has become a vicious cycle because I am now even more tired during the daytime, so when I need a nap, I reach REM sleep and it’s the same vicious cycle all over again. I get PTSD nightmares during the nap, I wake up in a sweat and dazed and confused. I am only working part time on the weekends but I am so tired that when I sit at my desk to try to work on a computer project I am literally falling asleep at my desk or if I watch TV the same thing happens. I am almost ready to cry at this point. I have got to get this nailed down before grad school starts or I will be between a rock and a hard place.

Dealing with mental illness is a constant battle and there are days when I grow sick and tired of it. There’s never any controlling the symptoms, there’s merely managing and reaching the acceptance that all I will do is manage them. That’s fine but the moment one thing gets a little bit out of management, the others start to fall like dominoes. I need to nip this one thing in the bud before this happens. Lack of good sleep is going create a cascading problem.

This morning I am experiencing some racing thoughts all about the secure VPN network that I want to design so I know I need to put some things down just to stop them. I wish I had some more money handy so could just get this thing started and stop the thoughts altogether. If I got this thing started, it would give me a good activity to do to learn and keep me productive instead of sitting here and somewhat mindlessly on Reddit. Oh well. At least I feel strangely cheerful but I cannot explain it and I am going to ride it out for what it is absolutely worth.

This week I hope to hear something positive back from the place I interviewed at last Friday, The Bridge Clinic. I like the mission of The Bridge Clinic and think I would enjoy doing the weekend administrative assistant job. At least I feel okay about not getting the job too. I won’t beat myself up if it does not materialize. I don’t really have any plans for today but I would like to read some more of my novel. The trouble is I get sleepy when I read but that’s not necessarily a bad problem to have. 😆

Last night someone supporting the Israeli Defense Force tried to follow me on Mastodon and that gets a instant block. The IDF is in the middle of a genocide against the Palestinian people and I am a Jew who supports a two state system. Not only that but I reported the user to the admin of the Mastodon instance that he was on. The fediverse should have zero tolerance for this kind of thing as it is an open and safe space. There are no “both sides” of this issue.

I am thinking that once I graduate with a Masters of Social Work (MSW), I am going to dedicate some time every month to volunteer for causes that I am passionate about. I may even start a a non-profit that blends social work and technology because the internet is the modern day equivalent of the printing press and it needs to be more accessible to people of low income. I don’t consider internet on a phone to be acceptable internet access. Children and adults need actual computers to participate, and be competitive in, today’s world; real laptops or desktops and not simply netbooks and Chromebooks. I had a pipe dream to start a non-profit ISP in my home town of Delaware. Maybe I could make this a reality.

Some days I feel like Bill Moyers in that I have got a world of ideas. Ideas are lots of fun to come up with. Dreams are lots of fun to come up with. Some days I would like to be better at the follow through of them. But really first I have to work on myself and get myself to a place where I can make these dreams happen. That’s going to start on August 26th!

I had high hopes that today would be a good day and I don’t know why I get my hopes up because inevitably they get dashed. This afternoon I had an interview for a weekend administrative assistant position that I was excited about because I thought it would be a good exit strategy from my present work as a security guard. While the interview itself went reasonably well, I’m a betting man and I don’t think the odds are in my favor on this one. There are going to be concerns about my qualifications on this one. Either way, I’m going to hear back in a week.

I’m really feeling salty about my current job situation. My boss wanted me to work at Wilmington Housing Authority tomorrow and I’m just not doing it. I flat out told him no thanks. I know he wasn’t happy but I’m not working at that shit hole. I don’t want to set a precedent that I’m willing to bend over backwards. I was really angry over how my boss tried to short my pay by a dollar an hour. I had to catch it and argue it. At first he wasn’t going to do anything. It took an explicit threat for me to go to the Department of Labor for him to quickly make the correction. I hate crooks.

I’m sure the heat isn’t helping any but I’m trying to look on the bright side of things. The bright side being grad school starting in only 30 days. Patience has never really been my strong suit. The Department of Vocational Rehabilitation ordered a brand new Dell laptop for me to use for school. This really made me happy as I would have been perfectly okay with a used one. I would’ve been grateful for anything given to me.

This weekend is going to be really too hot to do anything except stay in the air conditioning. I don’t even want to spend any time in my office because the A/C doesn’t reach that room. I’m just watching the local news and generally wasting time. I’m fine with this.

I’m thinking I’d really like to have an early to bed night. I worked 4 straight days of second shift and clearly I’m not used to this. My biorhythms are somewhat thrown off. No doubt that has contributed to my overall agitation. Hopefully my therapy session this afternoon will relax me some.

I am disappointed but not surprised by Indivisible ignoring my carefully drafted email to create a secure network for communications. They probably think I am one of the “tin foil” hat loonies but I was actually being quite reasonable and of sound judgement. But they made the choice to disregard my idea.

People are afraid of protesting because of the very real threat of being arrested and then disappeared. Indivisble is organizing activities out in the open which is practically an invite for law enforcement to keep tabs on their activities. Hell, it’s practically sending up a flare that says, “Please conduct your best surveillance on my activities.” It’s no wonder people are scared. The best protests are the ones that cannot be predicted. How do you plan them to be unpredictable? You use a private, secure, and a virtually undetectable network.

It’s like the idiots haven’t even read all of the briefings put out by the EFF. The EFF is dedicated to protecting individuals and organizations in the digital age. I just don’t get it. I want to offer Indivisible a service for free that would cost them tens of thousands of dollars in consulting and implementation fees. They blow me off as some nutcase. All I can really do is shrug my shoulders at this point and move on.

How do you convince people that the government really is spying on them without sounding crazy? I guess that’s the 64,000 dollar question. Maybe it’s going to take something happening to blow it wide open. I would’ve thought that event would’ve been Edward Snowden’s revelations; guess not.

I wonder if Indivisible will do anything at all to help individuals participating in events that it organizes. Will Indivisible help them or simply treat them as casualties of the war for freedom? This remains to be seen since they seem to be so cavalier about their communications and planning methods. I don’t really know and can’t really say but I may think twice about going to one of their events because it’s like a giant sonar ping for authorities and government surveillance agencies. I wish that were not the case though.

Today I really learned the implications of a post-privacy world. I have a Mastodon follower that is (or purports to be) a Meta employee. I don’t know why but I believe him when says that he is. There’s just something believable about it. Well he revealed some very angering things about what Meta knows about us; specific things down to our sexual orientation and how often we have sex and our political affiliations and leanings. I screwed up when I didn’t heed the warnings years ago when privacy advocates were railing against Facebook. I thought those guys were wearing the “tin foil hats.” I’m the sucker.

Now it’s just about impossible for me to disappear even if I really want to. Couple that with me feeling really salty about my employment situation. My existing employer is jerking me around so I don’t feel like working. Well I digress, I feel even more motivated to continue on my path to build CCURENET. But CCURENET is not, nor will it ever be, designed with mobile devices in mind because of location tracking. I won’t allow mobile devices to participate on the network in any way, shape, or form.

CCURENET is going to depend upon people having internet access and an actual laptop or desktop. I’m hoping this can reclaim some privacy.

Today I got some most welcome news. I’ve received a full ride scholarship to the University of Delaware for a Masters in Social Work! The scholarship came from the State of Delaware. I wasn’t expecting a full ride. I thought it would just be some monies and I would need to get FAFSA loans. So that put a real smile on my face.

I also got a 100.00 gift card from Verizon which was a welcome surprise because I’m trying to build out my home lab so this will purchase an OptiPlex 7050 to serve as the router. Then I have a lead on 2 more Dells which will serve as DNS servers, web, sftp, and maybe VoIP. Initially, this equipment will be for participating on DN42 to try a few things out. Once I have a proven concept, I will then build out CCURENET, my own network.

The only thing I wish I did not have to do for the next four days is work. But, the bills need to get paid somehow so I’ll grind through it. I need to set a reminder for Wednesday to reach out to my recruiter to see what’s up with my job interview that’s supposed to happen on Friday. In other news, I have to figure out how I am going to get some professional dress clothes for UD graduate school orientation. I learned it’s dress professional but I don’t do ties so they’ll have to deal with that.

I’m also thinking about just shutting down my Mastodon instance and going with one of the Mastodon instances already out there. It’s been a fun experiment but it’s a lot of care and feeding that I won’t have time for anymore. Running a Mastodon instance isn’t simply stand up and forget. It’s an appreciable workload. I’ll make a decision either way by the end of the summer. I’ve still got time.

One thing I will have to do is get used to being in academia again. I’m going to have to buckle down and study. I need to maintain a GPA of at least 3.25 to keep my scholarship so that means hard work. I also don’t want to let myself down. I’ve been given the opportunity of a lifetime and I fully intend to capitalize on it.