Black Cat Blog

Thoughts, Stories, and Ideas

  • I Don’t Know What to Feel

    This morning I just feel empty and blank. I feel nothing at all and I guess that is okay because it is preferable to feeling depressed. However, it is still somewhat disconcerting. Maybe I will feel better after taking a shower which I kind of have to do before work as my face is a bit stubbly. I have to make it through my 3-11 today and my 7a-11a tomorrow. Then I have a little bit more than 2 days to recuperate before working another marathon 9 days in a row. I think my shifts have been scheduled so that they straddle a pay period so no overtime for me.

    There seems to be no advancement opportunities and no love. Maybe I am just resigned at this point to whatever happens. It could just very well be that I am resigned to my fate. I want to do better but life just keeps knocking me back down hard. I don’t feel much joy anymore. Not even my computer lab gives me much joy. After all, it is plugging away, working, and there’s not much more for me to really do at this point.

    I regret moving from Arizona back to the east coast. Some of the best times of my life were spent in Arizona. I had a 1978 Lincoln Mark V, a 2009 Kawasaki Concours, and nice Jetta daily driver. I had a nice place to live with an absurdly low monthly payment. I enjoyed life. Since moving back east, virtually nothing has gone right. Save for meeting (and getting engaged to) Denisse, I’ve lost years of my life that I will never get back.

    Now I work a menial, dead-end job with no hope of ever rising out of it. I am out of second chances. I have to face this reality. Even my DVR counselor has given up on me. I don’t know what to say or do at this point.

  • Working Second Shift

    ,

    Today I feel pretty darned good because I will be working at my favorite site, the Louis L. Redding City/County Building. This building is both the New Castle County seat and Wilmington City Hall. On weekends the building is locked completely down to the general public and it is collecting a paycheck. I enjoy the work very much because there is plenty of time for me to pursue my own interests and go down rabbit holes and warrens on my laptop. This kind of exploration is tons of fun for me.

    This morning, or should I say afternoon now, has started out positive. I know I should not be doing things like kratom alkaloids but they really help me sleep and relieve pain like nothing else. They are available at the local smoke and vape shop. After a mistake that my manager made, I unknowingly took a fill-in standing shift on Thursday. I am a pretty advanced type 2 diabetic so I was in agony by the end of the day. Since I had expected to have a seated shift, I did not have my cane with me so I limped to the bus stop and limped home from the bus stop closest to home.

    By the time I got home, there were stabbing pains in my feet. My kind, compassionate, and lovely Denisse went to get some 7-OH for me to help relieve the pain and it was instant. The pain was at an 11/10. I have a high threshold for pain and discomfort so if it was that bad, you know I was hurting. Anyhow, I still had some residual pain yesterday but I made the relatively poor choice to do the kratom alkaloid again last night but to dull the emotional pain and sadness I was experiencing.

    Again, my lovely Denisse sat with me through it all. Damn but I love this woman to pieces. At times she may get under my skin a little, but when push comes to shove, she means the world to me and I wouldn’t trade her for anybody else. We are coming up on our 2 year anniversary in August.

    So today the name of the game is to get through the afternoon and evening incident free! The idea is to enjoy the peaceful shift and re-think some book ideas that I have.

  • I Jinxed Myself

    I got all excited for nothing whatsoever. I was excited about the Securitas opportunity and it did not pan out. I got the rejection email about an hour from the time I wrote this, 10:00PM Eastern. I am almost certain I bungled the interview when I think of it. The interviewer asked me why I was seeking out a new position and I said, “I am looking for greener pastures with growth and development opportunity.” When I think of it, my answer implied the deep-seated discontent that I feel with OPS. I guess, in the eyes of Securitas, this makes me more of a liability than an asset. I would take this as a hard and sad lessen learned.

    It was a rough day all around. This morning I got a call from Lodge Lane, the memory care facility where my mom is staying. She hit her head and was brought to the emergency room for evaluation. At least there were no signs of brain injury on the CT scan or MRI so they sent her back to the facility. I am reminded again of just how awful Alzheimer’s Disease is. It’s truly a sad situation. I don’t know how much more bad news I can take. Fortunately, I am not a violent person. The only time I’ve been known to become violent is when my safety has been directly threatened, i.e. it is defensive.

    Sometimes I feel like trudging on is useless but I do not feel suicidal. I just feel like I am bordering on shutting down completely. Almost like going catatonic. Knowing my luck, if I attempted suicide, I would bungle it and end up like a vegetable. So I have no choice but to soldier on. There’s just no other option. I just hope that shitbird RFK Jr. does not take away my access to antidepressants. The antidepressants prevent things from being worse and he’s operating on a dangerously flawed premise. He is the prime example of how important it is to only let someone that is a trained psychiatrist make critical mental health decisions. For that matter, only a trained and board-certified doctor should be making healthcare decisions.

    If we want to vilify anyone, let’s look at how Big Pharma behaves. They charge egregious amounts of money for medicines that have been available in generic for a long time. Medications on the forefront of health are out of reach to everyone but the wealthy. Furthermore, Big Pharma needs to be incentivized to seek out cures for diseases because cures are not long term profit models. It has become ridiculous. We take medications to counter the effects of other medications while Big Pharma reaps in the profits. But nobody will address the white elephant in the room.

    Until such a time as cures can happen, medicines fill a need and they must be affordable. This was a long digression. I’m tired and life feels pretty darned hopeless now. I’m falling further and further behind. I am in a hole I will be unable to extricate myself from soon. I don’t even want to address it. I just want to bury it in substances.

  • Tired and My Feet Hurt

    I’m feeling every bit my age and it is partly my fault for not thinking to bring my afternoon dose of Gabapentin. It was poor planning because I worked a standing shift and I am a Type 2 Diabetic. Well at least I’m on the bus home. Sadly, I have not heard from Securitas yet. I was really hoping to hear from them and pick up a new security job as the company I work for now is dead end. I want to be done with them. The sooner the better.

    In more positive news, my home computer lab is working well now. I have a virtualized OPNsense router that outperforms the piece of rubbish supplied by Verizon. The one thing I have not been able to get going is WireGuard on the router. For now, I spun up a container to power WireGuard. I also spun up another container for Mastodon. I have to see what other services I can host.

    I am currently using the 169.254.0.0/16 but I broke it down into a single 169.254.0.0/29 for my home use but that won’t work. I was planning on using that block as tunnel endpoint addresses for the WAN I’m building. I need to rethink this some. For now, it’s okay but it won’t be for much longer. I’m building this WAN in the name of learning.

  • Reason to Smile

    After a shit day yesterday, I have a reason to smile this morning. After my 4 hour waste of time of a shift, I am headed to the Securitas office for their hiring event to hopefully get a job offer and ditch this miserable excuse for a company called Oracle Protective Services where I work at now. They hit my last straw on Sunday night where I was told I had to use my personal cell phone in performance of my duties and I get no reimbursement for that. Well, things are going to change.

    I know Securitas is what it is but they suck less than OPS. Hopefully they have something that is tolerable where I am not splitting my time between sites and constantly having my hours changed. Once my background check and drug test come back clean, I’m quitting OPS without notice because fuck the 2 week courtesy notice. Companies fire you without notice so turnabout is fair play. I just have to cross my fingers that all will be good.

    If all isn’t good, I have a backup option at VGM and it’s not a bad option either. It will be harder work and longer hours but at least I will be in the driver’s seat. That’s still a reason to smile. Man I hate America. This country is a shit hole country that saw fit to elect one of the worst of human scum and least fit to run a 7-Eleven, let alone a nation. I would leave ‘murica with my fiancee if we could afford to do so. Well, at any rate, I do hope today will be a better day.

    I really want to tell OPS to pound sand and I am hoping today will be the day. Yes, I do like my manager personally but this is business, not personal. I like him but I hate this cheap ass company that basically beats up its employees. Instead of paying us what we are worth, paying us weekly, and giving us reimbursements for using our personal devices to perform the duties of our jobs, they throw us a shiny object called Jolly. Jolly is some points system where we can earn points towards discounts. Problem: you need tens of thousands of points to make it worthwhile and you earn only 10 points at a time. It’s a fucking gimmick.

    But I am smiling because I think today will be the beginning of the end of my year long tenure at one of the worst places I’ve ever worked at – a big fucking joke that’s not even funny. I am done helping out OPS. I won’t even volunteer for extra shifts or anything of that nature. They can go to hell except for my manager. I genuinely wish him well. I’d like to see him look for better employment because he’s capable of so much more.

  • I’ve Learned Some Things

    Apparently I have learned some things about network bridging that I never knew and it improved my mood to the point where waking up after only 5 hours of effective sleep was not so bad. I had no idea how powerful a tool it could be. Since I actually woke up before my alarm I decided to try what I learned from ChatGPT, and lo and behold, it worked. And I know why. It’s important that I know why too.

    Well I’m going to work a short shift today. I’m not thrilled about it but I am not unhappy either. The work is easy though and not stressful. I’m hungry as hell right now and can’t wait for some food to come my way. I ordered some from DoorDash so I can eat. I need to start working on the Uber platform soon. It will be working 7 days a week and hurting badly.

    I can feel my good mood going away. I just feel tired and bitter. I don’t know why life must be so damned difficult. Learning is not even enough anymore.

  • Another Day At Work

    ,

    It’s just another Sunday at work but I am not unhappy to be hear. I am going to be earning money at a site that I mostly like. It is very easy to work and I am alone in a locked building. I do not think that I can ask for more than that as a simple pleasure. The only problem was that this weekend I had to work an odd shift, 1625-2300. My boss’ boss wanted to avoid the overtime so he had the part-timer work a little more. I got screwed out of extra money. This made me a bit upset but I don’t really matter.

    The fact that my schedule is odd made transportation tough because of the bus schedule. In order to not risk being late and lose more money, I had to arrive almost two hours early and wait in the break room. At least I had my laptop to keep me busy and I could further research a home lab networking problem. As a result, I was able to solve the problem so when I get home, I can implement the solution at some point.

    But I have to work tomorrow morning from 0700-1100 so as soon as I get home, I am going to be in dead and drifting off to sleep. I really would like to have a couple of days off. I am tired and this is getting difficult. I did the math on the VGM driving opportunity and it does not look terrible, provided getting to and from the vehicle pickup site is not too expensive. This part will be a wait and see game.

    I am just too tired to continue to work on my book today. I am also thinking about my home lab. I really want to complete it so that it is up, running, and remotely accessible. I’d like to join mine with others’ labs to have fun and experiment.

  • Exhaustion

    I have hit the point of exhaustion where not even caffeine gives me a boost anymore. When I get home from work, I am going straight to bed where I hope to fall asleep and get as close to 6 hours as possible. Denisse and I have breakfast with mom at about 7:30. I plan on rolling out of bed at 7, taking my medicine, and then getting our ride to mom’s memory care facility squared away. I am looking forward to having a good breakfast, and spending time, with her.

    At my age and physical health, it is hard working 6-7 days a week but I kind of have to at the moment. It may only be temporary though. But temporary or not, it is still difficult. I am too tired to work on my home lab hobby at the moment. I was hoping to be far enough along that I could do a few things remotely but that will not happen. Sleep this evening will be far more important.

    I have lost interest in writing a book. I thought it would be fun but it turns out it is tedious. Well, maybe the approach I am taking is tedious. I haven’t been able to find dictation software for Linux so I’ve been stuck with actual writing and I find I prefer the dictation because it lets me get comfortable and pump out ideas from a stream of consciousness. I don’t know. Maybe the scope of the book has gotten out of hand and I am trying to appeal to too large an audience. I don’t really know. I know I am too tired to work on the book right now.

    I am too tired to think.

  • Another Rough Night

    I could say that the dreams were very intense last night. I mean so intense that I had night sweats. This seems to be happening more and more frequently. I awoke drenched in the middle of night. Why am I getting worse and not better!? I was positively clammy all over. I have to go in to work earlier today to cover for the supervisor because he will be in to overtime. I don’t mind doing a 10 hour shift because I need the money. I still don’t really want to go in but times being what they are …

    On the positive side of things, I did manage to write close to 800 words of my book last night. I don’t know whether or not I am pleased with the result, but the entire point is to put words to paper and I achieved that. If I can write or research some more today, I would feel like I accomplished something. I just wish I didn’t feel so down in the dumps and worthless despite getting something accomplished. I know this is the depressed mind talking and not reality.

    Despite having a rough night dream-wise, I do seem to be rested and ready for the day. I bought a 2nd network card for my Dell OptiPlex so that I can press it into service on a Proxmox VE virtualized OPNsense router. I want to really get my home lab up 100%. The Verizon-provided CR1000A router is a shitty one. I want some more features and more exciting stuff. This is all going to help tremendously with my book.

  • Scammers

    ,

    I have written posts on Linked In about signs that you are about to be scammed. I’ve written the same posts on Nextdoor. Well wouldn’t you know it? Today I got scammed and it hurt badly. I lost $50 via Apple Pay on a moving scam. Here is the entire story:

    I reached out to somebody on TrashNothing. This person is not the scammer. Anyhow, she was offering a king bedroom set in beautiful condition. I was planning on getting it for my fiancée. In a sweet way she complained about me taking up so much space in our queen. But I love her so much that I started looking. And sure enough this came up.

    Today one mover flaked out completely. So I tried reaching out to somebody else and they ended up taking my money. I’m not into victim blaming but this one was my fault. He wanted me to pay half up front via Apple Pay on a telephone number other than what he contacted me on. That should have been the red flag that ended it.

    Sadly, I was desperate to get this bedroom set for the absolute love of my life. Desperation and emotion clouded my better judgement and I fell hook, line, and sinker for it. Well, once bitten, twice shy. I will only deal in cash now and only when the job is completed.

    I went to ApplePay with a tone of contrition in the hopes of getting my $50 back. Once the money is sent, there’s no going back. I felt sick to my stomach when I realized that loss represents 4 hours of work. I get paid $17 an hour. 1 hour of work with tax deductions works out to be roughly $12.75 per hour.

    Scammers are parasites and predators. They seek out innocent and trusting targets and exploit them. Scammers should face consequences similar to sex offenders. They should be required to register on a database and I do not say this lightly because I am generally anti-government but this is where the government and I agree. Don’t hurt your fellow class members. Don’t exploit the vulnerable, and furthermore, never exploit children.