Back From my Florida Trip

So all that whining in this journal about not being worked hard enough payed off. The gods heard me and gave me stuff to do. So the next day I went to the Hard Rock shelter and yes, it was an inappropriate place for a shelter being attached to a huge casino. I wound up getting in 25k steps in loading and carting peoples stuff down through the casino to buses. It was chaos. On my first run I was stopped by some guy I don’t remember if he was…

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Red Cross Needs Slack Servers and Internal Communication Overhaul

Sunday Oct 20 AgainNow it’s 10PM and I’m back in my hotel room. Plans have changed again. I stayed up til breakfast then slept til almost 5PM and then got a call telling me that I’m no longer on night shifts and I’m no longer assigned to the Mega-Shelter. Now I’m going to a shelter at a Hard Rock Cafe and casino. I thought that shelter was shutting down because an operating casino is not an appropriate place to be sheltering families. They must need me to help shut it…

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Staying up All Night for Mega-Shelter Night shift (that won’t happen)

Sunday October 20It’s 3:15 AM and now I’m sitting in the lobby of a different hotel trying to stay up until 5AM to prepare myself for the midnight shifts that I signed up to handle at the new “mega-shelter” which apparently is a big deal because it’s bigger and more comfortable than the vast majority of shelters that Red Cross has done in the past. I visited and did a walkthrough earlier this evening as many of their crew were finishing up their last shift. It’s in this giant empty…

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Emotion packed day in Florida shelter

Thursday October 17 2024Today was an emotion packed day and almost entirely negative emotion. Well, maybe not entirely.I finally started doing things for Red Cross. Went to a couple shelters and yes they do exist they aren’t some kind of hoax and did shelter transition triage (SRT) basically asking the clients a series of questions to gauge their situation. They told me a lot of stories. That’s a big part of our job is just to listen to their stories, many of which have nothing to do with the disaster–well…

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First Day At Adventure Island Basecamp

Wednesday Oct 16Now I’m sitting on a surprisingly comfortable cot in a giant tent in the parking lot of whatever water park–Adventure Island– is across the street from Busch Gardens in Tampa Florida. So I got to Miami Friday evening then saturday a couple hundred of us Red Cross volunteers met in a ballroom and basically just got signed in and then they sent us out to wait. They gave us hotel rooms at this place right by the airport, the Marriott. I did have a roommate for the first…

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Frustrated With Myself Today

I’m super frustrated with myself and my situation today. I was on my way to Miami Florida with Red Cross today to help with sheltering after hurricane Milton, but I did something real stupid. Somehow I did not set my alarm in my phone. I could swear I did it but maybe it was actually the scheduling of my uber that I remember but I thought I also did the alarm, but now I look and it’s just not there in my phone. I woke up at like 5AM and…

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Trapped In Charlotte Airport, Wondering Why I’m Not Scared of Other Humans–or rather, why everyone else is

Now I’m in Charlotte north Carolina airport. Not having fun right now. My first return flight was late so I missed my connecting flight and no they did not give me a hotel room or a reimbursement or even an apology. I think that makes these situations worse when people keep telling you that you’re entitled to refunds or a hotel room, but the airline makes it clear you get nothing. They act like they’re doing you a favor getting you on a flight to the place you paid to…

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Airports, first world problems. Police brutality, an actual problem.

I’m sitting in Chicago–yeah, Chicago, I just checked my American Airlines app to make sure where I was. Been here all day, just chillin in this airport. Not my choice of course. My flight was originally supposed to leave around 9AM after just a 40 minute layover, but they changed it on me and gave me no choice in the matter. I shoulda paid for the flight insurance since my job is paying for it but I don’t feel right about charging the company for those kinds of luxuries.Airports are…

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The Story of My Web Dev Career Part 1

I want to write about my web development career and the story of how everything started. In the past I think I’ve always wanted to tell stories from my past that had some sort of specific moral or political purpose, but now with this new format I feel like telling other types of side stories that might mean a lot to me personally but I guess… I’m not sure why I never told these types of positive stories–maybe that’s what it is–this story is almost all positive and joyful. Writing…

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TV, Video Games, Booze, and Brotato

Not sure what I’m here to talk about. It’s late. I try to go to bed at midnight but that’s a light try, a half-assed try. I have 23 minutes to.Roommate’s been playing Brotato all day long. The constant beat of that game is sinking into my soul, it’s right below me. She’s unlocked just about every item and still going. It’s on my account so I get all the achievements. Too bad I don’t care haha.I turned my XBox gamepass back on, saying it was just for one month.…

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I got a little bitter rambling about Elon Musk and my ex instead of reviewing A Liberated Mind

I came to do a free write about any topic that comes to mind, specifically the book I just finished A Liberated Mind by Steven C Hayes. This was one of the best self help books I think I’ve ever read–or at least in the top 10% — or listened to — I wonder if people will call me out for saying I’ve read something when I really just listened to it.But anyway just before coming here I happened to be on facebook and saw an ex of mine posted…

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My Most Favoritest Song Ever: Flood by Tool

I was gonna talk about Tool’s Flood and the time I was sucked under a pile of logs on the Nooksack river–I guess that’s what I will talk about.Listening to Toadies Rubberneck. Suppose I should have Tool’s Undertow on right now but Toadies is cool too.Flood is about 4 minutes of a grinding, painful introduction followed by a moment of transition and revelation, continuing into an intense, increasingly complex and adrenaline fueled progressive rock masterpiece about a changing and twisting life perspective, surrounded in this metaphor where water is life,…

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My Most Favoritest Song Ever: Driving the Last Spike by Genesis

I have so many things I want to talk about in this journal — writing in here is much like exercising for me. I never want to do it, but afterward I feel much better about myself and the universe around me. I guess one difference is that here once I start writing I never want to stop. It’s only the motivation to get started that’s an issue.But okay, let’s do the favorite song thing. I don’t know why but I just feel the need to write, like the universe…

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guess I’ll talk about this journal, get a little meta

Gonna ramble about whatever comes to my mind today. I was going to write about my two favorite songs, Driving the Last Spike by Genesis and Flood by Tool, or at least they are the two songs that have probably had the deepest impact on my life and because this journal I’m doing is like I want it to be as much about joy as about pain. So often with me, and probably most other people who keep a journal, you come to your journal to get out your negative…

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Alcohol, alternative to feeling like yourself

Oh alcohol. I still drink to your health. I came to my computer tonight to write about alcohol because boy do I have a complicated relationship with it. I hate alcohol now but want to write my first time getting drunk as it was one of the most amazing and positive experiences I had as a teenager.I’m currently worried about a friend who has gone far too far down the booze rabbit hole.When an alcoholic has gone this far for so many years and destroyed their liver kidneys family and…

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On Setting Personal Boundaries (and my childhood obsession with violence)

Tonight I’m listening to an old cassette tape from my childhood that I haven’t listened to in at least 30 years. I must have been 8 or so I’m guessing. I can hear myself playing with one of the neighbors. I made him be the Soviet Union because I wanted to pretend war and wanted him to be the bad guy and wanted it to feel real even though I had no idea what the Soviet Union even was.so much joy I took from destruction. I can hear myself now…

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More rambling about self help books like Hooked and A Liberated Mind and mentality/religion of self-improvement

Golly how time flies and it’s been almost a week since I wrote here. I wanted to do this maybe three times a week on average. I have told myself that I need to come back here and write whenever I finish another book. I want to talk about every book that I listen to on audible to maximize their retention and positive impact on my life.Anyway, finished Hooked by Michael Moss and it was a fantastic book but I don’t really know what i can say other than I’m…

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Self help books: Getting To Yes, The Essential 55 and Hooked

Finished Getting To Yes today. This was a fantastic book. Prolly in the top 5% of the self help books I’ve listened to… at least for me. Maybe it’s cuz I always have had problems with emotions getting in the way of my personal negotiations and this instinct to think of my interactions with other people as being an us-vs-them kind of scenario, like even my romantic relationships in the past often felt like me vs her and I never knew how to steer the conversation back to a place…

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I chose to lead a happy life full of joy and wonder

I’m sitting out in a hammock in the woods of West Virginia right now listening to Keith Urban in the foreground and a beautiful stream in the background and wanted to babble on about how incredible everything is. I think about that movie Office Space from time to time and that guy who was like “every day is just a little worse than the day before so every day of my life is literally the worst day of my life” and I remember seeing that back in the day and…

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I’m gonna open the healthiest restaurant in America

Golly, been a week already since my “first” entry. I write this in VS code of all places because it’s easier than having separate apps for writing and coding and I don’t want to write JavaScript in MS word.But how I write is a boring topic and I want to keep this interesting and useful.I’m listening to Hooked by Michael Hoss on Audible right now “How the food industry exploits our addictions”.I’m struggling with a sugar addiction right now. I already cut out sodas and caffeine, most processed meats, most…

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Been thinking of maybe going back to my age old idea of making a public journal

Been thinking of maybe going back to my age old idea of making a public journal. Just write as fast as possible like I normally do in my private journal and just post. The public one could have comments but I wouldn’t respond to them unless it was like a weird special occasion.I know I’ve tried the social media thing over and over and over and it’s never worked, but you know, I do it differently every time and this idea is a bit different than what I’ve done in…

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Why do People Hate Technology? (Jixuan and Sebastion)

A couple weeks ago I posted about some threats I got from an old friend who hated me due to my support of technology. I sent the video to my favorite tech YouTubers, Jixuan and Sebastion which inspired them to prioritize a video they’d been planning. They didn’t mention my situation, but I found the video to be a really fascinating look at how technology affects our mental health and why emerging technologies can lead to such vicious hate. It also discusses the old argument of whether you inherently have…

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Review of The Wrong Missy on Netflix with Spoilers

I don’t normally do movie reviews but I finally watched The Wrong Missy on Netflix and was taken aback by the lack of social responsibility shown by the writers. Spoilers will follow: If you’ve seen the preview, you know it’s about a boring businessman named Tim who invites the wrong woman on a corporate retreat. The first thing she does is drug and rape him on the plane while other passengers watch and laugh. Tim is really upset about this and starts fantasizing about her death/murder. She then goes on…

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Be Sure to Get Good Sleep Before and After Your Vaccination

I was just listening to this Masterclass about sleep and they mentioned a study done with vaccinations that found when people get flu vaccines when they are not getting proper sleep, the vaccine elicited about half the immune response that it did in people who were getting healthy amounts of sleep. He recommended that whenever you get vaccinated for anything that you be careful to get really good night’s sleep every night for the week before and after you get the shot. I haven’t heard anyone else talking about this…

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The Space Industry is a Beacon of Hope in Difficult Times

I really believe that space news does not get nearly enough mainstream attention. It has far more affect on our daily lives than most political news and just about all celebrity news, yet it seems to be only a niche subject. Is that because there is rarely any bad news coming out of the space industry? Because there’s nothing to get really angry about? Is it because the effects on our lives often take a few years to be felt? Or is it because it has a stigma that it’s…

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