Blog
2025-12-13: Currently sitting in on my first DnD session. This group hasn't met in a long, long time and it's been a bit messy getting started, but they seem to be having fun!
I also just finished my rewatch of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and it hit me way differently than my last viewing. The show's handling of grief and being fully present in the moment both struck me. I'll probably be reviewing it soon.
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2025-12-11: Welp, there's a good chance that I'll have to go through the moving process next month. I've been anticipating some weirdness with my current landlord, who has been dodging communications for a couple months in the wake of some maintenance issues. I pre-emptively got an application in at a good apartment complext near me, got approved, and was given a tour of a unit. I let them know that I wanted to give my landlord an opportunity to try and set things right before I commit to move out.
With a fallback option figured out, I started pressing a bit more for a concrete day and time for some needed work, or some sense of where their priorities might be. The response I got, to paraphrase, was that they were unsure what they've got in the budget to take care of or when that would get done, and that they would need to raise my rent since they hadn't since I moved in, and that it's currently below market value.
On one hand, yeah, it has been low relative to my area. I've been fortunate for that. They initially offered a lower price than they initially sought for the sake of helping me out when I got this job and moved back. I've appreciated that and, that, alone, wouldn't be that huge of a deal if we agreed to the new rate.
However, the lack of commitment to some clear and obvious repairs that have been waiting between 4 months and 2 years, including water damage and an electrical issues, is beyond the pale. I am not about to pay more per month to still not have anything fixed. I'd been patient about the situation, knowing that my current rent is low enough that I'd struggle to find anything remotely the same quality for the money. If they raise it, they're suddenly in competition for a much wider breadth of options.
After dropping that on me Monday, they have yet to give any further indication as to the new rate either. So there's no telling.
That same day, I informed the management office at my prospective new home that it looked like I would need to start planning on moving, and that I would aim for a mid-January move-in date. They said they'll have something lined up, and that we will settle on the specific unit after the new year.
The situation has been frustrating, but I don't think they're acting out of outright malice. My neighborhood was affected by a natural disaster not too long ago, and upkeep on this unit and the surrounding community has been a beast to deal with. I would not be too shocked if they outright sold and cut their losses once I'm out of here. It had been a good arrangement for a while, since I have been a conscientious tenant worth taking a bit less a month from, knowing the place wasn't getting thrashed. But, with the challenges after the disaster, my quality of life here has been pretty poor, and they've not been in any position to tackle needed improvements. It's probably best for both parties that we accept this arrangement ran its course and end it now, rather than let it drag out.
On the plus side, I look forward to living somewhere with maintenance that live on-site, who are available 24/7 for emergencies, and who can usually have non-emergency jobs done within one or two business days.
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2025-12-07: Trying to limit unnecessary AI nonsense in your regular life can feel like death by a thousand cuts. Calling home a bit ago, I noticed a notice under my dad's number saying that the call was "enhanced" by Google's AI.
Can you not? I didn't ask for our conversation to get filtered for clarity by Gemini's black box.
I'm not against entirely against generative or analytical AI in principle. It's a technology I was intensely interested in ~8 years ago, and it is reaching capabilities well beyond anything I could have never imagined. BUT, the ethics around it, and around the companies crowbarring it into every possible nook and cranny to make a quarterly report look more substantial, is maddening.
One of my interns carries around a flip-phone. I think he might be onto something, limiting vector points for dumb bullshit. He also seems to have an EMP field surrounding him, to where novel "I've never seen this before" tech issues are a regular occurance. But even still, I would consider trying a feature-phone for a bit, just to see how that affects my daily life.
Other than whinging about the current state of tech, it's been a good weekend. I finally made progress towards getting my home page to a state that I would like. The current format made it awkward to try and add site buttons to the sidebar, and I don't feel like trying to adjust it. It's fine. I'll just have a handful of buttons instead of ~80 lol.
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2025-12-06: I've got the energy and motivation to make meaningful improvements to my site for the first time in like, two months! Yay!
I am collecting buttons from as many of the 100+ pages I currently follow as I can. I wanna have that section full to bursting. I am also going to work on making one for myself.
I also have potato and parsnip soup in the slow-cooker. Tis the season for good, hearty soup. I've got soup cooking, basketball on tv, and my living room is lit with the gentle light of a Christmas tree. Tonight, life feels simple and good.
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2025-12-02: Two cross-state trips and 4 attempts to get my paperwork submitted at the DMV later, my Forester is finally registered! It has been an actual nightmare. Basically, the order-of-operations got all jacked up because my parents didn't get a bill of sale for the electronic title. Without that, and without a physical, paper title in-hand, the DMV had no documentation showing the purchase price. That would have been easy enough to resolve if I got a direct explanation, but I got conflicting information at my usual location that didn't help at all. I had to go elsewhere to actually get what I needed.
On that first trip, the clerk looked at me in confusion and asked if I was trying to register a travel trailer??? Excuse me??? I sensed I was going to get the runaround right then and there.
After making a several-hour round-trip, it finally got resolved today. Here's hoping that's the last time I have to deal with this for a while!
In other news, I am finally working on reworking my website's home page. I am adding a separate CSS file for it to add sidebars. I really don't need them on my other pages, but I want to add blinkies/stickers/buttons.
Also, my intern only needed my budget linux laptop for a couple days. Turns out, her computer's issue was due to a button combination that disabled her touchpad. I have no idea what troubleshooting she was trying to do initially, but I am sure final paper and exam stress wasn't helping. Glad it helped her in the meantime though!
There's a 50/50 chance that I'll either be much more active during the holiday season, or totally radio-silent. Approximately zero of my holiday travel/family plans have solidified, so we'll see what happens. In the meantime, I hope to use the end of this year to reorient and refocus. I entered 2025 forlorn at the state of [gestures broadly] but, I have found hope and joy in friends, family, the young folks I get to mentor, and seeking out new connections here and IRL.
I also have some reviews I wanna put out there, but I'll let those come when I feel up to it.