Blog
2025-10-27: Glad to report that my grandma is back home after a rough weekend. Last I heard, some family from out of town with some medical knowledge is trying to help her understand her diagnosis and make some lifestyle changes. I plan on being back to my old haunt to see her soon.
Work is kind of outrageous right now, with a lot of stuff that needs processed out over a short span. I have been balancing onboarding with interns on different projects, and had to pull a couple of them away to help me on this. One has been especially effective and made a ton of progress. I came by to check on their progress at the end of their shift, and they'd gotten nearly halfway through our current phase. We have two weeks to get this done, and they did a ton to get us ahead of schedule.
Between the stress of the sudden additional pressure on this project, and the worry I've had hanging over my head about my grandma's situation, I about cried seeing how much was done. I thanked them for how much they've helped, to which they asked, "Isn't that, like, what you hired me for?"
Which, like, yeah. Not wrong. But I certainly appreciate it nonetheless. I certainly appreciate how thorough and effective they are, and how I can provide general guidance on what needs done, and they can work out a system for attacking the problem without me needing to micromanage.
The others are newer and steadily finding their way in their own areas. Having someone on board who can just pick up a new project and run with it lets me focus on getting everyone else up to speed, and lets me tackle the other random little things that come up without getting buried.
Hopefully, these next couple weeks will keep going smoothly!
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2025-10-22: There's a pretty good chance I won't be active on here for a bit. I got a call from my parents that my grandma suddenly starting having slurred speech and signs are pointing towards some neurological issues. CT scans came back more-or-less normal. They're keeping her overnight and doing an MRI tomorrow.
I am afraid of what that prognosis might be. I am also afraid of the possibility that her condition will deteriorate pretty quickly. She's been pretty despondant since my grandpa passed a couple years ago. More than anything, I hope this isn't a sign of cognitive decline. Dementia seems like a horrific thing to go through, and I'm afraid to watch her deteriorate.
So keep my family and I in your thoughts (and prayers, if you're a person of faith) if you can. I am definitely going through it right now. My grandma played a pivotal role in keeping me going when I went through some traumatic stuff in my teen years. I probably wouldn't be here writing this today if she wasn't looking out for me and attentive to what I was going through. I know a day will come when she passes, and I know I will not be okay in the wake of it.
On a less dire note, I got to go to the Thunder home opener, and I met a player whose number is retired by the team! I'll probably share more about that when things with my family are figured out.
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2025-10-20: Wahoo! I have successfully set Pop_OS's COSMIC beta up on one of my laptops, and it's pretty great! They've basically stripped all the weird technical debt out of GNOME and rebuilt it to be a bit more user-friendly. It also has some really nice window tiling that makes it easier to manage your screen real estate.
Someone also converted my favorite icon pack to work on here, so it's back to looking nice and familiar. I am pretty impressed with how this looks and works. There are still some rough edges that need to be ironed out, but I am pretty impressed overall!
I also discovered I have been subscribed to Youtube TV since, like, May. I had it for NBA Playoff broadcasts and forgot to turn it off. Since my team, the OKC Thunder, is gonna be on national TV for like, half their games this season, I wanted to see what options I had. Tried DirecTV and it was miserable. Checked to see what Youtube TV would cost by comparison since my experience with it has been pretty seamless, aside from needing to turn my VPN off.
Oh. That's an expensive mistake. Welp. At least I know it's works well for my needs.
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2025-10-19: After a couple days of trying, I can't find it in me to get into whatever gameplay hook that Final Fantasy XV has going for it. The characters aren't really doing it for me either. I wanted to like it but, man, it's just not for me.
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2025-10-18: Lips are aggressively chapped. Send help.
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2025-10-13: Welp, I am going to take a swing at some creative writing for the first time in forever. I've done nothing but research projects for the last decade and change, but getting this website off the ground has given me the opportunity to broaden my horizons a bit.
Those reviews I've been writing these last few months are the culmination of years of pining. I envisioned myself starting a youtube channel to review shows/games/movies/whatever. But man, any time I thought about camera and voiceover work, getting footage together, and video editing, I found myself really discouraged. The idea of building a web presence on YouTube has been similarly daunting. It's oversaturated and dramatic, building an audience is really hard, and Google's policies have been so user-hostile that I can't stomach the idea of trying to get established there.
Gathering my thoughts, putting them out there in written form, and finding the right pictures/gifs/embedded videos to accompany them on my personal website, by comparison, has been easy and enjoyable. I really enjoy stepping away from a new experience, ruminating on it a bit, and sharing it to whoever happens across this site.
A year or so ago, I promised my pissed off, lonely inner teen that I would give myself better opportunities to be known and heard. Stepping away from all my established social media early in the year felt like a backslide, even if it were a principled one. The intervening few months were isolating. Though I could lean on a handful of good friends with whom I have stayed in touch, I also found myself feeling totally voiceless. The current state of things amplified that feeling a great deal
This silly goose-themed site has been a step towards authenticity and finding my own voice again. While I am re-adopting pre-social-media personal guidelines on how much of myself I share here in terms of personally identifiable information, I am making a concious effort to share what I love, what I have strong feelings about, what matters to me and how I feel. And I think I am getting better at it the more I do it.
On an unrelated note, I just realized that my little teal goose favicon on my splash page and home page is not showing up on any of my other pages. Heck. I'll need to fix that at some point, but not tonight.
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2025-10-08: My neighborhood had a little block party tonight, the first of its kind since I moved here. It was great getting to meet some folks in my own back yard!
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2025-10-05: Didn't end up with much time this weekend to futz around with my site. Made a day trip to see family and collect some necessities from my old car, stayed up too late trying to get a wifi issue solved with my new-to-me cheapo laptop, and spent today getting groceries, cleaning up, and the like.
I'll probably take a swing at some changes to my homepage. It's gone basically untouched since I made this site in June.
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2025-10-02: Just finished up a brief little review of the anime Ruri Rocks. Super cute, highly recommended.
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2025-10-01: Happy Spooky Season to those who partake!
