[Weekly - F/Sa] Week In Review

WE MADE IT TO THE WEEKEND

Why is that four-day work weeks--I took a day of PTO (paid time off) on Monday--seem even longer than five-day work weeks? It just doesn't make sense.

Anyway, we've made it to Saturday, for which I am most grateful. Work wasn't especially stressful, but recent changes have made it more difficult and less efficient to actually get work done.

The kiddos are healthy and get along well until they don't (then they REALLY don't, but I'm told that's the norm for siblings). They're currently vegetating in front of the television, but it's Saturday morning and I have our home network setup so that the Roku stick only gets 2 hours of Internet access max on the weekends. I'm not even upset because we all could use a chill morning after a long week. It wasn't bad, mind you. Just...long.

I paid the CGA annual expenses this morning, so thank you very much to everyone who donated last year and a special thanks to our monthly donor (you know who you are!) to help us keep the virtual lights on.

My wife and I are planning to be back at church in-person tomorrow morning, though we'll likely just ease back in by going to our Sunday school class then ducking out and watching the sermon by way of a recorded livestream after we get home. We both got our second shots earlier this year (I got my second shot in January, she got her second shot in February IIRC), but we've been hesitant to return to "normal" (ha ha, the old "normal" is gone, but I use the word as shorthand for a general state of life as people remember it before COVID) out of an abundance of caution for others in our lives, including my wife's grandmother, who is in her 90s. (Pardon the run-on sentence.)

TL;DR: Normal week. Long week. Chill morning. CGA bills got paid. Planning to go to Sunday school in-person tomorrow.
 
Life in general finally seems like it's moving forward in a positive direction again. Myself and family are all vaccinated now and the weather's getting warmer, so it's good to be going out doing things again. And the world outside currently seems to be a lot saner and less hostile than the online world has become, so maybe I will take some vacation time to enjoy it while it lasts.

I still struggle quite a bit with many of my online places being overrun by negativity, but maybe this is how the meek end up inheriting the earth - because the not-so-meek seem to find it nearly impossible to resist getting caught up in endless cycles of trash-talking each other on digital media, like it's become some sort of weird interdimensional trap that keeps them sucked in.
 
Still Alive.

Family is still healthy. Delta variant is surging here, so we're being cautious. We plan to enroll the kids in a virtual option for the first semester and switch back in-person classes for the second semester if they can get the vaccine before January.

Work is okay. Bills are gettin' paid. Received a job offer that I ultimately declined after much prayer and thought because I carry the health insurance for my family and we're expecting more medical expenses before the end of the year.

God is good. :)
 
So, I haven't been up to posting status updates lately, as it's kind of challenging to find positive, uplifting things to say about dealing with weirdos. However, given that hundreds of them are now converging on Dealey Plaza in Dallas because they're convinced that JFK Jr is going to rise from the dead to greet them there, is probably more than enough to speak for itself.

And about the only uplifting thing I can think of to say about it is to remark that the simple fact that mankind has somehow managed to survive all these thousands of years without becoming a fatal victim to our own insanity has got to be more than sufficient proof of God's providence and mercy and long-suffering.

And so much more I can relate to Jesus' concern when He was burdened about His people being like sheep without a shepherd. That's a phrase that comes to mind an awful lot lately.
 
Wow, things have updated around here.
I haven't been on, mostly because I haven't been doing much gaming-wise, and my computer time has been focused on either work, school, or paying bills.

Let's see; I'm married with two kiddos, still working, thankfully. I have been working from home over the last 18 months or so, just recently going back into the office.

Hi again after vanishing for a while. I pray y'all are well, and I'll try to pop in on occasion more often as time allows.
 
the_great_eskimo_pie said:
Wow, things have updated around here.
I haven't been on, mostly because I haven't been doing much gaming-wise, and my computer time has been focused on either work, school, or paying bills.

Let's see; I'm married with two kiddos, still working, thankfully. I have been working from home over the last 18 months or so, just recently going back into the office.

Hi again after vanishing for a while. I pray y'all are well, and I'll try to pop in on occasion more often as time allows.
Click to expand...
Eskimo sighting! So glad to hear things are going well for you.

How old are the kiddos? (Mine are 10 and 7 now.)

Most of our activity these days takes place on the CGA Discord Server, which you can read about here, but the forums are still online and, God willing, will remain available for a very long time to come.

If you get a chance to pop in again soon, let us know what games you're playing these days (if any; I and many other community members can sympathize that parental responsibilities tend to mean less time for games--but it's so worth it!).
 
Long time, no post.

I transferred to a different team in the same department in February. The work is very different and it's been a big adjustment, but I'm gaining knowledge much more quickly now and my team has been very helpful (and patient).

The kiddos are healthy and have been back in in-person classes since January. They got sick about a week after going back but symptoms were mild and we (I got sick around the same time) recovered just fine.

@Ember and family and I are planning to transfer our membership to another local church in the near future, so we ask for wisdom and guidance on that front.

So much has happened since my last post in November, but those are some of the highlights!
 
Well, I think my time of dealing with darkweb-addicted weirdos (both online and off) is finally coming to an end. Hopefully I can start being more cheerful and productive in other areas as a result.

Moving forward, I think I"m going to devote some time to family-friendly development projects for a while. Partly because I need something more light-hearted to occupy myself for a while to offset the difficulty of the past couple years, but also because one of the most common denominators I saw in these people that were going off in such strange directions away from wisdom and reality was that they were spending way too much time alone with their computers or cellphones, and not enough time - if even any - with their families and/or local communities.

Currently I am working on connecting my own family up with Nintendo Switches, which is a new thing for me as I've been resentfully stubborn about not wanting to upgrade from my still perfectly fine 3DS. But for family gaming I decided it would be worth it, and probably a good deal easier for me to do ongoing tech support for than dealing with other family members' PCs.
 
Life goes on. It's been a nice change of pace to have moved on from dealing with people struggling with serious cognitive issues to more normal type family challenges.

Unfortunately I'm the only Bible-believing Christian in my family so there are some awkward times when they go through periods of being upset and feeling victimized by life when they reach a natural consequence of believing and investing in untrue things and I can't honestly give them the kind of consolation they want to hear.

But at least they're not trying to overthrow the government to save humanity from evil space lizards, so that perspective at least gives me a bit more strength and patience to accompany them through such episodes than I was able to muster in my younger years.
 
I'm doing okay, but my online time will probably be erratic for a while as my mom is currently battling cancer, so family needs will be top priority for the time being.

On the plus side, events have encouraged my family to work towards being more family-like than they used to be, which has a lot of cascading positive effects that are good. But on the other hand, no one besides me has any interest in spiritual things, so I am limited in what kinds of help and comfort I can offer to practical and material things. Well, and tech support of course, which is not a small thing, but still not an adequate replacement for being able to see and accept the love of God.

I find it hard not to be horrified at the thought of having to face serious issues of aging and mortality without knowing or believing in God, but that's their choice to make, not something for me to try to force on them. So I try to keep myself focused on what's actually within my power and the Lord's leading to do, and leave the rest to Him.

In prayer and Bible reading, I'm reminded that even Jesus struggled with balancing family life with spiritual life, so it seems to be a natural part of life that God wants us to experience, not something we become miraculously exempt from as Christians.
 
The biggest thing of the week is Mom made it through a cancer-related surgery okay (her second of this year) and is recovering well, so I'm thankful for that.

Then a whole bunch of Twitter drama happened, which has nothing to do with me and shouldn't be something I have to waste time dealing with over more fun or productive things, because it mostly just involves people being mad about experiencing negative economic consequences for making bad investment decisions, which is kinda how reality is supposed to work and the internet is not somehow magically exempt from this.

But having been online since the mid-90s myself, I find myself constantly amazed at the number of people who don't grasp that internet services change in their offerings and ownership all the time, usually in the direction of what benefits the owners, not what benefits the users, and no amount of cleverness or capital resources are going to be sufficient enough to build some kind of permanent personal empire on a foundation of constantly shifting sands.
 
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Still alive. :3

So I know I've mentioned it on Discord, but I don't believe I've posted it about the forums yet: @Ember and I welcomed our third child to our family last year and his first birthday is coming up later this spring! He's grown big and strong and he loves the space bar on my keyboard. :>

The first 6 months (and especially the first 2 weeks) with a new baby is a bit of a blur, but I feel like we finally found a rhythm a few months ago. We're not as tired as we were, but we're still looking forward to summer when schedules will be lighter.

Work is going well and I'm finally past the "learning my role feels like drinking from the fire hose" phase, though there's still plenty to learn (especially since my primary focus right now is a project involving technology that's new to me and new to our organization). I am looking forward to warmer weather and finding ways to move around more. (Moving from a field tech role to a sysadmin role means a lot less moving around.)

Our family did transfer membership to another local church as mentioned in my previous post (from last April, wow, has it been that long?) and we're planning to start bringing baby boy to the nursery now that flu season is ending and Easter is rapidly approaching.

All in all, life is exhausting but good. We are blessed. <3
 
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