If you are local to #Austin#AustinTX#ATX and haven't yet heard, a #Lyft driver drove off with this dude's cat still in the backseat and then claimed there was no cat. Super fucked up story, so if you're in the Gateway / Balcones area or know a Lyft driver with an unexplained feline addition, please help him get his cat back.
The worst thing about tinkering with #PC hardware is the large force often required. Especially for 24-pin #ATX power connectors. Very scary to pull out a such, it can require great force. You can see the motherboard bending which surely isn't good for fragile electronics. Why hasn't the industry moved on to zero insertion (and extraction) force connectors for motherboard power connectors? (Yes, I know, historical debt...)
Or am I just holding it wrong? Is there some magical tool to use?
So much for thru-hiking the #AppalachianTrail this year. I've been on a downward spiral since leaving my job in September 2022. I was professionally burnt out. I didn't want to keep building #backend#dotnet APIs. I also read through the latest #IPCC reports, which paint a bleak picture of our collective future. In short, I was miserable.
I quit my meds cold turkey -- #Lexapro and #Metformin -- and started downsizing my life. I got a job as an #Amazon warehouse worker, but left after a few weeks as the holidays ramped up while the pay stayed the same. #DoorDash became my only source of income.
I also threw myself into political activism, working with the #PartyForSocialismAndLiberation to fight off an Austin Energy rate hike that punished the poor with big rate hikes while giving cuts to the wealthy. We won a few minor concessions, but the disparities were still there.
Afterwards, I sold or donated most of my possessions to try to pay my bills. I even sold my car eventually once DoorDash stopped paying well. I took the remaining cash and geared myself for a thru-hike of the AT, convinced that I could walk myself to a better place physically and mentally.
Physically, by mid April of 2023, I certainly felt ready. I was doing 15-mile days in #atx#austin. But mentally, I was still struggling with suicidal ideation every few days. My mom had booked flights and a hotel to see me off at #AmicalolaFalls, and the week before, she picked me up and brought me to her place.
It took all of 48 hours for her to chip away what little facade of confidence I had left. I broke down crying, saying I was at least passively suicidal, had crazy #anxiety and #depression, my blood sugar was all kinds of fucked up on account of not taking my #diabetes meds, and, above all, I was not (mentally, at least) ready to spend months in the mountains, alone.
So now I'm here, in Benbrook TX, back on meds, back at home (again (at 33)), going to #therapy, going bankrupt, and trying to figure out how to survive in #LateStageCapitalism and not end it all.
At this point I'm out of the nosedive at least. But I've got a bunch of climbing to do in the meantime.
On our trip to Austin in March, we went along the Colorado River and made our way to the Congress Avenue Bridge. The bridge is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world. While it was daytime, you can hear a light chitter of the resident safe in their homes underneath.