Economics Lesson -or- Why the shelves are empty (Non-fiction)

[This isn't even a rough draft, not really, it's something that I typed out in a Discord chat, but it is a something that you might find useful when trying to understand the world in which we live and the state in which it is in.]
[I've edited it a bit, I suppose it probably qualifies as a rough draft at this point.]

Ok, economics lesson time, mostly because I've been seeing people who are Wrong on the Internet™.  Also on mainstream (and fringe) news media, but I'm mostly concerned with the internet. Obligatory xkcd link: https://xkcd.com/386/

In an ideal system (the thing that is to capitalism as a frictionless vacuum is to high school physics problems), there would be no warehouses, there would be no back in which employees could check for products when the shelf was empty and, honestly, there would be no shelves.  Products would be sold the instant they were created and nothing would ever sit around ever.

In the real world, it doesn't work that way.  Certain things can be produced on demand at the point of sale, but most things will have to wait at some point in their life cycle.  They wait on the shelf for people to buy them, they wait in the back room (or under the counter, or up high, or wherever the company stores excess) for there to be space on the shelf, and they wait in a warehouse somewhere for there to be space in the back room.

All of this costs money.  Obviously any shelf-space occupied by something that isn't selling could be more profitably filled with something that is, but that's nowhere near the chief concern.  Warehouses cost the most.  You have a whole fucking building that doesn't make a cent but has to have utilities, property taxes (where applicable), maintenance, and so forth paid for.  That being said, even having something in the back room instead of on the shelf is losing you money that you would be making in a frictionless vacuum an ideal system.

Also, no matter where it's being stored, paying for something before you can sell it costs money too.  Time is literally money (see: interest rates) and by buying this thing (whatever it happens to be) before it will sell you lose that money and have to pay to store it.

At some point people realized that with the speed of modern communication, with advanced statistical modeling, and with other crap like that, they could reduce that cost.

The result has been decades of efforts to make sure that retailers have enough for normal demand and not a jot more.  Well . . . that's not quite true.  Empty shelves don't make people feel safe and secure and happy about a store, so the ideal towards which businesses have been working is to have exactly enough to keep the shelves filled, and not a bit more.

You can cut out entire warehouses, or at least sell them and replace them with smaller ones, you can reduce the time between paying for an item and selling it, and --in many cases-- you can even do a bit of remodeling to convert some of the back room storage space into additional store space which will increase your profits if you utilize it properly.

The goal, of course, is to have absolutely nothing in reserve, and have all the stuff on the shelves be bought that very day.  That goal has not been reached yet, but impressive strides have been made in that general direction.

Profits have increased, prices haven't really gone down, and everybody's happy (at least everybody who matters.)  Everything is perfect.

But, chris, you say, if there's only enough to meet demand, what will happen if demand increases?

Worry not, that problem was noticed long ago and a wonderful solution was found.  That solution is very simple: ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

I jest.  In fact it's more a "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" thing.

If people are at home instead of outside (at work, shopping, watching a movie, going to a club, celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, what have you) then there will be a massive spike in demand for everything that they're used to getting elsewhere.  This runs from food they might get at restaurants, to the toilet paper they would use in public (or work) restrooms.  Since you never bothered to have reserve stock, you won't be able to meet that demand.

However, since all of your major competitors have been operating on the same damned model, they won't either.  You're not losing your customers to other companies, so no real harm done.  After all, selling all of your stock (which is what left you with empty shelves) means you're doing way better than usual.  Profits are high.  Everything is good.

What about old fashioned "mom and pop" stores who--

First off, most of them went out of business ages ago.  Second, note how I said "major competitors"?  Well, with all of them, and you, out of the same product, anyone who does keep supplies in reserve is going to find themselves overburdened regardless, and they'll run out soon too.  There might be a brief spike in your customers going to them, but it'll die out pretty soon.  By the time this is over your customers won't even remember that those guys had it in stock for longer than you.

Still, doesn't it . . . I don't know, look bad when I'm out of the stuff I'm supposed to not be out of?

In other circumstances, it kind of would.  See the above thing about empty shelves being a turn off to consumers.  That doesn't apply here, though.  If everyone has empty shelves, then your shelves being empty doesn't reflect badly on you.  You're judged in comparison to your competition, not the Platonic ideal of a compassionate company.

Ok but it's my job to provide this stuff, won't it reflect poorly upon me if I can't?

Not really.  You can just blame the consumers.  "Look at all of these people buying stuff they suddenly need three times as much of; aren't they stupid?  They're the reason we ran out.  Just blame them," you'll say.

But in times of crisis the government advises people to--

No one cares.  No one ever blames a corporation for failing to provide what it promises.  Moreover, you've missed the point.

The point, dear reader, is this:

Everyone knew from the beginning that this would cause stores to run out of essentials the moment something changed.  No one cared.  Why?  Because it works.  You save money constantly by not having to buy excess stock, and whenever the shelves run empty that just means you sold more than you expected.  It's a windfall, not a problem.

After all, if you're the kind of person deciding on whether to make yourself somewhat richer or serve the average consumer in the times of heightened demand that you know will come from time to time, you're never going to run out any of that shit, now are you?

No one you care about suffers.

-

And that has been today's economic lesson.  The empty shelves we're seeing now (and I was shopping today, I saw entire empty aisles in the best stocked store I visited) aren't a bug or a miscalculation.  They're a predicted and acceptable (to those who made the decision) side effect of optimizing profit by reducing unused stock.

-

The system is working exactly how it was designed to work.  This was always part of the plan.  The flip-side of saving money by only buying the absolute minimum to fill your shelves has always been and will always be having those shelves empty when you underestimate that minimum because of unforeseen circumstances, which you know will inevitably arise from time to time.

Once upon a time people realized they could save money at the cost of having this happen every so often.  They responded with an enthusiastic, "Worth it!" and they haven't changed their tune yet.  No one with the power to change things is talking about going back to having more stock in reserve.

(Which is why I'm stuck in a house with three people and no toilet paper.)

-

[In response to someone offering sympathy for the parenthetical:]

It's not pleasant, but I'm actually somewhat more annoyed with myself for forgetting the economics behind the whole thing when it first started happening.  Yeah, it definitely seems weird when all of the toilet paper is getting sold out, but when you remember that the businesses that are sold out have spent literal decades trying not to have any extra, it makes sense that a mild increase in demand (on a global scale) would have that result.

It's really easy to blame people who are, by and large, doing sensible things instead of the ones who are actually responsible, and I did it myself a few days ago.

-
- -
- - -
- -
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The really short version:

All of this --every inventory shortfall, everything (no matter how necessary) that you can't get because the stores are out-- was foreseen.  It was considered an acceptable cost to incur in order to reap the associated benefits (vis-à-vis savings during normal operations), and now that we're in the midst of it that hasn't changed in the least.

It's not a feature, per se, but it's definitely not a bug.  That means no one is going to fix it, because in the eyes of those who set up the system, nothing is broken.

My sister is back in her home, I'm back in mine, and there are puppies

All told, my sister was in the hospital for several hours less than two weeks.  I spent almost all of that time away from my home.  Most of it was at her house, but for several days at the end I was staying across the street from the hospital.  (There's an apartment building set aside for the loved ones of patients who don't live in the area.)

At no point in that time away from home did I sleep well.  It's over a week and a half since I got back home, and I'm still not sleeping right, which leads to not eating or drinking right, and also getting my medication schedule all screwed up.  Which is part of why it's been over a week and a half since she got out of the hospital and I'm only just now publishing a post saying she got out the hospital.

So, all of that said, she seems to be doing pretty well, though she's actually back in the hospital today for minor surgery.

The day she got out of the hospital she gave an interview to a woman named Donna Perry.  You can read the resulting article here.  You can also read it in several other places, which come up well before that on Google, but that's the newspaper Ms. Perry actually writes for.  There's some stuff in there that I didn't know about until I read the article myself.

People have a tendency to want to help someone after something goes wrong, and if you can afford to and you want to, there are three ways you can do that.

The thing that would (probably) get her help the fastest at the moment is this Amazon wishlist, since if you pay for something on there it'll be shipped straight to her house right now.  She had me set up Paypal and Ko-fi accounts too, but I don't have the information needed to connect those to her bank account, so any money donated is going to have to wait until she gets around to that.  (If you happen to be reading this in January, though, presumably that's been done.)

On the subject of Amazon wishlists, anyone reading might have noticed that everything I've been writing has had an MLP bent for over two years now.  If you'd like to help me in that arena, I set up a list that has reference books along with a few RPG things that I'd use as reference books.*

Lastly, puppies.  Thirteen were born the day before my sister's birthday.  These were taken when they were three days old:

 

-

* I mean, I could try to use them as intended by actually running a game, but:
a) I've never done anything like that before
b) I'd have to wait for my sister's younger two to be old enough. (Once upon a time I was told eldest loved all things unicorn, but if it was accurate, it appears to have stopped being true since then.)

My sister was run over (by her own truck)

[Getting run over isn't a pretty thing, I'm going to be talking about the aftermath.  This is your warning, read at your own risk.]

It happened on Tuesday, much of the information I've been given was third hand (I didn't go up to my sister in the emergency room and order her to regale me with the story of how she got there; I didn't do that in the ICU either), so it's possible some details are off (or missing) but I'll tell you what I know.

The daycare my sister's middle and youngest child attend is one of those smaller more personal affairs where it's run out of the provider's home.  That home is on a hill.  Maine, especially non-coastal Maine (after losing the farm, my sister's family moved inland), is cold in late November.  To keep the kids from freezing, my sister left the truck on (and thus the heat on) while she got them in.  The middle child, a three year old, knows how to unbuckle himself.

In what is, so far as I know, his first time shifting gears in his life, the three year old put the truck in neutral.  My sister's luck being what it is, she was down hill from it.

Sickness

[This was originally going to be a comment in the  open thread at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]
[It may or may not be the case that it reflects the fact it wasn't intended to be a full post.]
[This is what's been going on of late.]

I am so very extremely sick right now.  In two different ways.  I'm not sure that the sinus infection I mentioned two weeks ago [in the then-current open thread at Ana's] ever went away.  I think it didn't.  I think that it just got less bad, and I thought that meant it was going away, and thus never actually made a trip to any doctor about it.

If the above is correct, it reasserted itself like whoa this passed weekend.  If it isn't, then Sinus Infection: The Sequel is way worse than the original.

On Saturday night, it decided to ask for company.  No idea how it managed it (I haven't been around anyone who could plausibly have given me this sickness) but into my life was introduced some kind of evil gastrointestinal thing.

I'm not going to talk about the gastrointestinal thing beyond noting that amoungst its symptoms is abdominal pain that's had me crying out in incoherent non-words.  The reason that I'm not going to say anything else is that gastrointestinal == ick in a way that, say, muscle aches or fatigue really don't.

So, on to the rest.

No fever (I'm not dying of influenza, woo!) but a lot of flu symptoms can and will show up in other conditions.  Fatigue, weakness, headaches like I've never known (I thought Migraines were the giant scary monarch of headaches, but it turns out sinus headaches are worse, by leaps and bounds no less), and oh so very much muscle aching.

On that last point, from Monday evening through Tuesday noonish (times are approximate in that I wasn't keeping track, and so am sort of guessing) my everything hurt.  It's possible that some little used muscle somewhere didn't hurt and I just didn't notice the lack of pain (it would be like a "meh" needle in a pain haystack), but even if that were true, the muscles around it must necessarily have been aching because there was definitely no part of me that wasn't aching

And, of course, it wasn't just little aches.  I'm aching today, but wasn't planning on mentioning it because it's not an all-consuming kind of pain.

This has, naturally, completely disrupted my sleep.  In particular, the sinus headache medicine lasts for four hours, which is not, in fact, how long I prefer to remain asleep.  The rest obviously doesn't help either.

Yesterday, I got a ride to a walk-in medical place.  They mostly told me what I expected them to tell me, but I wasn't actually going there for information.  I was going there in hopes that they'd give me antibiotics for my sinus infection.  They did.

That was too late in the day to actually pick up the prescription, so I started this morning.  Two pills down and 19 to go.  (Three daily for a week.)

⁂

So, that's life right now.  It sucks, but it should improve.

An update

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

After putting up the open thread at Ana's yesterday, I typed up what's been going on with me, since I haven't said anything there in weeks.  It's probably been longer since I said something here, so I figured I'd post it here too.

⁂

I've been bad.

[Depression, sickness, general terribleness at coping with life, goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, and a pig.]

Depression is bad. I thought it was getting better, but then . . . don't know.

I haven't been doing a good job of keeping food in the house,* which has translated to not eating properly. I know I'm not drinking enough. Haven't been getting enough sleep either.

So that's all fun. It all links together and feeds itself with any one problem contributing to the others, and in tern being bolstered by them.

I've been sick. Got the first sinus headaches of my life.† Not fun. I've just realized that it doesn't feel like they've gone away yet. Not sure if they really haven't, or I've currently got a migraine doing a really good impression.

Anyway, I got sick, it lingered for longer than it had any right to, then --just as it was lifting-- I got sick again, and now it's seeming like I might have picked up some kind of secondary respiratory track infection because apparently two annoying and gross sicknesses in a row wasn't enough.

Remember how I talked about bullshit regarding primary computer ages ago? Haven't actually done anything about that since then. Just been depressed and stagnant and stuff.

Secondary computer stopped accepting a charge . . . a few days ago, I think? Need to pop it open and see if it's something I can actually deal with or if it's kaput. It uses star screws. It probably isn't the first time I've encountered something with star screws, but it's the first time I've needed to do anything with them.

There is good news on the computer front. Thanks to a generous and unexpected loan from my mother, a new primary computer is coming. ETA next Thursday. So, that's something.

I've been helping my sister more days than not for I~don't~know~how~long. Everyone's getting worn down to Hell, tempers are frayed, and . . . blah. She lives an hour and a half away. Being trapped in a car any member of my family for that long can seriously deplete SAN points.

I don't remember what we started on. It's been fences so long that whatever came before has been lost. We've got one (pretty damned large) enclosure constructed and functioning, and another that's only waiting for gates. Both are rigged for electric fence near the bottom (to prevent animals from digging or forcing their way under, and the one waiting on gates is at the top (to prevent attempts to go over.)

When I started helping her up there this . . . stretch, I guess, she had a lot of chickens, two ducks, two sheep, and a goat. I've gone on trips with her to pick up an additional goat and a pig. The pig is a black furred and skinned individual Lola. The new goat has giant floppy ears. (It and the old goat are both incredibly soft and pettable.)

The sheep and goats both like to repeatedly express how unimpressed they are with the universe and all its contents by loudly saying, "Meh," but drawn out.

Helping my sister has taken up a huge amount of my time, and it leaves me pretty well spent the rest of the time. I was actually planning on starting to clean my house right around when she first called me in (well, first called me in this year), I haven't had the time or the energy.

I don't even remember the last time I wrote something.

- - -

* Have food right now, since I just stocked up.

† That I know of, could be that I had them before and mistook them for something else.

⁂

⁂   ⁂

Update on being sick: I noticed today that my sister's daughter is responding to sounds of sickness the way she would any other phoneme: she's mimicking them.

Mostly it's been the sound of spitting out mucus.  Thankfully she's doing kind of a crap job; her rendition of the sound isn't disgusting at all.

It's interesting to hear what things sound like when they're being imitated by her.

When we got the pig, she did her best to reproduce pig sound.  If you truly want to reproduce an oink, I'm pretty sure you need to do it by breathing in through your nose, but for my niece sounds are made by breathing out through the mouth.  The results were definitely evocative of a pig, but in a very noticeably human way.

Quick computer update

[Added after the rest, but before posting:]

First, shortest version:

There is, somehow, a serial number mismatch.  As such, primary computer isn't getting fixed.  This fucking sucks.

⁂

I'll have a longer post at some point because the story is long, complex, absurd, and terrible.

For right now, the short(er) version.

A long time ago, primary computer got sick of waiting for me to take it in for internal repairs and broke in half entirely.  I'm not sure when that was.  Many months.  Apparently I didn't mention that at the time, as the earliest post I can find related to it (October) is from a while after it broke.

For a very long time, it's been sitting there like a symbol of my inability to complete basic tasks.  A few days ago, I finally finished backing it up so that I could have it repaired.

It's not getting repaired.

It took them an hour to get their system to admit the warranty even existed.  This in spite of the fact that they could look at the record of the sale and admit that, yes, a three year warranty purchased less than three years ago would still be in effect.

That was only the start of the process, so I left the computer with them with the expectation they'd send it out for repairs once they fixed their computer problems.  (This was their idea, by the way.)

They say the serial number doesn't match.  It's the same computer.  The only way for the serial number to not match is if they replaced the part that has the serial number on it the last time it was in for repairs.  You'd think there would be a record of something like that.

So: wrong serial number means no warranty.  No warranty means no repairs.  No repairs means I'm fucked.

I can't buy a new one.  Having money to buy the one was a one time thing.  The plan was to keep track of every little problem and get them all repaired shortly before the warranty ran out in late September, in hopes that going into no-warranty period with a clean bill of health would allow it to last as long as possible.

The problems I have now are not little.  The broken in half thing I can actually fix fairly easily; hinges aren't complicated.  It's the stuff that I was planning to bring it in for before the hinges broke that are more vexing.

I don't know what to do.  I don't think I can do anything.

I'm having incredible difficulty coping with being alive right now (depression) (venting)

Emergency back up computer is reminding me why it's emergency back up computer.  I just got done yelling profanity at it and crying in its general direction.

It stopped working, I know not why, and after trying the usual things it became clear that the only hope of preserving the things I had opened was to run the battery down because the auto power off when that happens (accompanied by the system resume when you start it afterward) is actually pretty decent at fixing things.

The battery has never lasted anywhere near as long as it did.  Finally I gave up, apparently there was only four percent left to go.

If the power cord is in certain positions (which are basically impossible to predict or keep track of) it'll power down instantaneously killing everything.  It threw that at me several times when I tried to get it to start up.

None of that is the problem.

It's just easy to shout and cry at.

~ ⁂ ~

I want to have kids.  I don't know if I ever mentioned that here before.  I suspect that I haven't.

So, have that snippet of information.  I want to have kids.  Biological ones, not adopted.  For reasons I don't think I'd ever be able to articulate, it's important to me.  Has been for what certainly feels like forever.

I'm no closer to being the sort of person who could actually support a child (at all) than I was in high school.  What I am is older.  I'm not quite there yet, but high school was almost half a lifetime ago.

Actually, in the not-quite (but close to) half my life I've lived since leaving high school, I've done surprisingly little.  It's not for lack of trying so much as lack of succeeding.  At anything.

Outside of my education, the only thing I've really accomplished is transitioning.  That's certainly not nothing (I'm sure things would be worse if I were in the closet and pretending to be male) but it's not a lot.  And it's not enough.

I'm not living any more, not really.  I'm just . . . here.  Surrounded by the detritus of a lifetime worth of broken dreams and false hopes.

Usually the best I can hope for is distraction.  It used to be that stories made me feel alive and helped reinvigorate my own creativity, these days I read this fanfiction or play that game in hopes of momentarily being distracted from the bleak and disheartening thing that is my life.

When it works, that can be as bad as when it doesn't.  It becomes compulsive, takes over everything, and suddenly I'm ignoring basic bodily needs in order to continue something that brings me no pleasure.

I'm sad all the time.

(Except for the times when I can't feel anything at all.)

It feels like I deserve it.

Whenever I do manage to do something I can be proud of (usually some bit of writing), it seems like it's only lifting me up so that I'll crash all the harder.

~ ⁂ ~

I know that it's probably not the best time to try to put my life in perspective when I'm two years and counting into "Markedly worse than normal" and nine months to a year (I've honestly lost track) into "Even worse than that", but at the same time, there's nothing particularly unreasonable or illogical that goes into how I'm seeing things right now.

If anything it's the other way around.  I spent so long keeping myself going by lying to myself.  I knew they were lies, but it worked to keep me busy, to keep me from being stuck alone with myself and my failures the way I am right now.

I got myself to try to do a lot of things I wanted to do anyway by telling myself the monetary and "Save the Farm" equivalent of "Today Gotham, tomorrow the world!"

I didn't succeed in a single one of the things I did because of that, but I tried them, and they were things I wanted to try anyway.

The truth is, looking at things in terms of success or failure is too rosy of a view.  What typically happened is I'd get one or two steps in, and then completely fall apart.

My writing is like that.  It's why I have so very few finished stories.  Even when I somehow capture a spark of inspiration, I can't keep it alive.

Stepping back from writing for a bit, I was able to keep myself going through some of the worst times (and a lot of the "still horrible but not exceptionally so" times) by lying to myself and saying that if I tried [whatever] it wouldn't just be for myself, but a step toward saving the farm.

The farm is gone.  The house and greenhouse have been demolished.  I don't have any new lies to tell myself.

From a "Lies = Bad; Truth = Good" perspective, that might not seem like a bad thing, but I can't get by on the truth alone.  I've tried.  It doesn't work.

The truth is that there are about a million things I'd like to do, and I could probably be happy doing any given handful of them, but I never manage to do a single one.

I end up a crying mess.

I end up an apathetic lump.

I find myself in a place where I can't even make myself stand up

I get so fucking sad.

I scream profanity at inanimate objects.

I loose all hope that I'll ever actually finish anything.

I loose all hope that I'll ever actually start most things.

I look around me and see all of the evidence of things I've tried to do in the past --good ideas that could have blossomed into wonderful things in the care of someone less broken than me-- and I remember the one constant of my life:

The world around me changes, it grows, it wilts, it gets brighter or darker, it progresses and regresses, it brings forth new and different thing, it can be terrible, or wonderful, or mundane, but it's always in motion and always alive.

I'm not.  I stagnate.

Other than getting older, I don't change, I don't grow, I don't live.

I just exist.  Like a rock that's somehow managed to develop clinical depression.

~ ⁂ ~

And then, when I somehow manage to get ahold of something worthwhile in spite of all that, I fuck it up.

I had some good inspiration for a story not long before I started writing this.  I still remember the gist, but I'd already had the gist.  The good was in the details.  I lost them because I was too busy crying about my computer.

~ ⁂ ~

I don't think there's anything anyone can really do to help, but if you want to try (and you have the resources), I need money as much as always.

While I've been fucked up, speaking in terms of mental health, I've done a shit job of keeping up on my bills.  The fact that I was burning through heating oil way faster than I should have been (there's a story there involving a cat that turned out to be non-magical) didn't help.  Neither do the late fees.

I don't think, emotionally, I can handle looking up the exact numbers right now, but --off the top of my head-- I think I'm in the vicinity of $2,000 dollars behind on the "keep the house" expenses, caught up (after months of delinquency) on utilities, and . . . actually more than capable of covering other expenses.

That's slightly less bad than I thought it would be.

~ * ~

Given that I'm finally actually making progress on backing up primary computer (so I can get the damned thing fixed) again, there is actually another thing that comes to mind regarding things that might help.

It would be really, indescribably, useful to me to have the ability to store all of my old data in a single place, preferably one with redundancy.  (A constant source of frustration is when I have an idea for story X but all of the relevant data for story X is on another hard drive.)

Shortly before I broke my ankle, someone actually had something that met that description that they weren't using anymore.  It was heavy, my ankle was broken.  Getting it to me was put on hold, and I never followed up.

That was over two years ago, I doubt they still have it, but if one person could have such a thing that's free to good home, perhaps someone else could too.

~ * ~

And something else does come to mind too.

Someone (Brin maybe?) once talked about figuring out how to eat (get sufficient calories, nutrients, so forth) on their budget via the magical power of spreadsheets.

If anyone has spreadsheets, or whatever, like that and is willing to share, I think such things could be very useful to me.

It's been two years

So that this won't all be doom and gloom, here's some good news:

I wrote something.  Its not good, it's 15 pages of people taking in circles with an abandonment / betrayal based breakdown and some comforting through hugs and such.  It was supposed to be a quick "I'm going back home, I need you to watch this magical object that keeps the connection between our words active" and that was it.  Didn't turn out that way.

What it did do, what gives me hope, is that if flowed.  That's something that hasn't happened in a long time.

If you want to read it, it's here.

⁂

Two years and two days ago, but in the evening so not a full two days, I broke my ankle.  I've talked about it a fair amount.  Slipped on the top step, ended up on the basement floor, broke it in three places, needed a plate and a screw installed.  And it used to be my good ankle.

At this point it's very, very clear that the ankle itself was the least of the resulting problems.

You see, two years an two days ago in the morning and afternoon, I was the best I can ever remember being.  That's not the same as "the best I've ever been" because there was a time, as a child, before I had depression at all.  I have only snippets of memories from that time, and none of them really give a good sense of my overall mental state.

Being forced to be sedentary is usually not the best thing for depression, but the larger problem was bloodclot risk associated with surgery and post-surgery.

I had to go off of my hormones and the effect was . . . very similar to going off my depression meds.  It wasn't the same, and I doubt very much that I'd ever confuse one for the other, but those two things are in a category on their own that nothing else really compares to.

Eventually I was allowed back on hormones and things improved.  I was so relieved at the improvement that I thought it was over.  It wasn't, but I probably spent a year telling myself that I was back to normal and never acknowledging that, while significantly better than being off hormones, the state I was in was pretty definitively crap.

(Also, I had a lot of genuinely crappy things I could point to as the reason I wasn't doing well at a given time, which let me avoid the realization that I wasn't doing well ever.)

In the middle of last year, I had a series of breakdowns that led to me finally realizing that my mood had never recovered from the stuff surrounding my ankle breaking.

At around the same time, things got worse.  The big thing was that the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust did their backstabbing.  (The house and greenhouse have been demolished, by the way.)

Things got worse and they didn't get better.  Every so often I think that might be breaking.  Look at the note I have to remember to attach to the top of the post pointing out that, while not particularly good, I did recently manage to write something.

Every time I've thought it was breaking, though, I turned out to be wrong.

So I don't know.  Maybe I'm finally moving back to bad and away from worse.  Or maybe it's another one of those times when you get your hopes up only to have them shattered in a way that hurts all the more than if you'd never had hope in the first place.

⁂

What I do know is that I've spent the last two years barely functional.

I've been on hold.  The world has not.

My father's father has died.

We lost the farm including the part that we were very definitely supposed to keep as promised at every stage of negotiations.

That loss meant my sister was driven from her home.  Since she didn't have much time to look for a place to go, she settled for a place that was in a pretty terrible state (with the intention of fixing it up.)  Turns out that it was even worse than it looked (to everyone, including the inspector.)  Very much so.  It's not a long drive for being in a different city, but it's enough that I never see her or my nephews or my niece.

There was no Christmas or Thanksgiving last year because of how spread out the family has become.  Don't know if I'd have been able to take any joy in them if they had happened.

Other people have had changes that I'm not sure it's my place to talk about.  (They're not in my immediate family.)

All around me everything seems to be falling apart and I'm completely helpless.  I only ever leave the house for appointments, sporadic food shopping, and when I need to catch a bus to visit Lonespark.

I've been failing at taking care of myself so very hard.

My appetite went away, and I tried to stay on top of getting enough food, but last week or the week before (everything runs together) I discovered that I'd been failing at that.

Undernourishment will augment depression pretty hard.  So will dehydration.  Or sleep deprivation.

It's been two years, and that's way too long.  I want this shit to be over.

During that time my psychiatrist moved to a different practice, which means that while we should have been trying to adjust meds and such I was instead trying and failing to actually connect with the replacement.

Now we finally are working on it, but the process is slow.  "Let's make a slight change and wait a month to six weeks" slow.  And if I can't stay on top of the "eat-sleep-drink" trifecta that'll mess everything up and we might not be able to tell what works from what doesn't even at that snail's pace.

I don't want to be like this.  It hurts.  But I am.

That's where things stand.

A broad outline of the things I hope to do in the future

I started something that ended up getting too long.  At this point if something takes more than one sitting, it's probably not going to be posted.  Still, you might get a post called "What I hope the future of Stealing Commas will contain" at some point in the future, which will be like this but more into nitty-gritty details.

⁂

I hope to write again.  Fragments, chapters.  Original, derivative.  Continuations of old things that have languished for too long, wholly new ideas and characters and settings and scenes.

I desperately want to be a storyteller again.

It's probably the case that in the near future this will be a bunch of variations on a narrowly defined theme.  (You've already seen a bit of it, actually.)  When I get really depressed I tend to fixate on something and I've been very depressed for quite some time.  I don't even know how many alternate versions of the Equestria Girls Holiday Special I've started or thought about, but any return to posting is probably going to include a glut of that.

⁂

Close readings.

I've never seen them as quite the same as the kind of deconstructions you see from the likes of Fred Clark or Ana Mardoll, but I did have three things where I took things really slowly and looked at what emerged.

They were things I liked with the idea being that analyzing things I liked would keep me in contact with those things and help my mood in particular and mental health in general.  That didn't work out out, but I do want to return to (via starting over from the beginning) all three of them.

I've been thinking of adding the first thing I don't like to that line up, just so that people can know what the Equestria Girls Holiday Special, which I've got sixteen thousand variations on, is all about.

Thus, decon-esque things:
1 .hack//Sign
2 Deus Ex
3 Kim Possible
? Equestria Girls Holiday Special ?

⁂

I'd like to do, and share, more photography.  I used to do that, I could do it again.

⁂

Image manipulation is likewise something that interests me and that I've shared here in the past.  It's likewise something that I hope to do in the future.

I've tended to basically do . . . um, computer aided impressionism maybe?  I used to enjoy that.

⁂

Something I've never really talked about here is making things.

This is a thing I designed and had 3d printed once upon a time:

(The stickers, which were designed for a rather less complicated thing, I ordered from somewhere else.  As I recall it took three sets to sticker my design.)

I've got so many puzzle ideas that I never made because of the cost of 3d printing, and depression, and frustration at my hands not always being adequate to the task of casting pieces from molds.

Something that I've wanted to do but never made progress on is prop making.  Both replica props and original ones.

The interest is primarily in handheld things.  Sonic screwdrivers are an example.  It's a huge part of why I'd love to get my hands on the products from Rubbertoe Replicas.  Given the screen accurate fidelity, their stuff is basically a physical three dimensional blueprint with all of the information needed to create your own.

Nothing I make would be on that level (I work only with plastics, after all) but . . . yeah, the idea of creating that kind of thing is so appealing, and I want to work in that direction.

It's not happening while I'm too out of it to take care of basic bodily needs, but this is about things I hope to do, and that's one of them.

⁂

I've also thought of maybe doing reviews, or something like them, of games or movies.

⁂

And that might well be everything.

Now I'm only falling apart

Four lines of a song written by Jim Steinman and sung by Bonnie Tyler have been in my head.  How long I don't know.  Days?  Almost certainly.  Weeks?  Possibly.

Once upon a time I was falling in love 

But now I'm only falling apart 

And there's nothing I can do 

A total eclipse of the heart

I've never understood the song.  Not really.  Who is "bright eyes"?  Why is there nothing she can do?  Is it because bright eyes isn't listening?  Is it that she's lost the will?  What the fuck is going on?  And what exactly does a total eclipse of the heart entail?

None of that is the point, however.

The point is something else.  As much as having four lines stuck on endless repeat is annoying, the music is at least somewhat relevant.  Well chosen, as it were.  Insightful even.

Up until the last paragraph I thought it was just one line "But now I'm only falling apart", but then I realized that it's more than that.  "There's nothing I can do."

That is such a good description of this last however long its been.

I'm stuck.  I might say that I'm in a rut, to an outside observer it might even appear to be true, but I think it's more of a downward spiral.  Sure, it looks like I'm doing the same thing day after day and week after week, but the truth is that I think I'm getting worse and worse.

I've wanted to come back here so many times and write something.  Anything.  And it hasn't happened because I haven't been able to sustain the willpower needed to pull that off.  The post on Christmas day, which could be summed up as "Here's some shit you could buy me, or even give me if you happen to already have it on hand," and certainly lacked any creative merit, was only pulled off because a) it didn't really require any thought, and b) I could tie it to an external deadline that was inexorable.

If I'd tried to post the damned thing in May, it might never have gotten done.  But "giving" being related to "Christmas" pulled it off.

Most things don't have that, and even when it is possible it's unreliable at best.

I can't even describe what it's like to not be creating right now.  I want to say "emptiness" but that description is, unironically and pun not intended, hollow.  I want to say many other things, but the words flee from me.  The concepts as well.  It leaves me with nothing.

I'm not taking care of myself properly.

I'm not taking care of things that depend on me.  My cat can bug me into keeping her fed and watered.  That's good.  I don't know if I cold cope with the guilt should my negligence harm her.  My plants don't have the same ability.  I don't know how they're doing.  I would guess that losses are the highest they've been in a long time.

It's a terrible thing to look at something that was once alive and vibrant and know it died because of you.  Killed by your failings alone.

⁂

I'm not keeping myself well fed.  I'm not keeping myself well hydrated.  Rhoadan reminded me last post that they sent me some large drink containers because that's something that can help me with hydration a lot.  The fewer refills that need to be made for full hydration, the more likely it is for hydration.  As it turns out, I know exactly where those ended up when I forgot about them.

I meant to follow up my reply of (more or less) "Thank you for reminding me I have those, it'll help a bunch" with "Now that I'm using them again [good things]"  I know exactly where they are, after all, and using them would be a good thing to do.  I never did because I haven't.  They're two steps (maybe one and a half) from where I normally use my computer and I haven't retrieved them.

A lot of stuff is like that.  So close.  So easy.  So in reach.

And yet I'm not getting it done.

This is my life right now:

I wake up.  I've slept longer than I should need to (based on a lifetime of past experience), but I'm still not rested.  I drag myself out of bed.  I take my medicine (the one thing I've managed to stay on top of) I collapse into the spot where I use my computer.  I compulsively do things on the internet.  I doubt it would be considered "compulsive" in any clinical sense, but I see no other way to describe it.

I think of other things to do.  Someone of which are simultaneously easy and would reap huge rewards.  I don't do them.

If hunger and thirst disturb me enough, I eat and drink.

Return to compulsion on the internet.  Most of it has to do with simply staving off the boredom that would otherwise come from doing nothing.

Continue until I finally manage to break away and go to sleep.  Usually hours after I should be going to sleep.  Usually many hours after I should be going to sleep.

Sometimes I even brush my teeth.

I repeat.

⁂

I wanted there to be more in this post.  Talking about what I want to do.  Hopes for when I managed to create something (anything) again.  It kind of got taken over with the [something] of the now.

I'm going to post this.  Then I'm going to try to write something hopeful.  Something about the way I want things to be, and how I'm going to try to make that come to pass.

~ * ⁂ * ~

One last thing before I post this.  Sort of emblematic of everything.  Remember how primary computer broke down two and two thirds months ago?  I still haven't taken it in to get fixed.

It's sitting on my living room floor.  There's nothing inherently difficult about getting it fixed.

I want to make my own back up first, that was the original delay.  I needed to to find my external storage medium (no frills external hard drive with lots of space, nothing fancy.)  That's been found.  I even went through the first steps of backing it up.

It waits, there's nothing hard, I don't get it done.

So it goes with everything.

If you ever wanted to give me a gift

[I can be contacted via email at cpw (at) maine (dot) rr (dot) com.]

First off, I don't actually expect anyone to get me something.  I'm just using the fact that Christmas is a deadline I can't delay to hopefully get this written and out there.

So what is this?  Well, when I'm in a bad place emotionally but not necessarily financially, sometimes people ask if they can do anything to help and, even though finances aren't a top concern at that moment, there's not a lot I can point to other than the donate button.

It's not that I don't need money, I usually do, but I'd like to have other options.

The obvious solution is to have a post of "These are some things you could do to make my life somehow better other than giving me money."

The hard part has always been writing it.  It's not exactly a happy topic to begin with, it feels like I'm saying I should be given things I don't deserve, my brain always freezes up, and so on.

And then there's the fact that a lot of time I don't have the necessary information.  It ends up seeming like I'm saying "I could use one or more new pairs of shoes" (this is true) "I have no idea what my shoe size is" (this is also true.)

⁂

I do need things.

My clothing is threadbare at best and full of holes way more than anyone would like.  My backpack is falling apart in at least three different ways (busted zipper that leads to many headaches, holes in spots, and one of the straps is tied together because the plastic thing that's supposed to allow you to adjust said-strap completely died while I was waking somewhere with it on my back), my . . . wheeled luggage thing with the extendable/retractable handle that doesn't appear to have an actual name decided to take a different approach and combined the "gaping holes" with the "zipper problems".  It also dropped a screw from the handle, which is apparently all it takes to make the thing impossible to retract.

When I'm doing badly emotionally, I'm not always as careful as I should be with things.  (I often set things down in less than safe places, for example.)  When I'm doing badly emotionally for more than 22 months straight . . . all of my glass bowls (I think it's all of them) have broken.  I have no glass bowls.

Lists sort of go on.

It would be nice to have a comforter that's actually still recognizable as a comforter.

I cannot begin to describe how good it would be if I could put all of the back ups from past computers in one place that was simultaneously safe and easy to access.

Games are fun.

Blah.

⁂

The obvious place to start is things that are free.

Feedback is a huge one of those.

It's hard to give feeback when I haven't produced anything in what feels like forever, and I haven't produced with any consistency for almost two years, but hard is not impossible.  Especially because something that I could really use right now is reminders of when I used to do things right.  Also reminders that I used to do things right.

So if I ever produced something that you liked, if you could take time to go back to it, reread it, and then make a comment telling me what about it you liked, that would mean so much to me.

I think other free things require more functioning brain to elucidate than I've had for a week or so.

I could use advice on some things, but getting them from brain to page isn't easy right now.

Cameras is a thing.

The cameras I've had in the past had sunset modes that, somewhat surprisingly, were actually really good at capturing Sunsets.  The Canon PowerShot I have now does not have one of those, and I have yet to discover how to take sunset pictures that don't look like crap.

I've always done handheld photography, but the new camera is good enough (and my hand unsteady enough) that it seems like I might want to work on changing that.  I know nothing of tripods.  I'd need something that's light, portable, and quick to set up break down.  Anyone have suggestions?  (Relatedly, anyone have suggestions I could actually afford to pursue?)

There's a lot of computer stuff, but I'm really not braining enough to describe any of it.

⁂

In the realm of similar to no cost but not the same, there's a very good chance that people have, but no longer necessarily need or want, things that would be useful to me.

This has actually worked out pretty well a couple of times.  I've said that I could use something someone already had but wasn't using, the person contacted me (cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com) to get my address, and I got the thing.  Some those things were helpful at the time, some I still use to this day.

I already listed some things in the "I do actually need things" bit.  A backpack, wheeled luggage one might take on the subway with them, a comforter, glass bowls.

I can immediately add large glasses and cups.  (The fewer times I have to refill my water to become and remain hydrated, the more likely hydration is to be achieved and maintained.  The more times, the more likely it is that depression will prevent hydration.)  Ceramic plates have suffered some of the same fate as glass bowls, but I have plates in reserve.

While it's entirely possible that someone reading this might have clothing or shoes that could help me, figuring that out would require me to know my sizes.  So . . . electronics?  That sounds good, right?

When it comes to electronics, especially computer stuff, if you've got something that is merely outdated (as opposed to nommed on by a dragon, dipped in acid, or used a lightning rod) I'd be interested in hearing about it.  Unless its something I specifically spent more money than probably wise on (like my new camera) the outdated thing you have is probably worlds ahead of whatever I have.  (If I even have something in that category.)

Specific things that would be useful right now are robust external storage, a wireless USB mouse, and . . . well, computers themselves.  I'm not expecting anyone to give me a computer.

Outside of electrionics . . .

I like puzzles.  Have I ever mentioned that?  I don't think I've put together a jigsaw puzzle in years.  Also twisty puzzles (Ruibik's cubes and the like.)

Continuing in the vein of "Joy giving things" Legos are something I doubt I'd ever not want.  The more ordinary blocks you have, the more you can do.  For specific lines, I love the colors (and dragons) of Lego Elves.  (Unless there's been some sort of sorting error, every other thing on this wishlist of mine is Lego Elves.)  I love Spaceship! and superheroes and buildings one could theoretically make a town or city out of, and the sculpted pieces (dogs, cats, dinosaurs, bunnies, dolphins, so forth), and . . . I just really like Legos.

Unfortunately, so do most of the people who actually have Legos, so it seems like the chances of people simultaneously having them and not wanting to keep them are probably low.

⁂

When it comes to actually buying things . . . that's actually an even more difficult thing for me to write up than the rest of the post.  There are definitely people who need money and stuff more than I do, so it always feels like anyone could find better places to spend their money than on me.

~ ~ ~

The simplest thing on this front is just to link to the Amazon wishlists I have.  They're not necessarily up to date, or sorted, or any such thing, but they at least exist.

(Note that in the top right corner there should be the option to sort a list in a way other than the default.  This could be useful to you.)

This one has all sorts of things all mixed together.   We've got lots of lego sets, books on math, 50 years of Doctor Who art (I love concept art) a lot of games . . .

I should talk about games.  Games are a form of storytelling that can reach me emotionally when other things can't.  They don't always work, but the past 22 months of everything being kind of shit would have been much, much worse if I didn't have games to turn to.

The same also goes for my life as a whole.

I could really use more of that sort of thing in my life right now.

Everything on that wishlist is there for a reason, but some things that stand out in my mind right now are these:

I haven't played Tomb Raider, Shadow Thereof yet in spite of loving the first two.  I have some trepidation about it because, while it was quite good, the second game definitely left me with the impression that that the people in charge either didn't understand (or, perhaps, didn't particularly like) what it is the series gets right.  That said, the second was good in spite of that so hopefully the third will be as well.

Also, hey, it's half off on Steam right now.

Kingdom Hearts III and the Resident Evil 2 remake (underground labs and convoluted conspiracies!) both coming out in January.  Monster Hunter World and Persona 5 are both things that would be nice to have firsthand experience with in order to better connect with some people online.

~ ~ ~

The other list started off as divination, hence the name I gave it, but it ended up more being "Pretty cards and pretty rocks".

It is in general that the answer to the question "Would chris like these polished rocks?" is, "Yes."  Especially if they come in green, purple, orange, or blue.  Though, truly, if I were to list all of the colors I like, I would produce a list of all colors.

"Would chris like these rune stones?" has the same answer for obvious reasons.

At some point I really need to locate good references for runic divination.  A problem with rune stone divination, though, is that as much as I like rocks, traditional runic divination was done with sticks.

On the other hand, I'm not a diviner.  My interest is definitely more along the lines of "utter fascination" than "belief."

Important question:

Is there a term for divination stones with runes on them other than "rune stones"?  Because this is what actual runestones look like.  Note that they're big, heavy, and contain lots of runes that go together to form a coherent inscription.

They're not small things with one rune each.

~ ~ ~

List "more or less the last" is called absurdly expensive Lego sets.  Truth be told, some of them are not actually absurdly expensive (while others definitely are) but instead simply intended for people in significantly better economic places than the one I occupy.

~ ~ ~

Off of wishlists . . . um . . . I could really use a wagon.  Something I could load groceries into and pull behind me on the sidewalk for the walk home.

If my brain were working better I could populate this part better.

Some of the time things I what I want totally doesn't match what's reasonable.  For example, if a rich person were shopping for me I'd ask for one of each of these.  Probably also an Alibre design licence.

There are other things that aren't expensive but even at low prices aren't necessarily worth paying for.

Any of the books I do fic of would be useful in both physical and electronic forms.  (There are some things I want to do that require several physical copies of the same book.)  At the same time, I wouldn't recommend spending even thrift store prices on any books from the big three series (Left Behind, Twilight, Narnia.)  They're more of "If you see it at a yard sale" things.

The exception, I guess, would be reference material.  Not for Left Behind, but
The Official Illustrated Guide for The Twilight Saga and . . . I know that a variety of reference books for Narnia exist, and I'm sure that some of them are quite good, but I don't actually know anything specific about any of them.

⁂

Uh . . . that's probably good enough, right?

I'm posting now.

Come back tomorrow.  I want to end the year on a high note, so I'm going to try very hard to post fiction every day for a week.  Since I'm still in the same creative dry spell I've been in, I'm probably going to acomplish that by looking through old files to find things I've written but never published.

Yes, money would help.

I was asked multiple times if money, for a moving van for example, would help with the shit I'm currently deal with.

Yes.  Yes it would.  Preferably a week and a half ago (when I was asked here) but now works too.  Here's the donate link.

Gondor calls for aid (i.e. if you're in or about the greater Portland area, Maine Portland, I could use help)

I know that in the past people have said, "I'm not that far away, is there anything I could do to help by showing up in person."  Well, not that.  People have never, to my knowledge, said precisely that.  People have said stuff to that effect, more or less.

Or maybe, "I have friends in your area and they might be . . ."

What I don't know is who those people were or how they came to internet-know me.

Maybe they read this, maybe they were at Ana's, maybe they were somewhere else entirely.

Regardless, for once showing up in person could be helpful.  Short version: Stuff needs to be moved.  Both on the small scale where a person can move it and on a large scale where a vehicle is needed.

If you're up for it, contact me (cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com) and we'll see if you can help.  (I naturally assume no one is interested.)

Long version:

This is hard to write about because I just want to vent about how terrible everything feels and how shitty certain people were to my family, but that's not what this post is about.

This is what it's about: we're losing the whole farm.  My mom was put on the spot and had to decide between between accept the unexpectedly backstabbing altered arrangement, where we didn't get to keep anything at all, or go to the next offer, which would have seen the whole thing bulldozed.  At least by still selling to the backstabbers it'll become a pseudo-park instead of being condos.

That news is what caused my May breakdown, in which I cried for days and was emotionally fucked for even longer.  Then time passed and I had my June breakdown.  Then time passed.  (Actually, if you look at the space between them, I'm due for a July breakdown right about now.)

Property changes hands three days after my birthday, so by August 6th anything we want to keep needs to be evacuated to some other location.

We didn't know that anything would need to be moved until May, I wasn't the only one having problems, it's now mid July.

On my own, the most I can do is help my sister in her efforts.  I can't drive, (don't have a car anyway), I'm just one person, so on, so forth.  The thing is, what she wants isn't how I'd prefer to do things.

Helping her is a good thing, and if you'd prefer her orders to my own ideas then that's definitely a thing that can be done, but I'm going to talk about what I'd prefer for the rest of the post.

⁂

There's some path clearing to be done because the farm is one spring + summer-so-far overgrown, so there is a degree to it would be useful if someone wanted to venture forth with weed whacker in hand to do battle with grass and shrub so that others might reach the out buildings.

Mostly, however, what I need help with is moving stuff, both on site and between the farm and my house.
Aside:

Other than the "my house" bit (she's loading up an on-site storage container), that's essentially the same thing my sister needs help with.  The differences are a) the categories of some of the things to be moved, and b) the methodology employed in deciding which potential things should be moved.

So: moving stuff.

Stuff falls into three categories: inanimate stuff one can carry and put in an SUV/pickup/van/thing, big inanimate stuff, and plants.

~ * Stuff one can carry and put in a vehicle to move * ~

If anyone actually does help me, I'm pretty sure it will be limited to this category.  It's really simple, or would be if I had a car, could drive, and were more people:

Pick stuff up, put in vehicle, drive to my house, unload stuff.  Repeat.

Which stuff?
All the stuff.

The thing is, I really do feel like there's not a lot of time.

It'll be a week before I can work at the farm again.  At that point there are three weeks left.  Decent odds that I'll be in the area for at most two of those weeks.  It's the hot season and if I work more than a couple days in a row the exertion combined with the heat will make me sick.
From my perspective there's only a handful of days and they're running out.

So I don't want to sort through everything to save only what I actually wish to keep.  I am very deeply concerned that if I try to do that I'll spend so much time sorting that I'll run out of time before all of the save-worthy stuff gets moved (or indeed located).
I want to go quick and dirty:
 • Grab everything.  Stick what fits in a vehicle.  Drive it to my house.  Remove.  Repeat.

I can sort things after the sixth provided that I actually have the things, which will only be true if they're moved off the farm before the sixth.  Sorting takes time.  Especially when things may be disassembled.  With disassembled things it's like needing to put together a puzzle in order to make each decision.

Even if we do have that time, and I have doubts, I'm stressed the Hell out by taking that time to sort instead of just getting stuff to safety as quickly as possible and deciding what's worth keeping later.

~ * big inanimate objects * ~

The degree to which I think no one can help with this is high, but I'll put it in.
There are some big honking things on the farm, and I don't just mean cars.  Though on the subject of cars . . .

My grandfather talked about us building a car together for much of my life.  I'd say I wanted a rusted wreck from the woods, he'd say that we'd build a car together, but not that one.  Then he'd bring me to the chassis of a model A Ford (I didn't know that was what it was at the time) and say we'd build that.  It was four wheels, a flat (empty) frame, and a steering wheel; I was totally unimpressed.
The chassis has a tree growing through it now, but what I didn't know when I was younger is that, in one of the out buildings, he had all the parts to build a complete Model A.  Now a headlight or such I can probably move by my lonesome.  The body, though?  Not a chance in Hell.  (And I don't actually know if the engine is assembled or in more mobile pieces.  There never seems to be time to just look at things.)

If given the ability to move heavy things, there are other things I'd want to move too, but getting that thing --actually getting it-- it would . . .
It's indescribable.  It would overshadow anything else I can think of save the tractors (which my sister is theoretically looking into options for.)  I would be grateful forever.

And I'd learn how to build a car.  And I'd say sappy things to my grandfather at the cemetery (movies have taught me that this is required), and then I don't know what I'd do.  Maybe find someone who would appreciate it.  Maybe actually get my licence.  (Though that likely involves a lot of therapy, since I have a phobia level fear of driving.  My reaction time isn't that bad, but I'm completely terrified that I'll kill someone.)

~ * plants * ~

Who wants to transplant rhubarb?   Who wants to transplant an entire blueberry patch at the worst possible stage of the blueberry life-cycle without any earth moving equipment save shovels?

Me.

Digging is hard work that takes a lot of time, dirt is heavy, this is a really bad idea.  Horrendously stupid.  I'm going to need help to pull it off.

There are other plants too, I suppose.  They're not incredibly difficult problems though.

For example, there's no possible way to move the willow or butternut (and nowhere to move them too) but given the lack of mowing all spring there are doubtless small children of each that could be transplanted with relative ease.  Likewise there are probably some flowers in various places probably.

Nothing else on the level of work or stupidity require to move a blueberry patch in July.

⁂

And that pretty much covers it.

That's what I could use help with.

 ● Moving stuff that can be held.
 ● Moving stuff that's car like in scope.
 ● Transplanting plants.

If you think you could show up and help with any of that, contact me (cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com) and we'll see if our schedules can be made to align.

Need help: accurate and reasonably precise measurements of Duplo bricks

~ Background ~

So, for some ungodly reason, I decided to get the 30 day Alibre Design free trial.

This was, for the record, a horrible idea.  Right now depression is bad, I'm having trouble with the vitally important eat/drink/sleep trifecta, and since I'm not about to buy a $1,000 or $2,000 licence (depending on the version) I've basically saddled myself with sense of "If I don't do ¡Everything! in 30 29 days I'm an failure!"

(Yes, I did make an effort to indicate that "everything" is getting double exclamation.)

I . . . may not be the best at making decisions that are conducive to a non-catastrophic state of mind.

But it's just . . . I like Alibre.  With some exceptions here or there it's exactly how I would design a 3d modeling.  It's like a perfect fit.

And I've been having design ideas that I'd like to do more than just write about, since that comes with the constant caveat: "Of course this serves no practical purpose now, but if I ever get into 3d modeling again, maybe I could do something with this."

~ The issue at hand ~

  Short version:

It's a lot harder to get the specifications of Duplo bricks than it is for Lego bricks.  The dimensions that aren't easily derived are the studs on top (height and outer diameter) and the tubes on bottom (inner diameter, outer diameter), and the size of the splines that make the wall actually wide enough to hold the studs.  (Most of the wall is Lego-wall thickness to allow for compatibility with Lego studs)

Obviously knowing a radius is as good as knowing a diameter, and also some things can be derived if others are known.  Knowing stud outer diameter will allow one to calculate the spline size, or vice versa.  Stud outer diameter should allow calculations tube outer diameter (in theory, at least.)

  Long version:

The basic Lego and Duplo patents expired ages ago.  It's why Lego keeps on making new specialty bricks (it creates new, non expired, patents) and why Lego is so into stuff that's under copyright* (Superheroes, Disney princesses, a thousand original Lego IPs) these days.

Thus a thousand companies build Lego and Duplo compatible system bricks and don't even need to file off the serial numbers.

However, Duplo bricks don't get the same attention to detail outside of of the clone manufacturing centers.

Lego specifications can be found all over the internet.

Duplo not so much.

Now, Some dimensions of Dplo bricks can be worked out pretty easily by comparison to Legos.  The standard Duplo bricks are twice as high, wide, and long as Lego bricks, for example.  The short ones are the same width and height as the standard ones, but only as high as a single standard Lego brick.

Other things are harder.

The studs (round things on top, hollow cylinders in this case) are not simple multiples of Lego stud sizes.  Their height, inner diameter, outer diameter, and wall thickness are all unclear.  However the tubes under a regular Lego (which have known sizes) fit inside the the studs so we can thus work out inner diameter.  The wall thickness can be found from subtraction once one has the outer diameter.

Thus for the studs, the missing dimensions are height and outer diameter.

The tubes underneath have similar stuff going on, albeit with less to reduce things.

The height is a simple calculation in theory.  It's a Lego stud height less than all the way to the bottom.  The inner and outer diameter not so much.

If we assume similar construction practices to Lego bricks than the inner diameter will be equal to the stud outer diameter and the outer diameter can likewise be calculated once the stud outer diameter is know.

It is not clear that those are good assumptions.

So, for the tubes on the bottom, the missing dimensions are inner diameter and outer diameter.

~ conclusion ~

If anyone has superior google-fu, prior knowledge, or Duplo bricks + really good calipers:

I would be really appreciative if you could tell me these dimensions (plus any others you feel like sharing) of Duplo bricks:

The outer diameter of the studs on top.  The height of the  studs on top.  The outer diameter of the tubes on the bottom.  The inner diameter of the tubes on the bottom.  Anything else that you think one needs to know to create Duplo compatible objects.  (Primarily bricks.)

~ Footnote ~
~ (on copyright law vs patent law) ~

* Copyright law is fundamentally flawed and this is, in large part, due to corporations wanting to have stuff in perpetuity while simultaneously saying, "Fuck You!" to the people who actually made the fucking stuff in the first place as well as the entire extended family and circle of friends + acquaintances of those people.

Short version:

Patent law is designed to balance the importance of creators getting what they're due with the competing interests of the common good of society in general and the people within society in particular.

Copyright law is designed to make Disney (and others of their ilk) richer than God.  I know that, as a classicist, I'm supposed to say, "Rich as Croesus" but the truth is that Croesus couldn't even imagine this kind of wealth.

~ Giraffe ~

When we asked for the location of the AMC at Assembly Row (which was a field of dirt before they put in the Orange Line stop, but a mass transit stop is like really good irrigation and fertilization: It makes commerce grow with a vengeance) we were told, "Around the corner right by the giant Lego giraffe," or something to that effect.

All this time later I still snap photos when possible.  (It's been in multiple open threads at Ana Mardoll's because of that.)

Why is it here?  It's made out of Duplo bricks.  (Which makes sense, it would take eight times as many Lego bricks to do the exact same thing.)

The news is handling its favorite Trump scandal wrong

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

It's been a while since I begged people to leave comments, so: If you have something to say, please say it in a comment.

[Still don't have god damned internet at my house.  Fuck.]

First, some introductory paragraphs that seem to have nothing to do with the point:

The results of neuropsychological testing (which chrome doesn't think is a thing as evidenced by it putting a red "this isn't a word" line under "neuropsychological") say that I'm still depressed.  I'm so much better than I used to be that I figured it was dealt with.

I mean, I knew some things were definitely depression related, but I figured that they were the result (scars, hold overs, habits, whatever) of having spent my half my life with untreated depression.  Plus, I was a child before the depression set in.  A small child.  I don't remember what it felt like to be non-depressed so I have no basis for comparison.  Well, that's not quite accurate.  I have a baseline, it's just "my depression in its untreated state" instead of "normal" and while that is useful for many things, it isn't particularly helpful with answering the question: "Is this healthy or just less bad?"

All of that means that, for certain things, I don't know if they're the depression or just how I am.  This will bring us to the actual point.

The actual point:

When I write something, and no one responds, it's like I'm writing into the void.

For all I know no one even read it.  I know how many views a given post gets (which is a horrible metric*) but for all I know people went there, took one look, and decided not read.  Or they read it and were so completely "meh" about it that they could think of nothing good or bad.  Or they read it and hated it and, like most people who hate things, didn't devote the time necessary to comment that they hated it.  Or they were all spambots.  (The most popular posts on the blog are definitely and without doubt that way because of the number of spambots they brought in.  That said, spambot traffic dropped off sharply from October 2014 to May 2015 and is now at a fairly low level.)

For all I know no one read it.  For all I know no one liked it.  For all I know it was completely pointless posting it in the first place.

Maybe it's the lingering depression.  Maybe it's just the kind of person I am.  Either way, I need validation.  Without it I just . . . shut down.  I stop functioning.  I stop producing.  There is something profoundly sad, depressing even (and that's not a word I use lightly), about a creator who isn't creating anything.  It's not fun being one.

-

All of my comment settings are set to make it easy to comment.  I never close comments on old posts.  If you should find a post where comments are closed then tell me because that's a mistake that needs to be corrected.

So, you know, if something makes you think or feel anything, please say so.

And, for the record, I know there are problems and things that could be better.  There's no "Like" button, which means that you can't respond without making a comment saying something (though you could say "like".)  Sometimes comments disappear (not get marked as spam, that can be fixed, disa-fucking-pear) rather than post.  (Before posting, if it's something that has details you might forget, I recommend making a copy.  On Windows, in the comment box, ctrl+a to select all, ctrl+c to copy, and if your comment disappears, ctrl+v in the comment box to get it back.)

And, because I just use the crap blogger provides for free, I can't fix the problems.

But, if you can, if it's not too much to ask, can you please comment if you have any reaction at all.

-

As a point of comparison:

Recently, and I have to start posting these things here (but I worry people here won't be interested), I started writing at place called "Fimfiction" where I'm a niche writer who writes alternate versions of the execrable My Little Pony: Equestria Girls 2014 Holiday Special (think Star Wars Holiday Special levels of bad) why do I have multiple alternate versions of this piece of crap in the works?

Short version: because people respond to it.  If I post a new chapter of one of the works I already have or a new work it's going to get a response.  Quickly and powerfully.

Long version:

It seems to be the case that when depression hits me hard I end up reading fanfic for children's cartoons.  Don't ask me why, I have no fucking clue.  It was how I ended up deep enough in Kim Possible fandom to have several stories for that.  I don't remember exactly when, I could probably look it up, but best guess would be it was circa the recovery from the thrice broken ankle.

Depression was hard and Munchkin Weasel wanted to watch My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: The Legend of Everfree.  That became the franchise whose fanfic I obsessed over during that depressed stretch.  It helped that there's an extremely low barrier to entry.  Unlike the main universe (Friendship is Magic [FiM]) you could know the whole canon (at the time) in about five hours of viewing and I'd already seen a quarter of it.  Since it's the human-verse things operate almost entirely on human standards so I didn't need to get caught up on the ever-changing magical lore and species based powers of FiM.  So on, so forth.

My first serious offering was a sequel to an alternate version of said-Holiday Special.  That I posted here, along with my second serious offering which is a "How did we get from point A to point B?" fic that picks up at the end of the first movie.  I also posted them at Fimfiction.  Where I found out, because of the first, that there's an entire community salivating for more "The Holiday Special sucked, here's a different version," fic.

And the response gave me the validation that keeps me going.  Thus multiple fics with more in my head.

-

* It would be better to know how many visitors and, ideally, both plus.  Break it down:

(for a given post or page)
This is how many visitors you've gotten.
This is a graph of when you got them.

This is how many views you've gotten
This is a graph of when you got them
 - - - this is that graph broken down so that first time views and repeat views get their own lines

On this graph the x axis is "number of views" and the y axis is how many visitors viewed the post/page that many times.

This is a graph over time again, but instead of views or visitors it tracks the mean and median views per visitor.