Monday, August 3, 2020

Things I want or need -- 2020 Birthday Edition

I said I'd post this today, but it's now time for me to go to sleep and I've written all of three things, and only two of them are complete.

So, the idea behind this is that instead of just saying, "Give me money," I could make a list of things that would be useful, and maybe someone has one of those things that they're not using, or maybe someone is more willing to buy a specific thing than they are to just give general funds (or perhaps they could get a better deal than I would be able to get or...)

If there's anything on this pseudo-list that you have and are willing to send me, contact me via email:
          ⦑ cpw [at] maine (dot) rr {dot} com ⦒

As I try to keep my head up and myself awake long enough to get this posted, I'm just gonna add some quick things at the start.  This will be a hodgepodge of, "My half awake brain was firing randomly" stuff.  I'll try to make a better list at later date.

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-- One thing that would be very useful, but it utterly fails to fall into the "You might have this lying around and not be using it" category, is food.  People "helpfully" cleaned out my freezer, which meant I had nothing in reserve for the times when there was more month than there was food money for the month, and I've had a lot of times when there's more month than food lately.  Also, when my depression is really bad (and it basically always is these days) I'm not necessarily able to cook.

Someone I know got someone else I know a pizza in spite of the two of them being in different states, something like that would be so very useful to me right now.  I doubt anyone would do anything like that, but if one does want to try, contact me via email.

Oh, and the heating element in my stove isn't working properly, which is just fucking wonderful.

-- As mentioned below, basically anything that's electronic I'll theoretically have some use for.  This is especially true for any kind of computer, no matter how old or how crappy.
-- -- Adding to the above, my last functional USB mouse looks like it's losing functionality.  So if you're one of the

-- Tools.  I'm not entirely sure how but I seem to have run out of tools.  Screwdrivers, my drill, wrenches, generally all things that happen to be useful that you hold in your hand are rather lacking around here.

-- Bicycle tires, but you would need to know what size and I don't know so this is useless.

-- Clothes, but you would need to know what size and I don't know so this is useless.  (This includes shoes since I'm down to one pair that is starting to come apart at the seams in the most literal way possible.)

-- This is probably redundant given tools is listed above, but when alleged helpful people did something to my house that they assure me was called "cleaning" the soldering stuff I had, which was very, very basic anyway, disappeared.

-- Fans.  There is one working fan in my house.  Two if you count the one nailed to the ceiling of the master bedroom.  The non-ceiling fan is on the verge of failure, and I'm not sure how much longer percussive maintenance will be able to keep it running.  As such whether a little fan that goes on a desk, or a big one that sits on the floor, I could use any fan that's available.

-- Basically anything vaguely musical, even if broken.

-- Anything My Little Pony or Equestria Girls related.  I actually made an Amazon wishlist of stuff that I thought might help me in my fanfic writing (and also has the potential of allowing me to introduce my unicorn loving nephew to pen and paper RPGs), but in terms of stuff one isn't setting out to buy so much as get rid of, basically anything.

-- Bedding, but I'd need to verify the size of the mattress, which I'm not going to do right now.
-- Curtains.
-- Probably other stuff along the lines of bedding and curtains, though my mind is drawing a blank

This whole thing is basically an attempt to do something that I've done before (twice), the things in those posts might still apply.  I should reread them:
Things I need or want
⦾ Stuff you could send me

That was more than the "some quick things" I promised.  Anyway, that's what I added when it was already late enough that I should have been first going to bed and then sleeping.  The original intent was to go into more detail about stuff, what follows is what I wrote before I let myself fall into a depressive stupor that consumed most of the day:

Dog and Cat Supplies

As one might imagine based on the fact that the dog got hit by a car (she's fine now, by the way) I have a dog now.  When she got hit by the car she wasn't mine, she was just staying here until we could find a new home for her, but I promised her that if she lived I'd keep her.  She's very much alive.

Here's the thing: I didn't have much in the way of dog stuff to begin with, assholes lost or broke most of the dog stuff.

Retractable leash?  Broken.  Normal leashes?  Lost.  (Instead of clipping things to her collar, I've been tying a bowline every time I need to hook her up to something.)  Toys?  Almost none, and what I did have has been reduced by stuff getting lost.  Grooming supplies?  Never had them in the first place.

For the cat, it's much more on the side of never having stuff to begin with.  In all things (including human affection) anything she likes she likes more when it's outside, usually to a fairly significant degree.  As such, it never really made sense to buy indoor cat stuff.  The thing is, she's getting old, and I'd actually like it if I could convince her to spend more time inside.  Not lock her inside or anything, but--

Ok, here's the thing, I wanted to give her  more stuff to do inside before this because I'd feel better about her safety if she started spending more time inside instead of outside, but it might be too late.

From sometime Thursday to sometime Sunday I was at my sister's.  It was a very eventful time.  Someone choked me three times on Thursday and I'm pretty sure that on the third time, in the heat of that particular moment, they were genuinely trying to kill me.  While such things were happening to me, my housemate was supposed to watch the cat and dog.  I learned today that when the cat never showed up, housemate figured that I had changed my mind and brought my cat with me, because why else would the cat just disappear at the same time I did?

So my cat could already be dead or abducted, which is precisely the kind of thing I was hoping to avoid by enticing her to spend more of her time inside as she grew older.

I'm scared.  I'm worried.  I want to scream.  I want to cry.


Books

It's no secret that I can't enjoy reading like I used to.  At this point the only types of fiction I can enjoy are video games and incredibly niche fanfiction that retreads the same territory I've read a hundred times before with just a few tweaks here and there.

That said, I do have uses for books.  For one thing, not all books are fiction.  Any given art book is something that I'm interested in.  Books about creating fiction I'm interested in as well, whether it's of the form "This is how such and such thing was created" or "Advice for plotting your next novel".

Digitized books are also of great interest to me because of some metatextual computer projects I want to work on.  That said, digitized books are also potentially problematic legally speaking.  Reselling used books is an established practice that's older and more respected than any government extant today.  Reselling ebooks has the potential to get one sued into non-existence.

Alternate versions are also of interest.  Different translations of the same work, the novelization of a movie, game, or TV show, scripts, so on, so forth.

Outdated reference books, too, oddly enough.

Physical copies of books the Twilight, Narnia, and/or Left Behind series.  As many as people are willing to send.  It's for what basically amounts to a craft project, they shall be taken apart, put back together in new and different ways, and . . . stuff.


Computer stuff

Short version: basically anything computer related, including computers themselves, I'd be happy to take off people's hands.

Actually, pretty much anything electronic at all.  If I can manage to do anything, which is by no means given, a project that I'm about to start is Frankensteining some older stuff into new and different things, probably starting with some old smartphones I got my hands on.

If I should ever become rich, I would love to have a kickass top of the line gaming desktop.  That will probably never happen.  (If I were to have thousands of dollars to spend, it'd go toward paying down my debt, not computing.)  Neither do I expect anyone to get me a gaming desktop.

My interests are not, however, limited to gaming.  There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do where older computers no one would ever even think about using for gaming that could just sit there and run for extended periods would be useful.  A lot of stuff.  If I had a whole fleet of computers, I could still probably have productive use for more.

I've said something similar to this before, and gotten a response.  Unfortunately I was in a semi-zombified


Like I said only two of them were finished. I'll try to have some fiction posted tomorrow.

I survived another year (It's my birthday)

I didn't mean to go dark for over three months.  Sorry about that.

The best way I have to describe how things are right now is that it's been like trying not to drown.  Every day is a struggle to keep my head above water, and if I inhale . . . well, that's about as good as it gets.  Keeping up with anything?  Keeping in touch with anyone?  That's beyond me.

I try to eat, I try to drink, I try to sleep.  Sometimes I even succeed.  Sleep is my favorite.  I rarely remember any dreams, so it's just the comforting embrace of darkness.  Nothing hurts; nothing is bad.  It's like I don't exist.

Then I wake up, and the world is just as bad as it ever was, but now I'm a bit older and have gone a bit longer without accomplishing anything.

Anyway, as of today I'm old enough to legally serve as President of the United States.

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I have some stuff I'm going to bring over here to share.  Think it's all Equestria Girls stuff.

I did finally start trying to make let's plays, but my computer needs repair.  I guess the heat sink being improperly attached is a known issue.  One hopes that the resulting overheating hasn't damaged anything else.  Contacting tech support is, in theory, easy.  In practice . . . depression sucks.

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I've been meaning to make a list of things that would be useful and/or nice.

Mostly because, "Here are things you might not be using that I could use," isn't asking for money, and I hate asking for money, even though I do need it.  (A lot of it, in fact.)  After the dog got hit by a car, my high interest debt increased by nearly $4,000 dollars and the amount I owe my mother broke $10,000.  That was in late March.  Things are worse now, but I don't have exact figures for how much so off the top of my head.

So, my birthday seems like as good a time as any to talk about stuff I want or need on the off chance someone might give me something.  I'm going to follow this up with a post to that effect.