Hello again, gopherspace! It's me, jebug29, back at ya again! (I realize I
keep disappearing for a few months at a time, but please keep putting up
with me lol).
I'm writing this using my IBM 5144 as a feaux terminal, and the Pico menu
bar is making me realize that my screen geometry is annoyingly off. I had
to open up this monitor at one point before to re-center the screen after
moving it back and forth between college and home several times, so I
guess it won't kill me to do it again. It's a... process... though.
There's a reason this monitor's lasted three decades and counting.
Speaking of college, I am sort-of-officially-done (but not really). My
depression's been pretty significantly worse since returning to the US and
my home university - which is a good part of why I haven't been posting
more too - and after several weeks of absences and then the whole move to
online, I just completely broke down and realized I wasn't able to push
myself any further. My stress tank was full and a match was thrown in on
top. I ended up contacting several people at my school and my previous
therapist, and after about a week of e-mails they decided to basically let
me finish out all but one of my classes early and let me receive credit
for them. The one I couldn't finish out I'm having to take as an
incomplete and just finish whatever assignments are necessary in the Fall
and then be eligible for graduation. My advisor was hoping I'd be able to
just finish it out before the end of this semester so I could go ahead and
get my degree, but I told him that I just wasn't able to. Blue Cross was
just going to have to assess the damages my mind had and how much it would
cost to fix them, and I'd have to go from there lol.
I've been under significant financial stress too, since I'm living alone
and obviously the same inhibition to get my school work done extended to
just about everything else (plus, y'know, the plague's going around). I've
been trying to assess creative projects that I could possibly take on and
have been streaming drawing on Picarto[0] and even uploaded one of my
manga projects from Akita onto Tapas[1] to see if I could attract some
subscribers. (Which, I didn't, and I wholly blame Tapas' abomination of a
redesign for completely breaking the experience of actually interacting
with content; I've uploaded shittier comics and gotten subscribers with
every update before their redesign, so, woof). I didn't receive a
stimulus check since I'm 21 and the tax guy filed me as a dependent, and
my college also screwed all of the students over financially, giving us a
partial refund but also reducing our merit-based scholarships by 16%
(which for me was a $2800 reduction -- a number which here helps to
display just how much I hate my university). So, yep, just riding on
savings and hoping to win the lottery at some point lol. Or actually start
and finish some project that'll somehow make me some dollars. We'll see.
Speaking of projects! If there's anyone out there that wants to see my
Altair 8800 in more action, please let me know what sorts of things you
want to see and in what format! I've got nothing but time now, unlike the
last time I promised I'd make videos (sorry, lol), but I'd like to know
what kinds of things people would like to see - if just a system overview
of what all I have and how much stuff cost to build, or more in-depth
videos about disk creation, or tech demos, or heck even a Zork playthrough
lol. I'm open to suggestions and would love to deliver to those
interested!
Anyway, that's all in my daily life update for now. Hopefully I'll get
back to being more active on Mastodon and COM soon. (I also may make a
phost sometime later today or tomorrow about the Gameboy Advance stuff
I've been up to lately!)
See ya! ~jebug
[0]
https://picarto.tv/jebug29
[1]
https://tapas.io/series/Tadahito-no-Monogatari
