🐩 A Most Unreliable Narrator 😉 Issue #192 The Meaning of Life

Also, this week: Computer fetishes, George Wickham, and Reality Gays

Jun 23, 2024

Dear Internet,

It’s early Sunday morning; a bit too early for my liking that is. Thursday the Pug typically wakes us up if we’re not up to her liking, when she needs to go out. It was my turn to hustle out of bed, so I sprang out of bed and took her for a jaunt. Just kidding! There was no springing out of bed; more like creaks and groans. But she did get taken care of, fed, and had her arthritis meds. She’s back next to her favorite person, Mr. Lisa, on the bed.

Weekly weather report: It’s currently drizzling outside is a continuation from yesterday where it rained all day, shifting between downpours and drizzle. The “heat wave” (and I use that very loosely) we had this week where 2.5 days were above 80 has broken. I’ve currently got my office’s space heater on to take off the chill. It’s 59F outside.

And yes, it’s nearly July.

Mr. Lisa was making noise about getting central air installed in the cabin which is absurd. A week long of temps over 80 DURING THE ENTIRE SUMMER does not warrant spending thousands on central heating. While we are having the crawl space conditioned this summer, which is a step towards getting a furnace installed, we’re opting for a gas stove instead. I don’t know where he comes up with these ideas sometimes. It’s also absurd because we purchased a new ceiling fan for the great room and had a ceiling fan installed in the loft. Coupled with new windows, the cabin under a canopy of trees, and a few floor fans, the place is chilled enough I need a light cardigan.

Not weather related but the crawl space conditioning is happening in a few weeks and we’re hoping to get the gas stove this summer. If we can make that happen, chances of us living up here for 24/25 are quite high.

My week is slowly forming a routine which goes a long way to maintaining my mental health. I attend at least one OA meeting and one DBSA meeting a week. I’m at the gym four days a week. I have my video dates with Erika, Kristin, Steph, and Linds. I work at a local library a few days a week. I attend in person writer’s groups, and I volunteer as well. I’m starting to get clients so that has helped.

And, honestly, I’m happy. After expenses, I’m not making a lot of money with my business (yet) and what I’m getting at the local library is also not a lot but it gives me purpose. And it’s been a long time since I’ve felt a sense of purpose.

When I was unemployed a decade ago, and the unemployment stretched into years, I found busy work to keep myself engaged. But it was just that: busy work. I had so many ideas and so many things to do, I burned out. When I got my first contracting job in 2016, it was a damned relief. Now I had a purpose, and I was getting paid for it.

Yet, it wasn’t enough. Having a disposable income was great, all the t-shirts and Pops my heart could want, but I wasn’t happy. After the grind of corporate life for the last six years, when my last company and I parted ways and I breathed easier for the first time in what felt like forever.

Mr. Lisa and I have conversed over the years about my working life. It has become abundantly clear with my last corporate position I’m not one for corporate work and this is how my small business got launched off the ground.

As time has ticked on, I’ve spent a lot of time getting the business up and running. There is so much to do! (Best Kate commented to the effect she’s thought about doing some side hustle but watching me do the grunt work is exhausting and you know what? She’s not wrong.) But I enjoy what I’m doing because I’m learning so much and I’m brainstorming with everyone. So many people have given their time, and expertise, to me over the last few months, it’s been incredible.

I have purpose of my own making and I am much better for it.

I placed newspaper ads for my business in two local newspapers, and they worked! I’ve started getting clients. When the first client called, I thought, “Hey! At least once client came from the ad!” and then another and then another. When I told Mr. Lisa, he was gob smacked that the print ads were working.

As client requests roll in, I started to assess my needs and that includedbuying a Windows laptop.

I’ve been sucking on the Apple ecosystem teat for over a decade with my Mac Air, iPad, iPhone, Air Pods, Apple Pencil, and Apple Watch. (I think I made Apple a Wonderful Thing sometime back.) But Apple products are expensive and are still a minority share of the market. When Mr. Lisa and I talked about future business needs, I was hoping to get a work only Mac laptop in the next few years and move work shit off my personal laptop.

After a client conversation and more words with Mr. Lisa, I splurged on a Windows laptop which costs ¼ of my Mac Air. After research, including Wirecutter and Mr. Lisa, I bought a laptop on Amazon. When I originally gave Mr. Lisa my budget, he was skeptical that he could find a laptop within those parameters, but he did. The problem was the laptops were bare bones using base chips, graphic cards, offering little space and very minimum of ram. I reluctantly upped my budget and bought something beefier. Since I have no plans on running space or memory intensive apps, this should be fine.

When it arrived on Friday afternoon, I cannot lie to you, I felt a bit gleeful. I love setting up new computers. The hard drives are fresh and unblemished. You can customize it anyway you want. It’s a fetish, I get it.

I spent Friday afternoon wrestling with the fucking thing. It came installed with Windows 11 S which the “S” stands for “Security.” In short, MS locks down the laptop to deter you from you getting into trouble. For example, it will only allow you to download apps from Microsoft Store. This is problematic because many pieces of software that I use are open source, such as the image manipulation program GIMP, are available directly from the apps website. I get why MS is doing this but if you have a modicum of tech savviness, S is the fucking bane of your existence.

There is a way to turn off S, which requires you to download and update a Windows patch from the MS Store. Every time I tried; I kept getting an error message. Googling found that this has been an issue for years and despite all the alleged work arounds, the only thing that did work was…trying again. I wanted this thing prepped for my in-house client this week and if I can’t get S turned off, I’d be fucked. (In reality, probably not, but still.)

Long many long-term couples, we went to Costco on Friday night. It dawned on me that we could have just come to Costco and perused laptops since they were probably cheaper.

Turns out I was right in that thinking.

We found a laptop, same brand, that has quadruple the storage, double the ram, better processor and graphics card, and did not, thank fuck, have S enabled. The laptop was on sale and after tax, was cheaper than my Amazon purchase. I checked to make sure I could return the Amazon laptop and I can so out came the business credit card and whoomp, here comes Lisa’s new laptop.

Mr. Lisa, he of hardware greatness, is impressed with the guts on this thing and he guesses one of the reasons why it was on sale is that it’s a 15” laptop and the trend is to go smaller. My Mac Air is 13”. (In truth, I do not know why I went with a 13” when a 15” was available. I would have liked more screen size. It is about the girth after all.) Doesn’t matter to me as long as it works and it does.

My hardware theme is Pride & Prejudice and it felt appropriate to name the Windows laptop George Wickham. (IYKYK)

George is tricked out with my logo as the wallpaper and I’ve been installing software I use for the business as well as logging into apps to save logins/passwords in my password store. I want to make it that I’m doing at least 90% of my work work on George. I’ve moved over my business files to Dropbox so they can be easily accessible from all my hardware. The only thing related to business I have running on Fitzwilliam Darcy (my Air) is a mail client to keep up with work email.

Since my clients tend to be of an age and a lot of them are not tech savvy and you can probably guess that password retention is probably poor. I bought a few cheap password notebooks to hand out (for free) to clients to get them to at least create safe passwords and keep them stored somewhere even if paper format. Plus, it will also go a long way if they need help in the future. On Etsy, I found a company who makes webcam covers and they can be personalized. I bought a six pack with the initials of my company on them with my business credit card. I’ll also hand these out for free.

(I did the last purchase because George needed his own webcam cover and I thought it would be a good idea to have them available to customers. The cover on my Air is skull and crossbones slider which would be on trend for my brand, we’ll see how the personalized webcam covers go.)

In addition to the paper ads, I’m designing fliers with my company logo and information for the community bulletin boards of which there are a lot in the county. I was using business cards but how the cards are designed, each board required two cards and were not super visible if you were glancing at the board. The fliers will be brighter and bigger, and I’m including a QR code on the flier so that instead of fumbling with looking up my site or attempting to memorize my number/email address, you can scan and go. I’ve also looked into USPS’s EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) program. EDDM is the advertising postcards you get in your mail that always say something like, “POSTAL CUSTOMER ADDRESS.” You can choose the routes and I have a plan on what routes to use for maximum coverage. That card needs to be designed.

So yes, purpose.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

This upcoming weekend I’m going to be in Grand Rapids for tattooing with Ally. I’ll be gone Friday to Sunday so unless I write an issue out before Friday morning, don’t expect to hear from me.

A Most Unreliable Narrator

🐩 A Most Unreliable Narrator 😉 Issue #192 The Meaning of Life

Also, this week: Computer fetishes, George Wickham, and Reality Gays

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