A couple meh weeks, but probably still worth keeping up on these updates.
Migraines
Not better. Not worse.
I edited my migraine journal. My journal changes over time as I measure different things. Right now for each day I have a migraine I measure the pain, the sensitivity to light, the sensitivity to sound, the blurry vision, and the brain fog. All are measured on a 0-10 pain scale and averaged out to a 'migraine severity' number for the day. I used to measure specifically head pain and neck/shoulder pain, but I had found over several months that the neck/shoulder pain was always inline with the head pain just lagging by a day. A couple months ago I started counting the post migraine day as I consistently have a large non-migraine headache after migraines clear up. When I count 'migraine days' per my neurologist, I need to count those with as much emphasis as I do days with a migraine.
The most recent change is to add every single day into the journal. I'll specifically be counting non-migraine days in between migraines. I did this because I wanted to see if those were expanding since I started the higher dose of Namenda. And to track change, I went back and added it to the journal starting on January 1st of this year.
January I had non-migraine spans of 1, 5, 2, and 3 days.
February I had 4, 2, 1, and 3 days.
I started Namenda on March 4th, and tapered it up to it's 20mg dose on March 25th.
March I had 2, 1, 3, and 3 days.
April I had 2 and 2 days.
I increased the dose of Namenda to 30mg on April 30th.
May I had 3, 4, 2, and 3 days.
June I had 4 and 3 days.
My current migraine started on June 27th and is ongoing (yes, that's 7 days now). Looking at those objective numbers, I don't see a significant change. At least not one that I'd report to my neurologist. I'll certainly share the data with him, but I'm not going to send him a note saying "Since upping my dose, I've experienced more non-migraine days between migraines" which is what I was hoping to say.
And as for severity, I'd say it's stayed about the same. I'm currently frustrated as it's been a long migraine that feels like it's tapering off every night, but just picks right back up in the morning. Like now. I guess since it's been two months since upping the dose, I'll report to the doc that there's no improvement and see if he wants to up the dose again. He'd mentioned that he could try up to 40mg per day. I'll just have to wait until I'm not frustrated as that will color my reporting.
Other Health
I wrote about my trip to the ER in it's own post. I still haven't figured out what's wrong. The doc seemed pretty confident that it was a kidney stone and that makes sense, but the pain isn't completely gone and it's been over a week now. I used the pain pills, Norcos, for a couple days but after that the pain has been low and inconsistent. Like a 2 or 3 at worst and maybe only a couple times a day. I'd say that matches up nicely with the kidney stone, but I've also been experiencing ongoing constipation, and having a bowel movement alleviates the pain.
It could be pressure. A build up of stool expanding the colon that then presses on the kidney and makes it hurt. It could also be more direct and the pain is coming from the colon as I don't feel I've had a bowel movement large enough to 'clear me out'.
I don't know. I just have to monitor it. Not really bad, just frustration. Just meh.
I'll add that I hope to never experience that kind of pain ever again.
Finances
I got paid on time. I hate that I have to mention that, like it's an achievement. But with my LTD company's track record, I guess it is mention worthy. It's a pain for book keeping though as I'd normally track my bills check by check. I'd literally track all transactions starting just after my check was deposited and ending with the next deposit. That's because the State was VERY consistent in when I'd get paid. I could set my spreadsheet up for every two weeks, knowing that the money would be deposited in my account on the Thursday morning of pay week.
LTD now pays me once a month. I don't want to pay my bills once a month. They used to pay me twice a month, on the 15th and last day of the month, so I keep that up as a schedule. On the 15th, I just arbitrarily select a point and count all transactions before that point. Then on the last day of the month I look at when the check is deposited and.... .motherfuckers deposited it on the 27th!
You know, in this modern era, my banking institution (a credit union) can accept electronic payments on non banking days. I get money from my credit union and other institutions deposited into my accounts on Saturday, Sundays, and holidays. But the LTD company won't deposit their money on a non-banking day. The last day of June, the 30th, was Sunday. So they backed up the payment to the previous non-banking day, Friday the 28th and.... missed by a day.
I know it's just book keeping. It's just keeping track of 0s and 1s, and it doesn't really matter if I track it on the 27th, the 30th, or the 1st. But damn it I WANT to track it on the last day of the month. The 30th. If i don't, then my planned accounting doesn't line up.
On top of all that, since they messed up in May, I had to pull money from my savings account. I ended up getting the money, but I had bills to pay before hand. That left me with some excess money. I'd like to say I could just transfer the extra money back out and make it all work, but I was also using that as a way to pay off the vacation debts. So while I pulled $4000 temporarily over, I can't just put $4000 back as that will put my primary checking account in the red. But do I do $3000? $2000? It's hard enough to predict my spending habits for a two week or half-month period, but I now have to do it for a full month.
Like the common theme of this update, it's not really bad. Just frustrating. Just meh.
Family/Friends
R is experiencing a problem. I generally try to keep my opinion out of someone else's frustration as we all have our own personal demons. But this one honestly cracks me up, even though it's borderline devastating to R.
R has been on prescription medication for the past couple years. Initially he didn't have any insurance and was paying out of pocket for all of his prescriptions. Thank the Goddess, they were all generic, old, cheap medications. Like $5 or $10 a month each, and he was on two or three different daily medications. So when he picked his pharmacy, he literally looked at a map and picked the one closest to our house. He had no care about the brand of pharmacy, the reputation of the pharmacist, the cost.... just how much he'd have to drive.
You see, R is becoming quite the hermit. He wants to leave the house as little as possible and when he does leave, he wants to be out of the house for as little time as possible. He wants to interact with the fewest amount of people that he can.
Well, the pharmacy he picked just happened to be a Rite Aid. It could have easily been a CVS, a Walgreens, or a private family owned pharmacy. But it was Rite Aid. Did you hear that Rite Aid was going out of business and closing a lot of locations? Yeah, they're closing R's pharmacy. He'll be able to get his prescriptions there this and next month, but not in September. He also uses the pharmacy for a lot of his other shopping needs, like over the counter meds and various medical supplies. He even gets his cough drops there.
Now he needs to change pharmacies and he's practically beside himself. You can see his worry circle as he gets more and more worried and concerned and frustrated, then steps back and realizes he's not in control of this and just needs to make a decision, then starts to look at other options (none of which are nearly as good as the Rite Aid) and starts to worry and get concerned and get frustrated and....
I feel bad for him, but at the same time I want to grab some popcorn and just sit back and watch.
Nothing else really for family and friends. Just meh.
Entertainment
So I decided that my next series would be Battlestar Galactica. It's been on a low simmer for years on my back burner, but I've never heard anything bad about it and I like the cast. So about a week back I started up with the original miniseries (basically a 3.5 hour movie) and then started watching the first season.
This was made in 2003 and continued as a series in 2004 for SciFi channel. It's the era where they were really leaning into computer graphics for most things. The Cylons (the ones that don't look human), the space ships, the weapons, the explosions... all CGI. And while I'm sure these graphics looked amazing twenty years ago, they look pretty bad and dated now. The only reason I say they look bad is that old graphics CAN stand up to time. Jurassic Park from 1993 still has CGI that holds up now. Battlestar Galactica though is just dated and not as good as I'd want.
And then there's the actual stories. The characters are good, and the stories in general are fine... but it progresses SO DAMNED SLOWLY. I'm very low energy now-a-days, so when a TV show like this is slow, it makes me nod off. I don't get that excited "Oh I need to watch just one more episode before bed" feeling. So as I finished season 1, which ended on a cliffhanger, and moved into season 2, I looked up online to see if the general consensus was that season one was bad. I mean, I love Star Trek the Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and both of their first seasons are pretty universally panned as bad. Battlestar Galactica's first season? It's almost universally heralded as it's best season.
Fuck.
I'm kind of caught up in several of the story lines, but it's like a soap opera. One story line will take four or five episodes to conclude, but in the meantime they'll introduce another three or four storylines and undoubtedly, one or more of them will catch me.
A couple nights ago I wanted to watch some TV but didn't want a headset on. I almost have to have a headset on for Battlestar Galactica because the battle scenes are too loud otherwise. So, instead I just pulled up my list of shows to watch and decided to jump back into Suits. I figured a couple episodes of that would get me to sleepy time and I'd go to bed and resume Battlestar the next day. These episodes don't end in cliffhangers, but they still give me the energy of "Oh I need to watch just one more episode before bed!" I ended up staying awake late that night. Like past 1 AM. I watched it last night and had to drag myself away at 11:30, even though I still wanted to watch it.
I don't want to completely give up on Battlestar Galactica, but I might go seeking out a list of it's "best episodes". I know there are like three episodes in this second season with another Battlestar (Pegasus?), and there are other mini arcs worth watching. I might see if I can get interested in those and maybe they'll scratch the itch. They might even make me go back and watch all of it... but I'm doubting that.
New Tech
I got a new book reader.
About 11 or 12 years ago, my brother B got me my first book reader. It was a kindle knockoff. In all honesty, it was more akin to a little tablet than it was a book reader. It had a full color screen that ate up a ton of power and it had to be charged every few days even with light use. I used it or a bit, but ended up sending it back, doing my research, and getting my first Kindle. The one I got was the third generation Kindle or what later became known as the Kindle Keyboard. I loved it. The e-ink display was amazingly easy to read and gave it that battery power of weeks or months as opposed to hours or days.
Unfortunately, when I got tired of it several years later, I realized I'd put myself in a walled garden and couldn't escape. At that point, I'd bought dozens of Kindle books. Amazon doesn't play nice with it's digital books, and they're only available on their Kindle devices or through the Kindle app on Android or iPhone devices. At that time I couldn't try out any of the other book readers, some of which were touted as far superior to the Kindles of the time unless I wanted to give up my library and start over. So, I got the best Kindle of the time, a Kindle Oasis, and continued to use that.
But I missed color. Even if it was just the covers of the books, I wanted to have color. I'd also like to have a bigger screen. But Kindle just kept putting out iterative generations without any major changes to size or display technology. When the battery of the Oasis started to wane I looked at my options and saw that I was still screwed and had to stay with Kindles, so I bought the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. It wasn't all that special though. Just extra memory and the ability to charge wirelessly. That was two years ago and if I'm honest I was still disappointed in it.
A couple weeks ago I saw a YouTube review of an android tablet. It didn't use e-ink, but it was designed specifically to be easier on the eyes than most android tablets. It was terrible and nothing I'd consider, but it got me thinking... what if there was an android tablet that used an e-ink display? I could install the Kindle android app and have access to all of my books. I could also decide to get future books on other media, knowing that I could access my past and future libraries all at the same time. And its doubtful an android device would use the black and white e-ink displays, so it'd probably be color too!
A search showed me only a couple options. One was older, based on Android 10, and had been discontinued last year. The company looked like it had gone out of business. The other was from a company called... Onyx? It's a Chineese company so it's set up differently than I'm used to. I think the parent company is Onyx, but the book reader / tablet company is called Boox. The website is Boox.com and they refer to all of their many products as Boox products, but outside of their circle, everybody else refers to them as Onyx Boox devices.
Anyway, they have several lines of Android tablets using e-ink display. Some of them color, some of them black and white. And they're selling them not as book readers, but as full on tablets. They still use older versions of Android, but they at least guarantee security updates, if not outright operating system updates. The latest in their Note line was the Note Air 3. The color version specifically being the Boox Note Air 3 C.
They have a 'Tab' line that's more powerful and has more RAM, but it's also quite a bit more expensive. It's important if you're going more table things on it, but even they admit if you're using it as a book reader, there's no need for that extra power. And then there is their newest line called 'Go'. It doesn't have a backlite though, and I've grown accustomed to having that since the Kindle Oasis, so I didn't want to step back.
It's just as good as the Kindle Paperwhite for reading books. It's display isn't as bright or as white, but that comes from it being a color screen. The tradeoff is seeing my covers in glorious color and I love that. For tablet like activities.... well, it's shite. The e-ink display just updates too slowly and has all kinds of residual images on it. It CAN be used to read websites or Google news or update my spreadsheets or order door dash, but I'd far rather do those tasks on my phone.
Oh, did I mention that the screen is huge? Because it is. It's a 10.3 inch screen. I've pumped up the font size in the Kindle app so it's easier to read when my eyes are affected by my migraines (which is often now).
One nice thing is that I'll be able to use it to read alternative media. For example, I've had an online erotic story that I've meant to read for a long time now. Many people recommended it to me and say that I would enjoy it. It's a sissy maid story called "The Hotel". I've had it on my computer's desktop for about a year now and have only made time to read a couple chapters. It's not even all that long, but I just don't read on my desktop. Well... now I can back it up using Microsoft OneDrive (basically put it in a folder in 'My Documents' and then access it on my Note Air 3C.
I'm currently reading Stephen King's newest book "You Like It Darker". When I'm done with that, I'm going to continue re-reading his Dark Tower books that I've already purchased on Kindle. But when I'm done with that and am ready for a new book, I'll actually be able to shop around and see who has the better deal because I won't be committed to buying it from Amazon!
Writing
I finally finished It's A Man's World. At least I finished the CHYOA version. I'll freely admit that I rushed the ending, putting what should have been between three and six chapters into a single 'ending' chapter.
I wrote a 'note from the author' chapter and tagged it on where I was admittedly quite whiny. You see, I just didn't get the audience response that I thought I would. I think this has some of my best sex scenes ever. It's the first long form story where the 'man' becomes a 'woman' and isn't just some version of cross dressing with minor cosmetic surgical enhancements. And it was written in a fictional future where everything was possible including an overbearing AI robot, a society where men worshiped women by making them into 1950s style housewives and fucking them often, learning aide's that could control the subjects central nervous system or be used as a vibrating and shock giving butt plug.
The end wedding is a dogpile of future tech thrown in at the last minute. A chastity belt that includes a vibrating dildo and butt plug. A pill that makes the woman more feminine by growing her breasts (C cup to G cup), hips, and ass. A corset that's steel reinforced and has to have a robot's strength to pull in. Makeup that freezes a smile on the bride-to-be's face and doesn't let her speak.
It would have been fun to write that out in a couple chapters. But by the time I got close to the ending, I had very few people reading the story.
I can only compare this experience to Gamer Gurl as that's the only other story I've published on CHYOA. But the last few chapters of Gamer Gurl had over a hundred reads in their first couple days. They had multiple (like 10 or more) likes. And many chapters had multiple relevant comments. It's A Man's World on the other hand wouldn't get over 100 reads for several days. Three chapters still have less than 100 reads and an additional 10 have less than 200 reads. In the last month there has been six comments but only one was commenting on the chapter. There are only 5 comments between chapter 14 and chapter 55.
I put that all out there to say that it's hard to stay motivated when I'm not getting any response. I don't expect a bunch of pats on the back, but some kind of acknowledgement can go a long way. When I'm motivated, I don't need anything at all but I wasn't motivated at the end of this story and I have at least three good ideas that have my engines purring. So, that all led me to shoot It's A Man's World in the foot and put it out of it's misery.
I'm going to re-read it and do a final passing edit to get it ready for Fictionmania.
Publishing to Fictionmania will be a new issue for me. I didn't like the responses I got form Gamer Gurl or even Just Dance. Sure, I posted it in easy to ready pieces, about 8 chapters each story, but I think it got me LESS reads rather than more. And in all honesty, it's kind of a pain to put it out like that.
I think I'll split the difference with It's A Man's World. I'll put it out in two parts with an epilogue third part. Part one will be the Free Union, Gilead, and the first chapter or two of Mishigami. Part two will be the remainder of the story, save for the 'ending' chapter. And then I might expand on the epilogue, make it two or three times bigger and post it as the last chapter or ending chapter or epilogue.
Those certainly won't be even chapters. The first 'part' is closer to a third as opposed to a half. And the last part, the epilogue, a single chapter out of 55 chapters.
Oh, one last thing. I wrote the ending or epilogue in what I thought would be a fun way. It basically had two parts. The first was Joy and company coming to the realization that they couldn't change the past and all the decisions that resulted from that realization. That they had to stay in their new present. That they had to go to the past once more to destroy their notes. That they had to destroy the time machine. And finally, that Joy would remain female and even continue the relationship with Bradley into marriage. The other part was the marriage itself told from Joy's perspective. It included covering some of the traditions and how they came about. It even included the payoff of a joke I'd set up earlier with Sterling being turned into a female appearing robot but with a cock modeled after Bradley's own.
I wrote that last ending chapter going from one part to the other, paragraph by paragraph. It's a fun way to write as I obfuscated the fact that Joy was getting ready for a wedding for at least three paragraphs. That meant the reveal wasn't told for a full six paragraphs.
The problem was that the climax of the story wasn't in the middle. It was at the end when Joy is walking down the aisle toward her husband-to-be. So after working on it and publishing the previous chapter, I went back and re-wrote it as one longer normal narrative. They decide to stay, decide on on more trip back, decide to destroy the machine, Joy decides to stay female, then forward to the wedding.
I think it will be worth not just expanding, but cleaning up that chapter. It was just too quickly written and feels like it even now.
I'm sure I'll have the 'Fable' post up on the other blog in a few days. I might add another post specifically about It's A Man's World, but if I were to make that call right now, I'd just be done. Publish it, and move on to the next big thing.
Continued Computer Issues
The computer is still acting funky. Changing from slide show to single picture each time I flip from one desktop to the other. I know there has to be a fix for this. Either an actual repair of some sort, or a work around, or just a way to save a macro of changing the setting back to slide show and then having a keyboard button combination or mouse button combination to activate it.
I just haven't looked it up enough yet, so it continues.
Apple Music has thrown another problem into the ring. It now will just stop playing. It finishes out a song and then stops. The mini player is frozen and can't go to the next track, previous track, or start playing again. When I go to the main program window I can start the playlist back up (changing it to shuffle mode of course), or go to a new playlist, or anything else. It'll sometimes happen after two songs, but other times it will play for hours without it happening. I don't even know how to search Google for this problem. "Apple Music Windows 11 app occasionally stopping" ??
I guess I'll just hope for an app update soon that will fix it.
And then there was the problem last night. It's only happened once, so I don't know if it's an expansion of a previous problem, a new problem, or was just a bug for that moment. Last night I went to change my sound output from my speakers to my headset. I flipped the switch in windows, grabbed the headset, turned them on, and put them on my head. I then finished up a website I was looking at before turning the tv show on (an episode of Suits). But while reading, I heard my headset say "Attempting Connection".
I pulled the headset off and saw that it was trying to connect to the computer's 2.4 GHz dongle. Playing audio didn't work. The computer saw that the dongle was there and in fact saw the headset there. It just wasn't connected. I restarted the headset, but no go. I had to reboot the computer to get it to work again and once I did, it worked fine for the rest of the night.
This is kind of like the problem I occasionally have with the speakers. My speakers are Klipsch 'The Fives'. They're connected via a USB cable and sound great. But two problems come up. When I'm on the speakers the volume changer gets sticky. As in, I'm changing the volume using the roller on the keyboard or the roller on the mouse (two different pieces of software, meaning the software isn't to blame) and it will scroll from say 10, to 12, to 14, to 16, and so on up to the volume I want. Let's say 36 (and yes, it goes in increments of 2). That's how it's supposed to work. But sometimes it will get stuck on a number. I keep scrolling but the volume doesn't change and just stays on the number. And it's not like it froze and 'catches up'... it just pauses the input and then resumes later. It's especially frustrating when I have the volume up fairly loud and then start playing something that comes out too loud and need to turn the volume down quickly. It goes down a few numbers, but then freezes for two, three, or four seconds. That's a long time when you have speakers blasting into your migraine sensitive ears.
And then sometimes they'll lock up? But only on videos? For instance, I'll go to YouTube and pick a video. Instead of playing, it will just give the buffering circle and stay there for several moments until it crashes out. It took me a long time to figure this out, but eventually when I realized it never happened when I was on the headset, I tried unplugging and plugging the speakers back in (via the USB connection on the back of the speakers) and then the video will start playing normally. This doesn't affect music though. Not through iTunes nor through Apple Music.
Anyway, still annoying, and still meh as I know deep down these aren't real problems. Just annoying ones.
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