I don't want to spoil anybody's party today and I don't think there's an easy way to do this, but I think I'm gonna head on out guys. I honestly and truly love and appreciate every last one of you, but the outside world is calling my name and I think that's where I need to be.

Just know that you're all amazing people and you're all capable of amazing things. Be mindful, be compassionate, and be on your best behavior. The world is lucky to have each and every last one of you and I felt similarly lucky to share your friendship here on Hubski.

~rd95

To the new users of Hubski, welcome! To the old users who've started commenting again, welcome back! To the lurkers, we know you're there and we appreciate you! To everyone who's switched to user-inactivated, you'll be missed, please consider coming back.

To every person reading this, I think you're awesome.

I tried to explain to Dala earlier this morning when she brought up the subject, and I clumsily used the word "boring." Know how you know you married the right kind of person? When you accidentally diss your relationship and they're not even made because they know you didn't mean to. Anyhow . . .

Way back before we got married, I was thinking about us and how I felt. I knew very easily that I was quite enamored with her, but more importantly, it was in a very calm way. There wasn't a sense of excitement to our relationship, though we did have and still do have quite a lot of fun together. It was more quiet and calm and comforting, like sitting beside a creek on a summer afternoon or staying in bed under the covers on a cold winter morning. There was no sense of urgency or uncertainty in our relationship or how I felt about her and I realized that there's something special and rare to that, to feeling deeply in love but at the same time completely calm, and I doubt I'd ever find something that firm with someone else. So, after that, I just knew what I should do.

I might delete this. I ran this by Dala as well, to make sure she was comfortable with me sharing this, because it is an issue that affects our marriage.

When I was a kid, I used to be pretty adventurous and I took quite a few tumbles and suffered a few concussions in my time. These days we know those add up. A while back, I suffered a subdural hematoma. It was so bad, I was in the hospital for about a week, and initially they were literally considering cutting out a piece of my skull to relieve pressure. I almost died, which at the time wasn’t all that scary but looking back and thinking about it now, it kind of is. I guess that was a tipping point because things changed after that.

For a week or so after I got out of the hospital, I was fine, but after that there has been noticeable changes to my mood, my thinking process, and my ability to process and retain information. They started out slow, then built up rapidly, and now I think the changes have plateaued. I won't go into specifics, because some things are scary, some things are embarrassing, and as a whole it's pretty personal. In short though, while I'm the same person in many ways, I'm also different because my thought processes are different, the way the world influences me is different, and I literally feel like a different person. It's also created some concerns about dementia or Alzheimers on the horizon, as those already run in my family and apparently head injuries increase the risks.

The best way I can describe what I'm going through though, is that it's like I'm going through puberty all over again. I have new thought processes that are completely foreign, feel emotions that are both different and much more intense than what I’m used to, and every day I'm learning and figuring out how to cope with these changes and how they affect how I perceive and interact with the world around me. It's a lot of work and it's not easy.

There are some distinct upsides though. I'm way more into art than I used to be, I'm even more into nature than I used to be (I didn't even think that was possible), and I'm much more empathetic than I used to be. Not that that’s a decent trade off. If I could go back in time and undo the damage, I would in a heart beat.

Married folks of Hubski, how did you propose?

Drunkenly!

I won't share the story, as it's a personal one I hold close to my chest, but rest assured, I was deeply and shamefully inebriated. Believe it or not, Dala was none too impressed, but being the smart cookie that she is, she said "yes" anyways.

Sorry for the abrupt exit the other day. Working through shit and I realized naturally and through consultation with some people that it was the wrong thing to do. Have an apology bunny.

If crying is the worse you're doing, you've come far. I'm sorry to hear things didn't work, but keep trucking on dude and keep trying to improve. Right now, you deserve the best you that you can be.

mk! There's a bugski here! I can only badge this mind blowingly amazing post once.

Surly Bird

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Sleepy Fox

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Serious Goat

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I honestly really, really hate that goat picture. I was doing so well drawing the actual goat and then I messed everything up by just rushing to try and fill in the background without putting any effort into it. Then I tried to fix it and in doing so, made it even worse. So now I have this really okay looking goat surrounded by a messy blob of color that just ruins the effort I put into it because I didn’t want to put effort into the rest of the picture. It’s a metaphor for life people, let the eyesore be a warning.

Bird feeders are immoral. They promote changes in birds' natural behavior such as changing dietary, migration and nesting habits, put birds at risk for contracting and spreading diseases, and it's hypocritical to say interacting with wildlife in such a way is wrong except when it comes to birds.

Job Hunting

I’m dropping off a few more applications today. Talking to someone the other day, they think the reason I’m not getting hired anywhere is because I make too much as it is and because of that no one wants to give my applications a further look. So I’m thinking of no longer filling out the pay history section of job applications. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

That job I mentioned the other week, that I applied for? The one I think would be really cool to work at? I haven’t heard back from them even after leaving a voicemail and all. It’s pretty disappointing, but that’s the way these things go I guess. I’m just kicking things into high gear at this point, because work is not going good anymore (not that it has been, for a long while).

Work

Without going into too much detail, I’ve had this job for over ten years with the exception of that time where I got that new job but things fell through, found a different job but things fell through, so I’m back where I’m at. Over the past five or six years now, working at the place has been like sitting in the passenger seat of a car heading straight for a wall, all in slow motion. The things that have happened year over year has been crazy. Compared to when I first started, we’re at about 40% of the payroll hours of what we used to have. As a result, people are over worked and over whelmed and we’re at the point where it’s literally impossible to get done everything that needs doing in the course of a day. In addition to the slashing in hours, there has been layoffs and department shut downs, the cutting back of benefits, anything the company can do to save money even if it means they’re shooting themselves in the foot. That alone makes the place a ghost of itself. It’s worse though, in so many ways I don’t want to get into.

The scariest thing though, is the culture now. You guys know what a brain drain is? When a country’s economy starts to go bad so all of the smart, hard working people leave the country for greener pastures and there’s a positive feedback loop and every cycle things get worse and more people leave? That’s literally what’s happening at this company. What was once a place of encouragement and empowerment has been replaced by goons in charge and an oppressive bully culture. I’m not a lawyer or a business analyst or anything, but I do know some of the lingo and I know my rights as a worker and I think at this point and from my perspective, the whole company could pretty much be summed up as a hostile work environment. It’s a pretty normal thing now to talk to employees who are frustrated and angry and overwhelmed and scared and there’s gossip and backbiting and it’s hard to keep out of and things are pretty scary. Really scary.

Back to the car crash analogy, the wall has been oncoming for years. Without going into specifics though, some crazy scary crap has gone down the past few weeks I think we’ve finally hit the point where the car has come into contact with the wall and the engine compartment is getting crushed and glass is shattering and this vehicle is an ‘80s GM G-Body with no airbags and shitty seat belts. Things are fucked up, really bad, and it’s obvious they’re only gonna get worse. The crazy thing is though? On realizing this, I’m not scared or frustrated or upset. I’m gonna do my best to get out, like I’ve been trying, and keep my head up in the mean time. Other than that, I really feel emotionally detatched from what’s going on. I think it’s because I’ve wanted to rage quit so many times over the past year and haven’t, that I’m just in a mental place where my job doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing I’m scared about is the wellbeing of my coworkers. For quite a few of them, this crappy job is the only thing keeping their lives together and that’s pretty awful to think about.

At this point, I’d want to note I have a back up plan. One of my coworkers is a manager at another job and has been begging me to work for them for a few years now. Only problem is, it’s minimum wage. It’s nice to know though, if something happens to me at this job, I have a pretty much guaranteed safety net.

Also funny, my boss is trying to get me to come in today. It’s Christmas week and I have errands for the whole day (including dropping off those applications I mentioned). They asked yesterday for me to come in today and I said no, but I’d be willing to come in early or stay late on another shift to help out. They asked again today and got the same response from me. They’re probably dragging my name through the dirt right now in front of my coworkers, cussing me under their breath like they do whenever things don’t go their way, which is funny cause I constantly work extra shifts, come in early, stay late, never call in sick, and always give 110% when I’m working. Heck, the past four out of my six paychecks I’ve already worked past my alloted payroll hours. The one time I say “no” though? I become Villain #1.

New Years Resolution

I finally stopped drinking about two or three months back. It took me the majority of 2017 to get there, but here I am. I already miss it, quite a bit actually, especially when I see people on television drinking beers, whiskey, etc. Everything looks delicious. I have the same problem with smoking. I’ve been tobacco free for seven or eight years now but every time I see a cigarette or cigar, I want one. It’s nice though, to have that willpower over it. The plus side is, I’m actually a bit more productive now because lets be honest, you can’t take boozy naps if you don’t drink any booze. So what do I do with my new found free time? Chores. ::Half hearted cheer:: Yay. I love chores.

So what’s my new, new years resolution for next year? I’m gonna focus on being a more positive person. That means I’m gonna try my best stop making disparaging comments about people in power, governments (on all levels, domestic and foreign), getting into useless arguments on the internet, listening to others gossip, the usual. It’s a tall order and it’s gonna take some time to get there, but I think with practice, I’ll get good at it pretty quick.

Study Bibles and Qurans

The other week Dala had gotten a study bible as a Christmas gift for a friend of ours. She happened to pick one up for ourselves as well since she knew I needed a new one. I haven’t done more than just thumb through it yet, but it looks more than halfway decent. It made me miss my old NIV Study Bible though so I swung by the bookstore to see if they had one in stock. They did. For $100. I don’t remember how much mine cost but I’m halfway sure it wasn’t that much. So I think I’m gonna hold off for now.

That said, while I was there I figure I’d check to see if they have any Study Qurans to replace the one I lent out so many years ago. They did, this guy and let me tell you, it’s both really cool and a lot to take in. To give you an idea of how loaded it is, this thing is about three inches thick and the pages are as thin as you can possibly get (think tissue paper thin). When you start going through it though, you suddenly see why. On every page, only about the top third of the page is religious text. The other two thirds of the page? Information upon information upon information. We’re talking history, language, culture, on and on. This thing is detailed, almost to a fault. It’s not what I would call a fun way to read the Quran, partly because the religious text itself is in plain english (if language was a food, this thing would be white rice with just a touch of salted butter) and the format of only reading the top third of the book kind of hurts the flow. But other than that, wow, I don’t think I can recommend this book enough. I’m thinking about getting two copies to donate to my local Baha’i Center. It’s good for a library like that.

So yeah, that’s kind of life at the moment. Christmas is almost here Hubski, here’s hoping you’re all having an amazing close out to this year.

I'm almost done with The Earth Abides. It's pretty good, though I think in my opinion the whole of the book doesn't live up to the amazingness of the first chapter. I think my only real quibble with it is that the author thinks some things will last a lot longer than they really would. After twenty years, most canned food would be without flavor or nutrition, and even if they were able to get a car running again, by that point gasoline would have long since gone bad. The ideas are fun though, especially when the author describes what's going on in the world outside of Isherwood's view, and the whole story unfolds very easily. It's not bad.

This is my second time drawing this image. The first time around, I did it in pencils and it was a lot different. The man looked more like a man and was wearing a shoot, it was on a roof in a city with tall buildings in the background. Blah blah blah. Anyway, I experimented with shadows on the tree, grass on the ground, and the flow of water. I think if I draw this a third time, I'll put feathers on the bird.

Random Statements

Adventure Time is a fun show.

I'm not a fan of stretchy jeans.

I'm looking harder at going back to school.

Hubski is full of wonderful people that I'm fortunate to talk to.

Take all of this with a grain of salt and understand that in a lot of these things, I'm an idiot. But here are some thoughts . . .

For your classes, maybe start going to them. It seems like a lot now, since your so far behind, but the more you wait the harder it will be to get caught up and the more scared you'll be of going, creating a horrible positive feedback loop that gets more and more difficult to break.

For your projects, do them to the best of your ability, finish them. Then go to your professors with them in hand, acknowledge the mistakes you made and the lateness of the assignments, and see if they'll give you some partial credit, or at the very least, some advice to getting caught back up in class.

For self harm, see some help if you can. I don't know about Russia, but in America almost every college has counselors, priests, etc. that are there to help students with the non-academic tests life brings us.

You are smart. You are strong. You want good things in your life. Embrace yourself and you'll find the strength to see things through.

A Man Inside a Computer

A Man and a Dog

A Man in a Mask (It was originally supposed to be an elephant, but I fucked up and decided to run with it)

A Kite on a Cliff on a Windy Night

A Man in the Desert

Space Monsters (The one on the right looks better in portrait mode than landscape and I really just made these drawings so I could absent mindedly fill them in line by line as I watched TV. Look at the big picture and you'll see how they're kind of layered)

Lights

I have decided I like lamps with light bulbs a hundred times more than I like fluorescent lights. I think when Dala and I get our own place, we might start our own lamp collection. It'll be both functional and fun.

Hubskiers

I appreciate every last one of you guys.

I'd say the idea is worth the experiment, with one condition. There should be a tool that allows Hubski users to share comment threads and individual comments with non-Hubski users. I have three different friends that I regularly share Hubski threads with who are non-Hubski users, to the point where I probably e-mail or text a thread about once every two weeks.

Some kind of spaceship.

Art

As I said in a post a day or so ago, I discovered a ton of science fiction magazine covers on Wikimedia the other day. I keep going back to them, they're so much fun to look at. There's some that I have clicked on and looked at three or four times and go back to look at them again and find something new and cool about them. The above picture is something I kind of drew on a kick and I'm pleasantly surprised how it turned out (two others I tried though, left me horribly disappointed). As I was drawing this, Dala showed me pictures of sunrises and auroras on Earth taken from outer space. Now those were cool.

Coffee

A while back I ranted how the only coffee ever made in the morning is Maxwell House and while I don't hate Maxwell House, I've gotten pretty tired of drinking it every single morning. I think I've finally turned everyone in the house onto the importance of variety, because for the past week or so, there hasn't been a can of that stuff in the cupboard at all. We got all sorts of bags of other stuff. Starbucks, Seattle's Best, random shit from random brands. I'm pretty happy about that.

News

I officially hate three out of my four local television news programs now. They're all getting to the point where they'll tell you the majority of the story, but if you want to full details, you'll have to download their app. If that's not a bunch of bullshit, I don't know what is.

Books

Dala and I went to a local bookstore the other day to hang out with some friends. I've talked about them before a few times, but Fantagraphics has a bunch of books collecting stories from EC Comics. I wasn't gonna buy anything yesterday, but when I saw they had The Million Year Picnic I decided to snatch it up. These books are absolutely fantastic and I can't recommend them enough.

This is wrong. This is so wrong and so big and so horrible. Let's give a conservative number, saying that each of these people are influencial in the day to day lives of five other people. That's 600,000 lives negatively affected by this decision. If we accept that consequences have consequences, this actually affects millions of people. Family. Friends. Coworkers. Classmates. The longer it takes to fix this, the more difficult it will be to make things right again. There's nothing good about this. There's nothing right about this. There's nothing okay about this.

Art

Recently I discovered and fell in love with Hale Woodruff’s block prints. They feel so energetic and modern and I love the white lines on black backgrounds that he has going on. It just adds so much to the energy.

A while back, while looking up Folk Art on Wikipedia, I discovered Jose Guadalupe Posada, and let me tell you, his work is crazy cool. It’s very energetic stuff and while he often used skeletons as a theme in a lot of his works, their behaving and posing like everyday people creates a feeling of both being down to earth and otherworldly at the same time. He drew more “normal” stuff too, but man, those skeletons really stand out.

Seriously, words can’t do either of these guys justice. Check them out.

Car Problems?

This weekend I was driving down the highway when I heard a loud, forceful, metalic “ping” in my rear driverside wheel well. When I had my summer tires put on for the year, the tire shop busted one of the wheel bolts. It turns out that for the FR-S they’re pretty crummy, so my first thought was one busted while driving. The family friendly auto-shop that does my car maintenance is closed on the weekends, so I dropped it off at the brake place near work, asked for a tire rotation, and asked them to check out the noise. All of the wheel bolts were intact. They checked all of the wheel wells, suspension, and undercarriage and there’s no sign of damage or impact. Car drives fine. No wobbling, shaking, or weird noises. I’m gonna assume that everything is fine, but I’m getting my oil change next week and I’m gonna mention it. kleinbl00 or lm, any ideas on if it could be something, and if so, what I should ask the guys to check for? Like I said, the ping was loud as fuck.

Phone Malware?

The fucking DailyBeast website on my phone kept on redirecting to a Free IPhone scam website last night, even after I did a system restore, so I ended up doing a second one just to be safe. Malwarebytes shows nothing on the scans. Not one to leave things alone, I looked all over the internet last night and came across two possible scenarios. The scary thing I came across was that maybe somehow the router for our wireless network got hacked and some program changed the DNS settings to exploit Andriod phones. That strikes me as . . . unlikely but it makes sense in a weird way. So I woke Dala up, much to her frustration, to have her reset all of the router settings. The DNS before the reset was (edited per Dala's advice but it looks like the default DNS address that comes with the router) and the DNS after the reset was the same. A little Googling shows me that’s a default DNS for a lot of routers out of the box. So I think we’re safe there.

The more likely scenario is that its just a bunch of ads from some ad network being all fucky and jerk ass because people can’t leave shit alone. If that’s the case, it’s the ad server on the website and not my phone, so both it and the router should be fine. Unless I’m missing something.

I called my dad and sister last night (two very tech savy people), explained the whole scenario before them, and they both say “Yup. Ad Networks being all fucky. Don’t worry about it.” Except, you know, it’s my phone. My E-Mail is on there. I Hubski when I’m on break from work. I need it for 2 Factor Authentication for literally everything I do. So. I’m worrying.

kleinbl00 (again), Devac, bfv, all you other savy computer bros. Any thoughts? I’m wracking my brain here. With the exception of Malwarebytes on my phone, it’s running just Andriod and the apps that came with it from Google, Samsung, and my wireless carrier. My PC runs Linux Mint, nothing extra added. I go only to sites I know, double check sites I don’t know with Norton Safe Web and Google Safe Browsing before going to a website I don’t know. So I’m very careful. No clue what’s on my wife’s windows box. Same for my roommate’s tablet. My wife is the tech pro of the household, so I trust her. My roommate? Well, don’t get me wrong, he’s a cool guy and all, but I let’s just say really wish he’d listen when we tell him about being careful on the internet.

House

Gonna look at it this afternoon. Don’t know if we’re gonna pull the trigger. I’ll share my thoughts tonight or on next week’s Pubski.

Hubski and its users

This is just the occasional reminder that you’re all awesome. :)