My wife painted my fingernails for me. And I've started using her "happy light" full-spectrum light for 30 minutes in the mornings. And I'm eating better, and trying to remember to drink water. (Most of my water intake has been in coffee or mixed drinks, honestly, and that just ain't meeting the body's needs.)

But yeah. I'm definitely experiencing some depression. So I have been Working On Things. With some minor successes, small failures, and colossal screwups. Let's start with the fun one first...

Diesel in the Basement (sung to the melody of The English Beat's ska anthem "Mirror In The Bathroom")

Last year we replaced the oil furnace in our house with a lovely heat pump system. Having been through a full summer and winter with the new system, we are 100% in love with it, and ready to get rid of the "oil" furnace.

First off, "heating oil" is a euphemism for diesel fuel with red dye in it. Seriously.

So in removing the old furnace, I had to disconnect the two copper lines that lead to and from the "oil" tank buried in our front yard. I turned off the valve and disconnected the intake from the pump. Easy peasy.

The outflow pipe was around the back of the pump, up against the wall, so it was harder to reach. But I got the crescent wrench back there, and unscrewed it... until diesel started spewing out!

Turns out the wrench had slipped, and I was just twisting the pipe until it broke off the pump... and began spraying diesel all over me and the room.

Over the next two hours I tried a dozen different ways to try and stop the flow, none of which worked. I was about to dial 911 and just hope the fire department had a method for capping the pipe, when I saw my neighbor outside next door. He works for the gas company, so I asked him how I could cap the pipe. He said fold it over twice on itself, then put a pair of vice grips on it. That'll stop the flow.

And it worked! (Mostly.)

So I called my brother to come with his neighbor and a bunch of gas cans for their emergency generators. (They live out in the country, and have backup generators for when they lose city power. These run on diesel, so they always have diesel on hand.)

They came out with seven 5-gallon cans, and we proceeded to form a bucket-brigade from our oil tank to our (other) neighbor's oil tank, and drained about 150 gallons of fuel from the tank. (Thereby relieving the pressure on my janky fix in the basement, and stopping the flow of fuel into my basement.)

Crisis averted. Except now everything smells like diesel, and probably will for another month or so until it off-gasses enough ... or we just get used to it.

Music Stuff

To avoid buying another bass (a Fender Mustang short-scale, or a Warmoth build-your-own bass), I did a bunch of organization with my music equipment, and finally made a dedicated area for the laptop, the mixer, the speakers, the amp, and mounted all the guitars on the wall.

I was actually able to finally connect my Focusrite Scarlet to my MacBook, plug in my bass, and do a little twiddling.

I still can't get the input levels right, but at least everything is cabled up and I can start figuring out how best to get a good sound in my DAW (GarageBand).

There is some balance between the volume of the instrument (passive or active electronics), the Scarlet's gain, and GarageBand's input gain, where I will be able to actually hear the bass, but won't overdrive the input to clipping.

I have NO idea where the fuck that magic level is, but I am now trying to figure it out without balancing the laptop and bass on my lap, and the Scarlet on the bed next to me, and switching between different types of headphones with different impedances.

That's progress, at least.

Work

I'm still 'working full time', which my boss and I have agreed comes out to about 2 hours a day, or so. We won't be allowed back in the office until June they say, but WA State is looking at loosening restrictions next week. Which will lead to more deaths and a spike just about June 1, which will push our return-to-the-office date out even further.

When my boss and I speak candidly about this stuff, we are pretty sure that "working from the office" won't be a thing this year for our team. We will work remotely pretty much from now on. A third of our team is remotely located, and two key members are looking to move out of state, so there's really no reason for us to have a desk at the office at all.

Fallout 76

Holy crap Wastelanders is amazing. I love this game!