Cav's Place

Today I somehow managed to do something I’ve been meaning to do for years: I finally mentioned on the site’s front page that the fantasy art gallery is no longer updated, since I think the last time I added something there was in 2013, and moved the list of bands and artists that caught my attention at some point to a separate section of the site. It’s still the plain table that used to be a basically hidden page on the blog, and adding more details is highly unlikely and writing more New Finds posts seems next to impossible now, when the time I spend on-line is limited, and as far as I recall I only added a single artist to the list itself since things ended up being this way, but at least what’s already there will be a little more visible now, I guess, for whatever good that may do. Also, while I was at it, I found myself once again thinking of making a section for the books I’ve read as well, similar to the one I have for games played, but that won’t be as simple as pretty much just taking the code I already have and putting it somewhere else, and I’m not sure how I mean to sort the entries and what notes, if any, to include, so this may be another thing that will only happen years down the line, if ever.

Otherwise, after getting up and checking this afternoon, I noticed that the time for the MilkyWay@home tasks processed since I went to bed was 5-10% longer than normal, and that was the actual CPU time, and when I ran CPU benchmarks I saw values that were consistently 3-4% lower than normal. Checking the reported tasks as well, it seems the change happened at some point before I connected again after eating the night before, my CPU apparently just deciding to get slower, though the reported speed is the same. So, with no other idea, I rebooted, which also allowed me to test whether Emsisoft Anti-Malware still makes me unable to boot back up without disabling it first, noticing that, while it took a pretty long time before the desktop showed up, the problem didn’t appear anymore. And running CPU benchmarks again resulted in normal floating point speed, and while the integer one remained just as low, the processing times returned to normal.

Yes, that means that, after waiting out the day, Thursday night I started a trial of Emsisoft Anti-Malware, to see if anything changed for the better. On the other hand, before that, Liza worried me. The seven days during which she should have taken those pills finished, though of course she hardly took any of them, considering how dad went about it, and he seemed to just assume that everything was fine now, but she started meowing a little before midnight, which is strange when she’s just with me, and then came to the kitchen and stayed there the rest of the night, including when I sat right next to her to eat. She hissed at me, but just turned around and remained there, which is pretty much unheard of for her, and then she seemed rather agitated as she slept, and only hissed one more time but again just stayed there after I got up for a moment and then sat down again. Told dad about it yesterday and he said he thought something was off about her too, at first trying to shrug it off, saying she may be getting older, but when I rejected that idea he said he’ll take her to the vet again… Yet when I asked him about it today, he said he probably won’t take her, but just call to ask about it.

Speaking of yesterday, he mentioned that he drove into a pothole when he went to work the night before and dented the car, which will likely cost about 1000 RON to fix, adding that I should compare that to me being worried about the 8 RON spent on those magazines. When I said I’m worried about my expenses, he said it’s about the family’s, and that God sends us such lessons when we act in such a manner. I almost laughed at that, but when I was already feeling so guilty about it and that made it even worse, felt like anything but laughing. On the other hand, I had just received another survey from Carrefour, so I had another one of those 10 RON codes, so soon after the previous one, when I thought I tended to receive them every two months or so. So, if he thinks in those terms, it could be said that, since I’m frugal, calculated and keep my demands low, I was given what I needed, while he was punished for being careless and saying it’s not something to worry about. But I didn’t say anything else at the time.

Monday I was woken up at 9:35 AM by a call from someone from the firm that’s supposed to service my phone, asking whether those supposed to pick it up contacted me. When I said they didn’t and that I was actually wondering about it, she said they ask because some clients just change their minds, but in this case it means something got mixed up, so they’ll send another request and ask them to rush it. I also said that I hope the problem will actually get fixed this time, since it’s the third time I’m sending it, and that was that. Saw later that I had another confirmation e-mail, with a new number, so I guess they just canceled the initial one and started the process again.

The plan was to run that day, and I knew it was going to be crowded, since it was a free day here, so for a moment I considered staying up even then, thinking that it was only going to get worse later, but I was too sleepy, so I went back to bed and woke up again at 11:35 AM, actually getting up then even though I still had the headache I had gone to bed with. Had the usual stuff, plus almonds, and the last piece of honeycomb as something sweet, put on the full running gear and went out at 2 PM, when the reported temperature was 25°C and it was sunny. Though something still didn’t feel quite right, that calf had improved and I also took care while going down those stairs towards the lake, so it didn’t start hurting then either and it was far less of an issue during the run. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to allow me to improve, much less get back under 48 minutes…
The time was 48:25.30, with sector times of 4:29.50, 5:00 (4:59.91), 5:49.18, 4:28.26, 5:00 (4:59.71), 5:48.37, 4:34, 5:15, 6:10 and 1:52 (1:51.81), making for lap times of 15:18.59, 15:16.34 and 15:59 (15:58.56). So, despite actually being just a tiny bit, less than a second, faster after three laps, I was again even slower than the previous week at the end, and after pushing as hard as I could to get two good laps despite the crowded conditions, I was so exhausted on the third that I don’t even remember the exact times, only having the exact lap time because the time at the end of lap three is the last interval time, so it’s left on the stopwatch. Things are so hazy that I’m not even sure I really looked after sector two, but I did after sector one and I know it was under 4:34, since it had been 30:34.93 after two laps and I remember adding seven, but I can’t recall what I added it to. Seem to remember something about a 46, a 43 or both, differing from the 49 that was there at the end, and it’s possible that the hundredths were very close on all three sectors, making for times on sectors two and three that were almost exactly on the second, which might have caused my mind to “overwrite” them, but I really have no idea. Either way, I barely managed to stay under 16 minutes on that lap, just sticking to the sector times needed for it.
Felt that the temperature is getting a bit higher as well, and while there wasn’t much wind overall, a few gusts did bother me a little. The problem were again the people, however, and this time the park was, as expected, really crowded. I was almost doing interval training, almost sprinting where I found some space, to try to make up for the time lost otherwise. Forget weaving, going the long way around, calculating paths or even squeezing through; there were roadblocks everywhere, making me slow and even completely stop, so many that I can’t accurately remember all of them even on those first two laps. I remember that at the end of the first sector I was trying to pick my way through quite a group when somebody pulled a dog across the path just as I was making my way out of it, forcing me to stop for a couple of seconds, but I actually don’t think that was even the first roadblock. Then remember the start of lap two, when there was a roadblock under the bridge and I meant to try to squeeze through in between the groups passing each other, but the large guy who was right in front of me noticed that I was coming, apologized and stepped aside just then, ending up right in front of me yet again and forcing me to stop as I just about slammed into him and eventually get around on the other side. Then, at the end of that same sector, I took to the grass, cutting a turn, since the path was again completely blocked, and slipped, just my left leg sliding away, though I at least managed not to fall and the leg held as well.
Started taking to the grass more often after that, when the path was blocked, and while I again cut a curve one or two of those times, I needed to go around benches to do so, meaning that I clearly lost time even then. Even so, there were still spots where I had to just stop for a moment, roadblocks I could find no way through right away, people cutting me off, cyclists, plenty of the children on bicycles or scooters going all over the place. Admittedly, there was also a moment, at the end of a sector one, I believe of lap three, when a girl on a scooter sort of opened the way for me through a roadblock, but I still lost time, since she was slower than me and I then had to find a way around her as well after getting through the others. And then there were those two cyclists, a man and a girl, with the girl rather going all over the place and the man trying to follow her lead, who got in my way on sector three of lap two and held me back for a bit, then pulled slightly ahead, moved off the path around the lake, then got back to it on sector one of lap three, the girl again ending up alongside me and just about matching my speed, so I couldn’t move to get around those in front of me until she finally pulled ahead and then went back off the path. On the other hand, I also recall a nice moment, I believe on a sector two, though I have no idea of which lap anymore, when I seemed to be facing another complete roadblock but the guy who was right in front of me just slightly turned his head as I approached and casually stepped towards the others he was with, creating just enough of an opening between their group and the other just at the right moment for me to easily pass through. That really stood out as the exception that day, and I thanked him as I passed, though I doubt he heard.

After the run, first went the other way, to get to the corner and look for the larger newspaper and magazine stand I knew used to be there, since I had some money with me and meant to look for this month’s National Geographic and a certain sudoku magazine, since I was finally about to finish the one I had on my desk for two years. That particular sudoku one seems harder to find though, always was, but I knew it did still exist, so I meant to check that other stand after having a look at the one across the road from the park on the way there and not seeing it… But that stand wasn’t there anymore, so I just turned around and came back here, not crossing the road again to have another look at that one. Did end up crossing the last road three times, however, since I know that this stand that’s on this corner is owned by some neighbors that are likely the ones my parents know best, and who also know me, so I usually avoid the place, to avoid awkwardness, but when I passed it that time I noticed someone else being there, and also quite a few sudoku magazines on display. So I turned around after crossing the road, crossed it back and asked for National Geographic while having a look at those, but didn’t spot that one quickly and the woman who was there was standing right behind me and asking what I was interested in, so I couldn’t stay, felt the need to get out of there and did so, leaving looking for that other one for another time.

Finally shaved my head that evening, before showering, and then the plan would have been to sleep in the next day, but at 11:15 AM I was awake, after receiving a message to notify me that the phone will be picked up that day. Just turned on the intercom and exchanged a few words with dad, then went back to bed, but it took me a while to fall asleep again and at 1:05 PM another identical message woke me up again, so I decided to stay up, to also spend some more time on-line while dad was away, especially since the Trend Micro Antivirus+ trial was ending that day and I didn’t know whether any parts of it would remain functional at night, so I wanted to do what I could earlier in order to play it safer if it’ll get completely disabled, not meaning to restore from that backup and move on to something else that day. However, all the waiting around, even holding it in until the feeling went away and ending up not even taking a crap that day and opening the door in a hurry when someone rang only to see that it was a neighbor looking for dad, ended up being for nothing, as nobody came and I just ended up exhausted, only managing to get another hour or so of sleep in the evening. And while I’m at that day, I’ll also mention here that I saw no visits in either view again, and that at night the trial did indeed expire and even scanning was no longer possible. It still seemed to be doing something though, judging by the CPU use, but I didn’t test whether it still caught anything.

That exhaustion didn’t stop me from getting back up at 6:45 AM yesterday, after likely less than one more hour of sleep, to go to Carrefour and Kaufland, so I’ll be back before dad will go to Auchan, and also before any risk of storms, which the forecast listed as beginning around 3 PM, though in fact just the clouds appeared then and even those were starting to clear again by 5 PM, without any rain, so this last part wouldn’t have been a problem. But I made a new list, adding the things dad had written on one left on the kitchen table, since I didn’t know whether he wanted me to get those things as well or not, grabbed the recyclables and was out the door at 8 AM.
This time around, while Kaufland still didn’t start checking again, they were taking people’s temperature when entering that mall this Carrefour is in, so they took mine twice, since I first checked prices there, then went to Kaufland, just getting a couple of things from there, then returned. Had several things to get from Carrefour though, and also added another carton of eggs that were about to expire and all the six bags of those things for my mother, since I noticed that they were on sale and those bags were the only ones left at the moment, and I only realized when checking out that I wouldn’t have had enough money, being just 0.19 RON short, if I would have again forgotten that discount code. But this time I did take it and it was used, though the employee seemed new, as he asked another one for help with it.
Also looked for that sudoku magazine again, including checking out the two Inmedio locations that are next to that Kaufland and Carrefour, actually checking the one next to Kaufland twice because an employee was arranging some stuff in that area the first time and the other asked me what I wanted when she saw me looking, so I left then and got back after leaving Kaufland, when I could just look. Then, since I couldn’t find it there, I went in the other direction after leaving that mall, looking for a stand, but just got to the intersection and returned, seeing none there. And with none on the way back either, I got back around 11:20 AM or so, put the purchases where they belonged, took a shower and ended up asking dad to try to look for that magazine in Auchan, after having already asked him to look for tea there.

Seems I just don’t learn, do I? I asked him for one of each kind of tea, saying that he may not find one, so just get the others in that case, and also for that thing, also specifying that it should be the one appearing this month, so it’ll be exactly two years after this one I had on my desk all this time… And he came back with one of each of the other kinds of tea, but two of that one I thought he might not find, saying that if I said it may be harder to find otherwise, he wanted to get me more now that it was available… And two other sudoku magazines, each of them costing more and having a little over half the number of puzzles of that one, and also having been released earlier this year, apparently because he was told that one will be released tomorrow and he just thought I liked doing them. When I reminded him I specified everything, and had also told him I knew that one’s harder to find but I had looked for it specifically in various places and only found others, so didn’t get any, he said I didn’t tell him directly and clearly, for each thing, that he must buy that and only that and may not replace it with something else or get more, so he took all of it as meaning that it’d be nice if he found that one, and this month’s issue, but in no way a requirement, and that either way it was too much information and he takes it as news and only listens to the headline, mentioning that he complains to his coworkers who write news about complicating things as well when the important information isn’t entirely in the headline. Worse, when I complained he of course immediately retaliated with the one thing making it worse, saying that if I don’t want them he’ll throw them away, so I had to take them to avoid being responsible for waste as well.
Either way, since I had calculated everything so I had just enough left to spend for myself this week to cover one of each of those teas and that magazine, meaning to count what he’ll spend on them as having been spent by me on stuff for my own use and move that amount to what’s available for other things, I spent the rest of that evening trying to work out what I’ll be able to cut out of the necessary purchases over the following weeks to make up for it, when I’m at the very limit to begin with. Of course, he doesn’t care, just saying that, even without getting into specifics, he can’t understand worrying about something already done and which can’t be changed, and there was actually more to that discussion and I probably made my side sound far less serious than it was because it was just so awkward, and talking always is for me, but the bottom line is that it all left me whimpering and about to collapse on the kitchen floor after he went out to get something else, and unable to go take a nap after that despite hardly sleeping in the morning. Only napped for perhaps half an hour after I finally got back to my room at 10:30 PM, after finishing in the kitchen, since after spending some time on-line while eating an entire bag of those things otherwise bought for my mother, which was another thing I was feeling guilty about, since instead of possibly saving something I had ended up responsible for using even more and that only added to it, I had started making something when he got back from Auchan and then stayed there to do all of it myself, so he won’t mess up even more and so I could just keep my hands busy with something while my mind desperately tried to wrestle with the situation. Not that he didn’t still mess things up even more even so, quickly cooking something for himself as well after I was done and again leaving a mess while also supposedly “washing” a colander and putting it back in the cabinet still both dirty and completely wet.

After all of that, only got in bed at 5:20 AM… And ended up jumping out of it when the intercom rang in the morning. I don’t know who it was, as after it stopped ringing I heard it start ringing at another apartment and nobody came here, but at first I obviously assumed it was the guy finally coming to pick up the phone, without calling first, and struggled to get out of my pajamas and put on my pants. It’s possible that I also did something else to my left leg then, since I’ve been feeling some pain in that foot today, as if I had walked too much, though I doubt yesterday’s trip would have caused that, and the knee bothered me a little as well.
After the intercom stopped ringing, I checked my phone and saw that there had been no call or message, and also that it was 10:53 AM. But I was up, and knew that if I’d get back to bed I’ll likely end up continuing to put off restoring from that backup again, so I got right to it and even remembered to first suspend computing in BOINC before starting, which was a setting it remembered after it was done, since its data folder is on another partition, and then turned it off completely as soon as it loaded again, before the time updated, and this avoided any problems. The odd thing, on the other hand, was that Samsung Magician didn’t say that there was an update available again, and in fact is clearly stating that I have the latest version, and also the latest firmware version, which clearly shouldn’t be the case. It’s as if it’s not checking anymore, but I don’t really care to look into it, especially since I didn’t care for the new version when I did allow it to update, a month ago.
But to return to the phone, at 11:40 AM I received another message stating that they’ll come pick it up today, which was followed by another identical one minutes later, and by a call at 12:15 PM, the guy asking whether I had one product or two to send, since he has two entries, so I quickly explained what happened and some five minutes later he was here, with his mask down when he got to the door, and finally picked it up. Now let’s hope they’ll actually deliver it to them, and then back to me, without something like this happening again… And also that it’ll actually be fixed, or replaced with a working one, this time around.
Otherwise, at least today I didn’t accumulate even more sleep debt, since I eventually crawled back in bed in the afternoon, woke up after about one hour, when dad got back, but then got back to sleep and got some two and a half hours more, so it should have added up to eight, if not up to eight and a half. Really doesn’t make up for the one hour or so I got yesterday, and even that came after getting relatively little Monday and Tuesday as well, and I’m feeling it, but I hope I’ll manage to use the next few days to recover a bit… Though the whole thing about that magazine really messed me up again, and at the moment I’m just keeping the old one here on my desk, with those last two puzzles I had left unsolved, and thinking that I’ll just keep doing so, even if it’s dirty and on the back even moldy, so I won’t add to the changes that make every waking moment ever harder to deal with. Did start one of the new ones though, but I’m putting them elsewhere, and actually thinking to keep this one here for another year, to only replace it with the one released three years after it, since I won’t get this one released two years later. But at the same time it’s not impossible that I’ll find a way to somehow work buying it this month into what I mean to spend after all, despite starting from a negative value. I’ll see about all of that next week, I guess…

With the current use of script blockers, plus some of the options available to people directly, Google Analytics sure is becoming less and less useful. For example I know it doesn’t display Sonya’s visits, and now, last Friday evening, somebody told me he spent hours reading my blog, but there was no trace of that visit, so I checked the site’s actual logs to see the 66 pageviews just on the blog that evening… But those logs are a complete mess, including all bots, spam visits and things other than posts, plus of course all of my own visits, and there’s nothing like the sort of filtering I can have there, so there’s no way to use them for the statistics posts and I’ll just have to continue those in this manner, with the understanding that they’re probably less and less complete. The fact that the days with no visits just meant no visits recorded there, not necessarily that there actually were no visits, was already clear.

Otherwise, after getting in bed after 5:20 AM last Saturday morning, waking up to pee at 8:30 AM and only getting back in bed half an hour later, after washing what dad had left in the kitchen and quickly checking something on-line, some ten minutes later my UPS got me back out of bed after beeping to let me know of a blackout. It was a very brief one, since it only kicked in for the five seconds that usually are the minimum amount of time, but outages that are particularly brief aren’t logged and even the shorter ones that do get logged don’t make it beep, so I guess that one actually lasted those seconds, and I checked again to make sure that everything was fine. However, at 1:30 PM I found myself jumping back out of bed, thinking that something was most definitely not fine, after being woken up by two more loud beeps. They sounded different, from each other as well, so now that I think of it I realize it might have been an alarm which was turned off right away, but my first thought was that a cooler had failed and the computer was overheating, though I checked the old phone first, since it was possible that it was one of its alerts, seeing as I’m not sure I remember how they sound anymore. But the phone had no issues, and turning the monitor back on and checking logs and then Open Hardware Monitor didn’t reveal anything odd about the computer either. Left that running though, until I actually got up for good, at 3:30 PM, but it just proved to me that nothing unusual happened during those two hours either, so I’m not sure what that was about. On the other hand, wonder if dad really is so absentminded or such a blatant liar, since in the evening he specifically told me he unplugged his Internet cable and didn’t, so it’s a good thing I checked for myself.

My mother was here Monday, and I saw her phones on the table, opened up, since she wanted to try to transfer the numbers from the SIM card to an older one because her current one didn’t work anymore, but that used a different kind of SIM card. So I put that SIM card in mine, and she could write down the numbers, but it just kept saying it can’t register the SIM otherwise, so I guess I could confirm that it’s really broken. Since stage two of the relaxation started that day here, that was one more reason to send it back one more time, so I filled the form again at night and the next day I received the message that it was approved. When filling the form, I selected Thursday as the day when I wanted them to come pick it up, but I’m yet to even get a message about that, so I’ll give them Monday as well, seeing as delivery services may be overwhelmed now, but I’ll ask what’s going on if nobody comes then either.

This week’s run was Wednesday, and it was even worse than last week’s. There were plenty of reasons for it, but that calf’s what worries me the most, since I felt it right away as I went down the stairs towards the lake and it stayed like that all the way to the end, though I probably noticed it a little less as I was pushing towards the end, not that it did me much good. Still, feeling it right away on those stairs made me realize that this is what probably happened two weeks ago, so it’s not that I did something to the muscle then, but that it was the moment when I felt something which had happened earlier, since going down those stairs for some reason seems to make it hurt, though the ones in the building here don’t seem to. Also, while that spot that hurts when I touch it is on the right side and lower, where the muscle hurts otherwise is higher and on the left side, as if it’s compensating for something and that causes an area that may otherwise be fine to hurt.
But, to get back to the morning, I again kept waking up, three of the times to pee, the last one being just after noon, so I considered staying up at that point, but decided to try to sleep a little more after all and actually managed it, until the alarm rang, at 1 PM. Then I had the usual stuff, plus almonds, but honeycomb as the sweet thing, and had the running pants and the regular t-shirt on, plus stuff in both pockets, both because the running t-shirt and tights weren’t washed yet and because I meant to go to that Carrefour from the park after the run. Considered taking the regular shoes as well, but didn’t want to put even more pressure on that muscle, since those are clearly worse at cushioning the shocks, so I at least had the running shoes on and was leaving at 2:55 PM, when the reported temperature was around 20°C and the clouds had cleared, staying sunny all the way after that. It was quite windy though, and that was one of the problems during the run.
In the end, the time was 48:21.71, with sector times of 4:27.79, 5:04 (5:03.63), 5:54 (5:53.99), 4:29 (4:28.89), 5:00.16, 5:56.10, 4:36.08, 5:09.18, 5:59 (5:58.36) and 1:47.53, making for lap times of 15:25.41, 15:25.15 and 15:44 (15:43.62). So it was clear pretty much from the beginning that it wasn’t going to go well and after two laps the chances of staying under 48 minutes were pretty much zero, but the first sector of lap three made things even worse and I was worried even about 48:30, and the pretty poor sector two only made me even more concerned, that really good final sector being needed to not end up in an even more embarrassing situation. But the fact that I could produce such a final sector, even if I was out of breath by the end of it and my nose got rather irritated again, means I’m not in such a poor shape as the times might otherwise indicate, and it may be a matter of having to learn how much to push through the park again. That calf makes it rather hard to do so, however, seeing as it feels like I’m nearing the end of a half marathon run from the beginning…
That calf might have also had something to do with the few warnings the right one, as well as the right knee, gave me, but those weren’t much of an issue. I wonder if the slight discomfort and small additional weight placed just on my thighs by the few things I had in my pockets had some effect as well. The wind, as I already mentioned, definitely had one, however, and a few gusts made me feel like I was barely moving against it. But it was again the people that probably bothered me the most, the park again being quite crowded. In fact, leaving aside all the weaving, going the long way around and calculating paths, I believe only sector two of lap one didn’t have any roadblocks or misunderstandings that made me need to slow, sidestep or even completely stop. If so, sector three of lap one made up for it anyway, having three such moments, but I’m actually saying I believe that to be the case not because I think there might have been another sector free of such problems, but because there’s a chance I forgot one that was on that sector as well, since otherwise I know I had such issues on each one, starting from a misunderstanding with a cyclist coming from the opposite direction that made both of us need to stop right in front of each other for a couple of seconds in the first sector and ending with a little kid cutting me off and making me need to quickly sidestep to avoid running into him just as I was starting the final sprint at the end. The longest stop was probably at the end of sector two of lap three, however, when I had a double or triple roadblock in front of me, I didn’t even see clearly, and a group of cyclists were coming from the opposite direction as well, so we all stopped and I moved aside until most of them squeezed through, I think only taking my turn before the last one of them.
And then there was the worker with the chainsaw, forgot if on sector three of lap one or two. This wasn’t a matter of lost time, as I squeezed between him and the truck as quickly as possible, but it was scary, as he was standing next to the truck, his back was towards me and he turned on the chainsaw he was holding, to hack those branches hanging low over the path, just before I reached him, so I just had to hope he didn’t turn my way just as I passed him. Two guys on roller skates were behind me at that point and one shouted as they also went through that spot. The other told him to calm down because those thin branches won’t hurt him, but he said it wasn’t the branches he was worried about, but the chainsaw, and that his heart stopped for a moment. I shouted that mine did as well as they passed me, a moment later.

As I already mentioned, after finishing the run I turned around and went to that Carrefour. Even if masks are required inside, I hoped to be able to get in that mall without wearing the one I had with me, to first go to the toilet and wash my hands and face, then put it on before entering Carrefour, but when I saw a guard at the mall’s door I put it on before going in… The thing is that, seeing him there, I didn’t even look until after going in, only then seeing that I had entered on the route marked for exiting, as different routes had been created for people going in and out. He also asked whether I knew how to get to Carrefour from there and I said I did, the escalator leading straight to it being straight ahead from that entrance, after all, but when I passed the second set of doors I saw that the way to it had been closed off, so I had to keep my eyes on the signs and on what a couple of others who also seemed to be heading in from there seemed to be doing, to eventually get there after going a long way around. But at least there are toilets next to that Carrefour, so I could wash my hands there, pulling the mask down and washing my face a little as well before pulling it back up.
This time I also wrote down the times on the little piece of paper I had taken with me, stopping to do so before starting to look for what I meant to buy. However, despite taking some paper, I again forgot to use it before leaving, so I again didn’t have that discount code with me. But there will be other times to use it, and at least I found the first thing I was looking for, as well as bread. That kind that I can get from there had been supposedly on sale the week before, but at a price that was above what I’d care to pay for it, and now I see that it’s on sale again as of Thursday, yet Wednesday it wasn’t supposed to be on sale but, at least in that location, it was at half price, so at what was the best sale price when they had just launched it and the full price was 25% less than it is now. They also seemed to have quite a pile of it, and while most was sliced, I could also find unsliced ones, so I got four. Then added a couple of other things and made my way out… And somehow ended up at the other exit, despite thinking that I was just retracing my steps until I found myself looking at an exit that wasn’t the one I was expecting.
No point in bothering to go back and try to find my way to the other side though, I’d have likely had more to walk anyway, so I just went out that way and then, after getting past the park again, also found that pet shop dad kept saying he buys cheaper cat litter from. He did tell me where it is, but it’s in a spot that’s just off my usual path and pretty much off my mental map, and the building it’s in is also rather hidden, so I never saw it before, but could find it easily enough if I looked specifically for it. The bags of cat litter are also quite hidden inside it though, as there was just one of a more expensive kind that I could see after going in, but after the cashier asked whether she could help me and I told her what I wanted she pointed out the others as well, between the windows and the shelves, so visible from the outside if I’d have looked, but not from inside. Could reach in that space and grab one, but the others were too far and I said I wanted another and couldn’t reach it, and she asked a guy who was in front of the store, and didn’t even have a mask, to come in and get one, and he somehow squeezed in that space despite being probably about as large as me and her put together and set it next to the shelves… Didn’t say so though, so when he finally made his way out the other side, we were both still waiting and she asked him if he got it just when he asked her whether she gave it to me, before I figured it out and grabbed it myself. It wasn’t easy to get back with all those things though, carrying some 17 kg, but I was nevertheless back at 5:40 PM.

Thursday I kept waiting for the guy to come and pick up the phone, both because I had selected that date and because it was two days after receiving the message that it was approved, which is how long they say it should take. But there was no sign… On the other hand, the computer again gave me reasons for concern about turning the LAN chipset off and back on so often. It had seemed fine lately, without any new errors or other problems, but when I wanted to quickly connect after I got up, since dad was still asleep, I saw that the connection was still listed as enabled even though it wasn’t, trying to disable it again did nothing and obviously also didn’t have an option to enable it. The troubleshooter sorted things out, correctly stating that the network adapter was disabled and enabling it, but after I disabled it again, even though just at that moment it showed up as disabled, when I checked again a few moments later it again appeared enabled. Did mean to reboot at that time, but put it off and, just on a whim, did a quick scan first… Which resulted in Trend Micro Antivirus+ getting stuck at the end of the scanning process, fully using one CPU core constantly and occasionally all of the CPU and not seeming to actually do anything, and also not stopping the scan when I tried to do so, or even to turn it off completely. Also briefly connected then, even if dad was also connected, to see whether that fixed it, thinking that it was probably stuck because it was trying to connect to check something, but that didn’t help, yet I at least could lower the priority of that process and then reboot quite normally, even if booting back up took longer than usual and I’m not seeing the Volume Shadow Copy service starting every five minutes and stopping each time after three anymore, as it had been doing ever since I started this trial.
Still wondering what the issue with the connection is, however. It does show up as being disabled again now, but I also switched back to an automatically assigned IP address before rebooting, thinking that perhaps the fact that I had specified a fixed address, to be notified of the conflict if dad would again leave his connection active despite telling me otherwise, had something to do with it. But I had done so earlier and this just happened now, so I doubt it’s that. And I obviously also don’t know whether the Trend Micro Antivirus+ issue was caused by the lack of a connection, or perhaps even by the fact that in one place it appeared to be enabled despite being disabled, or there’s a different problem. But that trial is ending soon anyway, so I guess I don’t care that much anymore, seeing as it’s clearly not an option for a longer term, and I mean to restore from that backup again after it’s over.

I seem to have started writing these posts as I go along, did it for last week’s personal one as well, so they’re now quite certain to just be chronological, but also likely even more embarrassingly detailed than they already were. It also means I can pretty much post them whenever I care to, since I no longer need to set aside a day to actually write them then as well, and I meant to post this Thursday, but also wanted to post it after they’d have taken away the phone again, so I’ve been waiting until this evening. But it’s quite clear that they won’t be coming on a Sunday, and I’d rather avoid a Sunday update anyway if I can, so I guess I have to post it like this.
There were some more annoyances caused by dad that I meant to rant about, but I’ll just stick to briefly mentioning them. There was the bread he took out of the freezer and put in the bread drawer while the bag was still very wet, even over the paper bags I use for my bread, and then put back again before it was dry even after I took it out and told him what the problem was. There’s all the stuff used and left scattered in the kitchen, this morning being a good example… And then there’s trying to trick Liza by putting some pills he should be giving her in her food, insisting to not try to actually give them to her or let me go for it, because she “won’t understand” being forced, and saying that she took them and it’s fine even when she only ate quite a few hours after he dissolved the pill in water and mixed it in, so probably after it had pretty much evaporated, or when she started bucking like a wild horse after tasting it when he didn’t dissolve it, leaving spit everywhere, and probably also at least most of that really tiny pill.

Yes, today is World Environment Day, and I should be posting something about it. With this year’s topic being biodiversity, I probably should in fact be posting something specifically about that. But I guess everyone else will, and some might even move past that completely unreasonable optimism that makes most keep saying that the doomsday clock is stuck at a few seconds to midnight, making you wonder only whether they’re just lying to everyone else or to themselves as well. So I’ll just keep it short and stick to what I already said in the previous post: It’s clear we wasted this immense opportunity offered by the current circumstances, setting ourselves even more firmly on the path of destruction and worsening problems for decades to come and, when it comes to the environment in particular, ensuring that everything is lost, yet we must keep fighting because we can’t allow ourselves to give up. Not because there’s any reason for hope left, not because we may still reasonably believe we have a chance, but because we have a responsibility, a duty towards the other species we share this planet with, towards the ecosystem as a whole, and even the tiniest shred of a theoretical chance they may still have will go away if we don’t.
Can you say anything else when a mere quick glance over recent environmental news from a single source shows that, for example, even the recent reduced activity and restrictions only slowed the growth of the atmospheric greenhouse gas levels back to the past decade’s average when we know that it needs to be quickly halted and then reversed, air pollution quickly returns to previous levels and may even exceed them as soon as restrictions are eased, even the completely inadequate existing environmental regulations are being increasingly discarded and even the leading calls for changing the system still focus on growth and state that the private sector should lead the way forward when either of these absolutely ensures that there will be no chance whatsoever of averting particularly terrible outcomes? I highly doubt you can… Or, well, if you can, I’ll definitely say you’re guilty of that completely unreasonable optimism I was mentioning above, and either lying to everyone else or to everyone else and also to yourself.

I kept saying I’ll write a post about what should be done to tackle the far more important environmental and social crises, now that we know drastic measures can be taken and the economy can be negatively affected and even individual rights and freedoms can be restricted when we recognize that a crisis exists and want to solve it, but kept putting it off. The topic’s too important and, far from getting better and easier in time, I find it much harder to write about serious non-personal topics and the end result if I try is clearly worse than what I managed over a decade ago… And now it can even be said that the moment is lost, because the measures are being relaxed even if the crisis that is currently recognized is far from over, there are more and more protests even against those that remain and great efforts and sums of money are directed towards the economy, in large part to allow it to continue as before instead of using the incredible opportunity for the absolutely necessary overhaul of the entire system. So I guess some things could be done, for a little while, but sooner rather than later people again proved that they’re, well, human, and if given the choice the tremendous majority, be they those in power or the masses of regular people, will just keep making the wrong one time and time again, regardless of the amount of correct information available.
Still, it’s this part about information that seems to still work, and it’s probably the one that worked the best from the beginning. Even if campaigns urging and pressuring people to act in a certain way are far more likely to have the desired effect than merely providing the information and expecting people to make the correct choice, it may not be too useful, the impact of individual actions being a mere fraction of what’s necessary when it comes to what’s needed to solve the major environmental and social problems, but it would at least be something and we now know it can be implemented quickly and on a large scale and maintained even when other measures start to fail. Of course, a complete overhaul of society and the systems it’s based on is required, and this is something that needs to be implemented from the top, by enacting uncompromising laws and regulations and strictly enforcing them, but if something so simple would have a chance of changing individual behaviors on a relatively large scale, it may buy a little more time. It won’t be much, one electoral cycle most probably being the most that could be hoped for when missing the opportunity provided by the crisis that is currently recognized will quite certainly ensure that all of those major problems will only get worse for decades to come and, at least when it comes to the environment, everything is lost, but even that is more than nothing, and we have a duty to try and fight all the way to the bitter end.

I’m actually just focusing on the environment now and thinking of a very specific situation, an NGO from here having asked the Ministry of Environment, before the state of emergency was declared, to start a campaign promoting recycling, which the media would be required to broadcast as public service announcements. The request was approved, but they were told that the campaign will only start in summer, because time is needed to create and film the videos and get them on air. However, that was definitely no longer the case when it came to the campaigns telling people to stay home and take measures to limit spreading this new virus, those announcements showing up everywhere very quickly, many media institutions starting their own campaigns right away as well, signs appearing in stores, on streets and at building entrances… And that’s still happening, these campaigns likely improving as time passed, so it’s clear that this can be done on very short notice and can keep being done over a long period.
Of course, even when done properly, recycling largely serves to perpetuate this cycle of continued production and consumption and permanent growth that created and maintains the problem, either way its impact is low when compared to what’s necessary, and what impact it does have may well be driven towards irrelevance by the massively increased amount of waste generated by the measures, some of them misguided to say the least, taken for the crisis that is currently recognized. But all of these may actually be reasons why such a campaign would work, and would be easily accepted by all involved, so it should be just about as widespread, and taken on with similar urgency. Just because of this increased amount of waste, the two campaigns could and should even be connected.

Still, while anything is better than nothing, if we are to start such campaigns, they should primarily focus on the individual actions with the greatest impact, not having children being the first by far, followed at a huge distance by living a car-free life, avoiding airplane travel and switching to a plant-based diet, the latter ending up at a similar level as the other two when you add the other factors it influences into account. In fact, avoiding airplane travel could and should easily be connected to the current situation, and that may even also be said about switching to a plant-based diet, considering the number of cases among those working in the meat industry, the difficulties faced by farmers during this period, and in fact how this virus started spreading to humans in the first place.
Of course, any efforts aimed at making people no longer have children will always be my top priority, and for good reason, any and all other measures merely delaying the inevitable at an ever higher cost until and unless we drastically reduce the population, and it should go without saying that such a reduction should most preferably be achieved not by increasing the number of deaths but by stopping births for a while and severely restricting them once we’ll again be able to allow a small number, after coming up with and implementing fair and objective systems for this purpose. And the uncertainty and likelihood of said potential children growing up in a world that’s worse than the current one should only make such campaigns easier, if people would only actually be rational beings. But very few are, and such a concept would also go against the perpetual growth model, and many others that this rotten society of ours is based on, so I’m just listing this here as the first thing that should be done when it comes to such campaigns, but I’m all too aware that it won’t be.
A campaign urging people to live a car-free life may also face resistance at the moment, because of the false sense people have that they are isolated and protected inside their cars, and also because some businesses and events are now favoring and even bringing back the drive-in model as a way to continue under the current circumstances. But it could and should nevertheless be attempted, and those campaigns discouraging airplane travel, even if and when it will otherwise be readily permitted again, and promoting a plant-based diet, most preferably also one favoring products grown and processed locally, should be easy. And if the authorities, media institutions and businesses won’t start them on their own, those of us who care need to demand them, loudly and clearly. Speaking of individual actions, we should probably even start them on our own, at whatever small level we can.