9:56PM. Today I was up at 3AM working on projects. Learning rxjs for voddo and futureporn. Then 6AM rolled around and I started preparing to pack and ship an hour early, because I was low on packing cardboard and stickers. Got some green and orange Hatsune Miku stickers cut out.

I think the green vinyl is slightly thicker, so I had really low yields on the green stickers. The orange seemed thinner than the green, and turned out much better.

I think my blade is getting dull. I think the blades are like $30. I could be wrong on that. Hopefully I’m wrong! $30 is a lot to spend for a blade.

My VPS ran out of disk space again. A side effect of automated livestream recording without any sort of automatic offloading. It all depends on me transferring the recorded videos to my local computer, which I haven’t been doing lately.

Ironmouse streamed 3 times in the past 3 days. I haven’t even finished watching the first of those streams because I’ve been so deeply involved in learning RxJS. I’m spending an amazing amount of time working, but I am also taking lots of breaks and going outside to walk, doing stretches…

That was today, anyway. The two days prior contained a little too much work, and I was skipping a lot of breaks.

Today is good! I’m taking care of myself.

I slept from 12PM to about 9:30PM. Felt really nice to sleep. I awoke to the sound of wind and rain against the exterior walls, and a cold dark apartment. I quickly got dressed and cranked my thermostat!

I saw D. and S. off this morning. They’re off to Rexburg for school. I was sad and for once I actually said what I was feeling while D, S, mom and dad were there. Major props to me for being more open and more of an individual! I’m proud of myself.

I was nervous to be at my parent’s house in the morning on a saturday, a time when I am never there. I talked myself into sitting down and putting the finishing touches on the christmas ornament I started on Christmas eve. I cut a Christmas tree shape from the glue/paint substrate. I then sat and had breakfast and had a nice chat with my parents as D. and S. finished loading their car. This was all before they left and before I expressed my feelings. I said that in reverse chronological order…

So yeah, I calmed myself and ate food and did crafts. My mom showed me how to make German bells from Christmas cards. I think it would be super cool to make a 12 days of christmas thing where every day, someone special gets to open one of these ornaments from the tree, and receive a gift within.

Weird. I just saw this strange book bracelet on pinterest

Lots of incredible craft ideas make their way to that website! Too bad it requires a login. I can’t be bothered. I click out when I see that login prompt popup.

It’s amazing how perception changes over time. Popups used to be the worst thing that can happen on a website, now popups are a standard. They could be technically called, “modals” which are slightly different than a popup because a popup would mean a new window or new tab. Modals use the same tab, but they still pop up and interrupt the reader… But nobody seems to be outraged about modals…

Then there’s spyware. Spyware used to be the worst thing that could be found running on one’s computer. Programs like Spybot and Ad-aware were invented to seek and destroy this unwanted software.

Now, people PAY hundreds or thousands of dollars for the PRIVILEGE of being spied on. Amazon Alexa, OK Google, Microsoft Siri… They’re always listening in, and that’s accepted and desirable for a lot of people.

What madness is this? Do people not care about security or sovereignty?

Yes, people do not care. But that’s not everyone. There are the masses that are bad with technology and don’t understand how it works, and they’re ignorant to the privacy and security issues. That’s a big part of the userbase, probably.

There’s the people who do care enough to not trust the tech, and they refrain from enabling OK google or siri on their phones.

There’s also a lack of statistics, at least that I am aware of, to say one way or another. For instance, I can’t say that a majority of people love Amazon Alexa. What people? What sample size? It’s definitely not a majority of all people on Earth. A lot of people don’t even have internet!

I don’t have to understand the people who do like always-on voice assistants. It’s not my problem, not my battle. I’ll leave that shit to the people who make movies like the Social Dilemma.

I’ve heard it’s a good movie. I don’t need to watch it though, I’m already in the place of distrusting social media. And also distrusting government, which I think there should be a movie about!

10:21PM. Plans for the rest of today are to figure out rxjs… I still haven’t solved the problem I’m stuck on. Nobody responded to my codeproject.com post about it. For future reference, don’t post on codeproject. It’s a bad clone of Stackexchange, with a fraction of the audience. I was posting to try it out, but now I see that it was probably not the right place to ask the question.

I think I will delete the question there, and re-post it on Stackoverflow. Yeah, I’ll do that after I finish writing here, because I’m really stuck!

        const stream = of(url)
          .pipe(
            delay(delayTime.getValue()),
            mergeMap(download),
            tap((res) => {
              adjustTimer(res);
            }),
            repeat()
          ).subscribe((val) => {
            console.log(`val:${val}, delayTime:${delayTime.getValue()} (${Math.round(delayTime.getValue()/1000/60)} minutes)`);
          });

The problem I’m having is that I want my stream to repeat over and over, but each time have a variable delay. I want that adjustTimer() function to cause delayTime.getValue() to change, which it does. But the problem is that the delay() operator is created when the observable describes, not created every time the observable executes. So the delayTime.getValue() is incrementing like I want it to, but because the stream only gets subscribed to once, the observable just remembers the original delayTime.getValue() which never changes and just repeats on a set interval.

I thought BehaviorSubject was just what I needed because it represents a “current value”, but I’m missing something to where changing the value of a BehaviorSubject will influence the flow of an observable stream.

I require assistance!

Ok so I did half the job of creating a question. I’ll get to that soon enough. Right now, I want to talk about… Feelings!

I think I have something to work on which is how I reacted to CoDA tuesday last week. The chairperson was calling on people and I got frustrated and angry. The chairperson was taking a, “greater than” stance. That’s what I thought, given their impatient and demanding behavior. I felt like they were attempting to shame people into sharing. They seemed incapable of just sitting in silence and waiting for someone to share. SOMEONE ALWAYS SHARES! There was no need to coax the sharing like they did.

CHILL THE FUCK OUT, ANON! You are not the only person bothered by the silence. Someone out there has something to say, and they are waiting for the uncomfortable silence to encourage them to speak up. Just wait!

I am just so bothered by being called on in an anonymous meeting. I don’t have a name if I want to. I’m someone other than Chris if I want to be. I think it should be up to me to volunteer my name and volunteer my story. If I choose not to share anything, that is completely fine.

Yeah, we were on Zoom. My name shows up for everyone in the meeting. So technically, it’s like writing my name on a triangle folded piece of paper and putting it in front of me on a table for all to see… I can easily change my name in Zoom, so I guess that one complaint is invalid.

I have this topic to bring up with my therapist on monday. I used this frustration as an excuse to miss CoDA on Tuesday. It’s not like the same chairperson was going to chair again. In fact, I know it was a different person because I remember the volunteer who agreed to chair.

But really, I need some external input. I need input from someone who knows CoDA better than me. Is it okay for chairpeople to call on attendees? I don’t think it is. I thought I read something somewhere that says attendees are not called on. I thought it was in the CoDA traditions list, but on reviewing that section, I did not find it. I must have read it somewhere else, or made it up. It’s probably in the bluebook somewhere, but that’s a big book to search through.

I’ll figure it out! I’ll talk to my therapist. She’ll know.

Also, I wish I would have said something in that moment when the person was calling on people to share. “Anon, I don’t appreciate being called on in this meeting. Often, just showing up is difficult. I don’t want extra pressure to share, and it was my understanding that sharing is completely voluntary.”

I mean, it’s not like the chair anon was forcing anybody. She was asking directly to people if they wanted to share, though. “Anon, would you like to share?”

They seemed to be targeting the people they knew best. It was only when they got to me when the said, “Chris, would you like to share?” After I started to respond they appended, “You can pass if you want to.” which was something they hadn’t said to anyone else prior.

I said “no thanks.” and that was it. I was angry. This person who was chairing has been at almost every meeting in this group that I’ve been to, but in that moment they seemed so completely off from what CoDA is all about.

Healthy relationships! You are not the supreme ruler of this meeting, chairperson! You are a trusted servant! Chill out, shut the fuck up, and serve the group by sitting in the silence with us until someone volunteers to speak!

That was nasty of me, but it’s something my therapist has me do. Be petty, be angry and judgemental, but get those thoughts out in a safe way, so I can process them.

And that’s all I’m going to write for now. I’m going to bring this up with my therapist on Monday.

Gratitude

I’m grateful for my Casio wristwatch that my brother M. and his gf J. got for me. It’s extremely stylish and utilitarian. It’s been great to go on walks and immediately know how much time I’ve spent walking. It’s been great to time board games and see how long a game takes. It’s been great to have a daily alarm at 7am, in case my phone alarm zonks out. It’s great to leave the house without my phone, and not be completely out of touch with the time!

I’m grateful for rxjs. IDK if it’s a library that will withstand the test of time. IDK if it’s a beneficial code pattern. IDK if I wasted my time learning it, but I did learn it, and it’s another tool in my toolbox, and another skill under my belt. It’s been fun to learn it! A real braintwister challenge!

I’m grateful for the vegan pudding my mom made for me. Apparently it’s a cake recipe that she modded to be pudding. It’s really dense and filling, consisting of tofu, almond milk, almond butter, and that’s all I can think of… But it’s tasty and I appreciate having it to snack on!

Affirmations

54. I am becoming healthier each day.
53. I have the pwoer to control my reactios to the challenges I will face.

34. I have peace within me.