#also had to use my mobile hotspot to post this because my internet is out >_>

[pangolinheart]

FFXIVWrite 2023 DAY 20 - HAMPER

AKA "Rhiki no!"

(This one is a little last-minute and half-baked because I had some kind of crazy and stressful stuff going on at work [and yesterday's will have to be my make-up for the week because I had to work from 8:30 am to 9:00 pm so I was too tired to write when I got home.] So have a little scene I envisioned when playing through the Stormblood Dark Knight questline. Rhiki is suddenly so full of bloodlust.)

Rating: Teen Characters: Z'rhiki Irhi (Warrior of Light), Sidurgu Orl, Rielle de Caulignont Word Count: 1,316 Content Warnings: Swearing

Life had been difficult since Haurchefant’s death. It had been difficult in all of the ways loss usually was, fraught with anguish, sorrow, and grief. He wasn’t the first person she had lost, and, as unpleasant as the feelings were, they were not entirely unfamiliar to her. It had also, however, been difficult in entirely new ways. In the aftermath, she had contended not only with sadness and regret, but anger. White-hot anger that seared through her chest and up into her throat. Swelling, uncontainable anger that made her want to scream until her voice gave out, or smash something with every onze of force she could muster – anything to get the anger out of her, even if she knew it would just make room for more. It was simultaneously primordial and completely alien, and it scared her.  

She had experienced pain and grief before becoming the Warrior of Light, but the causes were always nebulous, a confluence of personal choices and random circumstance that fermented into a tragedy. Sometimes, terrible things just happened, for no real reason, even to good people, and it was no one’s fault, really. There was no one person to blame, no villain to rage against. Just the inexorable chaos of the universe.  

Haurchefant’s death, though, was different. It had not only been someone’s fault, it had been intentional. There was a person, then an institution, on which to focus all of those swirling negative emotions, crystallizing them into rage. All of the heart-wrenching agony had a target. Someone that needed to be punished. 

The anger, however, did not die with Ser Zephirin, or Thordan, or the rest of the Heavensward. Even as their glittering aether dissipated into the air, the fury raged on. The evildoers were vanquished, and could do no more harm. Yet she was still so angry! But who was left to blame? Aymeric? Herself? No. In truth, there was no one. There was nowhere to direct such anger, and yet it festered in her chest, screaming to be released. 

She had tried to swallow those feelings, to press them down so far into her chest that they would never see the light of day. Even if she couldn’t hide them from herself, she could certainly shield others from them. How could she tell her friends, or anybody, about them, after all? Everyone believed she was a hero, that she was a good person. But surely a hero – surely a good person – couldn’t possibly have such ugliness buried inside them. What would they think of her if they could see the anger smoldering within her, like crackling embers awaiting a sudden updraft? 

It had taken her own reflection to teach her that that wasn’t sustainable. Shoving that anger down would only burn her alive from the inside. It had been a hard lesson to learn, but seeing her own face before her as she might see another person’s, the face of someone who was lost and hurting, had driven it home like a nail through her heart. It hadn’t been easy – it still wasn’t easy – but she was learning to be kind to herself. She had to give herself the grace she would show another girl, just like her, were the situation different. She at least had to try, anyway. This realization had helped to temper the rage, not by forcing it into submission but by acknowledging it, and recognizing it for what it was: pain. She now let such feelings wash over her, through her, without getting stuck in her heart or her throat where they might once again take root. It no longer built up inside of her, no longer needed to be vented to prevent her from exploding. She still felt it, of course, but it never made her ache for violent, bloody vengeance. 

That was what she told herself, at least. Which had been all well and good right up until she saw Ignasse. Until she saw that blue and white armor. 

She hadn’t even known Ignasse. He had been but one face among the many that had been absorbed into Thordan’s primal. Yet even still, it was like someone had pulled a lever inside of her that opened all of the floodgates. The hounds that had been sleeping quietly within were once again baying for blood. She lunged before she even realized what she was doing, fury singing through her veins once more. 

By the grace of the Twelve and Sid’s own quick reflexes, her friend was able to grab her before she had made it more than a few steps. Realizing upon doing so that she fully intended to fight for her freedom, he wrapped both arms around her in a more serious attempt to restrain her. Still, she thrashed about wildly in his grip, and he struggled to keep hold of her despite his great size advantage. 

“Let go of me, Sid!” She almost screamed, instead spitting out the words to keep them at a more reasonable volume. Sid didn’t comply with her orders, but made a sound of aggravation as she continued striving to free herself. She hadn’t even grabbed her sword; she was going to kill him with her bare hands if she could. 

“What in the name of the Fury-“ he hissed, voice strained. He readjusted his grip on her, and she tried to slam her foot down onto his despite the fact that they were both wearing metal sabatons. “Rhiki! Stop it! Hey!” She elbowed him in her attempts to escape. 

“What in the hells?! So when you want to kill someone it’s fine but when I want to suddenly it’s-“ 

“Rhiki, please calm down!” Rielle had also leapt into action when she saw the  alarming fluctuation in Z’rhiki’s behavior. She had dashed in front of the grappling pair, placing herself between Rhiki and the conjured man consoling his bereaved cousin, hoping to further hamper her efforts. Luckily, they had been watching the scene unfold from such a distance that the pair, with their backs mostly turned, didn’t seem to notice the small scuffle that had broken out. 

“Stay out of it! Both of you!” She growled, though with her voice’s high pitch and lilt it sounded less than threatening. “How dare that little shit use my aether to bring back a fucking Knight of the fucking Heavens’ Ward!” 

Earlier, she had been happy to help the boy, Myste, fulfill his strange purpose, despite the theft of her aether. He was a bit odd, to be sure, but she had felt that his heart was in the right place. This, though? This was too far. 

She renewed her struggle, and Sid had to almost lift her off the ground to keep her from pulling herself out of his grasp. “Not. Happening.” He grunted through gritted teeth, clearly frustrated. 

“Rhiki please!” Rielle begged again. “Myste is just trying to help! I’m sure of it! We don’t even know what’s really going on! If you’ll just calm down we can sort everything out, I know we can!” 

Though the words themselves did little to stem the tide of Rhiki’s anger, the pleading tone of her voice seemed to reach her, and her writhing subsided, if only a little, allowing Sid to grab a firmer hold of her. “Look!” He said, keeping his voice low, “It looks like they’re finishing up! At least let him get out of sight of his grieving relation. Then you can kill him.” 

This sounded to her like a much more reasonable proposal, and she stilled in his arms. “Fine,” she relented, voice still frayed from the exertion. “Now will you let go of me already?” 

This time Sid did release her, but kept his hands on her shoulders should she decide to make another dash for the man. She took a few deep breaths, but still seethed. 

“That boy has some explaining to do.” 

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2023 #ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #heavensward spoilers #dark knight quest spoilers #sidurgu orl #rielle de caulignont #myste #auggie writes #rhiki tag #i'm glad I remembered this idea because I really had nooooo idea what i was going to do before that #also had to use my mobile hotspot to post this because my internet is out >_> #anyway enjoy rhiki's thirst for VIOLENCE

[the-invisible-queer]

i'm gonna miss your danny content a lot

What are you talking about, bestie?

Danny content isn't going anywhere as far as I'm concerned. Still have the sideblog going strong.

Just because I don't post him as much doesn't mean the fixation is gone.

I still have to finish CM and I still got s2 of TWOT to watch. I still have to finish Three Rivers too and another show of his.

It's just hard to watch stuff when I don't have Wi-Fi at home. I'm working on a mobile hotspot for my internet use on my laptop. And last month I learned that Amazon Prime uses so much data (compared to other streaming services I use) that I can't use my hotspot to watch any Amazon Prime shows.

And I REALLY hate watching stuff on my phone. I don't want you watch TWOT s2 on my phone because I feel like I won't be able to enjoy it as much.

I still very much love Daniel Henney. I'm still a fan of his and will continue watching his work and supporting him.

Danny content isn't going anywhere.

My blog used to be a lot more active with Danny content because I got asks about Danny. That I had fun with.

I am always accepting asks about Danny or any other past fixation I've had.

My fixations don't die. They go on the shelf waiting for something exciting to happen.

But also my mental health has been really bad.

I know no one asked for my Jonas Brothers fixation. But I'm on the struggle bus mentally and those three dorks have helped pull me out of some dark places the past month and a half.

Quite literally the Jonas Brothers have saved my life AGAIN.

And since I haven't been able to watch stuff as a distraction, I have been listening to music to quiet the negative thoughts.

JUST BECAUSE I've been posting more about Jonas Brothers doesn't mean I'm gonna stop posting about Danny.

Like it's not as frequent sure.

But the man still lives in my head rent free. And I still post him on my Instagram every goddamn day.

So again, the Danny content isn't going anywhere.

[bomberqueen17]

life update

ha so I was So Offline this past weekend-- during the week I was at least poking my head in on the Internet in the evenings using my phone as a mobile hotspot, and sometimes I had a few minutes during the day, but then on Friday at noon Dude showed up and I was just busy and then in the evenings there was family shit until late and then I didn’t want to keep him up so I think three whole days went by where I did not actually open my computer, and only looked at my phone occasionally. I also worked the farmer’s market on Saturday, which, whoo it was 91 degrees Fahrenheit, great.

Friday evening my older sister and her kids and dogs had showed up to Mom’s house, so I didn’t see them until Saturday afternoon. Dude was quiet and subdued and sat in the corner-- not far off his normal behavior, but I did ask him at one point and he said oh i haven’t been sleeping well this week i’m tired, but told me not to worry about him, so, I didn’t.

It wasn’t until Saturday night as we were walking back to the cabin that he spoke and i noticed his voice was extremely hoarse. “What the heck,” I said, “you sound like shit.”

He coughed. “I feel like shit,” he said.

I stared at him. “You took a rapid test before you got on the train, right?” I said. “If you spent all week with out of town coworkers visiting, and you were tired and run-down and--”

“No,” he said.

For some reason I didn’t make him take a rapid test right then. Possibly because there’s no power in the cabin and I was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep. But you’re already guessing the punchline. The next morning I had him take one of the pile of rapid tests I carry with me always for such a thing (half of the pile that lives in our house), and sure enough.

Immediately, it showed a positive result.

Fucking great, Dude! You coughed on my mom, and on all of my niblings! BIL had *just* Saturday afternoon been done with the 5-day post-exposure protocol after sitting next to the deputy mayor of Troy in a meeting one day before (the deputy) tested positive, so now everyone gets to mask back up...

we had to drive home with masks on, and I had to do all the driving, and he was like yeah in hindsight I get that I should’ve figured this out earlier but-- well he’d had bad tooth pain, had to go to emergency dentist, wasn’t sleeping or eating because of it, and had been consistently coughing due to allergies, and he just plain hadn’t noticed when the accounted-for malaise had shifted over to being more general.

Now he has decided to hole up in the living room of our house, not either of the bedrooms, and that room has no doors, so I have to wear a mask anywhere besides the bedrooms. This is stupid, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. I have tested negative once, and will re-test every 24h I guess-- the protocol is to test on days 3, 4, 5 of exposure and then return to normal, but as my exposure is ongoing I can’t see how that will work out.

I’m at work at the moment, mostly to get out of the house so he has a chance to putter a bit. When I get home I’m going to force him to move into the guest room. He didn’t want to do that because then “if you want to go to the back porch you’d have to walk past me!” ... Dude why don’t you just take the back porch, and I’ll be in the house. I have no need to get to the back porch. if I do I can walk there from outside.

But the guest bed currently has a bunch of my spare clothes on it, because normally I can’t get dressed in our actual bedroom because Dude sleeps later than me. So if I just haul all those clothes out then I think he can just be in there. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than forcing me to wear a mask everywhere in our house.

Of course, if I test positive when I do my second test in about 4 hours, then it will be moot, but.

I think I’m going to borrow some equipment from work so I can work from home a little bit this week, and not come in, because this is fucking stupid.

#life update #about the author #that quarantine lyfe #fuck this shit #covid-19 #coronavirus

[helpibrokemybrain]

writing-prompt-s facelessnamelessanarchist Follow

Follow welcomedhappiness Farewell online privacy

Follow tikalgirl What happened?

xdvisyrx Trump happened.

Follow pizzaalle just get a VPN?

Follow earth-ruins You can’t just tell people to ‘get a VPN (Virtual Private Network)’. Buying a VPN is like buying a house. It’s very very important. Having no VPN or having a ‘wrong’ one can seriously damage your life. Especially for Americans because their privacy laws are garbage. I am going to try explain why you should get a VPN but bare with me, I am from Germany and my English is far from perfect. Let’s start with a simple test. Click this link here: https://whatismyipaddress.com/ It will tell your IP adres, your ISP (internet service provider), and your location. The location might not be very accurate, but then again, it’s just a simple website. Imagine what the government can do! So basically, everyone can find out where you live. But there is more danger. Your ISP. Your ISP logs your every move online and they are required to keep it in case the government wants access to it (or if a 3rd party wants to buy your data (yikes). They have everything. What websites you visit. How long you stay on a website. What you download. Your search terms. European laws are more subtle on this but if you are from the US you are #@*#&, especially because Trump doesn’t support the open internet. It’s scary but maybe in the future you can’t get a job because the recruiter knows your searched on ‘how to deal with depression’ or anythings else that’s supposed to be private because it’s your f*cking right. Or you get a $100k fine because you pirated a movie 15 years ago. You need a VPN. You’re dumb for not using one. but what does a VPN do? A VPN encrypts all your data so if it were be intercepted no one can ‘crack the code’ and damage your privacy. Usually being online goes like this (simplified): Your computer —-> ISP (—–> keeps data —–> sells it) But with a VPN it goes like: Your computer —–> VPN (encrypts data)—–> ISP (ISP can’t see shit) Furthermore, a VPN hides your IP address and location by giving you another IP address located in Spain for example (you can often choose from a list and change as many times as you want). Now that you know why you should get a VPN and what is does it is important to educate yourself because people often choose the wrong VPN. VPN providers are also businesses and have to obey the law. If you choose a VPN provider located in the US then you are throwing your money away because the laws in the US shits on your privacy. If the US gov wants the provider to give all their logs they have to obey.  The ISP  still can’t see what you are doing online and sell your data but the US gov can interfere with your VPN provider so NEVER CHOOSE A PROVIDER LOCATED IN THE US. I just wanted to make that very clear so my followers don’t buy false security. There is still more danger!  Who says your VPN provider isn’t selling your data? You need to check their logging policy. Do they keep logs? If yes, what for? For how long do they keep them? Tip: Choose a provider who doesn’t keep logs More about law  The US is part of the Five Eyes program (the worst): The Five Eyes, often abbreviated as FVEY, is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence (source) There is also a Nine Eyes (bit better) and Fourteen Eyes Program (better).  You don’t want a VPN provider who is located in one the Five Eyes countries.  If you had to choose go for a provider located in a country that’s part of the Fourteen Eyes Program or even better, go for a country that isn’t part of any program! I know this is a shitty explanation and please pardon my english but now it’s time to do your own research. Take your privacy seriously. Maybe WWIII breaks out and you get killed for liking the ‘wrong’ FB-page. Go to this website: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/simple-vpn-comparison-chart/ Make sure that your future VPN provider both has green boxes for Privacy Jurisdiction and Privacy Logging. I recommend ovpn.se and trust.zone. ovpn is located in Sweden so they are part

of the 14 Eyes Program and they keep minimal logs. Their business ethics, however, are alright. Trustzone is located in the Seychelles. No country can interfere and their privacy jurisdiction is the best you can get. The US want your data but needs to get it from Trustzone? The Seychelles will simply give them the finger and wave them goodbye. However, this makes this provider very appealing for people who torrent and criminals because they keep no logs (and that is how it shoud be) Also,  there are almost no marketing efforts so this provider is one the cheapest) Also, often providers such as ExpressVPN are being called ‘The Best’ on websites about VPNs but know that this is just marketing which also makes those provider more expensive (and they too shit on your privacy) This must be the worst article you have ever read but please, please take your privacy very seriously. EDIT: I got many people asking me which provider I use. For those who want to know, I use Trust Zone. They offer a free 3-day trial with no strings attached. But still do your own research!

writing-prompt-s I am also with Trustzone but I think you forgot to explain one of it’s most important features. It protects you when you are using someone else’s Wi-Fi. If you are at Starbucks and you use their Wi-Fi your privacy is at risk. Anyone with ill intentions could steal your information. Especially if you are using an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot. With a VPN your data gets encrypted so no one can steal it.

Follow rabbittiddy Wait, what’s going, on? Did trump destroy internet privacy with a bill or something? Where’s the news? Oh wait, why am I getting visions of Alex Jones and selling water purifiers?

Follow thecrystalfems He hasn’t yet but he says he wants to. And if he is serious about it it would be really easy to do. Since all our data is already recorded, as the person above explained.

Follow coltrer Trump wants more surveillance of Muslim Americans. This in a country where internet privacy is already close to non-existent. Trust.Zone has a free trial. Use it.  btw this post only has 11k notes? That’s quite disappointing for something this important. Don’t reblog this post to save a life. Reblog this to protect an entire family!

Follow imthedoctor12 @earth-ruins @writing-prompt-s Should I get trustzone for my mobile device?

writing-prompt-s If you use public Wi-Fi, then yes. Which VPN you use is up to you, amigo. Take @earth-ruinsadvice. Do your own research first.

writing-prompt-s @elvesfromthedeep​ just brought the current situation in the US to my attention (March 30, 2017). SourcesAnger as US internet privacy law scrapped  Congress just voted to let internet providers sell your browsing history  To all my friends in the US, please read this entire post. Making everyone aware of VPNs is going to be my mission. Your privacy matters. Please reblog this post.

Follow greeneyespurpleheart Don’t tell me you just wanted to scroll past this. Stop looking at pictures of cats for a moment, okay? Don’t you realize how important this is? This is dangerous! ‘America, the best FREE country in the world’ my ass. With this new law your ISP can sell your Internet history which could include passwords, usernames, religion, credit card numbers, race and much more to the highest bidder. So here is what I want you to do. You are going to read the whole thing and before you think ’this is so important. Let me reblog this real quick and go back to admiring cats again-’ NO! Don’t reblog this. Take action first. Then reblog. Sign up for a free trial! Trust.Zone offers one (here). Yes. It might be difficult to set up a VPN for some people. But is that going to stop you from protecting yourself and your family? 30 minutes. 30 minutes is all that it takes. 5 if you know how to install software. The problem with some of you is that you see ‘difficult’ as something negative. I want you to see difficult differently. I need you to push through this stuff. You are going to protect yourself. There is nothing negative about that. VPNs are fun and costsaving too! A VPN bypasses geographical restrictions so you can access websites you normally can’t or you could start Netflix’s one month free trial over and over again- forever. And it’s legal! (unless you use it to buy weapons etc.,) Don’t tell yourself that you are too tired and that you will do this tomorrow. Because that isn’t going to happen and you know it. You have to do this right now. You only have to click on it. Don’t let this/shit/life just happen to you. Take yourself seriously. Get a VPN. Privacy is not a privilege, it’s a fundamental human right

joyfuldefender Ok sorry that it’s so freaking long and also sorry for the language, but this is extremely important. Please reblog!

Follow li-ionsandtigersandbears Reblogging again bc this is important

Follow mermaidz4ever We have a VPN you should get one too

killmongersbaby Please read.

Follow bae-in-maine Can you get them for your phones?

Follow kika-lei ^ you can. & when you have a subscription you can use it on your phone and computer. no need for separate subs or purchases. it is absolutely so important for safety. but one of my fave things to do with my vpn is access non-US netflix. I mean other places have all the new good place eps, all the ‘classic’ bggo eps…

i-cant-remember-who-i-am IMPORTANT

Follow theriflemanofroblox reblogging so new people can be aware :)

Follow facelessnamelessanarchist Long as hell, but read it!!!

Source: welcomedhappiness

————————— I found this post and I thought it was important but tumblr wouldn’t let me reblog it for some reason so I copy/pasted it because I’m not very tech savvy

[claudia-kishi]

14, 26, 34

14. how long does it usually take you to make a set?

it depends on what kind of set! for ones that are like... 2 gifs long maybe like 10 min max. for ones that are the same scene but take up 6-10 gifs i’d say like... 30 minutes to an hour? then there are the gifsets where you have to go through a bunch of episodes to get the caps and those take 5ever. but honestly i lose track of time when i edit which is bad haha but i also can’t stop editing a gifset midway because it bothers me love that for me!

26. how many un posted sets are in your drafts right now? 

6! i usually don’t save things in drafts (esp not now since tumblr eats them ugh!) so it’s pretty clear. most of them i’ve posted already or i’ve scrapped completely because i’ve given up hahaha whoops.

34. a set that took you a long time/was really hard but you’re really proud of how it came out?

oh god. this eric x calleigh gifset LITERALLY killed me. since i definitely was NOT hunting down csi: miami downloads, i screenrecorded from hulu to make this... from 10 separate scenes... deleted duplicate frames (WHICH TAKES LITERALLY HOURS)... and colored it... AND UPLOADED IT WHEN I HAD NO INTERNET SO I USED MY MOBILE HOTSPOT. this set was truly a journey. oddly coloring for csi: miami is pretty easy, so it actually turned out pretty nice... just sad that i posted this basically for myself so nobody cares about it. 🥺 in case you didn’t know they still are #1. 🥰

send me numbers!!

#ask #textythings #thank u rachel <33333 #escapologistcameronblack

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

Another life update. Go us!

Quick Links: Ongoing Fundraiser, Needs Wishlist, Wants Wishlist, Ko-Fi, PayPal.me.

I have a PayPal (tashabot at gmail dot com), a Venmo (which is like $80 in the hole somehow?) that is the same username, and a CashApp that is also $tashabot. Also linked above are Ko-Fi and PayPal.me. These methods all come to me automatically, although PayPal takes their cut. GoFundMe takes roughly three days to get to me and they also take their cut. Thankfully someone helped me get my bank account in order so I'm no longer in the negative.

The breakdown of everything is under the cut. The TLDR is that our combined households need $4,000 minimum to keep afloat and have no idea how to raise that? And to TRULY be afloat, we'd need $10,000 and magical jobs to come land in our laps.

Here's a list of everything I and my family owe, in full, but broken down into semi-digestible chunks:

If you can signal-boost this, that would be rad. Thanks for reading.

I owe T-Mobile $600, and I furthermore owe Alyssa $240 for paying a past-due amount on her emergency credit card so we wouldn't get shut off. A lot of this is late fees and EIPs for when we had equipment failures that we can't really get out of.

I owe $240 total to Geico, my car insurer, but I owe $103 of that by the 14th. I SHOULD have it in time, and the monthly amount will go down significantly after this payment. But still...yikes.

I need a new alternator for the RV. This can run anywhere from $50 to $250, and I have to pull it out before I can find out for sure. YAY!

I need a new headlight for the car, which according to Autozone is $16 for just the bulb, which I don't know if I can put it in properly, or $122 for the full assembly. It's like...one of the only issues with the car. I still haven't named her yet. Anyway, I'll figure out if I can just swap out the lamp or if I need to swap out the whole assembly today.

My mom and sister owe $581 to the water company, $479 past due. Yaaaay, living in a desert.

$51 to Waste Management who hauls away garbage. Kinda necessary.

They also owe $1050 to rent, plus a $35 late fee.

$242 to the electric company.

$264 to Charter, their Internet company, with $174 due for them to turn our Internet back on. We use the Internet for side-work so this is kind of important. I'm actually writing this out in Notepad, and then I'll post it on Tumblr using a tiny bit of my phone's wifi hotspot data.

My sister needs $350 to fix her sedan and register it so that she can retire the gas-guzzling truck she's been using.

My mom owes $5,715 on her car total, and owes $368 currently.

We're currently staying in front of their house, technically illegal but because we're homeless the police and code enforcement look the other way because we take every possible step to be safe and clean.

I need roughly $200 to do repairs and upgrades on the RV, internally and externally.

So the minimum amount we need to get "caught up" enough for my mom (who brings home about $3,000 a month but is covering ALL of us on that) to be not drowning? Almost four grand. If we wanted to ACTUALLY be caught up? Nearly $10,000.

The bad:

I have no idea how to get all of this, still. I work part-time at Gamestop and DoorDash/Instacart when I can, but I got diagnosed with Influenza-B yesterday so I can't do either of those things rn. I'm doing proofreading at the moment.

I've hit a fuckless zen, but I know my sister, who has my niece (six years old) is terrified most of the time, and I don't blame her. My mom is incredibly stressed because she's the only one with a full-time job and is supporting the majority of things on her own.

I got denied a monthly space at the only place in town that will take my RV, at its age.

I keep applying to jobs and either not getting callbacks, or getting interviews and then never hearing from anyone again. I DO have an interview as a leasing agent on Wednesday, but I'm not holding out hope I'll get it. Hopefully I won't be sick still then. I'm pretty sure giving your interviewer the flu is a good way to not get the job.

Raven has applied to everywhere that won't set off her PTSD. One callback, no jobs.

My sister has been applying everywhere too but, nothing. She's technically been charged with several felonies. Long story, if you want the deets and I trust you, you can PM me.

I posted the fundraiser to Reddit and I'm getting a lot of "helpful" comments about searching for jobs/relocating that just aren't something we can do right now, or are things we're already doing. It's like people don't believe me when I say that I am looking, flat-out, for jobs right now, and it's really disheartening.

I am officially a "real" Gamestop employee and not a seasonal one, but it pays minimum wage and I usually work like, one day a week, maybe two, now that the slow season is back.

I'm not sure my good computer works anymore. It got physically damaged at SNAFU Con and I'm afraid to try and start it up (plus I don't really have the room to set it up) and see how bad everything is. Replacing it would be incredibly expensive. - This is left over from the last update. I haven't checked because I'm still scared of what I'll find.

The good:

Everything from the last update. Raven and I are doing good, we're slowly making the RV into a home instead of a house, the cats are healthy, I get to see my dog soon.

I know we are incredibly privileged in a lot of ways. We HAVE transportation (a necessity in the area we live in, but still). We HAVE access to phones and internet. We HAVE some money that comes in. We HAVE a space to lay our heads every night. The problem is that a lot of that is going to be falling down around our heads soon because the money we do have come in isn't enough.

Thanks for reading, and I'm so sorry to be just..rambling on. I don't want my family to be homeless, and my family includes my mom and sister. I'm willing to provide receips of every bill paid off!

#fundraiser #Poverty #financial insecurity #Fundraising #money stuff

[stahl-tier]

My horrible Odyssey to install Git LFS on my Synology NAS

So this is a bit different content from what I usually post. But I NEEDED an outlet for this incredible buildup of frustration that I had to deal with for the past WEEK. The objective seemed easy when I decided to start this terrible journey:

Install Git LFS on a Synology NAS disk station.

The Status Quo

My friend and I wanted to work on a Unity project together, so "normal" Git, I was told, would not suffice. It had to be LFS. We looked into other options before, but I thought "Hey, why not use the readily available NAS I have? Why use external, even paid services if we can just use a homebrew solution?" And that's where the descent into madness started.

I have a DS418j, not the most advanced or expensive model. It is important to note that I went into this as a completely clueless person.

I never used Git via console commands. My knowledge of Git was generally very limited. Even at the end of all this, I still BARELY know how to set up a repository and interact with it.

I had no idea what LFS even really does.

I only had very rudimentary knowledge of how to operate my NAS via its user interface.

I never interacted with a Linux console before. It turned out that I would be doing that a lot.

A Walk in the Park?

At first, everything seemed pretty straightforward, to be honest. I googled the simple task of setting up Git on a Synology NAS. The first result was already pretty helpful.

It seemed like all I had to do was set up a new user on my NAS ("gituser"), also install the available "Git Server" from the NAS's user interface. And "WebDAV", another package that could be installed via the interface.

WebDAV, as I found out, was a key component in my journey. It was a bit of a struggle to set up, but it appeared to be important in the process of connecting to my NAS via HTTPS. And probably other things that I still have no idea about. I didn't even know why I'm installing WebDAV in the first place, because I intended to use Git via SSH. Which another setting in my NAS would provide - the Terminal setting in the system settings. That's where I enabled SSH via port 22.

Well, my friend then told me that we cannot use LFS via SSH. Okay, I thought, that's what WebDAV is for, after all.

The Git Server had very few options, which seemed fishy to me. It literally only has one window where you set permissions for users. I gave gituser the permission to access it. That was that.

Of course I also needed a shared folder for our repositories ("git"). Creating that was not hard either. Here I noticed that gituser needs to be part of the "administrators" group for Git Server to work properly. But I could not remove it from the "users" group, so things got a bit fucky with permissions. I ended up giving both the administrators and users group a lot more permissions than I was comfortable with. But I trust my friend to not wreak havoc on my NAS for the time being.

So, everything was set up. Or so I thought.

Hitting the first Bump in the Road

I was able to connect to my NAS via SSH only, but didn't think anything of it yet. Doing that, I used Sourcetree to create the first test repo. Went to the NAS interface, checked, it was there and looked good. I could push and pull files. Created a second repo, ran "git lfs install"... and it didn't work.

The lfs command was not known.

I quickly found out that... of course it could not be known. Other than github for example, my NAS did not have LFS pre-setup. So, I concluded, I had to go install LFS on my NAS.

...Easier said than done.

While it does support a console with most regular Linux commands... a package manager is not included. At least none that is easily accessible, or supports any common packages.

At this point I figured "Why deal with this myself?" and contacted Synology support. I asked them "how can I set up Git LFS on my NAS?"

And Synology Support said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They told me they do not offer support for the console. They said I should go ask the community. Okay.

I did not ask the community, but I did a lot of googling and found out: I could not "just install" LFS. I had to get creative.

We heard you like package managers?

First, I figured out that I need to be able to use the "curl" command. All the binary files on LFS's package cloud were binaries that were apparently downloadable with curl. I did not know what curl was... but I knew I needed to get it working.

I found out that for curl to work, I needed to install PHP on my NAS. Luckily, that was possible via Synology's included package manager. But for PHP to DO anything, I also had to install the "Web Station" and configure my PHP version there. I figured... might as well!

After enabling a couple PHP commands, I felt ready to download LFS. But the question was... which version? What even was my OS?

As it turns out, Synology uses a custom Linux version for their diskstations. Of course, LFS does not "officially" provide a package for that version. I tried the nodeJS version, because I noticed I also have nodeJS installed on my NAS. I ran into the version issue as well, unfortunately, when I tried to install the package through nodeJS. Not even changing my nodeJS version helped. Many hours later, I tried the .deb and .rpm files randomly instead of the nodeJS ones. Those also didn't want to work, despite me eventually figuring out how to lie to them about which OS I'm using.

I was almost ready to give up at that point. I was at least 3 full days into my odyssey already.

But then I spotted something else... A thing called "GoLang". Apparently, it would be possible to download LFS via GoLang. However, to do that, I of course needed to get Go first.

An initial search got me on track to "ipkg", which promised to enable me to install Go. But after reading up on it a bit, it looked woefully outdated. I had it already downloaded and was about to install, but ran into errors and trouble again.

That was when I found "Entware". It's similar to ipkg, but uses "opkg", a similar package manager. I was able to install Entware on my NAS without much trouble, and it contained the Go package that I needed so direly.

While I was at it, I also installed the available "git" and "git-http" packages from opkg, just to make sure. Who knew if they'd come in handy. I don't know if they did, but they also didn't seem to cause any harm.

Now, with Go installed (which went surprisingly smoothly), I was able to access just about anything on the internet and install it on my NAS! Hallelujah!

But if you thought it was over... just look at the scrollbar.

The end of my odyssey was finally in sight. I thought that nothing could go wrong anymore, now! With the help of Go, I was able to install the LFS binary. I was able to run it in my console, too. I was finally able to run "git lfs install".

...and it didn't help.

I got a bunch of errors, again. Instead of getting closer to the solution, it seemed like I just managed to find more obscure errors. Here the important thing about the SSH came in, as well. LFS does not like SSH, from what I found out. But SSH was the only way for me to connect to my NAS from my PC!

In a fury of looking up stuff again, I found the "DDNS" option on my NAS. That would allow me to get a hostname and use it like a normal website address! I kinda rushed through the setup because I had no idea what I was doing.

Well, whatever I did, it seemed to be sufficient. My friend could now connect to my NAS over her Sourcetree client. But when she tried to upload LFS objects, it just didn't work. She got a "404" error.

It wasn't hard to figure out that 404 meant no access in this case - my NAS was simply refusing to show any directory to someone who doesn't have access to it. Cue a long journey into my NAS's interface to make sure the gituser had the right permissions. I also changed the password because I read something about WebDAV being particular about some passwords. I also made a new user to see if maybe I just messed up setting up gituser.

To test if I was making any progress, my friend and I tried to access my NAS via our web browsers. But no matter what we tried, no matter what I tried, we couldn't access. 403 Forbidden or 404 Not Found. Those were the results. I couldn't even access if I used my admin account.

I tried to hack my way into pushing anyway, and only ended up corrupting our repo's history with "missing" and "broken" files because they were never properly uploaded, but LFS thought they were.

It should be noted that I had just accepted that HTTPS won't let me connect on my PC. So I had set up a hotspot for my mobile internet via my phone and used my laptop to do these things. I was in denial about eventually having to fix this, because I'm on a tight data plan on mobile and uploading and downloading Unity projects of several GB size wasn't going to happen that way.

Synology Support to the Rescue! ...Or?

It seemed like we had finally narrowed down the issue with our LFS upload attempts when I also checked the WebDAV console and it reported that it denied our login attempts through browser and Sourcetree as an "authorization failure". So something was wrong with WebDAV.

I contacted Synology support a second time. I asked them, "Why can't my friend and I connect to my NAS via the internet when I have WebDAV enabled and everything port forwarded?"

And Synology Support said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They told me WebDAV and web browsers don't use the same HTTP and HTTPS methods. They are simply not compatible. They told me I should download their WebDAV client or connect locally.

So it was known from the start that what I was attempting could never work... but it was also not mentioned anywhere on the web or Synology's help pages that this was the case.

We have a saying in Austria: "jemanden deppert sterben lassen". It translates to "to let someone die stupid". Essentially, it means that you have information and you watch someone else without this information struggle without ever telling them about it voluntarily. I felt this saying was very appropriate for my situation.

Time to give up, I guess... Except I didn't.

I was almost a week into my odyssey by now. Maybe it's a sunk-cost-fallacy, but I couldn't abandon all my work now. I refused.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

I went back to open another browser tab (my average was 20 open tabs during this... normally it's 2 to 3). And I searched for a solution that works with WebDAV. And truly... there was ONE repo online that offered it.

A special thanks goes out to this fellow: https://github.com/mpotthoff/git-lfs-webdav

They straight up saved our project from collapsing into a pile of tears and rage. I installed this package on my NAS, which... sort of worked. It turned out I needed to install it locally (as well?). So I did. But I needed to install Git, LFS, and Go on my local PC as well for that.

So with the help of Go, I built an exe file for my laptop, which then gave me a 401 when trying to push to LFS. Luckily I expected that. And I was overjoyed, because FINALLY a different error.

I tried to run the steps in the git-lfs-webdav repo to fix it... but got a strange error in the console.

It cried, when trying to enter my username, that the "handle" for the password was wrong. But I hadn't even entered the password yet! Searching some more on the internet gave me no conclusive answer. Randomly, I tried a different console - my Sourcetree console apparently runs "MINGW32" while my Git console runs "MINGW64". Switching to the Git console fixed this problem for me, and switching to the Windows shell fixed it for my friend.

And then, it finally worked for my friend.

She could upload a test image via LFS, and I could receive it via LFS on my laptop.

The rest was me calling my internet provider about my PC being unable to connect. The internet provider said ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Luckily I did not attempt to mess with my DNS or Subnet Mask or anything of the sort, or buy a VPN/Proxy. All I had to do was create a self-signed SSL certificate on my NAS, download it, and feed it into my PC's trusted authorities files. My friend had to download and feed it too.

In Summary...

This was a horrible, terrible, awful journey. I would not recommend attempting this at home to anyone.

Even now, what we've got going on only sort-of works with our Unity project, because Unity is... Unity. We're still figuring out the details, for example why scene content is going missing and so on.

But I believe that the worst and most difficult part is over. Will I be able to recreate this in a year or two, maybe for a different repo, on a different PC?

Probably not.

#synology #synology nas #nas #diskstation #git #git lfs #webdav

[maryellencarter]

I'm not sure if I was super clear, so my apologies if I'm explaining a bunch of stuff you already know. :-)

So mobile hotspot itself -- I think this is a nationwide standard on most phones and carriers? If you have a phone and a plan with the functionality, you can go into your phone settings, on my iPhone it's called "Personal Hotspot", and set your phone to broadcast a wifi signal. Then you can get onto that wifi with your laptop, tablet, whatever, and browse using your phone's data.

If you have unlimited data, that's all well and good. If, like me, you have limited data (I have 2gb a month because I'm poor), that could become a problem. That's where this company-specific feature comes in. As y'all can probably tell, I'm trying to keep these posts fairly ungoogleable for obvious reasons, but using the current obfuscation techniques that seem to be in vogue, the feature is called Sa//fety Mo??de. You have to use the company's mobile app or customer web portal to turn it on -- you can call customer service but it's frankly easier to do it yourself, it's under the Data tab in the app iirc -- and then when you run out of data, instead of "you ran out of data, here's an overage charge, do you want to buy more data at fifteen bucks a gig", you get "you ran out of data, you're now in Saf((ety M))ode" and your phone internet speed drops to 128kbps, which is Pretty Got Damn Slow but will load text posts and Discord messages just fine.

(I don't think I've actually evangelized this feature previously, but it is literally the reason I stay on this company's service even when I'm very broke. When I'm homeless like this, it keeps me connected without raising my phone bill, which is the primary thing keeping me sane. Not something they'd want to put in an advertisement, but true.)

SO! When you use your phone as a hotspot and still have fast data left on your plan, it will use that fast data, can't get around that. But I had been assuming that the hotspot function required fast data to work -- that if I tried it while I was on my slow data, I'd either get an error message "do you want to purchase more data" or just get a data purchase added to my phone bill -- and it doesn't. You can use that slow free data as wifi with the hotspot function.

Which means I can write in Gdocs from home and also possibly (I haven't tested Discord voice chat on slow data yet) get back to D&D just in time for the last few sessions of the campaign. So I am squeeing my damn face off here. :D

Um. That got long. Did I answer your question? :-)

#how do telephones #still working on a tag for this topic #i suppose eletelephony is too vague #do any of yall know that poem though #once there was an elephant who tried to use the telephant?

[johnandsarah]

Honeymoon Days Ten and Eleven: Second Breakfast, Ed Hardy Hell, and Old Friends in Person

Our host in Cork took me seriously when I told him we had a “hobbit-like affinity” for breakfast when considering recommendations for a place to eat, and he sent us to the Liberty Grille. There, in true hobbit fashion, we each had a standard breakfast, and then, once we noticed the extensive French toast menu on the back of the first menu, we had second breakfast. I had an absolutely stunning French toast made with nectarines and maple-infused soy yogurt. 100/10, would order at the Green Dragon.

By this point, we were basically experts on the Ireland rail system, so we got to our train and our ~reserved~ seats with plenty of time to spare. Our seat-mates this time around were two teenage girls on their way to Dublin to party; they both applied full faces of makeup over the course of the journey, including false lashes and winged eyeliner! Truly impressive, ladies; I salute you.

Our arrival in Dublin this time went.......less smoothly. We had sort of planned our entire day around the 3 PM check-in at our AirBnB near Ha’penny Bridge, but our host was really late to meet us and let us in to the apartment. Like, 90 minutes late. This was the only time in Ireland that I regretted not shelling out €60 for a mobile WiFi hotspot, because loitering outside a Starbucks down the street did not feel like #honeymoongoals. When he finally did show up (and after a false start where he asked me if I was “Barbara,” wandered away, checked his phone down the street, then ran back and said, “Sorry, Sarah???”), he brought us to the apartment. This bed, you guys. This bed. It felt like a scratchy sheet stretched over bare bedsprings. It looked like an Ed Hardy shirt that got dragged through a Harley Davidson merch store.

But hey, at least sleeping here on our last night would make going home to sleep in our own bed that much more appealing.

We quickly left to go on the main and much more pleasant event of the evening, which was meeting up with Moose, one of John’s long-time internet friends and a fellow pedal-builder based here in Dublin. He met us by the bridge and took us on a little walk around some of his favorite spots that we had missed. This actually included the Chester Beatty Museum and Library, a place whose name I could never remember at which I saw an awesome exhibit about the Mughal Empire during my very brief stop in Dublin nearly ten years ago. Turns out there’s also this neat design in the law outside that you can only see by getting on the walls around what used to be the old harbor in Dublin.

We also dropped in on Some Neck Guitars, a very cool shop owned by some friends of Moose. I had a great chat with the owner, Owen, about how Boston has changed since he lived there for a year in 1994 while John and Moose talked shop over the impressive collection of gear on display. It was a delight to see that the demo pedal board not only had one of Moose’s wares (top right) but some three models from fellow Boston pedal-friends Coppersound Pedals!

After the shop, we met up with Moose’s wife Roisin and went out for truly excellent ramen. We chatted all about our journey through Ireland, the weird similarities between Northern Ireland and the American South, and Marie Kondo’s Very Powerful Baby. It was a really lovely evening, and it was definitely worth the truly shitty AirBnB.

This morning, John woke up feeling rather worse for the wear as his good-for-nothin’ tonsils and a sore throat combined with Hell Bed to make for a pretty poor night’s rest. However, we had managed to use the very spotty WiFi at this apartment (deep sigh) to find a likely looking spot for breakfast right around the corner. Lemon Jelly Cafe had my favorite tea of the whole trip (very similar to my all-time fave, MEM Tea’s Blue Flower Earl Grey) and fresh-squeezed orange juice that was unbelievably tasty. Plus, very LGBTQ-friendly! Hell yeah!

Now, we’re sitting at the airport in Dublin waiting for our first flight back home. We’ve got a four-hour layover in Keflavik (don’t think we didn’t consider taking a shuttle to the Blue Lagoon!!!), and then we’ll be off for Boston. This trip has been an absolute whirlwind, and I am so happy to have taken it with my favorite guy. We’ve had an amazing time, but we are definitely ready to see our pets, sleep in our own bed, and eat a Big Salad back home.

P.S.-Our amazing wedding photographer Katlyn Reilly posted our photos online! In a hilariously frustrating turn of events, the internet at our AirBnB last night was literally too slow to load them, so we couldn’t look through them when they arrived, but we’ve had much better luck here at the airport!

What a great day. What a great trip. What a great life.

Thanks for reading ❤️

[theglamdeveloper-blog]

Desk Setup!

I’m in the process of setting up my desk space in my apartment, with class starting and everything. I’m with two roommates, and this desk was being unused in a corner of the apartment, so I figured that I would give it the love that it needs. 

So here’s what’s currently on my desk starting from the bottom left corner:

Headphones: After talking to my audiophile friend, I picked up the Parrot Zik 3.0 headphones off of Amazon. The retail price was $600 but I ended up picking it up for roughly $250. They have a smart panel on the right ear cup so you can touch it and it will pause the music, increase and decrease volume, go back and skip a track. They’re active noise cancelling and they have pre-sets that you can play with to change the sound of the music. They are a dream for a tech lover like me.

Notebooks: The notebook directly under the headphones is by Miquelrius. I don’t know the exact name of the notebook, because I bought it at a law school bookstore. I absolutely love this notebook though. I bought one in purple for me to jot down notes while I’m at work, and I recently bought a black one for personal use. I really like the size of it. It’s not too small, not too big. And the pages are color coded so I could organize my notes and have different sections if need be. 

The black and white notebook I picked up at Target since it was back to school season. I use it to take down notes in my coding class and to pseudocode both activities and homework before going into Atom (the text editor I like to use) and cranking stuff out.

Planner: Last year I had a Day Designer planner. I absolutely loved it, but I wanted something with a bit more flexibility in terms of making it my own. Which is why I went for the kikki k. planner in Copper (which is actually just a rose gold). The marble inserts that I use are from Sessa Vee. She has both a regular website and an Etsy shop. I use the planner to plan out everything from the things that I have to do at work, the things that I have to do for class, and personal to-dos.

Laptop: This is my bread and butter. I had a PC before that was 3.5 years old, but as I started doing more design work, I realized that it wasn’t fast enough and didn’t have enough processing power to do the tasks that I needed it to do. So at the end of last year I bought the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13″ Laptop at the Apple Store. I picked this laptop because I am not about the dongle life. And this laptop was good enough for the things that I needed it to do, which is design work, web development, and the usual word processing and browsing the internet. It’s sitting on top of an black Incase laptop sleeve. I have a Uniqfind marble skin on my laptop and a clear case on top of it. I also have the Fliqlo screensaver, in 24 hour mode because I’m cool like that (lol not really).

iPad Mini: I bought this bad boy in October 2015 as a birthday gift to myself from Best Buy. It’s the iPad Mini 2 and I love it. I do wish that I got the cellular version, because I would definitely enjoy reading it on my commute to work and not have to use my phone as a mobile hotspot, but I enjoy using it to read, watch Netflix when I don’t have my laptop, and to take notes on. I also use it next to my laptop to look at class slides, as pictured. My favorite app for annotating powerpoint slides is Notability. I got it for free about 2-3 years before I bought my first iPad because I knew I was going to use the app down the line. I love the size of it, but I may replace it with a new iPad pro down the line.

Mini Mouse: This was my older brother’s, but you can easily find a mini mouse online on Amazon or Ebay. I use it on and off, it depends on my mood.

Felix Gray Glasses: Those glasses are actually computer glasses. Don’t look like them right? They have a blue filter on them so that my eyes hurt less from staring at screens all day. I purchased them because my eyes started to actually hurt after designing marketing materials for a couple of hours in InDesign one day. Seeing as I was doing more and more design work and I knew that I was going to be coding more, I knew that it was going to get worse. The glasses that I purchases have a .25 magnification on them to help reduce the eye strain even more. They recommend it for people who are looking at their computers for hours at a time, so financial analysts, web developers, and then there’s us folks that stare at InDesign and Photoshop for forever.

Desk Lamp: I bought this lamp from Target. It’s an organizational lamp so it has places to put pens, post-it notes, and it also has a USB port and an AC adapter which I thought was really handy. I have two sets of pens in there: the Papermate Inkjoy set of 14, and the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner set of 20. I also have the Sharpie Liquid Highlighter set of 6 in there as well.

What do you guys have on your desks?

#new studyblr #studyblr #studyspo #study motivation #studyspiration #desk setup #studygram #original content #new study blog #stationery #office supplies #staedler triplus fineliners #marble #technology #macbook