L.J. Writes

A couple of days last week went by in housework to get my new desk set up and change the furniture arrangement. This was after an all-nighter to send in my Soul-Sucking Neverending Work Assignment of Doom From Hell in the morning followed by a nap to sleep it off, so that was certainly a choice I made.

In the afternoon I rose from the dead to clear out the old desk and brought in the assembled pole-mounted desk, wiping down the desks and floor in between. I also moved my secondary Dell monitor from the old desk-mounted monitor arm to the new pole-mounted one (after snapping a pic of the old setup so I can sell the old arm on the flea market app Danggeun), then moved my computer housing to serve as a side desk. More wiping because the inside of that housing had gathered some dust over the years. The monitor was plugged in on its brand-new arm, and I turned it on to check the power supply-

And nothing! The monitor wasn't turning on! I wasn't sure if the monitor itself had somehow met its demise while being moved to its new mount or something was wrong with the power supply. So I dragged our cable hoard out of storage to see if I could find a matching power cord, which there was. Two of them, actually. Changing the power cord got the monitor working again, whew. Maybe I'd kept the monitor power cord too tightly curved on the old mount, or maybe its time had simply come.

Anyway it was a good thing we had the extra cord on hand, but the cables had become a tangled mess in storage and I somehow had the energy to group them into different plastic bags and tag them by categories like "power cords" and "charging cables." It doesn't make an immediate difference right now, but future-me will thank past-me the next time a cable needs to be found.

The old, bigger desk wasn't being dumped; rather, it replaced the side table of the living room couch. The couch-side table had been hanging on in bad shape for years after a younger Tater had jumped up and down on it, tilting sadly and precariously from a missing wheel, so it was a mercy really. (Why are kids?) I dismantled the old couch table and replaced it with the one I'd been using in the office. Also wiped down the living room floor while I was at it. After putting away or tossing a bunch of stuff, the new setup was more or less complete. I even took a night to do a deep-clean of the keycaps and board, a process I live-tooted on fedi.

( Before and after pics! )

I'm very satisfied with the new setup, despite all the work it took. The desk layout is more compact than before, the computer housing no longer gets between me and the monitor, and everything I need is within reach when I'm sitting at my desk (or desks, rather). The change was a while in coming and I'm relieved to have it over with.

Hello again, Dreamwidth!

It's been a while. Lately I've been hankering to keep an online journal for everyday, chatty stuff that's less serious than my author website (yes, I have one now!) but also archived in a more orderly and discoverable way than my fediverse social media accounts. This DW account was the obvious choice for it and I've always been meaning to do something with the account again, so might as well run with it! I'm hoping to stick around for longer this time.

So what have I been up to? I've been getting busy with work again after a five-month dry spell since a little coup attempt in Korea you might have heard about. A lot of the long, anxious winter and spring months were spent following the political news and going to protests, doing independent research, working on ttrpg translation, and lots of home cooking because we had more time than money.

The political situation is finally starting to stabilize with the Presidential election, and so is the economic situation. Literally work started rolling in the week of the election early June, so that's been a win on more than one front lol. I'm getting back to normal-year levels of work and income which is a huge relief, though it also means I'm busy and stressed again. I guess life is a choice between problems and this is better than the alternative!

So it's going to be a busy weekend crunching for a work deadline, monsoon season is here and it's raining again, I have a bunch of things going on and more I'd like to get into but I'll get to that post by post. Like I've been mildly obsessed with Kpop Demon Hunters, did some small coding projects, been working on side translation projects, ran some tabletop games at events... keeping busy, I guess, in addition to the default family, work, and home stuff.

And I continue to work on my writing, of course! More about that, too, as things come up.

After my prior post on the subject, here's yet another commonality between the fandom policers and the woobiefiers/apologists: They think their personal emotional reactions define the morality of a thing.

Again, they go to opposites from the same premise. The fandom police think that since they react with disgust, shame, fear etc. to a fictional depiction, it must be objectively harmful and therefore immoral to create. The apologists think that since they react with positivity and excitement to a fictional depiction, it must necessarily be harmless and objectively moral. The emotional and intellectual dishonesty is staggering in either case, which isn't surprising because they both start with the same dishonest and flawed premise.

I am a Christian atheist.

Let me state up front what I don't mean by that; I don't mean I believe in the obscure branch of Christian theology which states that God is dead and we must love each other and save each other in that absence. While I admire the poignancy of it, it doesn't gel for me even as metaphor because I don't believe God is dead but rather that he never existed, at least in any physical sense outside the sensemaking that we do through story.

I also don't use "atheist" as a pejorative here, as a Christian pastor does in his book The Christian Atheist criticizing Christians for living as though God does not exist. I don't think it's morally or intellectually inferior or superior not to believe in God.(1) By atheism I mean, simply, the lack of belief in God as a supernatural being. I don't assign any moral or other value judgment to it.

Fortunately, Christian atheism seems a lot more visible than it was back when I was first searching for the term back in 2013. The above two senses were the only ones I could find at the time, but now I am able to find entire articles on cultural Christianity(2) and more expanded information on Christian atheism itself, not to mention modern Christian atheists openly expressing their convictions.

( What Christian atheism means to me )

( Procrastination and career thoughts )

Speaking of whom, the Tot is growing apace, not doing much talking but he sure laughs and babbles a lot. He's a healthy and happy kid and I couldn't ask for anything more. He is HEAVY into cars, both toys and the real kind; Mark's father even sent the kid a mini sedan he can ride in and drive around, proving once and for all that grandparents love their grandchildren more than their children.

Mark calls that thing the White Elephant for a reason, aside from its color. It's noisy, takes up space, and is heavy as hell to take out of the house where there is enough space for the kiddo to ride it around, something we have only done twice. Funny, though, it's actually worked out reasonably well; the Tot hasn't shown much interest in playing outdoors with the thing, and mostly loves to climb in, honk the horn, and play its tiny selection of music. He occasionally pedals it backward and forward, but we stop him from doing that at night so we don't disturb the downstairs neighbors.

I pulled my zero gravity chair out of storage and rearranged my workstation to use it, with a bed tray holding my keyboard placed on two straps across the armrest so I can type comfortably. I was using a kitchen chair for a while and that got uncomfortable, so I considered getting a swivel office chair but the idea of being upright all the time didn't appeal, either. This arrangements suits me for now--with my main monitor being a flatscreen across the room, I can tilt back while working when it suits me. Maybe a better lumbar support could help, but then again I'm not vertical most of the time so it doesn't bother me.