“The drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room’s atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary.” — Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead
Last November I restarted this blog which was never actually started in actuality. Just ideas in my mind and a few noodles over the past 25 years (and of now — this moment that I’m writing — til at least 2032). Then last May I decided to make an effort at giving journaling a serious go because I kept having negative and positive experiences — comedic and tragic — that I considered novel and that might make me laugh in the future.
This experiment began in earnest in Las Vegas at New Relic FutureStack. I was sober. In Vegas. For the first time. There was a lot going on in both the internal and external non-psychedelic, organic, set and setting that’s been my experience so far. And then I found out that Electric Daisy Carnival was going on.
Over the years I’ve had more than a handful of random people — friends and others — tell me that I should make sure to journal if I wasn’t already, or start a blog, or both. Little did they know I’d already started earlier. If they commented in the past year that is. If they’d commented before that then yeah — I hadn’t started yet.
And, so far, I’ve managed to write one entry every day-ish over the past year. The thing is I recently realized this long-form stuff is more like a “show about nothing.” Which is also debatable. Words are something. I think. Theoretically.
“Day-ish.” That’s kind of an ADHD thing for sure. Not only being lost in imagination over actuality, but in doing something consistently. Basic life tasks and more complex. It can be challenging to implement consistency when there are way so many more interesting things to get my dopamine going.
Day-ish. Because I’d get distracted by life and then miss writing something. Or maybe avoid it. Or maybe post something of little substance then consider that writing even though it’s not actually writing.
Day-ish. Because when I started writing it was in the day. In Vegas. Where I saw a dancing Bumble Bee while walking one way on the strip, then hours later while walking back with its butt on a bench, now headless with a man’s head poking out. The man’s arms rested on his knees. His shoulders slumped. His head limp and buried in his hands . Body language that seemed like he was having a very bad experience. Some sort of exhaustion — physical or emotional or both. It was very hot out. But that’s a blog post to fill in future posts and past blanks sometime…
Day-ish. Because a few times I fell behind, but I filled in the blanks. Sorta. Kinda. Usually somewhat half-hearted. And tagged with “time travel” because… well… I wrote a past entry from the future. Which is a form of time travel.
lmao. “Fill in future posts and past blanks sometime…” We’ll fucking see about that. Especially if I keep posting all the fucking posts at the end of the fucking month. Distractions.
Distractions. That’s been a theme in this experience too. Just everywhere. Everything. Everyone. Of every sort. Have I read the past posts? Nope. That’s intentional. Have I read the past journal entries? Nope.
I fully expect all those to be some sort of long-term log of projects. Hopefully. I think the things I’ve been working through may have some sort of novel value. I will revisit them as the locus of my attention flails from this to that over time.
Hey neat. I’ve never known that “locus of attention” is an actual term that’s in use now. And wow. It is just such a spot on term to describe the attribute of mine that is flailing like fuck. Which is not in Wikipedia yet. Maybe I’ll add it. Yeah. Maybe I’ll add it. We’ll see.
Distractions. Yeah. That locus skips to something novel… and then even though my conscious mind is thinking, “Go back to what you need to do dude,” my actions are contrary to that… which leads to all sorts of mixed emotions.
A lot of it negative if having a difficult time approaching that something that might be time sensitive. Oh yeah. People seem to consider you some sort of fuck up if you have a challenging time keeping your shit together.
All of this a distraction to the rest of this post.
Which is all about distractions.
Which I absolutely excel at.
“Excel” as in “being exceptionally proficient in an activity or subject.” Not as in spreadsheet. Like just now I got distracted by an impulse to eat some Keto ice cream. I caved. I am barefoot as I write this now. Somehow when I took my first spoonful I flung some out and it landed between two of my toes.
Anyway. Games. computers, and upgrades — free and not.
I was at work a few weeks ago participating in a virtual Lunchtime Games hour we’ve had scheduled weekly… but in which attendance has been dwindling. Probably because I coordinate them, and I’d been cancelling or unable to attend the past few weeks because of overload… and, or, wanting solitude time for an hour.
It makes me laugh when I write then read a sentence in which I change the tenses and point of view. I don’t even know if I just did that. I don’t know shit. There’s too much to know.
This session had 3 people in it. Unfortunately, this made playing Jackbox Games untenable. One of my friends suggested that I play Deep Rock Galactic.
I was interested. I’m on a macOS based laptop though, and I was pretty sure that it didn’t support that and needed Windows. I’m told that it’ll work and to go to Steam and buy it. So I do. Without research. Because I’m an adult man — theoretically — that’s allowed to make questionable purchasing decisions while he’s sharing his screen and his friends are watching.
It did not support macOS. Which was discovered after the purchase.
And to which was also pretty funny to me as it’s another example of the questionable decision making processes at play in my mind here.
I did not have a Windows-based computer to run the game on, and I’ve had very little desire to spend the money to buy or buy and build one.
The other friend, the one that didn’t suggest Deep Rock Galactic says that he can give me a computer that he thinks is specced enough to have the game performing well enough to have an enjoyable experience. He says that a friend of his gave it to him so he felt good about passing it on instead of selling it.
So I accept it. Feeling, and expressing, a deep sense of gratitude. It’s a Dell D5810. Even though it was quite a few years in compute power it could handle quite a bit of power RAM, storage, beefy GPU, for its age.
And just like that. A new distraction to veer me off course. Old and new at the same time. Just enough to distract me from working through upgrading my house.
Even though I find myself doing much less hands-on technical work in the role I’m currently filling, I still like to fuck around and find out about new technologies and things… when I have the energy to do so. There were things about this that drew me to it like rats to sugar water.
They love that dopamine hit, just like me.
The computer has an Intel Xeon CPU, no storage, 32GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 1050, a 450 watt power supply, and no operating system.
It’s upgrade time.
Since it’s an older rig I figured it prudent to use eBay rather than anything first-hand.
Since I want to stick a more powerful GPU in the thing I needed a power powerful power supply. I find one 3 times less than retail.
The machine can max out 256GB of RAM… so why not? I find that RAM on eBay and buy it. I managed to find the single offer that was $150 less than the rest. That was cool.
Beyond all that thought, I knew that two of the components I’d buy first-hand.
A 2TB solid state storage M.2 module and the adapter needed to run it with the older box.
And a GPU.
Which, right now as I’m writing this, I am still in the process of figuring out. Probably an Nvidia GeForce 30 series or 40 series. The 40 series is more expensive, but it is also much more powerful when it comes machine learning experiments. The graphics are cool too, but I’m really more interested in the ML capabilities because of my generative art ideas.
I still needed an operating system though, and by OS I mean Windows. Windows costs money. You can usually find it pretty cheap now-a-days, but I had an unfair advantage.
Microsoft decided to allow everyone with a Windows 7 and beyond serial number to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. At first it was a time-limited offer to rapidly increase adoption, but eventually it became permanent. And you’re able, as of now, to use those Windows 7 plus licenses to upgrade to Windows 11.
Throughout the years I’d had various MSDN subscriptions that allowed me to allocate 10 serial numbers per product per account.
So I did, and have at least 20 keys of each major version of Windows. The bulk of them unused. So I did not need to pay anything for my Windows 10 license.
But that’s only Windows 10… and Windows 11 was out… but the machine I have didn’t meet the required specs, so it wasn’t able to be upgraded through Window’s standard upgrade mechanisms.
The internet said, and even Microsoft did, that there were ways around the limitations put in place to prevent Windows 11 installation as long as your machine supported Windows 10. Microsoft did cover their ass by stating by doing so that you may eventually not receive security updates.
But, this is the kind of shit I love to do! Experimenting with things to figure out how to get it to work.
Did I mention that I’m distractible? All that above? A distraction. Did I really need to upgrade this to get Deep Rock Galactic working? No, not really. But, I want to use this new old hardware to doink around with Machine Learning.
Now I have a new computer with old specs that are new enough to run Windows 11 to fuck around with.
And the next distraction that’s taken me off the smart home kick which has taken me off from a few of the other things I’m working through.
There lays the debate as to what GPU to get. Will it actually get used or is this another project that I’ll get back to?
And this is only the most recent distraction that’s jangled my locus of attention.
Now, if I just figured out my locus of control. That’d be cool.
And this entire post has been a bit of a distraction from the Clean Language stuff I gotta research/write in order to give a workshop on Friday.
This Friday.
At a super secret thing near some hot springs some where.