The Brow @lowbrow@writing.exchange

Welcome to the word party!

Finally got into my journal last night. My last entry was two weeks ago, and wow. I filled up pages just to catch up on current events before I even got to my own personal junk. What the hell is even going on with the timescale?

Currently sitting with an ice pack after doing PT exercises. I sure do miss being able to do things like "stand in one spot, but... vigorously?" without needing a major recovery period.

Physical therapy is hard, woo.

Going to hit the ol' journal later on, I hope. Very busy lately.

I'm feeling a little bit... done with things, today.

Haven't actually written in my journal in a few months now and my pen dried up. Got it soaking now to clear out the old ink funk, then I'll dry it, recharge with fresh ink, and hit the paper soon. Oh *boy* do I have some things to write down since the last time, haaaaaa.

My vacation got cancelled, go figure. :/ Holed up at home, I feel at least a little blessed that I can work from home most of the time with the occasional office visit. What an interesting and fresh hell this is to visit us, though. Who the fuck knows what happens next?

Little bit less than thrilled with my onyx nova pro e-reader these days because the wacom side of it won't calibrate correctly for handwriting anymore. Calibration is uneven across the screen surface, which is even more frustrating. Still love reading on e-ink, though, I haul this thing everywhere. Debating a switch to a kobo, though, for better battery life and waterproof... but only the onyx has usb-c. ugh.

Started re-reading Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy. Really good sci-fi, explores identity and culture in a great way.

Ow, my leg.

Oh, I'm approximately alive, thanks for asking. I'm monitoring writing.exchange regularly, but haven't had a lot to say, so I just thought I'd check in!

Good grief, I got my machine back after a near 30-day RMA process. It seems.. mostly ok. Definitely better than it was, in that using the GPU doesn't send the fans into full-bore hovercraft mode, or start crashing the system horribly. Here's hoping that sorted everything.

Shipped my whole dang computer back to the seller for warranty diagnosis and repair. Ugh, this is what I get for not buying locally and/or doing it myself. :/

Super stressed about my relatively new computer, a gift to myself a few months ago for getting a great new job in 2019, likely needing to be RMA'd tomorrow for repairs. Blaaaah. That's what I get for letting a company build it, I guess.

Ahhh, I love archive.org so much. I've been raiding the "film noir" movie section recently, and the "old-time radio" has some great shows. Just hit up the "universal library" and found some amazing ebooks, too.

Only thing with the books section is that I wish there were more cleaned-up ePubs instead of auto-generated messes. My eInk tablet still isn't much good at rendering PDFs, so ePubs are better and easier for me. Cleaning ePub scans myself is dang hard work, though. :/

16gb->32gb RAM upgrade tonight. Whew, that's a lot of memory juice.

I don't have a ton of memory pressure on this system right now, but the price was nearly half-off, so I couldn't resist the chance for a little extra future-proofing.

New inks arrived. Haven't loaded up any pens yet, but there is much promise in these colors. Noodler's red-black might be the dark ink I've been looking for - pH neutral, waterfast, and deeply bloody. Might have to scrape out the last of the aircorps blue-black (which is really more green, don't like it much) from a tester pen to try it soon.

Meanwhile, though, I'm still on a bit of a writing blitz with the pelikan royal blue because it's just so nice to use.

Pelikan 4001 royal blue ink arrived today, just loaded up a fresh pen. This is a really nice ink, especially for the money. The texture is excellent in a pilot metro fine nib. It's just cruisingly smooth, without being at all runny. Not my most favorite shade of blue, but a very functional one. I like.

I think I want a small writing/crafting desk. I've got my eye on a couple little wood secretary desks that I could squeeze into a corner of the room nicely, and one of them has a storage cabinet under and is really tempting. Not only a good place for inks, pens, and writing, but also I could transfer all my essential oil mixing stuff over there, so it'll smell good, too. And it'll free up my big L desk for more modern technical projects.