Deep Fried

Thing got even busier during the holiday season than I wrote in Busy, Busy, Busy, especially at work. We were a quite fried, but we’ve survived.

It made things ‘interesting’ for a while. I certainly had to cut back on some of my non-employment related activities to be able to keep up. Now, I’m trying to keep a balance between the many things I need and want to do, and my available personal ‘resources’ especially mental and emotional energy.

On the plus side I was helped by the fact that I am now sleeping better. A new alarm clock that I bought keeps beeping for an hour before it gives up has helped me wake up in the morning, and once I was waking up at a reasonable hour, I was able to sleep at a better time, and now my schedule is quite good. If anything I go to bed quite early and end up doing some things early in the morning (like this morning), instead of pushing into the night.

The clock is not an expensive one, in fact it was almost the least expensive one available from Home Depot online, but works far better the more expensive (if better looking) clock from Wayfair that only beeps for a minute or two before turning off. For someone like me, I might as well not set the alarm as have rely on that clock.

Once I had time during the actual holidays (rather than lead up to them), and in addition to a good visit with family and a lot of sleep, I spent quite a bit of time reconfiguring my home network using two of the OpenWrt One’s I mentioned in my previous post, and a new managed switch.

I’ve moved back to a Windows-first setup from a Linux-first setup, due to hardware issues under Linux, particularly with the less robust handling of multiple displays (e.g monitors) under Linux, as well as Windows 11 not functioning well under Libvirt/KVM (that is in a Qemu/KVM virtual machine). As a consequence I have doing more dealing with the limitations / quirks of Hyper-V on Windows 11 Pro.

I did try Oracle’s VirtualBox, but it does not play well with Windows 11 virtualisation-based security. Otherwise it would be the better option for running alternate desktops (e.g. Linux desktops) under Windows. OTOH I don’t currently have a huge need for both a Windows desktop and a Linux desktop, so I find that WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux, v2) is sufficient for my Linux needs (e.g. building OpenWrt images using OpenWrt ImageBuilder).

I have been struggling to find time to also work on the project for the non-profit I have been helping. It seems to take me a bit to get back into it when I hit a wall (or get over-stressed and tired from being excessively busy), and I’m not back in the groove, quite yet with that.

Still, I am confident I will be able get back to that, and to effectively triage my to do list, so that I am able to emphasize the things that most need, as as those I most want to do, and time the rest as time and energy permit.

I have had some practise with that at work. It is fortunate that the medication I take has restored a good chunk of my ‘Executive functions’, which had taken a hit when I was in crisis some years ago, and whose loss is something that was thought to be an inevitable and incurable result of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders. I am glad that turns out not to be the case.

So, now just a hint of charcoal left from the frying, and back it, and enjoying what I am doing (and getting things done).