January 2020 archive

13
Jan
2020

Goodbye, eBay. Goodbye, PayPal.

categories: personal; word count: 310 words

For the better part of December, I had to screw around with PayPal not wanting to charge the intended funding source for a purchase that I had wanted to make, then attempting to do unauthorized funds transfers on various other funding sources of mine. It was only at the end of December that I was able to amicably “resolve” this in that I was finally able to delete my eBay and PayPal accounts, which was what I decided that I wanted to do after PayPal decided that their repeated attempts to do these unauthorized funds transfers were allegedly “authorized”… rather than attempting to use the funding source that I had wanted them to use in the first place, doubling down on their faulty logic because it padded their bottom line. Over the course of December, Google searches revealed a similar line of logic in that PayPal sided with whoever stood to make them more money in claims and disputes like this, and it was around then that I decided that I wanted as little to do with them or any site that they were owned by as humanly possible.

I think that if I do make another PayPal account, it’s only going to be connected to the bank accounts that are connected to the kids’ ABLE accounts since those can not have funds transfers done on them and the money in those can only be used for very specific purposes. But that is probably not something that I’m going to do right now, although it is something that I will consider on down the line since the money in their ABLE accounts is something that I would like to spend on their behalf at some point. Obviously it’s not something that I would like to spend right now. I would like to spend it on bigger expenses for them later.

12
Jan
2020

Lost Dimension

categories: action and adventure; word count: 513 words

This was actually one of the first games that I played on the Vita, having received it so long ago that off of the top of my mind, I’m not exactly sure what holiday I received it for… that’s how long the Vita’s been around for (and how many games that we have for the Vita, although I don’t intend on saying anything bad about the Vita when I say that, having already made mention in a previous post to how the Vita is one of our favorite consoles for a number of reasons). It was also one that I played with Bub, that he enjoyed as well.

It managed to combine so many parts of our favorite game mechanics and genres into one without making it seem like it was forcing anything in, and I do have to point that out almost from the start of this review. It’s an action-adventure game (you’re scaling a tower, and fighting enemies as you do so), a classic who-done-it (because you’re scaling the tower with complete strangers, and some of them are enemies working with the game’s final boss against you, and you have to figure out who those are and vote them out one at a time on each floor of the tower based on the clues that you obtain), and it has maximum replayability because the game’s “traitors” are chosen at random at the start of each playthrough, meaning that you have to do the work of finding out all over again who the traitors are with each playthrough. And because each of your teammates have special powers, sometimes this means that the traitor you have to sacrifice at each floor’s pit stop might be someone with a particularly advantageous power that would otherwise make the subsequent floors easier to get through, but… you have to do what you have to do. The character that you control has the ability to “read minds” — that’s the easiest way that I can word it without spoiling too much of the game’s actual plot mechanics — and this is how he is able to “read people” and figure out their true intentions, and figure out whether or not they are traitors. It involves a clever mini-game that you can play to figure out their intentions, and one that I strongly encourage playing as often as possible to confirm things.

Over the course of our first playthrough, we ambled through it with the intention of picking it back up at some point and getting it right, and we only managed to get two wrong, which should really say something. If you get any of them “wrong” (don’t manage to eliminate traitors before you get to the top of the tower), you have to fight them in addition to the final boss), which does make the final boss more difficult, but not entirely impossible if you’ve managed to gear up properly. This is in comparison to other difficult final bosses.

All in all, I would recommend this game to anyone who is looking for an action-adventure “who done it?”.

11
Jan
2020

23andMe gave me my 0.10% back!

categories: personal; word count: 245 words

When I got my initial results in, 0.10% of my DNA had been read as broadly northern East African, but an update took that away… without changing any of my percentages, so my total percentages only came to 99.9% no matter how you did the math. I wondered about this for awhile, but one of their most recent updates actually gave this 0.10% back to me, although that portion of my DNA is currently allocated to the “Unassigned” section. With any luck, as they continue to update their algorithm and their systems, I will find out what portion of my ancestry that DNA is allocated to, especially since it seems like a comparatively small amount. But it had amused me for awhile that my ancestral composition did not add up to 100% like it was… supposed to, especially since so many of my DNA matches did have their ancestral compositions add up to 100% (although some of theirs, like mine, did not, and that this was to varying degrees), and I wanted to know why this was. But having watched them change what portions of my DNA have been assigned where over the course of their several updates, at least I have an idea where to expect them to assign this DNA at some point whenever it does get assigned, or where it might most reasonably be expected to come from…

This genealogy stuff is kind of wild, especially since I have the two unknown family members that I do.

10
Jan
2020

Something that I seriously just heard.

categories: personal; word count: 160 words

“Nobody really games on mobile consoles any more.”
“Mobile consoles aren’t that important now.”

Are we… living in the same decade?

Did I seriously just hear someone say that?

Well, in this case, “saw someone type that”, but still.

Excuse me while I cling tenaciously to our functioning mobile consoles, making sure that they work.

Not even a year ago, I heard just enough people lamenting that Sony was letting the Vita go, that Nintendo would have the only mobile console out on the market, and now it’s seriously like no one cares. At. All. Wow.

Am I now so old that I date myself whenever I talk about long rides in the car with my Gameboy Advance, my Nintendo DS, my Nintendo 3DS? Because I think I do. And I’m only in my early thirties. This is honestly when you want to say “kids these days” and mean it, and to think I’m saying it over mobile consoles now…

09
Jan
2020

My experiences with migraines.

categories: personal; word count: 641 words

Although I began having migraines after the birth of my second son (and in no way attribute them to my pregnancy with him or his birth in that I do not “blame him” for their advent… that just happened to be the period of my life that coincided with me starting to have them), I didn’t know that they were migraines for the longest time because I attempted to brush them off for as long as I could, medicating them with Ibuprofen at the maximal safe dose because that could be taken while I breastfed, and then aspirin and Ibuprofen in alternating doses when I was no longer breastfeeding until I came to the realization that NSAIDs lowered my spirometry because my asthma responded unfavorably to them. It was around that point that I finally brought up my concerns to my new primary care doctor, having had to find a new one because the one that I had been seeing for as long as I had been an adult no longer took my insurance. Since my migraine care was a bit tetchy with me also being an asthmatic, meaning that I could not safely take NSAIDs as evidenced by their alterations to my spirometry long being in my medical file and beta-blockers not being a choice for me due to the fact that my asthma was markedly more than “mild intermittent”, I was referred to a neurologist to take on and then oversee my migraine care, which I was completely fine with.

Although I would eventually start seeing another neurologist in the same practice once she went on maternity leave and then decided not to come back from it, we came to the determination that I had been — as I tended to do — understating both the frequency of my migraines and the severity of them, so we figured out how much I was actually in pain so that we could start to work to reduce my pain as much as was possible. Along the way with the first neurologist, an MRI was done so that we had a head scan of me on file, and although we “didn’t expect any surprises”, one came about in the form of a nearly one centimeter pituitary macroadenoma. Because of the frequency at which I need prednisone for my asthma, we’re currently “waiting and watching” my pituitary tumor (since that’s what it is, although more than 95% of these are benign), hoping that it doesn’t cause any unnecessary problems other than the fact that it’s a bit uncomfortably large in such an enclosed space. Discussions about whether or not I should apply for disability due to the frequency and severity at which I had migraines were had with my second neurologist, and he believed — and still believes — that I should apply for disability until I actually get it, acknowledging that it might be a bit of an uphill battle if Social Security wants to arbitrarily deny me with every flimsy excuse they can come up with. But he is, and has been, extremely supportive of me applying for disability, and he does acknowledge that my migraines — chronic and intractable — are a severe, disabling condition.

If my pituitary tumor is in any way influencing my migraines, conceding that me being as steroid-dependent as I am might make removal of it difficult, I may inquire at some point about radiation therapy, having seen my own mother go through whole-brain radiation therapy when she was alive and being treated for cancer. In my case, it would be localized to a much smaller area, the side effect profile would be slimmer, and it might be an alternative to removal that would reduce the frequency and severity of my migraine pain if this is in any way contributing. It might be something worth looking into as a possible palatable middle ground.

08
Jan
2020

“Gifted” in areas, needing help in others.

categories: personal; word count: 630 words

This post directly follows my last post relating to the experiences that I had attending secondary school.

However, this post, as with the last one, focuses on experiences of mine attending high school.

I was enrolled in my school’s gifted and talented program in second grade, and chose to quit it during grade eleven when my history teacher made some ableist remarks in the classroom one day about how the “smart students should only (associate) with each other, and not the normal students”. He made it clear when he said those things that he meant them, and he made it a point to look at me when he was saying them. I didn’t feel comfortable continuing to be part of a program that prioritized cohesiveness based on one’s perceived intelligence, made that abundantly clear as I quit the program, and had the backing and support of both of my parents, who were appalled that a teacher involved in the program was using the platform to disseminate views like this (“even if he was joking”… although no, it did not seem like he was actually joking).

As I went through the process of quitting the gifted and talented program, it came up that I had been struggling in math for years based on my grades and self-attestation, and I had asked if there were any supports that could be given to me to better help me understand material that I struggled with. The school actually had the audacity to tell me that since I had tested into the gifted and talented curriculum, I “didn’t need (those) supports and services,” pointed out that I had not actually failed any math courses, and furthermore, had the audacity to tell me that they would refuse to provide me with any supports and services relating to my struggles in math even though my grades made it clear that I struggled with my understanding of the material in comparison to the other core subjects, which I excelled in. This was around when I realized that because the school “saw” me as gifted, they weren’t actually going to assist me in any area in which I struggled because they would fall back on the fact that I had, at least for a long stretch of time, been enrolled in the gifted and talented program. This was actually a regret of my mother’s — she would later tell me that if she had known that this would cause so many problems, especially as it related to the fact that it would take me all the way until college statistics and algebra to gain a sufficient understanding of mathematics, one that I should have gained while I was still in secondary school, and if I was going to be exposed to these blatant ableist ideologies as a result of my parents consenting to allowing me to be involved in the gifted and talented program, my parents would never have consented to allow me to be a part of the program in the first place. And to be frank, I can see why my mother said what she said.

My entire time spent in secondary school left a lot to be desired overall, especially for reasons like this.

At the time, I didn’t know that what the school did was actually illegal — even if a student demonstrates sufficient understanding, or mastery, in one or more core subjects but struggles immensely in another, they are to be offered appropriate supports and services to help them achieve mastery. “Being a part of the gifted and talented program at one point” does not prevent the school from offering these supports and services.

I did not have any idea that there was even a thing called dyscalculia until I was in college, and that’s sad.

1 2 3 4 5 6