Posts Tagged ‘life’

10
Nov
2022

I shouldn’t have been surprised at any of this.

categories: personal; word count: 263 words

In spite of both of my children’s cases having approved good cause waivers on them exempting them from enforcement so that we can safely receive state benefits, they have once again been referred by the HHSC (Health and Human Services Commission) to the child support office, which is not legal. I have filed a second complaint, will be conversing with the child support office tomorrow morning again over this — didn’t I do this at around the same time last year? — and will consider contacting Legal Aid over this for what might actually be the third time now if enforcement efforts on both cases are not promptly stopped. I also filed another complaint over ambiguous, confusing wording in the state manual as it relates to homeschooling and having that serve as a work exemption, because no such state certification exists in Texas as is now purportedly required by the state benefit handbook. And just like I mentioned when I wrote about this for the first time, everyone was as confused as I was when I sought clarification on it. Everyone seems to get as confused as I am about these child support cases illegally being re-opened for enforcement when they should not be, but it’s my job to make them do their jobs, safely and legally allow us to access benefits and to continue to access benefits, and to keep us safe. If that inconveniences some people, well then so be it.

As has been said with more and more frequency now, let the bridges that I burn light my way, as they will.

03
Nov
2022

In case anyone wonders about Tumblr’s opsec…

categories: personal; word count: 443 words

In case anyone’s wondering about Tumblr (which I know I’ve mentioned in here before), to the best of my knowledge — and I grew up around people who became experts in fields like computing, graphics design, hacking, programming, and web design — it has not been made any safer. One of my friends, who is brilliant at what he is able to do, regularly confirms that Tumblr’s oauth exploit is still there whenever conversation about Tumblr shows up… usually on Twitter, and especially since Elon Musk now owns it. This continues to lead to the ability for hackers to session hijack, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this is continuing to be done by hackers… and the more innovative of them are using staff logins to hide their tracks, although I’ve long since joked — which is not a joke at this point — that any hacker who knows his way around a tin can knows how to hide evidence that he was hacking. Tumblr has been hacked into far more times than they have ever been willing to admit to, because the only times they admit to it are when they find evidence that they have been hacked or when a hacker goes public with the fact that they did so and Tumblr wants to save face. Their “site security” only cares about keeping the site safe and secure if enough information can be given to Tumblr about the hackers to facilitate pursuit of them via law enforcement and the court system, otherwise they don’t care to fix day zero exploits that have very likely been around since the site was first formed. At one point someone had actually injected malware into Tumblr uploading it through the oauth exploit, which I actually screenshot on my computer as I had been attempting to view a friend’s Tumblr when my firewall began telling me that it was blocking attempts Tumblr had been making to infect my computer… but that actually seemed to get fixed within a few days, although Tumblr has been mum on the whole issue.

To be honest, I continue to advise people not to use Tumblr, and I am all the more vigilant advising parents not to let their minor children (teenagers) make an account on Tumblr. The safety issues are too much, there are almost no instances where their content moderation team actually gets it right (let alone keeps it right) and the sheer number of exploits that are still to this day accessible on their site means that nothing you post there is even remotely safe. I do not have an account on Tumblr and I won’t ever let my kids have them.

29
Oct
2022

This bears repeating again because it’s still true.

categories: personal, television shows; word count: 515 words

It’s been… I don’t even know how many weeks at this point since I quit the Discord “reunion” servers that I was invited to, the ones with people that I had grown up with, and I continue to be happy that no attempts have been made to invite me back to already existing servers or new ones (matters might have been helped out by the fact that I deleted people from my friends’ list on Discord, making it more difficult to contact me, having done so for this reason). But I continue not to miss being in any of them, and I can’t realistically see myself wanting to join them again for any reason. This doesn’t seem like something that’s going to change, even though I’ve heard it said in situations like these — and when it comes to fandoms — that you “can’t leave” groups like these. And then, when I don’t want to be a part of these groups any longer, I do, and some people are actually surprised that I’ve done it, committed to it, and doubled down on it. (But why? Seriously?)

And like I’ve said, I’ve done it with fandoms as well, although for slightly different reasons (although my willingness to commit not to participate in fandom activities as they are more or less known to be is the same, and is something that I am continuing to be willing to commit to). I dislike the whole “you can never leave fandom once you join it” phrase that is almost a catchphrase at this point, seeing it more like a jeer than anything else, and I really dislike the expectation that you have to agree with “your people” on all issues 100% of the time or you are Not Doing It Good Enough and Should Be Blocked — for instance, I’m still not watching The Winchesters (the prequel to Supernatural), simply because it doesn’t address anything that I’m particularly interested in watching a television show about. I’m not jeering at or making fun of the people who are interested in watching it, though. It’s just… not my thing, although if I wind up tuning in at a later date I wind up tuning in at a later date. I’ve also fallen out of the habit of reading fanfiction at this point, simply because my time has become occupied by other things and the only times I’ve actually taken the time to think about it have been times when I’ve noticed that I just haven’t read it in a really long time. Truth be told, when I had to reload our gaming PC I didn’t even log back into Archive Of Our Own, and it’s been almost a year since I have. It’s not out of malice or anything, either. I just want to spend my time doing other things and there is only so much time in a day, and I burn out if I have to talk about things for hours, days, weeks, or months on end. I need to be able to walk away from them under even the best of circumstances.

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