I said before that I had migrated all of my social media content to posts on SideshoViD.com, but that wasn't entirely true. I had not posted any of my Instagram stories. To be honest, that's mostly because I didn't know I could. I thought that once they disappeared they were gone. But the other day I noticed my "Archives" on Instagram had every story I'd ever posted.

They made it basically impossible to access that content from my laptop, but on mobile, there was a button to click to download the photo or video. I was astounded at how quickly videos were downloaded to my phone and then uploaded to my website. They must be compressed or optimized somehow. It was literally as fast as I could click that they were done. As a result, it only took a few evenings sitting on the couch crunching through them to complete 2018-2024.

The cool thing about that is that there was a period of time, a couple of years even, where stories were the sole format I used. I liked that they were more ephemeral, less pressure, and felt more spontaneous or narrative. So now a huge chunk of time from around 2022-2024 that was previously unrepresented has some history here.

I also like that it took the topic tag for "squirrels" from obscurity to #6 most popular topic. Those were the primary years we spent getting to know Muffin and trying to get her to eat out of our hands. So that is all documented now for posterity. She's here right now in fact having a little breakfast before heading out to work. Look for her to pop up a lot more in the This Day In History section! 🐿

Yesterday I have my first ever colonoscopy. Normally they say you should wait until you're 45 years old. But I think that's not so much because it's a good idea to wait and more of that insurance won't cover it until then. I was talking with a doctor recently and mentioned that my father had had colon cancer and he said, "Oh then you shouldn't wait until you're 45 yous should start when you're 40." Mmmk, well I'm 44 and a half years old, so great.

Regardless, I got it on the calendar and scheduled it for this year. My gall bladder surgery had not only met my deductible, but pushed me over my out of pocket maximum for the year, so it would be covered at 100%. Although I have to admit I didn't ever verify that it would be covered, so there very well could be a massive bill coming. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Colonoscopies, insurance, deductibles. Could I BE any more adult?

Everyone told me the colonoscopy was no big deal. They just give you some of Michael Jackson's milk and you doze off into blissful slumber. NOT really the whole story folks. Before you do that you have to spend an entire day eating nothing and taking absurd doses of laxatives and Miralax. I don't think they do the prescription jug of juice anymore, since you can accomplish the same thing by abusing over the counter drugs. It was so terrible. I couldn't sleep the entire night because I had to run to the bathroom every 15 minutes, nauseously hungry, and trying not to get dehydrated.

Sure the actual procedure was pretty nice. I really did prefer the propofol over the general anesthesia for a full blown surgery. Waking up was gentle and peaceful, not jarringly confusing with missing bits of memory. They did find 2 polyps and those are being biopsied so all in all I guess it was a good idea that I got this done, but please jebus don't make me do it more often than every 5 years. I am not looking forward to the next one.

I spent the better part of today in the bowels of the ■■■ Airport. I wish you all could have heard my inner monologue as I walked around the caverns. I am flabbergasted that my life's path has led me to this. I have to go back tomorrow and possibly Wednesday. If this goes on beyond Wednesday, I will be looking for a new job. It is completely ridiculous to send me to places like this. They seem to assume I have some massive background experience with hands-on work, probably because everyone else I work with has at least 15 years of experience as building engineers and shit. I program. I like computers. The most voltage I ever saw in college was 5 volts. Now they're handing me a hard hat, a screw driver, and shoving me into 480 volt transformers and expecting me to know what to do.

How many times do I have to fucking repeat this, people? Electrical engineers ARE NOT ELECTRICIANS.

Some of it was kind of neat, I have to admit. I would love to see a show about the HVAC system on the Discovery Channel. They have one central plant that handles the cooling for the entire airport. You can't imagine how big these chillers are. Chillers make cold water and then pump it around to cool down the air that blows into the offices and terminals and stuff. There were at least 4 of them, maybe more, and each one was about as big as an airplane. Then there are cooling towers that use evaporation to cool down water. Each one of these was a round tower about the diameter of a basketball court length-wise. They had huge fans blowing air through the water, and we walked down to the sump, which was a little more like Niagara Falls than an air conditioner. At least in my experience ... which is NONE.

I'm not looking forward to tomorrow but I'm trying to keep a positive attitude. I'm not shaving today or tomorrow and I dropped by Target to get a shirt for work tomorrow. Hopefully I'll at least mildly look the part. My boss always pulls me aside when we're on site and explains the most BASIC concepts of HVAC to me in front of everyone else on the site. I don't think he's consciously trying to destroy any credibility I might have, but if he were, this is how he would do it. I know I've only worked there six months, but come on, I have managed to retain the slightest bit of information in that time.

If any of you know of any positions open in your offices ... jobs where you don't have to put your physical well being on the line ... please let me know about them. Sorry to be a downer, but this kind of shit just really rubs me the wrong way. Hopefully this will all be over soon and I can get back to sleeping at my desk. Ugh.