Mandaris Moore

Follow @mandaris on Micro.blog.

My family is having a guest over tonight and it’s the first time that we’ve allowed someone to come over since the pandemic started.

This is also the first time that Lillie has seen someone in our home and she was not happy about it at all.

She saw our guest and started barking and growling. I tried calming her down and then decided to take her for a walk. As soon as we stepped out the door she wanted to go back inside.

She looked so sad that I had to take a picture.

→ 8:52 PM, Sep 25

waiting at the airport

I’m waiting for my parents at the airport. I’ve been waiting for almost an hour even though the flight came in early. Apparently there is something going wrong with the luggage and now we’re all waiting for something to happen.

After driving around the terminal for 10 minutes, I parked over in the free parking lot. It’s actually pretty nice except for the people driving around it like it was a freeway.

I also got a really good shot of the moon. I don’t think my camera phone skills are going to get better if I only take pictures of my dog.

→ 8:45 PM, Sep 24

What are you doing in my bed!?

Sleeping. 🐶

→ 10:21 AM, Sep 24

Jr High Dungeons and Dragons

My youngest daughter joined a Dungeons and Dragons at her high school and was really excited about the possibilities.

She’s been having a couple problems connecting with people so my wife and I are just as excited for her. We even went out and helped her pick out her first set of dice.

Then the big day comes around…

And she comes home frustrated!

The entire play session was wasted because they had not one but two dungeon masters. And to top it off they didn’t get along and had some kind of nerd competition on who knew the most about half-elves.

I’m hoping that we can turn the experience around because she’s signed up through the rest of the school year.

→ 8:11 PM, Sep 23

When I’m stressed, I get mean to myself. Little unnecessary comments. Where did I learn this and how do I turn it off.

→ 1:45 PM, Sep 23

I’ve been invited to be part of my friend’s new DnD campaign. It’s using DnD rules but part of a world that he’s spent years coming up with. I’ve played a couple times in the past but this is my first time where I’m actually concerned about learning more of the lore. It’s also a little nerve wracking as I don’t know if the other players have to same knowledge of the game that I do.

Still, I’m looking forward to it, but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to fit it into my schedule because the games are going to be 5 hours long on the weekend and the family needs me around… I think.

#DnD

→ 9:26 PM, Sep 22

Making dinner!

Close up of the dishes

→ 6:34 PM, Sep 22

Hey, there are about 100 days left in the year. Does anyone have any challenges that they would like to tackle?

→ 5:06 PM, Sep 22

I’m wearing my watch on my right arm because I found that wearing it on my left discouraged me to measure my blood pressure.

I’m getting older and heavier.

→ 7:18 AM, Sep 22

Lillie in her kennel. 🐶

→ 6:56 AM, Sep 22

My wife has been telling for weeks that there were going to be shortages on certain kinds of food. Not in the post-apocalyptic kind of shortage where we’d have to think about eating someone sort of shortage.

But more of a we’d need to not be wasteful because there isn’t a much of this as we’re used to kind of shortage. It just made me think about how much food that we waste, not just me and my family, but society in general.

After all, you don’t have to look far to hear a story about someone getting fired for letting people know that a store would rather dump it all in the garbage than to give it to local food banks.

Still, I’m optimistic about what’s coming for us in the coming month and telling my children that they should probably get that list for Santa in early.

→ 8:24 PM, Sep 21

Hey @maique! Here is a picture of one of the sandwiches. I think I spend too much time rolling the meat in the sandwich in an attempt to get some texture.

→ 8:10 PM, Sep 21

Someone keeps knocking the stuffing out of her bed.

→ 5:00 PM, Sep 20

It’s the little things in life that really, really irate me when it comes to Apple’s software. All I wanted to do was read the MacStories iOS and iPad review on my iPad and it feels like I’m being punished in some ways.

Now the problem is that I have the file on my Mac, but there is no indication of how much of it has been loaded to the server or when I can expected it to be completed so that I can read it on my iPad. A true first world problem.

On top of that, there doesn’t seem to be any control over when I don’t want it to be on the cloud or if I want to delete it.

→ 4:47 PM, Sep 20

There are soooo many text editors to choose from these days.

If there was ever a time that you wanted to explore different ways to write text on a Mac, this would be that time. I’m currently bouncing between a few as I work through my goal of writing 100 words a day¹. I’m planning on writing more about this after the month is over, but I will say that it’s been kind of fun to see what they all have to offer.

Strangely enough, I’ve been having the urge to write with pen and paper.
1. A forgot to hit the publish button yesterday, so today will have twice the amount of awesomeness. ^[return]
→ 7:25 PM, Sep 19

Went to get some air.

→ 5:59 PM, Sep 19

It was a pretty full day, I woke up later than I usually do and looks sometime making coffee. My daughter had a soccer match and it felt good to be able to see it without worring about smoke and heat.

I also attempted to watch Dune”) tonight, but I didn’t get much further than 16 minutes before everyone else left the room and I turned the movie off.

I also spent the evening with my wife watching the movie “We Broke up”)”. I was a short comedy that left me feeling sad as the couple… well… broke up. The difference being that they separate without a lot of screaming or infidelity. Just drifted apart and found that they wanted something different in their respective lives. We saw it because it had Chidi in it.

→ 6:57 PM, Sep 18

the day after the tears

Yesterday was pretty chaotic.

It feels like today went to an opposite extreme.

Just feeling lethargic and the dread that I’m going to mess up.

I started to think about what my daughter said about wanting more control of her life. With the pandemic, I don’t know if there is anyone who feels in control.

We decided that we’ll go for more bike rides and I came up with a plan to start the day with writing in the more what kind of self care we are going to do. At the end of day we’d see how much of it had accomplished.

If you know of a way raise a 12 year old girls confidence, please let me know.

→ 9:22 PM, Sep 17

Being a parent is so, so very hard to do. Not only are you supposed to be responsible for yourself as an adult but you have a responsibility to someone else. Someone who didn’t choose to have you as a parent.

I think that’s been one of the hardest things about this pandemic. We’re stuck with the same group of people day in and day out and I feel like I’m not doing enough. You have a bad day, you can’t do anything but try to keep it inside so you don’t hurt the ones around you.

Because they can’t go anywhere else either.

We’re all stuck here together on a planet that dying faster than anyone cares to admit.

Today, I just feel so weak.

Because I don’t know the right thing to say or the right thing to do.

→ 9:57 PM, Sep 16

Something about this fire hydrant

→ 4:16 PM, Sep 15

Being drunk means never having to say your sorry
About two days ago, I had a friend start shouting some stuff in a group chat that a few of my friends were in. Nothing wrong with that by itself, it’s a private chat that we use our personal devices to connect with. The problem is that some of the stuff was just 100% not cool and we could all tell that he’d been drinking that night.

I didn’t make a big deal about it but thought I’d text him the next day privately to ask him if everything was alright. The text messages had gone out on a school night¹ and from my experience it could mean something more.

Here is basically what the text chain was. No changes to highlight that I don’t edit my text even when I post them for you fine people.

Me

Are you ok?

Him

Ya man….why?

Me

Picture of conversation

Him

I was talking shit man…and then talking about baseball…the Giants. I see now I wrote decisions when it should have said “division”. Then talking more shit. Sorry, I’ll add more emojis from now on.

Me

Do you think I care about the emojis?

I’m ask about you.

Wow, you can really feel the drama there…

Anyway, I haven’t heard back since, and I’m not going to wait around for an appology.

It’s just kind of weird for me to have this kind of reaction.
I’m no longer in school and I call any Sunday through Thursday night a “school night”. ^[return]
→ 1:17 PM, Sep 15

The Apple events are usually fun for me. I usually put it on my calendar and watch them live either by myself or with a friend. This year, I went over to a friend’s¹ home and we watched it live as they announced all the different products.

And…

And I think Brianna Wu has summed it up better than I can.

The tech analyst in me is not very impressed with #appleevent. My wallet, however, thinks it’s the best Apple Event EVER! pic.twitter.com/gjIoOW60Rr
— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) September 14, 2021

I mean, I really enjoy my Apple Watch and my iPhone Se, but I don’t see enough in this event that would make me want to upgrade. I mean, money is tight and a lot of this is a year over year upgrade over something that I already have.

So, I’m happy for everyone involved. Apple will still be able to make billions in the holiday quarter as people try to get the latest iPads for their kids to do their school work or dabble with making better home videos.

I’ll see you at the next event!
1. We’re both vacinated. ^[return]
→ 9:31 PM, Sep 14

Wow @jayeless! I was working theming the default marfa theme using the color scheme from nord and just playing with the idea of making it it’s own seperate plugin, but what you have done is absolutely beautiful.

→ 2:55 PM, Sep 13

Went into the office today.
I went into the office today to have a little bit of a change of pace as my productivity at home has kind of wound down in the last couple of weeks.

I had forgotten how much of a hassle it can be.

First, I had to pack up my laptop. And even though I didn’t need to pack all the dongles because I have a docking station at work, I still need to unplug my current home set as I don’t have one here. Working from home is only a “temporary thing”¹.

Then I had to drive in, find parking, badge in, and clean my desk area. All things that aren’t too bad when I compare it to not getting a paycheck, but time consuming compared to just getting to work when I’m ready.

And after that…

Nothing.

No magic.

No automagic switch that turns on the magic productivity.

I’m the same person.

I’m doing the same thing.

This time, I have other problems like getting my laptop on the company’s Wi-Fi that doesn’t recognize the device.
There is nothing so permenent as temporary. ^[return]
→ 2:02 PM, Sep 13

It’s been a pretty long weekend. My wife was telling me that we hadn’t had this many activities in a weekend since the pandemic had started. We were out of the house almost all of Saturday because of my daughter’s volleyball tournament followed by a birthday party at the skating ring.

Sunday was filled with a trip to the farmer’s market, seeing my parents, going to another birthday party and then a volleyball clinic.

On top of that, I’ve got this hesitation about how I’m going to handle the coming week.

I wrote that last sentence and then spent 10 minutes saving a gist to github to respond to a closed issue, then surfing twitter, then making a task in OmniFocus before coming back here and writing this.

→ 9:50 PM, Sep 12