Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1108)
Hello Everyone!
Avoiding distractions, Digital aloofness, An inbound freeze, Draining the water system & A lost tooth!
Okay, I better start typing or all too much time will slip by... and I will not be 'on time' even though I have been bouncing between staring at the blinking cursor... and replying to some comments on a few Hive posts. It is not the first time that has happened and lately I have taken to disconnecting my internet connection... so that I will not grow distracted while writing.
I guess that spending too much time on the computer 'will do that to you' (so to speak) and while I love having the technology 'at my finger tips' it can also (at times) be way too much... and offer up all too many 'side quests' to explore. Ha! After writing that sentence I got a bit distracted again... because I realized that I had failed to check one of my devices for messages. All of which lead to finding a message... answering it... and then realizing that I had another correspondence to attend to!
That saying about 'one thing leading to another' comes to mind when it comes to all that stuff. My only real tactic with it all seems to be to disable notifications on everything that I can... do not carry a phone on me and if possible leave it somewhere that is annoying to retrieve it from... or even check it.
The term 'digitally aloof' comes to mind as a good way to describe it all... and without being able to do it... I would be swamped with distraction... or just a never ending pursuit of exploring 'everything' that piques my curiosity. All of which I already grapple with given my level of 'deeply seated interest' in technology... and my constant practice of applying my imagination to it throughout the course of my life.
Anyways, the weather stayed nice throughout the day but by late afternoon the temperature began dropping and the closer it got to sunset the colder it got... all of which pointed to a very chilly evening ahead. Having been watching the weather forecast, I already knew that it was going to get below freezing tonight... but I had not quite counted on it getting quite that cold that fast.
I should maybe backtrack a bit and say that last night (after doing my writing and posting routine) I decided to finally buckle down... and focus on one of my coding projects a bit. Lets just say that at three in the morning I realized what time it was... realized that my project was likely to get wrecked if I kept pushing myself... and that I really needed to get some sleep.
When I first started working on that project everything 'seemed in order' but for the 'final tweaks' that I wanted to put on it I needed the advice of an LLM and most likely some code generated by one. To keep the story short here... everything that I tried to get the LLM to do it would throw an error... and in the end (after hours of burning through all my GPT-4 usage tokens a few times) I gave up on trying to get it to do any code interpreting.
Come to find out (today) that there was some kind of bug (or several bugs) with some of the LLM backend software that had been updated last night... which resulted in widespread errors like the exact ones I had encountered over and over again! Not too get off on too much of a tangent here... but I think things like that are all the more reason to see more of those kinds of models available in a decentralized and 'openly available' manner.
Moral of the story there is that I slept in way late. I found out later (in the late afternoon) that the technological problems I was facing had zero to do with me... and was way outside the scope of me being able to alter their outcome... in order to remedy the scenario. During that time I was able to figure some things out 'on my own' though so at least it was not a total waste of time.
Knowing that the temperatures were going to get below freezing tonight I had to devote part of my day to getting the entire water system prepped for draining. Then power off the on-demand water heater, shut the electricity off to the well pump, drain the system... and double check it all to make sure that I did not miss anything.
Now, knowing all of that... you would think that I would give myself more time to do it but nope I procrastinated it for much of the late afternoon while the weather was still mostly fair. You would especially think so... since I dislike dealing with water hoses that have already begun to grow stiff with the cold... and thus I usually try to do it not long after the warmest part of the day for the best results!
Yet, today I dealt with the hassle and was like: This is why you do not put this kind of thing off until the last hour of daylight! Which is exactly what I had done... and by then both my main water hoses had already begun to hold their 'coiled' form (at the end of the hose near where the high pressure nozzle is) and I had to 'straighten them out' as best that I could... to accommodate the water in the hose to be fully evacuated.
In other words I made it all harder on myself than it needed to be and made a mental note to avoid doing that in the future. The thing is that I did not even have a super good reason for putting it all off until late in the day besides 'it was cold outside' and I was already all cozy in the cabin.
On a different note. At some point yesterday evening (I think just before I began writing the daily entry) I had one of my bottom teeth fall out. Although it surprised me finding something in my mouth all of a sudden... I was not surprised by that particular tooth 'letting go' so to speak.
It had been getting 'crowded out' by the teeth around it for the last few years... and for at least three months now it has been super loose. Being weirdly positioned behind my other teeth (closer to my tongue) it had been tricky to both eat... and keep myself from fiddling with it with my tongue... so I had been hoping it would just fall out without any pain or difficulty.
Seriously, for months now I have been hoping and praying (in my own way) that 'it would simply fall out' and preferably not when I was sleeping or eating... so no frigging complaints there and thank God for small miracles. The only real downside to it all (so far) is that I now have a big gap in my bottom teeth because apparently the tooth had only been 'crowded out' near the crown... and the base of the tooth was still in its original location.
I had just gotten used to not fiddling with a loose tooth in my mouth... and now I got this brand new gap that my tongue keeps wanting to explore of its own volition. It may take me a few days to 'get used to it' but I know that I eventually will. I am just thankful that I did not have to shell out for a dentist or experience any discomfort along the way.
Well, I think that is about it for this entry. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice time.
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I like the term digitally aloof. I spend an awful lot of time being distracted as you are and then vowing not to touch my phone for hours. I write and post here, vote, and don't return comments for days because goddess knows I need headspace.
It's absolutely pouring here. It shouldn't be. We are lucky to get a drenching this late in the season but bloody hell I've hated being indoors all day.
I HATE mouth things. It's crazy how your tongue wants to explore anomalies even though you sternly tell it to stop.
Donny has pulled several of his own teeth, or maybe I should say like you they came loose and came out. you will get used to it being gone but it makes me sad that you lost another one.
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