Diary of a Network Geek

In these troubled times, we’re all talking about the same thing in the same way.

I know the isolation is getting rough for all of us and it’s definitely giving me more days where I feel like my brain has more in common with moldy cottage cheese than the evolutionary advantage I’m told it is. In fact, I’ve been trying to write this post for days. Normally, I queue up these weekly posts with plenty of time to spare, but, lately, I’ve been writing them closer and closer to my self-imposed morning deadline. Honestly, I know in part it’s because I’ve been just as busy as I normally am, if not busier, but also because my creative thinking is just weak and stagnate. That’s been made no better by the posts on LinkedIn telling me that “…[if] you don’t come out this quarantine with: -A new skill -Your side hustle started -More knowledge you never lacked time, you lacked discipline.” For one thing, that’s bullshit. If you have time to do any of those things, you’re unemployed and worried about finding work and healthcare, which is not conducive to actually accomplishing any of those things, or you’re stealing time and resources from your employer. Either that, or you’re about to be laid off because you’re normally so unproductive that you have all this spare time and just needed to be able to more sufficiently hide that from your supervisor by not being seen. And, even if you aren’t doing that, but for various reasons are legitimately employed and legitimately not stealing time from your employer, you may still be massively depressed because of all the chaos and fear and stress at all levels of society. Saying that we should all just get our collective shit together and magic up some of that toxic hustle that the magical thinking, next-wave, would-be Napoleon Hill’s have been trying to sell us for the past decade, is about like telling a person with clinical depression they should just try to be happier. That’s not how it works. If that’s all it took, we wouldn’t have a multi-billion dollar antidepressant medication industry. Granted, those faux inspirational messages all seem to come from marketing companies who, traditionally, make more money when they can sell people things to fix problems we don’t have until the marketing companies convince us that we need to fix them, but it seems like it’s been really bad the last couple of years. Really, it’s just the latest “get rich quick” scheme meant to fleece the unwary and desperate. Of course, the truth there is that the only way to get rich quickly, is to sell someone else the “sure-fire method” of getting rich with little to no work. (Spoiler alert; those are all scams!)
And, for me, the added stress and strangeness of working from home has made everything seem flat and repetitive. Surely, you’ve noticed that all the commercials lately sound the same, right? According to the Boing Boing article titled “Every COVID-19 Commercial Is Exactly The Same”, part of my challenge may be something called “semantic satiation”, which is “…a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.” And, that’s officially the excuse I’m using for why it feels like nothing anyone is saying any more matters. And, that’s true for news stories about the ailing economy, too. So, basically, what I’m saying here is that I feel massively overwhelmed by this entire situation, as do, I imagine, the two other people who probably still read this blog, as well as everyone else in the country. We can’t keep track of what day it is, or what we should be doing, which are both signs of stress and depression, by the way. And, I seriously think that just maintaining my “day job” is impressive enough.
The thing is, the world is changing. Of course, the world is always changing, but, right now, we are all very, very aware of the fact that it’s changing and that the changes are pretty much all out of our control. Honestly, that’s how it is pretty much all the time, but, right now, we just can’t avoid that particular truth. And, you know what? That’s a really scary thing to wake up to and it’s okay to be scared or whatever you may be feeling by all this. It’s okay. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and like it’s super hard to do anything that really matters. It’s okay to just want to have a hobby that’s fun and not going to result in some monetary gain. It is okay.
For me, that’s been photography in the past. They way I like to do photography takes a lot of time, though, so I haven’t done as much as I’d like. If you feel like you’d like to get creative and learn a little photography, for fun, but haven’t known where to start, I have good news. Now you can get some free, thanks to the Photography Life YouTube channel, which has all kinds of video tutorials meant for beginners. (I do have to admit, I found them thanks to PetaPixel.)
If that’s too much, then go ahead and try a game. In the past I’ve talked about Universal Paperclips, which is still a good choice, as it mostly runs in the background after a certain point. But, there’s also a new game that looks fun, based on this article on Engadget, Who knew I’d get obsessed with a spreadsheet game?.
And, if you just need to have some soothing music in the background while you try to work, try Robert Fripp’s Music for Quiet Moments series. Each is about 50 minutes of gentle, peaceful music. For something a little more unnverving, try the AI-generated music based on famous artist’s original work. It’s a little odd, but certainly interesting.

Finally, I’d like to share something with you that I personally find helpful and uplifting; Pema Chödrön on SuperSoul Sunday via the Oprah Winfrey Network YouTube channel. She’s a fantastic Buddhist teacher and her talks and books are incredibly valuable teaching for me in “these uncertain times”.

So, like I promised, things are getting weird. Next week, I’ll be in the office a bit. My co-worker and I are coming in every other day, to try and help keep the potential for exposure to COVID-19 to a minimum for us. I pray that it goes well.
Check in next week to see!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words!

Quarantine

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Quarantine on Sunday.

This is a dark and disturbing movie and I cannot recommend it to anyone with a weak constitution. It wasn’t scary, per se, but it was surprising, which is a refreshing change for me when it comes to horror films.

The entire movie is filmed in a kind of “Blair Witch” style, but better. It’s all done on a single camera, or point of view. The idea is simple, really, a TV news reporter and her camera man are shadowing a pair of fire-fighters in some unknown urban setting. The entire thing is filmed from that perspective.
The movie starts off simply enough with this reporter filming some intro work and getting to know some of the firemen. It’s all normal, fun stuff, basically a reporting doing a puff piece about the heroic firemen. Then, they get a call.

The firemen that the reporter is shadowing go out on the call and arrive at an old, relatively short, apartment building. They meet a pair of policemen who have called for assistance getting into an apartment where a tenant is believed to be trapped, possibly hurt. They break into her apartment and find an old woman who’s become dangerously ill and, it turns out, violent.
Honestly, at this point, I thought it was going to turn into a standard zombie movie, just in a building, but, well, it turned out to be something more. Not too far into the movie, after it’s established that there’s some sort of illness running through the residents, the CDC and National Guard show up and seal everyone into the building. That’s where the name of the movie comes from, I suppose, the quarantine.
Naturally, in my standard movie review style, I won’t reveal the rest of the plot and spoil it. Let me just say that, even though the plot is simple, it’s handled very well. And, there is a bit of a surprise ending. At least, it was a bit of a surprise to me.

I liked this movie.
It was a little scary, pretty gory, and disturbingly realistic in its portrayal of the events. It does take place mainly in a single four or five story apartment building, but that enhances the whole thing. And, it is filmed from a single camera perspective, but, again, instead of limiting the film, it adds realism and immediacy. The single camera thing also adds a fair bit of suspense and sets up the surprise ending. I really was pleasantly surprised at how effectively that was used in this film.
Also, keep in mind, this isn’t my kind of movie, generally, but I liked the way it was constructed. And, it didn’t disappoint at all. I cannot recommend this film to most of my regular audience, but if you like a good horror movie, this will do quite well this Halloween season.

Quarantine was well worth the matinee price I paid. Even though this wasn’t a zombie movie, if you like them, go see this movie.