Daily - Feb. 7, 2026

Previously…

Today’s recap

Gonna warn you ahead of time, this is a depression rant post and I go off the deep end. I don’t blame you if you want to skip. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Was not in the mood to write a daily notes yesterday, so covering two days in this one.

Top of my list was to go to the allergist yesteday. This is a follow-up to showing medium to high allergy reaction to wheat, corn, and yeast. I was kind of hoping this appointment would go well because I have so many gastro problems. I did some random stuff around the house and then headed out to the appointment, which is about a 45 min. drive.

Get there and the office is this large closet. There is only one person that works there, the allergist. They have a laptop and a iPhone, nothing else and no other staff. This is the only place I can go because no one else will accept state insurance. Throughout my time in the office, a steady stream of folks come in to get an injection and leave. That seems to be the only foot traffic the location gets. There are no other patients the entire day.

As soon as I speak to the doctor she drops on me that it turns out she is out-of-network for me, meaning I have to pay for the visit completely out-of-pocket. So, she doesn’t accept my insurance. She says she tried to call, but got busy. I immediately lay into her about not calling. Total round trip, with chatting with her, is 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back. She says she will try to contact her insurance person (?) to find out what happened with accepting my insurance. I sit for about 20 minutes, 7 people come in for injections. Her phone never rings. No other patients come in, only injection folks. She never tries to call anyone and does the same bullshit “adults” do nowadays. She sends some emails. She texts. She fills out some contact forms. She never once tries to call anyone.

But the “pHoNe cAlLs aRe hArD” crowd. My response to those folks? Shut the fuck up. Make the fucking phone call. Be a fucking adult. Its just a fucking phone call to someone who expects phone calls. I can’t hear shit and I make phone calls when I have to.

She asks if she wants me to have her call me when it gets sorted. I say no, I’m never coming back.

This is my experience with every health professional. I’m at my breaking point. I’m not going to the doctor anymore. When my meds run out, I’m done taking those, too. Fuck it. I’ll go to the emergency room if needed. Otherwise, I’m done. If it kills me, I don’t give a shit. I’m done with it. Here’s the reality: If I had money I’d get health care. Without money, society wants me to die. So, I’ll oblige.

After getting shafted at the allergist I went to Costco to talk to the hearing specialists about my hearing aids. I did a warranty exchange about a month ago and they are still acting up. I spoke to them longer about my troubles and laid out what I want done. Short version is if these aren’t fixed by March I’m getting my money back. I am still making payments on them and wearing them is worse than going without.

I’m just so tired.

Got home and did nothing the rest of the day. Oh, wait. We found out the dehumidifier upstairs has been leaking and the carpet is soaked. Fan has been running on it for 2 straight days now.

I did put back together my desk. I had converted it to be laptop only to save power during the winter. But, I don’t care anymore. I reconnected my desktop and I plugged in my soda machine because fuck it. I might as well enjoy something. I can’t afford it. But, fuck it.

Side note: The soda machine is kind of neat. I got it for free when I lived near Fresno, CA from a customer at one of the warehouses I managed. this is like 18 years ago? It is very old school and is essentially a converted fridge with turnstile dispensers for each drink. It can actually hold small juice bottles, too. I posted a video of it on my Mastodon. We watched Smackdown, wife and I watched Batman Begins while the gorls had a stay up as late as you want night.

Today I did so little it gave me a panic attack. Because of my planned allergist appointment yesterday I was told to not take my GERD medication. Today I paid the price for that and I never got to speak with the doctor. Win. At least it gave me the opportunity to do all the things I find relaxing or hobbies I enjoy in my last weekend before returning to work. Things such as:

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About midday I say the neighbor had finally moved their car from partially blocking my driveway, so I ran out and parked across the entire area so no one can park back in that spot. At the same time I washed a bunch of mildew that has grown on the van on the shady side, making it look like we pulled it out of a bog. The driver side rear tire won’t hold pressure any more, so I have to fill it every 5-6 days. At some point maybe I’ll be able to get a tire? Wife and I have already discussed the people we can ask for money so we can replace the van. I have no idea how those conversations are going to go.

Its great. Its great to be in a worse financial position than my parents, who I thought I was better than. Apparently not.

We watched the latest Lucha Libre AAA event, bed time for the gorls, and then we are going to watch The Dark Knight.

Projects

I did get a couple small things done.

First with my Chromebook Duet running PostmarketOS. The default keyboard config doesn’t have home, end, page up, page down, or delete keys. It was driving me nuts. I finally reconfigured the layout so now alt+ arrow keys for home, end, pgup/down and then ctrl+backspace for delete.

Next was an issue I think I resolved with the HP EliteDesk mini PC. The ethernet port would drop connection multiple times when using, especially under heavy load. It would disappear for 1-3 minutes and occassionally need a reboot to fix. I researched today and it might be related to iommu support. I added a kernel flag in grub to disable it. We will see how this goes.

Daily gratitude

• Thankful for my wife for not giving up on me yet, even though she should.
• My solar panel+power station setup is working great. Now that I’ve fixed the networking issue with the EliteDesk I’m one step closer to getting something offgrid.
• Costco gave me a new charger for my hearing aids. Fingers crossed.

Tomorrow’s big thing(s)

Its the NFL Super Bowl and we’re having a little party. My son enjoys the football and it should be fun.

Loose thoughts

My teeth are getting pretty yellow. The last time I was at the dentist they refused to do a cleaning until I got $5,000 in work done first. I’m sure this is all fine.

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