Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1129)
Hello Everyone!
Way off track, Pesky GPT cooldown periods, The value of a satisfied mind, Trimming foliage & A charitable gesture!
Alright, I am not even close to being on time tonight with my writing routine... but at least this time it was not from 'staring off into space' too much... or because I could not break away from whatever I was working on. I will probably get to spelling out the reasons later in this entry... but for now I am just going to take my time and enjoy my espresso a bit before really diving in here.
Somehow I managed to fall asleep relatively early last night compared to the night before (which is not saying much) and wound up sleeping most of the morning away yet again. Last night though, I finally noticed something that I had somehow missed during all this recent upheaval to my sleep cycle... and now that I know what it is I am unsure exactly how to solve it.
What keeps happening is that as soon as I finish my writing and posting routines I keep immediately changing gears... and begin working on one of my numerous coding projects. Which is fine and all considering how much I enjoy doing it... but what keeps happening is that an hour or two into my 'nightly sessions' I wind up burning through all of my allotted GPT-4 calls... then have to wait for the 'cooldown period' to end before I can use the model again.
None of which is all that big of a deal in the not-so-grand scheme of things... because I still wind up working on my projects... but I do so with one of the less capable models. What happens though is that I leave the GPT-4 window (that is on cooldown) open because I learned the hard way that revisiting a chat (from the chat history) often breaks the code interpreter... which yeah is one of the main advantages of using that model.
I also seem to run out of my usage credits right at some critical point in the project... and basically leaving the window open ensures that I can progress from where I stopped. All of which sounds okay but in reality I wind up piddling around with stuff 'killing time' until the one (to sometimes two) hour cooldown passes... only to be in the same cooldown phase again after a mere forty requests once it has been lifted.
In other words all those 'waiting periods' each night keep me up much longer than I would be otherwise... and since I usually have some kind of 'stopping point' (for the project's daily progress) in mind each evening... failing to reach said stopping point... will frigging nag at me all night. So, basically in that scenario I wind up not being able to sleep (because I missed my mark) and wind up with a bunch of unresolved questions bouncing around in my head to boot.
The solution is pretty simple because I think I could just up my subscription tier... but as things stand just paying the extra twenty bucks a month (for the tier that I am currently on) has been tricky enough to pull off each month. It would not be accurate to say that 'coding' brings no value to my life... but it assuredly does not add any financial value so the idea of paying even more (for a higher tier) is not even remotely appealing.
Heck, I do not even want to be shelling out the twenty bucks a month that I currently am... and it is worth noting that I have never been the kind of person to pay monthly subscriptions for anything. Sure that twenty bucks is 'worth it' given how much time (and headache) that it saves me... so I am not exactly complaining here and I am saying more that... while it is not necessarily a necessity (especially for a hobby) it helps make the hobby 'enjoyable' instead of frustrating.
I guess the important part to it all is that at this point... it is fair to say... that I have probably succeeded at breaking my gaming addiction... and whether replacing it with a coding addiction was a wise choice or not is something that I will find out later. For now though... everything is going according to plan, I do not miss the gaming... and the level of 'challenge' involved with coding dwarfs anything that I have ever encountered in a game setting... which yeah is promising for me because I enjoy challenges.
As far as that last bit goes (in regards to challenges) it is the self-imposed intellectual challenges that I am referring to... and my mindset is never to be the best, to be 'number one' or any horseshit like that. It is for the sake of exploring the challenge along with having to bolster my wits, expand my horizons, test my patience and a slue of other such things that all amount to seeing if I can enjoy the journey... or not. When I was gaming I used to sum that up by saying: I play the game for the sake of playing the game... nothing more and nothing less.
Believe me, that I am well aware of the perils of having such an attitude in regards to not just gaming... but most facets of my existence as well. If I had an ounce of avarice (or maybe even competitiveness, capitalism, or good ole mercantilism) in me... I would probably have done much better in life than I have... and along the way I would have simply had to make peace with loathing myself for 'going against the grain' of my nature.
Obviously, I must have found loving myself in 'poverty' more appealing than loathing myself in 'wealth' given how the events of my life have played out thus far... and I doubt that will ever change about me. Not to get too lost on that particular topic but I gotta say that regardless of everything (and damn near anything) when I pass from this world... I want to do so with a very satisfied mind... and I am not keen on letting anything (whether it be internal or external) get in the way of that.
Okay, I really got off on a bit of a tangent there and now the hour is growing very late, my little brain is fatigued... and I have yet to spell out the events of the day... and how I came to be writing at such a late hour. This is all also eating into my precious coding routines but hey that happened earlier today as well so perhaps it is just par for the course.
Earlier today I was 'eyes deep' in a coding project (a side project for the Hive smart VM project) when I saw a message that there would be some folks visiting to pick up a camper that has been sitting unused out here for the last few years. To gloss over lots of details, the camper was not mine and the folks getting it were a family in need and the owner's of the camper were helping them out... all of which had zero to do with me... and I was not asked to do anything so do not get things twisted here as I spell out the rest of it.
The folks getting the camper had scheduled its pickup for mid afternoon... but me being me... and knowing how folks tend to be... I was like... well they are going to get here right before sunset (many hours late) and its going to be a total mess getting that camper (and all the stuff stored around and under it) out of where it is. Since I could not do squat about other folks punctuality (or lack thereof) I decided to go ahead and do what I could do... which was get all the junk out of the way... while there was still daylight left.
So, not long after getting that message I set out with a rake and my gloves to get the area cleaned up, disconnect all the utilities from the camper and rake all the fallen branches out of the way. About halfway through the process I wound up heading back to the shelter site to get some handheld pruners and a pull saw... and wouldn't you know it... there was a new message waiting for me... to let me know the folks would not be arriving until just before sunset.
Anyways, once I got back over there with the hand tools I set about trimming back a bunch of foliage that was protruding into the road (which needed done regardless) and also finishing up a few odds and ends around the camper itself. None of it was a hassle, none of it was anything that was too strenuous but there was a heck of a lot to do... and I did it knowing that doing so would spare everyone an incredible amount of fumbling around in the cold at night.
What I am saying there, is that I took it upon myself to do it knowing full well that I could have simply kept coding, kept being warm... and had nothing to do with the whole affair in a very guiltless manner. Except my charitable nature got the best of me... and knowing all parties involved (to one degree or another) I figured my small efforts could help curb things turning into a real shitshow.
The part that I did not really count on is getting caught up in the 'hooking it up and hauling it away' portion of the process... and honestly I fully intended to not get caught up in that... but I did. At first I had left that area (before the folks arrived) but then wound up heading back over there with the landowners so that I could talk to them a bit.
Of course that was also just before the folks coming to get the trailer arrived... and although I tried to break away a few times (as the sun was setting) I decided to stick around and help see it all through. Honestly, I am glad that I did because even with an 'extra person' (me) there it was rather challenging to guide the folks on backing the camper out... without hitting any trees or running over the water spigot in that area.
Long story short there, after lots of having to shout (speak very loudly) over a loud diesel engine... and them going backwards and forwards... and maneuvering in various directions... they finally managed to to get the camper (and their vehicle) aimed in the right direction. Granted the area the camper was in is rather odd being in the curve of the road... but honestly there was plenty of room to work with... and it did not need to be as difficult as it was... but I guess 'that is life' so go figure.
Okay, I have to quit writing now because it will already be close to midnight before I can get this all edited and posted... and yeah I am pretty wiped out at this point. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice time.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
I know it was a pain doing it in the cold and that late in the day, but you did the right thing by clearing the land around the camper and helping this family out.
!ALIVE
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I thought so also and it really was not that much of a pain to do it.