It's the end of the year! That means it's time to write about the year, or perhaps the upcoming year! I originally had a different technology-focused post, but it seemed appropriate (if a bit cliché) to do this type of post today. I also heard from people who missed the presence of "life" types of posts on my primary blog.
Technology in 2015 was okay. Windows 10 shipped. More on that later. 2015 saw a lot of tablets ship, and the rest of the market appears to be following Microsoft's lead into bigger and more capable tablets. Google has made a few "big tablet" attempts, but most of them are hampered by the fact that Android is terrible on big screens, and Google is actively promoting bad design patterns, so that situation is unlikely ever to get better.
Windows RT finally totally died with the introduction of the Surface 3, one of which I picked up and used for NaNoWriMo this year.
I also briefly got into phone systems, something I intend to return to eventually.
But, this post is really about me, in perhaps a more personal way than the posts I usually write about how technology impacts me or how I use technology.
I bought a house this year, and although I haven't specifically written about it yet, I have a 40/20 megabit Internet connection from my local telephone company. It's the most I've ever spent on a single utility, and that doesn't look like it's going to change, but it's so worthwhile for me, because I can really easily use my home computing resources when I'm on the go, and things like "software updates" don't completely destroy gaming sessions or video streams.
Oh, the house. That's a long story. After leaving campus due to rising costs and the magnificent indifference of the residential housing department, I lived with a friend in an apartment, and when she moved away, I found myself needing a place. I was able to secure a garage to live in over the summer, and then as luck would have it, a bedroom opened up in that house at the literal eleventh hour before winter. (As I recall, I moved to the bedroom in mid-November.) After that, I moved in with a friend and colleague and her kids, and a year or so after that happened, she asked me to start a more serious look for housing.
And so, I started searching, both for rentals and for houses and places to buy. I looked at a few places and spent some time speaking with my previous housemates from the Crazyhouse Collective. Ultimately, a pretty hard deadline and the inability to come to a consensus about down payment funding meant that I was on my own, and I selected something that seemed manageable, both from the perspective of being affordable and having good network services. It's on the far edge of town, but I still get all of town's services – our streets are plowed and if I needed ambulance service, it is available, for example.
The house is doing well. I've had a payment mishap so far, and that's encouraging some of my goals for the coming year, but I've more or less recovered and think that it was a good learning experience. I'm still not totally moved in, and hope to do some ritual cleaning at some point in the next year, when I'm feeling a little better.
On a more personal note, I've continued to struggle with Myasthenia Gravis. This year, I had not one, not two but three attempts at having a fistula created. One in June, the next in July, and the latest very recently here in December. If this one works, at some point next year, I'll be able to have plasma exchange treatments done using the resultant "very large" vein, instead of having a catheter inserted into my jugular vein every few months. This should introduce some possibility to pre-schedule the treatments and perhaps schedule them out in a different way, for more maximal effectiveness and coverage.
The year started bad, too. I went into the hospital at the tail end (like, literally December 27th or so) of 2014 and was held up for almost two months as the local neurologists, pleased that they were able to treat me locally, proceeded to do the wrong treatment, and then proceeded to literally put me in a holding tank, hoping that the treatment would magically start working. Needless to say, I now exercise veto power over the hospital.
Hospitalization itself got better after that situation. In the mid-year, I was hospitalized and was able to directly request the treatment I needed, get it, and then leave halfway through the treatment cycle to continue having the treatments done on an out-patient basis. It was not the smoothest thing, but it worked very well, all things considered.
I have developed another chronic health condition as well. This one's really of my own doing, and as a result, I need to be much more mindful of what I eat, especially when it comes to sugars and simple carbohydrates. Another thing I've been advised of is that I may have some oddly specific blood things going on. The surgeon who performed my three fistulas told me he's done thousands of fistulas, and I'm the only case so far so far that has required a third creation. The nephrologist I'm working with has suggested it might be a condition that specifically promotes coagulation, but we don't know yet. That might require additional investigation, or it might be a matter of selecting a different means of access, such as a catheter that gets left in place or another type of installed port.
Managing the myasthenia gravis continues to be the biggest problem. Other things continue to fall to the wayside, either as I fill my schedule with things pursuant to managing MG, or as I simply don't have spoons to do anything beyond work, food, and sleep. With luck, the fistula will work properly and develop into something suitable for plasma exchange, and the management of the MG will become easier this coming year. I simply don't know what will happen if it doesn't.