cassie ink

I started accumulating my music library in the mid-2000s by downloading shit off Limewire. At the time of writing, that library is approaching nearly 20,000 songs and around 200GB in size.¹ As a teen married to my computer, I used various apps to listen to and manage the library — iTunes so I could sync with my iPod Nano, Winamp when I wanted something local, and then eventually foobar2000 when Winamp went the way of the buffalo. Once the smartphone era came around, I used Google Play Music to upload the library to their servers , and that bridged the gap between my locally stored media and listening on the go from whatever device. Frankly, at the time, I couldn’t believe that Google was allowing something like this — absolutely none of the music was purchased through them and I wasn’t paying a cent to access it. After a few years, Google shut down Play Music and attempted to transition everyone to YouTube Music. My response was a resounding “Fuck that,” and so I did what any normal person would do: I built a home server so that I could, essentially, host my own Spotify.²

Doing

I added a “bookshelf” (reading tracker) to this site! It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time,¹ but I finally felt I had the time, understanding of Hugo templates, and workflow with Obsidian to make it happen. It’s pretty empty right now and therefore I appear as a rube who has read only one and half books, but luckily I was able to add a miniscule disclaimer to the bottom of the page that defends my reputation (reproduced below).²

This week was nuts. Oh, and I’m sick again (still?).

My birthday was Monday; I went right from teaching middle school to teaching my college course in the evening. I got home around 7:00pm, showered, ate dinner, and felt down — not because I had a particularly bad day, but it just felt like a bunch of stress came crashing upon me and like there was no way out. I guess I hoped something completely arbitrary like a birthday would wash away the weeks of discontent, but alas.

Doing

I’m doing better this week than last. I finally feel like I’m getting above water on my work, so I’ve been coming home at better times.¹ Part of it is that I’ve accepted that my students this year are incredibly behind in their reading and writing skills and I have slowed my instruction way down as a result — not to “dumb it down” but to build good, strong foundations for them. I can’t just pass the problem along to the next grade. This probably means that we’re not going to get through the same amount of content as I usually do in an instructional year, but I’m lucky in that I teach a skills subject, not a content subject.²

Doing

I’m sick again (still?). As I wrote last week, I’ve had a lingering cough for going on two weeks. I visited urgent care and received a non-specific diagnosis, but they gave me an inhaler and said to come back if I wasn’t better in a week or two. On Wednesday or Thursday, I came down with a regular cold. It’s manageable, and I’m hoping it knocks whatever the cough was out of my system, but it feels like I can’t catch a break. Joe has been sick too, so we’ve been barely making it by; the house is messy and there are a lot of projects that I’d like to get to, but neither of us have felt up it.