![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioWelcome to July! The year is now half over!
The summer solstice is in the past, which means the days are getting shorter again. Yet, it only just got so hot and humid that you can't do anything outside without sweating to death.
Whether you got the jump on things in January, or you waited until May to start your plans, everything's gonna grind to a halt in July.
The best course of action is to sleep late, start drinking early, and enjoy what you can of the summer... at night.
------------{=0=}------------
I went into the studio straight after work, yesterday, to hash out some lyrics... playing the music aloud, and singing along, while jotting ideas into Notepad.
But then something weird happened... I found that I suddenly had double vision.
Out of nowhere, suddenly the pictures from my right and left eyes were not aligning!
The right eye was going where I wanted to look, and that image was upright, like normal.
But the left eye's image was offset, and rotated at about a 20 degree angle!
And no matter where I looked or what I did, the images would not come together!
--<>--
If I closed one eye, or the other, then I could see fine with whichever eye was open. I just couldn't use them both at the same time!
I wasn't dizzy. I hadn't hit my head, or had any other kind of physical trauma. And I was still on my first beer... sober and wide awake.
I went outside to see if maybe trying to focus on far away things would help.
At first, it did not!.. but then I found that if I turned my head to the right, and turned my focus to the far left of my field of view... side-eyeing, basically... that WOULD cause the images to line up again.
After I did that two or three times, it was as if my brain said, "Oh! Wait!.. I remember how to do this!" And the images started realigning for me, even looking foreward.
This episode lasted a good five to seven minutes, but after eight or nine minutes my vision was back to normal.
--<>--
After doing a bit of research, and talking to Colleen and Tim, I've concluded that what happened was a form of optical migrane... most likely triggered by the bright light of the studio monitor... and that it's due to a genetic quirk.
Tim's had a lazy left eye since childhood. His brain long ago learned to simply ignore the input from that eye, and he's had monocular vision his whole life.
Colleen experienced the double vision thing once, very briefly, but it turns out that she and I have also experienced a different kind of optical migrane where bright bands of pulsating, rainbow colored light will appear in our peripheral vision... much more on the left than the right... and persisit for several minutes.
Until she told me about that, I thought I was the only person who'd ever experienced that one too!
So... what it all boils down to is that I'm old... and my left eye is now a little wonky, and will get stuck once in a while.
But, I'll also point out that optical migranes are not painful. They're just very weird.
------------{=0=}------------
In other news, there was an electrical issue in the studio.
I mentioned how I'm plugged into an outlet in the basement that's known to be good, i.e. correct polarity, properly grounded, and new wiring.
And that was because the outlets here in Dad's room are ancient knob and tube, two prong outlets, with no ground, and dodgey polarity.
And the power strip I'm using for the studio is also brand new, and up to code.
However, there'd been this odd issue where, whenever I turned my little clip-on desk fan, on or off... the computer would make a sound to signal it! As if I were plugging or unplugging a thumb drive!
That should not happen!.. because the fan is IN NO WAY connected to the computer!
And then I noticed that when I tried to plug anything into the power strip, when it was powered on, there'd be a spark!
And it turns out that the problem was with the extension cord I was using to get from the good basement outlet, to the good power strip!
That cord... a heavy duty, three prong cord, was... just some legacy cord left over from Dad... and, of course... it had some kind of nasty wiring issue!
In other words... don't try to work around Dad's shitty outlets by using one of Dad's shitty extension cords... no matter how heavy duty it looks!
I replaced it with a brand new extension cord I forgot I had in the van, and all the problems went away, but... not before damage was done to the computer's sound card!
--<>--
You see, it was right after my optical migrane episode, that I went back to play my music, and suddenly the speakers sounded like they were completely fried!
At first I thought the two incidents were related, like... some ethereal pulse of ball lightning passed through the room and fried both my brain, and the speakers at the same time.
But I replaced the speakers with identical ones from upstairs and they still sounded fried, which meant it was the sound card... or at least the audio jack.
I then got a pair of USB headphones and plugged them into the new computer and... thankfully, through those... the sound is perfect!
But this is when I investigated and replaced the faulty extension cord.
And now... my brain is working... the two sets of speakers are both good... and I can hear my music in headphones... but that audio jack is fried, so I can't monitor music out in the room.
------------{=0=}------------
That was all of yesterday's news.
Today is the first day of a four day weekend for me, and I just woke up a little while ago.
My plan for today is to work on music and... actually smoke some weed!
But for safety's sake, I need to run a few errands before getting stoned.
------------{=0=}------------
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
The summer solstice is in the past, which means the days are getting shorter again. Yet, it only just got so hot and humid that you can't do anything outside without sweating to death.
Whether you got the jump on things in January, or you waited until May to start your plans, everything's gonna grind to a halt in July.
The best course of action is to sleep late, start drinking early, and enjoy what you can of the summer... at night.
I went into the studio straight after work, yesterday, to hash out some lyrics... playing the music aloud, and singing along, while jotting ideas into Notepad.
But then something weird happened... I found that I suddenly had double vision.
Out of nowhere, suddenly the pictures from my right and left eyes were not aligning!
The right eye was going where I wanted to look, and that image was upright, like normal.
But the left eye's image was offset, and rotated at about a 20 degree angle!
And no matter where I looked or what I did, the images would not come together!
If I closed one eye, or the other, then I could see fine with whichever eye was open. I just couldn't use them both at the same time!
I wasn't dizzy. I hadn't hit my head, or had any other kind of physical trauma. And I was still on my first beer... sober and wide awake.
I went outside to see if maybe trying to focus on far away things would help.
At first, it did not!.. but then I found that if I turned my head to the right, and turned my focus to the far left of my field of view... side-eyeing, basically... that WOULD cause the images to line up again.
After I did that two or three times, it was as if my brain said, "Oh! Wait!.. I remember how to do this!" And the images started realigning for me, even looking foreward.
This episode lasted a good five to seven minutes, but after eight or nine minutes my vision was back to normal.
After doing a bit of research, and talking to Colleen and Tim, I've concluded that what happened was a form of optical migrane... most likely triggered by the bright light of the studio monitor... and that it's due to a genetic quirk.
Tim's had a lazy left eye since childhood. His brain long ago learned to simply ignore the input from that eye, and he's had monocular vision his whole life.
Colleen experienced the double vision thing once, very briefly, but it turns out that she and I have also experienced a different kind of optical migrane where bright bands of pulsating, rainbow colored light will appear in our peripheral vision... much more on the left than the right... and persisit for several minutes.
Until she told me about that, I thought I was the only person who'd ever experienced that one too!
So... what it all boils down to is that I'm old... and my left eye is now a little wonky, and will get stuck once in a while.
But, I'll also point out that optical migranes are not painful. They're just very weird.
In other news, there was an electrical issue in the studio.
I mentioned how I'm plugged into an outlet in the basement that's known to be good, i.e. correct polarity, properly grounded, and new wiring.
And that was because the outlets here in Dad's room are ancient knob and tube, two prong outlets, with no ground, and dodgey polarity.
And the power strip I'm using for the studio is also brand new, and up to code.
However, there'd been this odd issue where, whenever I turned my little clip-on desk fan, on or off... the computer would make a sound to signal it! As if I were plugging or unplugging a thumb drive!
That should not happen!.. because the fan is IN NO WAY connected to the computer!
And then I noticed that when I tried to plug anything into the power strip, when it was powered on, there'd be a spark!
And it turns out that the problem was with the extension cord I was using to get from the good basement outlet, to the good power strip!
That cord... a heavy duty, three prong cord, was... just some legacy cord left over from Dad... and, of course... it had some kind of nasty wiring issue!
In other words... don't try to work around Dad's shitty outlets by using one of Dad's shitty extension cords... no matter how heavy duty it looks!
I replaced it with a brand new extension cord I forgot I had in the van, and all the problems went away, but... not before damage was done to the computer's sound card!
You see, it was right after my optical migrane episode, that I went back to play my music, and suddenly the speakers sounded like they were completely fried!
At first I thought the two incidents were related, like... some ethereal pulse of ball lightning passed through the room and fried both my brain, and the speakers at the same time.
But I replaced the speakers with identical ones from upstairs and they still sounded fried, which meant it was the sound card... or at least the audio jack.
I then got a pair of USB headphones and plugged them into the new computer and... thankfully, through those... the sound is perfect!
But this is when I investigated and replaced the faulty extension cord.
And now... my brain is working... the two sets of speakers are both good... and I can hear my music in headphones... but that audio jack is fried, so I can't monitor music out in the room.
That was all of yesterday's news.
Today is the first day of a four day weekend for me, and I just woke up a little while ago.
My plan for today is to work on music and... actually smoke some weed!
But for safety's sake, I need to run a few errands before getting stoned.
°¦}
