Man! It sure has been a While! I have recently been going through one minor crisis after another, until it sort of just ended up being generally too much to deal with and I have neglected my beautiful webbed site in favor of playing Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire for multiple hours straight. I hit a score of over 1 billion on Sapphire field!

So without further ado, it is time to recount the tragic comedy of errors my life has become, so as to explain myself (which I don't really need to do, I know) and- more importantly- so I can laugh about all of this, even though I really am still In It.

I am required to get a Summer internship in order to graduate on time. The reasons for this are many, and most of it is self-imposed bullshit I have signed myself up for, but it is crucial to know that when I was planning the last half of my undergraduate degree out the Economy was in much better shape, and manufacturing was much easier to find a job in as an engineer. Guess what happened to change that!

I was told to apply to my school's research department in January. Unfortunately, the guy in charge of hiring was then out of work for a while and unable to do much hiring because his daughter got very sick. I was told I would have the job by the end of February, but I did not get it until late March.

Also in March, I got a job offer for a Summer internship from the career fair. I was told I passed the first interview and they would like to formally offer me a job. I asked about housing. They never got back to me about housing and never sent the contract over.

No worries! Once I started working at the research department, my boss said that he would get me a job there over the Summer to qualify for my internship. I was told this in late March, and he said he would talk to higher-ups on my behalf. Two weeks later, I asked those higher-ups, who had never heard of it. My boss went on leave to care for his daughter.

The guy leading the research department said that he would not hire me for the Summer on such short notice. Less savory, more bigoted reasons were suggested by his coworkers and by my professor, but nothing ultimately came of it.

No worries! I had another interview that went well. It is now about three weeks until Summer. The interviewer said that they would like to have me on board. I did not receive the contract until the final week in April.

When I did get the contract, I was told that housing would not be provided. The internship is in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania, and the housing market isn't great!

This is fine, though, because on a class trip to another state I was told by an engineering manager that they would be interested in having me for an internship and that I should send them my resume. I did, but then they never got back to me.

Not a problem, though, the company I got a contract at found me a place to live, because a nearby landlord they have partnered with before just got an opening! Rent is affordable and the house is super close to the factory. Now I just have to finish finals, pack my things, and prepare for work!

My laptop was dying in under 5 hours during normal document and web browsing activity; it lasted for almost 10 before! Luckily, a battery swap is a very simple procedure, and because of my experience modifying electronics in the past it should provide no problems.

My laptop broke.

I took it to two repair shops, who both said the motherboard was fried entirely. I got my hard drive from it, and they sold me an adaptor for the hard drive.

After an entire day of troubleshooting, it turns out they sold me the wrong adaptor and were closed for the next three days. I had to leave for my internship in two. I bought a new adaptor.

I bought a new laptop online. Took out the bulk of my savings. Surely not a problem, because I will be getting that sweet sweet engineering internship money, and they told me I would be paid weekly, so I will recoup the cost quickly!

Nothing populated in the company's online system. I am not added to payroll until the first payday passes. I am also getting paid biweekly. It will be 3 weeks until my first paycheck.

I can't even set up my new computer, because you need an already-functioning machine to get a bootable USB. I crash my roommate's laptop trying to create a bootable Windows USB on it.

Surely this means it's a good time to finally try Linux- except, my roommate won't let me use his laptop anymore, so I wait for my parents to mail me one of my OTG adapters to create boot media with my phone. I didn't bring it with me because I have not once needed to use it.

Linux ends up being a perpetual string of issues for me. At this point I am working 9-12 hour days, my brain is fried, I do not have the patience to learn an entirely new OS like I thought I would. When my audio drivers need to be reinstalled for the third time I decide to go back to Windows.

My USB drive is so old that the default bootable USB creator on Fedora doesn't really function properly. I download another one. Windows 11 does not want to install. I am, somehow, missing the driver needed to read my hard drive.

The only thing that I had not yet tried is a program called Rufus, which is Windows-only, so I install a Windows 10 VM, which takes many, many hours of troubleshooting and re-initializing the kernel over and over for some reason.

I now have a functioning Windows 11 machine. Excellent. Why does my hard drive not connect to it anymore?

I spend more hours tracking down a very specific program that will install a very specific driver, because the WD programs aren't working whatsoever on my machine for reasons i do not care anymore to investigate.

It is the third week of my internship. My boss keeps asking weird and invasive questions about why I wear a mask indoors. I am given 10+ rather large projects to complete in 12 weeks in various departments around the plant. I am expected to stay for a minimum of 9 hours every day. I do not even have a functioning company email yet.

The oven in the house I am staying at does not work very well. My banana bread is undercooked. I broke all of the eggs I bought while biking home from the store. My green onions went bad after less than a week. The house does not have air conditioning. There are no screens on the windows, so bugs keep getting in. I'm just being petty at this point, but you understand, right? The build-up of Things Going On???

I have a list of blogposts I wanted to make for months now, but then I got busy with... all of this, and finals, and so I cleared the list and want to start anew. I'm hoping as I settle into a routine I have more time for webweaving again.

♥Jay