Why does life have to fuck with me like it does?
So last night, in the wee hours of the morning, I decided that…
In this case, specifically, it was time for me to download and install VRchat again and try to get with the young hip furries there.
I’ve been looking to expand my online social world and I keep seeing these excellent videos made by people like AydenFox with VRchat that make it seem like VRchat is a really fun place to be, so I thought I’d take another stab at it.
This marked my third or fourth try at this. All my previous attempts have been thwarted by my old nemesis, social anxiety.
I would find someplace where furries were hanging out and talking and someone would say something to me and I didn’t know how to reply to them and my anxiety would redline instantly and it’s ALT-F4 time.
Man it sucks to be crazy.
This time I was a bit more forewarned. But when I went to the big furry hideout where three or four furries were hanging out and chatting, I was reminded that VRchat does not really work via text, but by voice.
So when someone asked me if I had a microphone, I went EEP and ALT-F4.
Luckily, I rediscovered my VERY solid Samson microphone ($80 and reportedly damned near indestructible) recently, so this was a recoverable situation.
So I freed up a USB port by prising a long defunct wireless dongle out of one (surprisingly difficult) and plugged the microphone in and loading up freeware Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) Audacity to try it out.
But I got nothing. No audio recorded. Hmmm. I went digging into the audio settings of Windows 10 to see if one of them was the problem. Nuh-uh.
Then an error message flashed by in the lower right corner of my screen WAY too fast for me to read it, but it said something about not recognizing… something?
Eventually I managed to click on the error thingy when it popped up and that made it stay on screen long enough for me to read that apparently Windows 10 did not recognize my microphone and that’s why it wasn’t working.
Well shit. Just when I was ready to dive back in and take the huge step of actually talking to strangers in realtime.
Terrifying! But also pretty exciting.
So right now I am stymied. Here I have this lovely unbreakable microphone and a service I really want to use it with but Windows 10 can’t connect to it.
I haven’t given up on it yet. There’s some suggestions on the Web on how to fix it and I am going to try those.
Luckily, I am the sort of person who gets angry when thwarted and so that makes me all the more determined to MAKE the goddamned thing do what it’s supposed to do.
It’s either that, or find my expensive webcam and try to use ITS microphone.
And JUST the microphone. I’m not ready for video chat yet.
Heck, I am barely ready for voice chat.
It’s going to be a huge increase in social stimulation for me, but I am determined to embrace that and do my best to turn that stimulation into enjoyment and enthusiasm instead of letting it turn into anxiety and panic.
One way or another, I am going to chat with fuzzies in realtime, using my actual voice, and thus level up my entire furry experience.
Oh, and I have to figure out how to take a picture of my current VRchat avatar.
He is so dang cute! 🙂
More after the break.
Nothing I can do
Some of the worst moments when you’re disabled are the helpless ones.
Like just now. As part of making myself a chickenburger for supper, I put a hamburger bun in the toaster to toast.
The problem with that, though, is that these No Name hamburger buns I bought are not very big. Kaiser rolls they ain’t.
That makes it tough to get them out of the toaster when they’re done. It makes me wish we had one of those modern toasters where the basket can lift almost all the way out of the toaster in order to make it easier to get things like hamburger buns and bagels out.
Instead, I have to do that thing where you try to get it out with your fingers without getting burned by yanking it out really fast and with minimum finger contact.
Well this time I put a bit too much oomph in my pull because half of my burger bun ended up in the very narrow gap between the fridge and the cupboards.
So there I was, helpless. Because there was no way I could possibly retrieve it. I had to tell Julian about it so that he can figure out a way to get the dang thing out of there.
And that was a little humiliating.
But that’s what being disabled is like. By then my back and my legs were already in serious pain, so I could not even hang around to provide moral support.
And in a circuitous way that got me thinking about medic alert bracelets like the ones the famous “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” lady advertised.
I can easily seeing myself in that exact situation, or worse. I could hurt myself in a fall or get trapped somewhere when Julian isn’t home[1] and end up in a lot of trouble, and not even be able to get to the phone to call him.
So having a little button to press to summon help that I can keep in my pocket would be just the thing.
And boy, does that makes me feel old. And I am old. I am not fooling myself on that.
But that feeling of helplessness is a killer. It’s got me very depressed and so I am going to go lay down in the dark a while and think about stuff.
Don’t worry, I am sure I will be fine after a good sulk.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.