Two things getting on my nerves lately.

First off, my anti-bad stuff software, Spybot Search and Destroy 2, keeps identifying my copy of the Tor browser^[1] as malware and quarantining it so that the system can’t access it and I can’t use it.

And I can’t seem to call it off, as it were. It has a list of files it has quarantined, but Tor isn’t on there, so I can’t tell it to chill the fuck out about it.

I’ve tried all kinds of things, like uninstalling Tor then reinstalling it in a totally different directory in order to sneak it past my own security system, but to no avail.

I am getting ever close to the nuclear option, which is to uninstall Spybot entirely.

Hopefully that would work, though it would leave me feeling a tad vulnerable. So I am going to try everything else first.

It’s just so frustrating to have to struggle with my own damned computer just to use Tor. I feel like a victim of an autoimmune disorder.

My computer’s defenses are attacking healthy cells!

I am sure there has to be some way around this, though. Besides uninstalling Spybot. Most anti-mean programs software has an “allow” list where you can tell it specifically that this program is not a virus, but if Spybot 2 has one, I can’t find it.

If I do end up nuking Spybot, I will reinstalled Malwarebytes. Forget why I uninstalled it in the first place, though I am pretty sure it wasn’t because of a situation like this one.

The other aggravation is this maze in Skyrim. It’s part of the awe inspiringly good Legacy of the Dragonborn mod, and it’s super frustrating.

Mazes and I do not get along, especially in first person. Even in the real world, where there are far more landmarks to distinguish one place from another, I have a terrible sense of direction.

I like to say my sense of direction is so bad, I can get lost in an elevator.

Add the abstraction of a 3D video game world and I am hopeless. My only salvation is that mazes, unlike the real world, have a sort of internal logic to them that lets me mentally mark off passages I have tried before.

But that only works up to a certain level of complexity and this maze exceeds that.

So it’s remarkably nightmarish for me. in a low key way. It feels like some fever dream I might have when I am overheating in my sleep.

I’ve had nightmares like that, where I am trying to get somewhere and I keep taking paths that seem like they will take me there but I just end up back where I started.

Having poor spatial awareness can really be a drag sometimes. And yet I get the feeling that it is somehow connected to my creativity.

I guess seeing things as rigidly spatial doesn’t fit with creativity’s relational nature.

I’m going to go see if the left hand rule works in video games.

Wish me luck.

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Update : Yes, it works. Sorta. Like a lot of sets of instructions, I feel like there is a hidden assumption that is not contained within the instruction set itself and without which the instruction set is worthless because they just won’t work.

Like with this thing.

In searching for that image, I discovered that there’s an entire reddit community inspired by it where people post images of other unhelpful art lessons.

And that makes me very happy. I am glad others share my bitterness and rage about how useless art books that say they can “teach you to draw” are.

Oh, and for the record, if your answer to “And how do I do that?” is to say “Like this!” and do it, that’s not good enough.

If all I had to do to learn to draw was watch someone draw, I would be Leonardo Da Fucking Vinci by now because I have watched my friends draw SO much.

I’ve never been able to copy someone’s actions.

Maybe I have the wrong kind of mirror neurons, I dunno.

In other words, ordered from Taco del Mar tonight, so I am in Mexican food heaven. It has been so long since I had anything like actual Mexican food that even fast food and/or food court level Mexican food seems like heaven to me.

I’m currently 75 percent of the way through an order of loaded nachos with pico de gallo (basically, salsa without the vinegar), cilantro^[2], cheese, and….

Swell of dramatic music, please.

and… CARNITAS!^[3] I love carnitas so much and I hadn’t had it since I lived in Silicon Valley. So when I saw that as an option I POUNCED.

What’s more, I have a bigass burrito and chips n’ queso in the fridge, and I am going to have them for lunch tomorrow.

And the quality’s pretty good,. at least with my nachos. The pico and cilantro taste very fresh, which is very important to me.

Not as much cheese as I might have liked. Perhaps they are trying to get me to pay the extra $1,50 for extra cheese next time.

If so, it worked, because I totally will.

At the risk of being declassee, though, I do still miss my Taco Bell. It is, objectively speaking, worse Mexican food, but it’s the first Mexican food I had besides when my Mom would make tacos from a kit, and I will always be fond of it no matter what.

Plus, I am nuts for that nacho cheese goop that comes from a pump.

What can I say, some of us have a weakness for artificial cheez flavour.

I mean, who do you think keeps these things in business?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[2]] Glad I got over my aversion to cilantro. Now it just tastes like parsley to me, and i love me some parsley. [[1]]