zetasyanthis | Entries tagged with personal

A tiny little bunny
who hopped into our lives
who opened up with science
the doubt inside our eyes.

That hopping little bunny
who was the friend of all
she hopped until she couldn't
and at the last did fall.

She left us teared and weeping
for her most sudden pass
and now we lay her shell to rest
in consecrated grass.

That hopping little bunny
that changed all of our lives
she made the world a better place
despite our crying eyes.

Here's a list of my personal stories, along with relevant tags:

My Friend Lon (silly antics, highly amusing)
The Wicked Grounds Name Story (heartfelt, gender)
My Greatest Travel Disaster Story (quite hilarious, yakkety saks should be playing as you read this)
Backups are Important! (title says it all for this one!)
How To Make SPI Cry (embedded hardware, microcontrollers)
Internship + Massive Flood (FPGAs, terrible software, epic flood)
Home SWAT Team (police, somewhat terrifying with an ambiguous ending)
Work SWAT Team (police, no one seriously hurt)
College (misc college stories, including an embedded internship)
High School (misc high school stories)

The first time I ever visited Wicked Grounds (a BDSM themed coffee shop in San Francisco), I was going to a small writers' meet with a friend of mine. He ended up being delayed by some personal stuff, so I ended up getting there a couple hours before he did. This was the first time I ever went as myself (female-presenting) to /anything/, and so I was a bit nervous. I hadn't changed my name yet, had just barely started therapy, and was very, very nervous.

Eventually, I went up to get a refill on my drank-far-too-quickly mocha, and the barista happened to ask me if I wanted to open a tab, since I looked like I'd be there a while. (I had my laptop, etc...) I said sure, and handed over my card, just as she was asking my name. Thinking she was doing a quick check on the card, I reacted instinctively with, "My name is <deadname>." She looked at me, sadness in her eyes, and said, "No hon. What's /your/ name?"

So a few years ago I had a small NAS, serving as my main filesystem for all sorts of video and audio contents, packages, etc... It contained a lot of personal photos, etc, that I really would have hated to lose, and so I always kept a backup... of at least some of it. I couldn't quite afford a large enough backup unit at the time, so there were some things that only existed there.

One day, I came home from work and my NAS was off. "That's odd," I thought, since it ran 24/7, and I proceeded to try the power button. Absolutely nothing. Not an LED or anything else at all. Well, this NAS had a slightly odd internal power supply that ran off an external 19V brick, so I decided that I'd worry about the rest of the system later and just pop the drives out of the front and hook them up to my media center PC to try and check if my data was at least intact.

Montage ensues, pulling the media PC apart and placing the drives (still in their hot-swap trays) upside-down on top of the media PC. I hook everything up, plug the PC back in, and hit the power button. INSTANTLY, A THREE INCH FLAME shoots out of the top of one of the drive's controller boards where the hot-swap tray had shorted to the drive! Apparently, over time, the metal bottom of the tray had bent and made contact, and while the dinky little 120W NAS PSU tripped out and saved anything bad from happening, the old 750W PSU in the media PC was happy to just power the fuck through that short. Needless to say, that drive was toast, but my data survived to live another day thanks to RAID5, and now I keep backups all over the place.

Notes on easy off-site backups:
1. Encrypted flash or hard drive in your car's glove box.
2. Encrypted flash or hard drive in your bank safety deposit box. (Two or three 3.5" drives fit perfectly in a 3x5 box, which runs about $100/year most everywhere.)

Obviously, you'll have to rotate them periodically, but that's a good start at least!

Father Benedict

So when I was in high school, we had this awesome priest by the name of Father Benedict. He was a science teacher, and taught among other things biology (evolution, not that 6000 year old nonsense). He was an interesting fellow. Quick with a joke, kind, and unmistakable, because during class, his pet hedgehog would commonly end up sleeping in the hood of his habit! In addition to this, he wore paratrooper jump boots, which apparently have special sloped soles so that they don't catch on the airplane hatch and snap your neck when you're jumping out of the plane. I don't know what happened to him in the end, but he was quite a gamer and ended up the hub of the local file-sharing circle at the school. I should reach out and find out what happened to him some day.

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Mrs. Fletcher

Mrs. Fletcher was a grumpy old Nun who I had the misfortune of having as my teacher for Catholic Morality class. She basically turned it into "Why Abortion Is Bad 101", which had me wondering why on earth I should care since it wasn't my body in the first place. (I hadn't realized I was trans at the time, and even now I can't exactly bear a child.)

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Biology Teacher

I don't even remember her name, but she came in to teach a semester of sophomore biology after the normal teacher went on maternity leave. She came in with overheads... hand-written overheads that she proceeded to draw over to try and make more legible, which... did not work. Not my favorite teacher by a long shot, and given I all but passed out during a dissection, that was not my favorite class either. I cannot handle gooey sticky biology bits, and even the smell of formaldehyde makes me nauseous.

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Mr. T(aska)

Mr. T, as we called him, was a fantastic physics teacher and had all kinds of bling his loving students had given him over the years. He was very white, but went along with it, and was often quite funny. Among other things, I'll never forget his exhortation the first week of lab work, when he said something to the effect of "I know you are all very smart people, and they you can break anything you set your mind to. Please do not (intentionally) break anything in my lab!" :D

Mr. T also went on to push me to attend Fermi Lab's Saturday Morning Physics, which is a series of 9 three-hour Saturdays at Fermilab. You get two hours of lecture followed by a one hour tour of a different part of the facility. As a result, I've actually been /inside/ portions of that facility you can't even normally access, as the accelerator wasn't running while I was there.

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Dr. LeCompte

Oh boy, this guy. Nerd that I was, I was a member of Math Team, Science Olympiad, and Computer Club (and ended up running the latter two my senior year). Dr. LeCompte, though, was special. The guy didn't even work for the school. He just came in and taught probability and statistics for Math team when he wasn't flying over to Europe for what I later learned was involvement in CERN. He actually runs the bloody ATLAS detector over there, which I guess explains why his card counting problems were so fucking difficult! I learned probability from a /particle physicist!/

Sleeping silence sleeping soundly.
Tiny water trickling depths.
Who can know these sounds so lonely?
Who can plumb their secret depths?

I can stand here and behold them.
I can see and never cry.
I can hold you, now forever.
I can feel you fin'ly die.

And yes I will stand your heartbreak.
And yes I will live that morn,
that I sing with humble redoubt,
that I sing your song that mourns.

I can stand here, ever weeping.
I can stand here, should I cry.
Your heart lost will feel so lonely,
that beside you, I will die.

So let's not. Let's live together.
So let's shine with force of will.
So let's ever meet the morning.
I can do it, if you will.

Helpers and kindness and rescues of hope
our hearts can't withstand the pain
These people, this place, all are scars
on the psyche of our brains.

Instead of scars, we should now have
these tattered wings of hope
one day at a time, one breath at a time,
preventing the snap of a rope.

You wouldn't imagine these things that kill,
these tiny little knives,
but you can't see inside our our souls
inside we always die.

Today I'm feeling terrible.
Today I'm feeling fine.
Today I would release with knives
that sweetly sickened wine.

A red vintage so lonely
A red vintage so sad
that what I'd do
is die with you
to quick to apply scabs.

If I now had my kitchen knives
I'd open up my self.
I'd rip and tear and gnaw and bite
and shred apart my health.

From one life to another
I would forever fly
on chords of crushed intestine walls
and surely I would die.

A stinking, piss-filled brutal death
and at last I would fall.
I'd give away my life-blood still.
I'd give away it all.

I'm trying to find my worth inside.
I'm trying to find my worth.
It's been before inside myself.
T'was given t' me at birth.

And yet when I feel empty
and when I feel ashamed
I will resolve to hold that spark,
to hold on to my name.

I will not let this threat take hold
that threatens to take life.
I will not be beaten by it.
I will not lose my life.

I will not quit; I will not fail
for my life is at stake.
I will not tarry, delay long.
I cannot risk mistakes.

I wish I felt my heartbeat.
I wish I felt my strain.
I wish I felt but anything.
I wish I felt my pain.

I wish that I could go from day
to day to day at last.
I wish that I had love and joy,
but all I have is ash.

I wish I could get up and sing.
I wish that I could laugh.
I wish that I could desperately,
find once again, my path.

I wish that I could just get up.
I wish that I could strive.
I wish that I could do something,
and more than just survive.

I wish that I could see once more.
I wish that I could cry.
I with with greying everything,
that I'd wish not to die.

I feel an anxious itching.
It takes up all my mind.
And if I really let it,
around my throat would wind.

I cannot tell this timer,
this night-impending doom
to please please please stop ticking
its way into my room.

This timer, ticking badly,
this timer, ticking down,
it drives me mad with itching.
It drives me to the ground.

It scares the fuck out of me
It scares me half to death
and my my my my my brain
would swing on its last breath.

I wish I knew these doomticks
would stop their sounding call.
I cannot take these doomticks!
They shake the very walls!

I cannot see, I cannot find
my heart inside this shell.
My mind rebels, my mind dissolves
and I am left in hell.

I can't believe, I cannot see
this curse inside my mind
anxiety is part of me
and keeps forever blind.

I will not see, I will not feel
this noise inside my brain.
I'll medicate or TMS
'till it then cries in pain.

I'll wake, now free
and sing for joy
at this now world unfurled
and laugh at last
and cry at last
I'm finally a girl!

I cannot feel my heart right now;
I cannot feel the truth;
Behind my eyes the suicide;
the stained and bloody earth.

I cannot feel the pain right now;
I cannot feel the birth;
as my blood drains I cry at last
for death surmised in mirth.

I cannot rate my risk right now;
I cannot answer true;
I do not know where at I am;
I'm still lying to you.

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Zeta Syanthis

My Main Site

June 2024

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Page Summary

Poem: For Porsupah
Zeta's Poems
Zeta's Stories: Link Page
Zeta's Stories: The Wicked Grounds Name Story
Zeta's Stories: Backups are Important!
Zeta's Stories: High School
Poem: Trickling Depths
These Things That Kill
Poem: Terrible
Poem: Knives
Poem: I'm Trying to Find
Poem: I Wish
Poem: I Feel An Anxious Itching
Poem: I Cannot See
Poem: I Cannot Find

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Page generated Jun. 28th, 2025 05:04 pm

Ramblings of a Transgirl

I'm complicated. So are you, if you take a minute to think about it...

Entries tagged with personal

Poem: For Porsupah

Zeta's Poems

Zeta's Stories: Link Page

Zeta's Stories: The Wicked Grounds Name Story

Zeta's Stories: Backups are Important!

Zeta's Stories: High School

Poem: Trickling Depths

These Things That Kill

Poem: Terrible

Poem: Knives

Poem: I'm Trying to Find

Poem: I Wish

Poem: I Feel An Anxious Itching

Poem: I Cannot See

Poem: I Cannot Find