Here is what April 2026 brought me:

  • I watched the Artemis II launch split screen so I could get different angles.

    • Split screen view of 2 different channels showing Artemis II launch on April 1, 2026
    April 1, 2026

  • I got a haircut, just a quick trim. I'm growing out my hair for my birthday trip so I can have an emotional support hair curtain on my travels but it needed some shaping and my bangs kept getting into my eyes.
  • For my brother's birthday, the family went to minigolf. It was nearly 100'F (~37.8'C) and humid AS FUCK but it was nice to hang out with them.

Some work stuff:

  • I also did an in-office lunch during the month. My team does them once a month and I didn't do them super often the last year (though before that I was a regular attendee) so it was nice to go and catch up with my peeps. Most of my (now defunct) team have worked together since 2013 or 2018, and didn't become full time remote until 2020, so we value those completely optional touch points. It's an opportunity for me to ask the developers questions about how everything works so I can learn more technology stuff (I walk away with so many things to look up later).
  • On that note, throughout April our team officially 'broke up' - officially divided. Although we don't have a new org chart so we don't know where everyone's placed or what is going to happen or other such things that make you feel like you understand what your job is even during transitions... it's become pretty clear, swiftly, how the responsibilities are divided now and how some of the cross-overs we enjoyed for the last 10+ years are GONE. My technology team will always work with the support and development teams that used to be part of our department, but they both got swallowed by different departments and the few of us left are just kinda here waiting to see what's up. Luckily I've been through at least 5 other transitions since I started working here so I am comfortable just staying in my corner until people figure it out. (It would just be nice to know what direction to point myself in my work!) On the flip side, I suddenly dropped 6+ hours of meetings from my weekly calendar due to this division, so it's nice to have enough time to get stuff done.
  • After my in-office lunch I got sick. Womp womp. One of those things where you're keenly aware of all the micro decisions you made to be less careful.

Ok not work stuff again:

  • It didn't last very long and after I got better, I finally assembled, packaged, and sent my winter zines to the handful of people on my list, and started my next zine thing! Overall I was pretty creative this month with a few different projects and sketchbooks and things. I am playing with some of the digital/website-based zine tools I've been collecting, but haven't published anything yet.
  • I got Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream on Switch and immediately became addicted. :)
  • Zenny has been having higher irritation with allergies - something we discovered about her last year (I've only had her 3 years btw). She was on meds for about 8 months that worked pretty well and then there was an extreme allergens weekend and it basically knocked us both out. I invested in an air purifier and it's been bad some days, but never as bad. I could immediately tell the difference and some fur is growing back for Zenny too. We'll go to a dermatologist to check it out but I did get to put her in a flower to prevent her from licking the skin meds off and she did in fact want to murder me.

    • Calico cat seething in a plush cone in the shape of a purple flower
    Zenny thinking only of murder during plush cone time for meds.

The Zenny situation gave me a lot of anxiety so I've been laying low since the last week in April, pretty much. I'm trying to pay attention to spoons and being honest with myself about motivation & energy levels, what's realistic instead of expecting myself to be at high capacity consistently daily.

Here are some horrors I really enjoyed during April:

  • Pretty Lethal (2026): Ballerinas
  • The Bride (2026): V. emotional
  • Kombucha (2025): 80s style body horror & practical effects
  • By Design (2025): Abstract & weird, I loved it

I also liked Poor Things (2023) and Gendernauts (1999).

Track Changes (2016) Thoughts & Feelings

I finished Track Changes in May, technically, but I'm still gonna mention it anyway. I had so many thoughts & ideas & questions from reading this book. It was easy to compare to AI pretty quickly, since apparently some of the early reactions to word processing and desktop publishing at home echoed much of what we're hearing about AI now: it'll steal our ability to be creative, computer art is not real art, it's "cheating" if you're not using a typewriter or writing by hand, we'll lose cognitive function by relying on computers too much, it's terrible for the environment.

It really kind of puts into perspective the depth of those arguments against AI, because they didn't have the perspective in the 70s/80s/90s that we do now... before we were perhaps influenced by the sci-fi writers of the time and earlier and the fear of AI and automation coming too soon ... now it's here. Now these concerns are real and they are big and they are for some reason being ignored at large.

As the book progressed I got deeper into it and saw that it gave outstanding perspective of the iterations people went through accepting the new "disruptive" technology (computers, keyboards, printers at home — pre-internet). I was alive for some of that, though not much. I asked the old people in my life many questions about their experiences. Almost all of them wanted to talk about AI instead.

Another thing about the book I really enjoyed was the inclusion of poetry about computers and about the process of writing with different technologies. It was really difficult finding full texts of these online, but I found one I really loved: A Poem Written at Work on a Wang Word Processor Sometime in the Afternoon Wanting to Leave by Patricia Freed Ackerman, 1990.

Lots of authors have named their computers. My computer's name is Jeffff. I usually name computers and electronics after Greek and Roman deities, but this just spoke to me in the moment I suppose.

There are tons of Twilight Zone episodes inspired by or related to writing on computers or automation, including:

  • From Agnes with Love
  • The Old Man in the Cave
  • The Brain Center at Whipple's
  • I Sing the Body Electric (I also recommend the book by Ray Bradbury if you haven't read it)

I still have thoughts to process and haven't written a collected review yet but I can say that if you're into nerdy academic shit about technology and literature, I recommend it: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum.

Links & Things

Here are some links I collected throughout the month to share with you.

AI things:

My April activity online:

Videogame screencap from Tomodachi life depicting a Michael Myers mii sitting on the floor in a dilapitaed house
Michael Meyers Mii hanging out at home probably thinking of murder.