Hello all! Thank you for joining for another sporadic post here in mclepke land. It’s fantastic to see you! I hope you’ve been doing well. Yes, you.
It’s been a bit since my last post, and while I don’t have a ton in the way of interesting updates, I at least wanted to check in and say hello. My last post was from sometime within the big allergy test I did. That test ended 14 days ago at this point.
On the test - I have been able to change some of my daily routines in response to the results. I am allergic to a rubber compound found in the nitrile gloves I wear while doing chores, so I’ve since switched the vinyl which seems to be helping. There was also some random chemical additive thing that I came back as allergic to, and that chemical thing was in a shampoo I was occasionally using, so I switched that out.
Other test results are a lot less actionable. I’m allergic to nickel and cobalt. Like…okay? Nickel in particular I think is in everything. It’s still good to know I suppose, but I haven’t changed anything in my life having gained that information.
The test seemed very emblematic of healthcare in the United States right now. I went in to see a dermatologist seeking help with the severe eczema on my hands in March. The first action he decides to take is to schedule me for an allergy test. That test first of all can’t even occur until October - like I mentioned, I ended it two weeks ago. The test is also extremely disruptive - I was unable to get my back wet for a week, which meant no exercise and no sweating and no showering for a week. Now, I don’t know how many people take this test and get some sort of truly life changing piece of information. That definitely wasn’t my experience.
The way they give you the results is they hand you one print out for each thing you came back as allergic to. On the printout, they list things that commonly have whatever the substance is. If I combined all the items from all the sheets I got, I would cover almost every item in the world. Like I’m kidding but I’m not kidding by very much. The following items were all listed as potentially containing the type of rubber I was allergic to:
Rubber and nitrile gloves, rubber shoes, elastic in clothing, brassiere cups, diving gear, safety aprons, respirators, masks, pen handles, phone armbands, kitchen utensils, hockey pads, steering wheels, condoms, microscope eyepieces, balloons, toothbrush handles, headphones, makeup applicators, duct tape, tires
Now, that list above is not even everything for the rubber. There’s more that I’m just not listing. Then, consider that this is one of six things I was allergic to. This is what I mean when I say that the test isn’t very actionable. Ideally you’ll get a nugget or two that you use to change something in your daily life, but for the most part this reads like the consulting reports I used to churn out for clients in my business bro days. That isn’t a compliment.
Also, simultaneously, Erika did some reddit research for me and found stories of people with my exact sub-type of eczema having success soaking their hands in apple cider vinegar. So I’m like okay I’ll try this out. I start soaking my hands in apple cider vinegar once a night for 20 minutes. After the soak I just dab my hands dry with a paper towel and add moisturizer to them. I smell like apple cider vinegar a lot now. I think I’ve successfully convinced myself that I like the smell though?
But anyway, this apple cider vinegar soak has improved my quality of life so radically. I couldn’t be happier about it. The $2 a liter apple cider vinegar is working better than any product I’ve ever tried to use on my hands. It’s crazy too - I’ve had this hand eczema flaring up off and on since I was like 21 years old. The apple cider vinegar soak is revolutionary. Thank you Erika for your tireless redditing.
The juxtaposition of the reddit user’s simple soak success and the allergy test’s 10 page deliverable of nonsense is American healthcare.
Stream Update
I’m dying to get back to streaming at this point, but I’ve been dealing with the latest roadblock - I’ve been having connection issues. I returned to streaming on October 25 and October 26, and on both days I experienced connection issues that I’ve never had before. This then kicked off what has been 9 days now of diagnosing the issue and addressing it. I’m hoping it’ll be done soon.
Longtime followers of mclepke speedrunning may remember that earlier this year I started having an issue with my CRT flickering that prompted me to switch which room of the apartment I stream from. Switching which room I stream from did fix the CRT flickering, but it opened up the question of how I would connect to the internet from this new room. The router used to be right next to my stream setup, and now it was several rooms away.
At the time we basically identified three options. The first option came first because it was easiest and cheapest - we bought a Wifi extender thing for $25 and plugged it into my new streaming room. I then connected my computer to the Wifi extender via ethernet and did a test stream, figuring that if I had any issues I would move on to option two. I never had any issues, and so I just stuck with the Wifi extender local ethernet combo.
That combination worked perfectly for a couple months and around 16 streams leading up to the break I took. Once I came back from the break and tried to stream on October 25, I started experiencing connection drops while streaming. I’m not sure what caused the setup to suddenly stop working, although I do have to say that back when I initially assessed the three options for connecting to the internet in the new room I am streaming from, I was anticipating that this Wifi extender thing wouldn’t work. While I am able to connect my computer locally to the extender, the extender still has to establish itself via Wifi, and it’s naturally less reliable to stream over Wifi.
Also because of the way this unfolded, I wasted a day or two thinking that the issue I was experiencing was related to my streaming software. It wasn’t until my connection paused during a therapy session that I started to connect the dots. All the other uses of the internet work totally fine with this connection, it’s only the more-intensive live stream that has hiccups. Thank you therapy.
At this point, I went back and assessed those other two options from back when I first moved into this room in early August. Option 2 is to pass the internet connection over some coaxial wiring that our apartment came installed with, but that we have no real knowledge of or ability to change since we’re just renting and it’s in the wall and stuff. Option 3 is to just buy a super long ethernet cable and run it across a massive portion of our apartment.
I start with option 2, hoping to avoid running this large cable. So I order the devices you need to make this work. Basically the main router runs an internet into a converter, and then the converter connects to the coaxial cabling in your wall. Then, from the room where my computer is, I have a second converter plugged into the local coaxial connection, and then I connect to the ethernet from there. Long story short, this didn’t work. Something about the internal coaxial wiring needs to be changed and like I mentioned we’re not going to do that.
That in turn leaves us with the 100 foot ethernet cable idea. So I bought that cable and bought some wall mounts to try and do this as neatly as we possibly can, but it’s a bit of a project. It’s traveling the length of our living room, through the kitchen, and into my streaming room. Alongside keeping up with real life, I just don’t have it done yet.
I’m eager to get back though, so stay tuned. Hopefully I can get some consistency back with streaming once we’re over this connectivity roadblock.
That’s all I have for you today. I’ll hit you with another update soon. It’s already Wednesday, and who knows when you’ll even read this, but hopefully the rest of your week goes great and you have a pleasant first weekend of November. You can do it! For my fellow Americans, I haven’t done a full deep dive yet but it looks like our election had some uplifting results. I’m feeling hopeful. We got this.