I'm fat. And tired of it. Now that my ankle is better, I can get back to walking regularly (happy dog!), and start doing the exercise I need to do to limber up, and get back into yoga. I'm so stiff it is embarrassing to go to yoga right now. I can't even sit cross-legged on the floor... my legs are so tight I fall over backwards. :-( It's funny, but frustrating. I'm going to do the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride at the end of the month, riding my old BMW, waxing up the handlebar mustache, and wearing my wedding tuxedo. Hopefully the weather holds. September in Seattle is a real crapshoot... could be 80 and sunny, or 50 and raining. It also conflicts with a weekend Burner campout I'm going to be attending, so... not sure how to sort all that out, just yet. But I'm sure it will all work out fine! :-o Had a fascinating conversation with two women I knew very well back in the late 1980's. We sort-of lived together in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, since the apartment I was in always had a couple of people circulating in and out on a regular basis... Anyway, I admitted that I was embarrassed by a drunken night of lunacy, when I last visited them about 15 years ago. In my head, this was an epic "issue" between us that I could never overcome because I was such an asshole, and it would always color our relationship for every day from then on into the infinite future. She said she didn't remember that at all... And then admitted she felt bad still for arguing with me on the back stoop of our apartment, back in 1988(?) or so, and that she still felt bad for breaking that glass and yelling at me... ... which I don't recall at all... And so an interesting conversation ensued... We talked about how we hold on to things, and revisit them over and over in our heads, until they become completely blown out of proportion, and we build up this elaborate baseball bat, and then beat ourselves over the head with it for ever and ever and ever... Until one late night in 2016, she is chatting with me over Messenger as she lays down to go to bed in Dusseldorf, while I am just waking up in Seattle, and we both admit our secret shame to each other... and realize that this embarrassment, this weight, this failure we have carried around with us for almost three decades... has absolutely zero significance. That's an important lesson that we need to re-learn, over and over and over again, throughout our lives.
That's a great story. When I'm drifting off to sleep and am jolted into wakefulness by an embarrassing or cringe-worthy memory of mine, a tactic I've developed for placing less significance on the memory is to remind myself that I've never been jolted into wakefulness by something embarrassing someone else has done.
Our business is making great strides. We have customers flying in to MI from California to have the procedure. We have investment interest from some big names and it's looking like we could button up funding by the end of October. I'm traveling too much. It's hard on my family. My wife is on call next week and I'll be in MI for the first part of it. Not cool. But, sacrifices must be made. What we are building is of importance both societally and to our family. I'm having a blast. Edit: alert on my phone that my plane is boarding. I'm at least 30 minutes from the airport. I'm gonna miss my flight. Fuck traffic!
"As a medallion member, you should know to be at the gate at least 30 minutes prior to departure." -not helpful Delta lady. Pushed to a later flight. Will be sprinting through Atlanta to make my connection. Headed to Nasheville for the afternoon.
for someone who was out of the tng-loop, what job/business are you involved in? and what procedures?
16" Newtonian Dob with all the motors and GOTOs. We used Stellarium to verify the star field, looked at said star field and said "the fuck are we doing, again?" Then we looked at Neptune with the same scope and eyepiece to get a view of Triton. Triton is almost the exact same size, colour and brightness as Pluto. Now with the better idea of what we were looking for, we went back to Pluto and are 70/30 we saw it. Two other guys are 100%, but I like to think I know better. The only way to be sure is to go back the next day and look again for a faint tiny ass star that moved, but sadly I have work and can't pull that off. Maybe next month we will try again and see if there is anything different. Pluto is near opposition, and there is a star party next month at new moon. At the party, looking at Stellarium, Pluto will pass a star roughly the same brightness from the beginning of the evening to the middle of the night, so we can watch it move and get more eyes on it.
Ohio valley skies suck 100 out of 365 days a year. Another 100 days out of the year the skies are mediocre to below average. Another 100 days are worth pulling out the big scopes, but don't expect to do the hard core stuff. Then you have to hope that the moon is not in the sky; the moon is bright and annoying when looking at galaxies and very faint stuff. We had 3-4 in a row that did not suck, bordering on best of the year. We are more serious than average and seek out the insane challenges. I'm still trying to get the weather and skies to align to see more of the Palomar Globulars which should be doable with 16" dobs. I've seen Palomar 9. There is a whole observing program for stuff like that and a few of us are running down the lists. I'd love, LOVE to be in New Mexico for the week surrounding New Moon in either Spring for the Virgo galaxies or early Winter for the Orion stuff. I've been observing in California at 8000 feet and ho-lee-shit. It is about as close as a religious experience as I am capable of. I could not make out most of the constellations as there were too many stars.
Meet you there. http://www.jdvstudio.com/Photography/USAStates/NewMexico/NewMexicoSkies/NewMexicoSkies.html I grew up with constellations you can't make out. Shit got a lot easier once I moved.
some girl with my same name put my email address down when signing up for a credit card so i've been getting her bill statements which included her phone number so i called it to be like yo change it. she was unnerved to say the least so mission accomplished. also only 2 more days of work fuck this jobbbbbb and fuck virginiaaaaaa
Someone with my email has a Boost Mobile account. I've just been letting it ride. There's no full number given, but they apparently have autopayment set up and are making their payments. Good for them. My email won a lawn mower auction on Ebay last year. The lawn mower was in England, so it would be difficult for me to claim. I changed the password. It was the least-effort fix.
i've been trying to get into the account to change the password but when i hit "forgot password" it sends the link to who knows where. we'll see next month if the emails stop but i'm not willing to call Florida from Kosovo.
Had an amazing time camping and hiking in the central cascades. Ended up doing 27 miles worth of hiking, and roughly 8,500 ft of elevation gain. Saw some beautiful parts of the world and not many people, which is a great combination. My knee kind of hurts though, so I set up a PT appointment (finally) for Friday because of a few things. Went with a couple of friends, and met up with some older (60 year olds) climbers who one of my friends knew. Few things beat a night when you're under the stars and the Milky Way, cooking food, while a couple of people play guitar and sing Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead songs. Myself and one friend hiked, while the others climbed. But it was interesting. kleinbl00 and others here have hammered in the point that I'm kind of self-selective and ridiculous when it comes to dating and relationships and all that. The person I went hiking with...we don't share all the same values. But it was a tremendously fun and challenging time with a lot of real conversations on the way up these mountains. New goals are to really get myself in great shape, since she thinks I can get to her level (marathons, lots of trail running, a fast pace, etc.) with some training. See: PT appointment to strengthen my lower body and improve my gait. Stretching and strength exercises on the daily. An actual running plan. Thinking about a climbing gym membership. Trail running starting in a few weeks. Signed up for my first 5k race (I've ran plenty). The times they are a changin'.
I am not restful, and it bothers me. There are a lot of exciting things happening, but at the moment, I am spreading myself too thin. I don’t see being busy as trait worthy of admiration. Focus is far superior, and I am not able to focus as much as I would like to due to time and money constraints. I know this is a transient period, and this fact is going a long way to how I am able to cope with it and rationalize it. I recently finished Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome podcast, and have now moved on to his Revolutions which I find just as enjoyable. cgod have you listened to either? At any rate, I guess I read history more than the average bear. In A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman wrote: I can’t shake the feeling that we might be within what will be later perceived as a period of disaster. It’s not a disaster for us in the here and now, but there is upheaval occurring about us, and I think the output of this century is going to be significantly dissimilar to the input. Don’t get me wrong, Trump and ISIS are not on the list of things that make me feel this way; central bank balance sheets, workforce participation, machine learning, and global warming are on the list. I just added Jim Corbett’s Man Eaters of Kumaon to my reading list.Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times.
I'm now five books into Will Dutton's opus and the point he makes over and over is that even the most deboucherous and licentious city-states of history were largely composed of ordinary people having ordinary lives and enjoying ordinary things. Rulers that kept things peaceful for half a century get a sentence or two; those that destroyed culture in a few brief years get chapters.
I'm just in the first segment, so I haven't experienced that yet. Do you think that THoR had such a thesis? It didn't seem to me that it did, aside from the arch of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire itself. IMO, Duncan started to find his voice about 60% into THoR, when he made the realization that he was starting to just talk about the rise and fall of Emperors, and then broadened the scope and allowed for tangents a bit more. Thus far, I've found Revolutions pretty balanced in that way.
I think Duncan kept improving throughout the podcast, which is pretty normal if you've listened to many history podcasts. But sometime around the middle he definitely found a voice and settled on a way to present the material. Revolutions sounds like the history of a topic more than several disparate and tangentially related histories. It seems like there should be some kind of general lesson to draw out of the study of a dozen revolutions beyond a recounting of the facts. Maybe there will be some kind of conclusion at the end, I hope so. Duncan has spoken before that he has some novel overarching theories of history, I'd be interested to hear them in podcast form. Check out The History of England By David Crowther next time you need a good history podcast. It starts pretty rough, you can basically throw out the first section on the Anglo Saxons as an inferior product but after he finds his feet it's one of my favorite history podcast of all time. I know he was thinking about redoing the Saxon episodes but I think he may have just done a history of the Saxons podcast seperatly later on to make up for his early product.
If you read my latest posts, you know quite a bit about what happened in my life in the last week. Check them out. What I didn't say was: I asked a girl out recently. Planning to go out tomorrow night. Hopefully she'll be able to make it (she has classes until 8 PM, like most of the uni this year). She promised nothing but said that she'll try to find time. I presume you don't say that if you aren't interested. Had my first "man talk" today. A curator male friend of mine asked me today what I think of the female curators (about our age) "as girls". I said I didn't really think about it, which is true. He told me he liked one of the girls, Masha (the same one I wrote about in the Curatoriade posts), because she had "unusual beauty" - as in, not a model, but attractive nonetheless. I was surprised that he started that kind of a talk with me, but apparently, I grew up enough in his eyes to warrant it. My guys (the ones I curate) have been addressing me with the respectful "you" ("Ð’Ñ‹") until very recently. I appreciated it at first - it was nice being called that - but soon I realized that it just pushes me away from them by making me into some sort of an unreachable authority figure, and that's not what I want. You can see how a lot of my recent thoughts revolve around curating the freshmen. It really does take a lot of my time and energy, and I may complain about it from time to time because I'm not used to it, but I've never felt so alive and full of energy. I've met the British exchange students in TSU today. They sat on the floor, talking about stuff. Will and Arthur. I didn't exactly catch the uni they exchanged with: it goes along the lines of "Dortham" or something like that; it's in the north of England. We had a class right next to their class' room, so I came by and got to chat with them. They didn't bat an eye when I said "Hey fellas". Turned out to be really cool guys, someone whom it's nice to chat with. Some of my groupmates talked to them, as well; they seemed to be pretty receptive to that. One of my groupmates refused outright because she was so shy about her English, despite the fact that she talks fine, and the flaws in the language that she has are negligible, definitely so by the Brits who came here to practice Russian. I got a bit of a stutter talking to them because I already had a full day of running around behind me at the time, but they both appreciated my command of English nevertheless. I'm aiming for a student exchange the upcoming spring, as well. All I have to do is get the papers in, but it doesn't guarantee my success. I am a pretty good student, as per my exams, so this should win me some points. If I get to visit the US or Germany, that would be fantastic. My German is not very good at the moment, but hell, I'll practice hard for that kind of an opportunity.
Bread My sourdough starter is routinely making bread now! I thought it was a non-starter for a bit there, but added some rye flour to it and the yeast finally took off. I'm starting to get to the point where I figure out how a long slow ferment works into my day. This shit is worth it. I didn't use this recipe to make the starter I am using, but did use it to make a back up batch when I thought the first attempt was dead: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/233/wild-yeast-sourdough-starter I can confirm that thefreshloaf procedure works. The pineapple juice had the backup starter lifting in three days, and skipped the musky smells stage that the other starter got bogged down in. Starve The Beast I need to renew my driver's license, but it is a pain in the ass. I took Tuesday off last week, and rode my bike over to the place. I got there a bit after 11am, and was told that the line was full for the day. They close at fucking 4:45pm. So now I'm out a day's worth of wages, and still no license. I was told I should text a number and put myself in line without actually being there. Which is great if A) you have a cell plan, and B) you have a car to arrive there rapidly after you get told to show up. I really want to just say "fuck it" and let the damned thing lapse. I don't own a car. I don't drive. I hate driving. But I keep it for emergencies. And voting. And beer.
Most of the things I've read suggest just getting a starter from someone... I think that's in line with sourdough tradition: get some from an old tried & true strain and pass it on to your grandkids. I found this group http://carlsfriends.net/ which will send you a starter if you send a stamped envelope to them. It was recommended by http://www.sourdoughhome.com. Both websites seem a bit dated, but look like they have good info. I just mailed a request this morning, and I'll report back if you or keifermiller are interested my "starter-by-mail" experiment.
I started work proper this week. Got an employee card, public transport card, sim card, a $2k laptop and my first responsibilities. I feel surprisingly not stressed about it - it's not quite zen but close to it. The amount of new names I have encountered in the last two weeks, however, is killing me. My monkeysphere was already full. Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone I knew on the street and it took me more than a minute to figure out who they were. Luckily he didn't find out.
99% of them won't qualify for entry into your Monkeysphere, so don't sweat it. There are tricks for remembering names, though. A friend of mine who is a photographer actually takes a "mental photo". He shakes the person's hand, and while doing so, repeats the person's name, and blinks - like a photo shutter closing - and takes a mental picture with the audio tag of him saying the person's name. It works for him. For me, it was a realization that remembering someone's name is about respect, not about your capacity to remember, or not. We can all remember names when we want/need to. Like that hot girl/guy at the bar... you remember their name, why can't you remember the FedEx guy's name? Lack of respect. It's that simple. When I realized that, I pretty much instantly began remembering everyone's name. I know because I was in a weekend-long group event with about 60 other people I didn't know, so I had ample practice that evening, and throughout the weekend. Remembering names is easy. But every name you remember is not going to be a part of your Monkeysphere, so cut yourself a little slack. :-)
True, true. However, I wouldn't feel very guilty about not knowing the FedEx guy's name. I find it draining to remember all the names (and backgrounds, experiences, conversations...) of all the people that I don't really care that much about. I have to make a selection of who to care about and who to forget, or else I'll forget things I know about the people I do care about. That bar is set low, but I still wouldn't try to remember a delivery guy's name.
Oh man... you will want to take a very close look at those beliefs. Because those beliefs right there? Those are the beliefs of a Grade A asshole. Which you may not be yet... but that's the destination down the road that says people are only valuable according to their title, job, position, name, skin color, language... I wouldn't feel very guilty about not knowing the FedEx guy's name. I find it draining to remember all the names of all the people that I don't really care that much about.
I did wonder if I came off as a jerk! To me those things are not the same. It's not that I have a select club of people that I value based on their job/position/etc and forget about the rest. I just think that I should have a (meaningful) conversation with someone before I am going to remember their name and details. Because if I care about someone even a little, I try to remember everything about them. That is something I can't do genuinely for everyone I encounter, so I draw a line at 'is there a chance that this person will matter some day in the future'.
I hear ya, and I understand your thinking. But you are selling your brain short. Remembering people's names is easy when you get the hang of it, it doesn't diminish your capability to remember other stuff (our brains are NOT hard drives that "fill up"), and it keeps ya sharp. And, you never know when it could come in useful ... making a friend of the FedEx guy can have unexpected benefits. ("Hey veen, I noticed that package has a dent in the side. Why don't you open it and check it out. Yeah? Damaged? Ok. No problem. Keep it, and I'll file a report. We'll get you a new one tomorrow. Sorry about that!")
I've been in that situation a number of times. Lately, my life is as such that when calling someone I almost identify myself as with the wrong company. Too much input is effecting my output. Congrats on the new gig, enjoy the zen.Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone I knew on the street and it took me more than a minute to figure out who they were. Luckily he didn't find out.
So I guess I'm trying to expand that short story into a little book, novella, a serial, what have you. I only have two whole pieces written out, the one that I posted last week and another event that happens down the line. I'm kind of frustrated with it, because I want to keep things pretty mundane but it's slowly turning into some kind of ghost story (not a horror story, but something supernatural) just by logical progression. My writing process is interesting. I don't know how to really write (as you can tell from my numerous posts on here about antiques and such) so getting actual words on paper is like sucking a really thick malt through a straw, that is sometimes the struggle seems to be part of the fun and other times I just want my fuxking malt. I have an half hour commute to and from work on a good day, so I do a lot of thinking on the story to kill time and I think about having Event X happen cause it sounds like something I want to write but to make it work I have to write Event D first and in order to make that work I need to write Event N but now I have to revise Event X slightly to address a change in the mood, symbolism, metaphysics, what have you. Meanwhile, I have a bunch of holes to fill and no idea how to fill them yet. I have a rough outline in my head that gets revised every other day. I have character designs in my head that get revised every other day. I have (minor) metaphysical laws in my head that get revised every other day. The only thing that hasn't changed is the underlying message that I want my story to convey, which if I've learned from my poetry classes, I should never share it because different people find meaning in your works that you never knew were there but totally make sense. I blame my love for comics and D&D on this endeavor. I blame television. I blame my wife who keeps on getting me to try new things instead of doing the same old everyday. I don't know how, but I'm sure Hubski is somehow to blame too. Barney Miller is still amazing. Night Court has seemed to have suddenly lost its appeal to me. Yesterday rummaging through the dollar bins at the comic shop I was reminded of just how many comic companies have come and gone. I also remember the dollar bins used to be a quarter. Damn inflation.
Sick, but recovering. Reminded myself today that language learning is much more fun when I'm not constantly stressed about how behind I am, so I caught up (mostly) on my Greek homework. After 10 problems it started to get easier, and actually kind of enjoyable. Need to remember that that's how it works. I've been taking a core class focused on computer science and really enjoying it, and thought I might major in it, but I'd be starting super late. So I met with the department chair today-- he says that I can take 102 next semester (since I have programming experience) and then decide from there whether I want to major. It's usually the weed-out course anyway, and from there I should be able to fit everything in, assuming I don't want to double major with something insane like Classics (which I don't think I do). I may even have time to go abroad for a semester still-- and if I go to Germany, I'll be one credit away from a German minor, so duh. Generally in a way better place than I deserve to be given how sick I am.
Things keep on thingin', folks. Still recording, still preparing to move, still happily back with my ex. Of more interest: My Husbki-versary was a few days ago, and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who made this site what it is. This place has been very important for me this past year - if I keep talking, I will get disgustingly mushy, so suffice it to say that you people mean a lot and have been wonderful.
this is incredibly popular in the speedrunning circles i watch. there are so many remixes of this song. I think my personal fave is a combination of Brahms Hungarian Dance number 5 and the Slam Jam.
I bought a long board in hopes of making my very short commute a little quicker, at 5 am every extra minute of sleep is precious. I was never any good at skateboarding as a kid but it's about as hard to ride this giant boat as it is to push a shopping cart. I've shot off the thing a few times but I haven't tumbled. It's exactly what my search term was looking for "good skateboard for a fat old man." My kid had also expressed interest in getting a board, hers comes on Friday. My board was relatively cheap but I spent a few extra bucks on hers. It should be small and light with decent hardware. It's easy to get discouraged when your a kid with a new hobby and you're set up is shit.
I'm not cut out for job hunting. It's been a week and really a positive week yet I'm still internally freaking out. I had one place tell me they would most likely email me an offer after talking to someone else so now I'm obsessively checking my email. I think it's because I'm excited to move so the idea of not being able to is more crushing. I've never been this stressed over job hunting before and it's taken months at times. I need wine and a bubble bath.
Stayed out of the hospital all labor day weekend despite being outside a lot, drinking a bit too much. Call that a positive. I have a bit of a tan finally, which is nice. Stayed firmly in my head most of the time I was out and about this weekend. Call that a negative. Just deleted a long and bitter diatribe about how I can't expect there to be much interest in me when there's a literal Swedish fitness model hanging out on the boat. The Swedish fitness model isn't the problem. The problem is that I need to stop putting myself in situations that I know I won't enjoy because I think I'm supposed to enjoy them. Other people can go and enjoy things that I don't enjoy. I don't have to like the things they like, or tag along just because I'm invited. This is probably why my perception of fun is so warped. Chicago next week, still need to clean up/format the report I want to give. It's starting to feel a bit like brown nosing, but the entire point of this conference is to improve clinical research operations, and that's what I'm addressing. I was out sick yesterday, and came into work this morning to find out that one of my patients passed away over the weekend. That's my second one ever. Life evidently goes on.
Sorry to hear that, man. But you're right: life goes on. Don't drag yourself any deeper because of something you didn't cause, sad as it may be. I learned that it's okay not to like something, even if people around me do. I'm not them, not do I have to strive to be them. It won't make me more appreciated: just less of myself. I know what my interests are (and you seem to know your own). Maybe you'll find peace in the knowledge that as hellish as it all may seem to you, you're still a person, and that means - you're a unique story just waiting to be told. As a storyteller, this is why I appreciate people so much: every single one of you has something to share that will astonish or excite me, or even make me learn. Basically, I'm telling you that you're a unique snowflake, and you may take joy in that.I was out sick yesterday, and came into work this morning to find out that one of my patients passed away over the weekend. That's my second one ever.
The problem is that I need to stop putting myself in situations that I know I won't enjoy because I think I'm supposed to enjoy them.