My brother would turn 24 today.
I can't seem to get away from him these days. This is the city where he went to school, not too far from where I live. I used to fly out here to visit him when he was in college, and I keep passing by diners and stores that I would go to with him.
I hate how much I can't easily remember. Tiny things like what day he died (6/22/12, I think), what kind of plays he liked (Neil Simon, Sarah Ruhl), if he ever saw me play my own music (I don't think so).
My neighbor has a ton of Halloween decorations - lots of orange lights, pumpkins, skeletons. On their lawn, there is a family of ghosts - One for mom, one for dad, and one for each kid. I thought it was cute the first time I saw it, didn't really think about it too much. Yesterday, I read the kid's names - one was Quinn, my brother's name. I made it to the end of the street, and then I just kind of... broke.
He was named after this song, which my Mom's college roommate sang incessantly. I sang it at his funeral - we got every one of his musically-inclined friends together to form a band for it. Everybody there sang along, and we probably played it for about 8 minutes. To this day, probably the best audience I've had.
I'll probably be updating this all day with bits and pieces I remember about him.
EDIT: I made a thing.
Happy Birthday Quinn. I'm sorry that he died Brendan. He's lucky to have a brother like you, marking the occasion. The "thing" you made is beautiful, sad and appropriate. Quinn is not a common name, it's odd that the neighbor has a ghost in their yard with your brothers name on it. That seems beyond coincidence, you know? I think that's pretty neat, actually. Thank you for telling us about him. If he had been able to hear your music, I'm certain he would have been impressed. Hard not to be. I hope that some of your remembrances bring you joy today along with the inevitable sorrow. Cheers pal.
I'm going to chase the high I'd get from Scholastic Book Fairs forever.
I have an internship interview today that I'm almost guaranteed to get, but I'm salty it starts the same time as the debate. How am I supposed to watch this country implode on itself if I'm out there trying to better my life. So dumb.
Inktobers:
Imgur is so shitty now.
Processing 66 brain samples this past week, been grueling. Asked my PI if we could automate the steps and he told me "that is automated, we used to squeeze those syringes real slow by hand back in the day". Which isn't great to hear when it's still 2 hours of careful pipette + tube manipulation, (protein sticks to everything, so we try to minimize the number of new surfaces / container changes a sample goes through), syringe pump motor grinding, and plungers getting stuck.
From left to right:
On the plus side, it'll be the biggest application of our technique to this model of Alzheimer's to date, so it should be fun to analyze. On the down side, there's 42 more samples to come for an autism side-project that is my only source of revenue for the lab at the moment.
----
I had my first cell-based experiment work this week, after 6 months of flailing. Didn't give the results I wanted, but workable, and the morale in lab is appreciated when your project has been stuck in the "mostly ideas" phase for a year.
Still wishing I could take a few months off and just optimize & automate the shit out of our workflow. There's a lot of facets to polish up. On the plus side, we got a new instrument in lab and it promises a fancy autosampler, better data, and less time sitting around for hours for columns to clog, condition, and crack, gradients to test, frits to break, and buffers to contaminate.
From left to right:
Realized I'd been mistaking a technician for a post-doc for over a year yesterday. The world around me feels confusing sometimes.
Sounds about right, though there's a sweet spot in the early days of joining a lab when it definitely pays off to optimize a workflow. I may have missed that as I move into my third year and pass into my second and third large sets of samples.
I will automate the shit out of my analysis though. It definitely gets under my skin when I hear about errors in conclusions due to a hidden bug in an excel formula.
Been wanting fingerless gloves so I found a pattern. Was sad because pattern was written for someone with bear paws. Ripped it all out and improvised and now have nicely fitting glovies!
The last time I made fingerless gloves was when I first got back into crochet and my tension control was horrid. One of the gloves fits perfect and the other is loose and floppy. These are a perfect fit!
I bought a $400 ticket home last Wednesday so that I didn't have to socialize with my roommate over the weekend. It was totally worth it - spent two days with my wife and my kid. Got rained on. Made dinner. Watched football. Lived like a normal person. Got up at 6, played airport games, landed 20 minutes early, spent an hour on the tarmac because fuck you we're LAX, Lyfted home and said-same roommate had covered two entire counters with dirty dishes. Worse, he hadn't even moved the clean dishes I'd re-cleaned before leaving on Thursday.
Got all covered in honey adjusting the shift linkage on the bike and left half an hour late. Made it in on time, exhausted and dehydrated, then made it home at midnight to a text reading "sorry for stinking up the house I had a recipe go bad." Went to bed.
Woke up, went to do laundry ahead of going to work and discovered that he had passively-aggressively moved his own laundry out of the dryer and put it on top to make room for his own laundry. Which meant that in order to do laundry I had to move two loads of his shit.
Sat down to drink some coffee and found a used Q-tip on the coffee table.
Lit the fuck into him over text message because I was in no mood to call his ass. Three hours later he sends some groveling "I know I need to do better" bullshit that makes it abundantly clear that this is his modus operandi - let it skate until somebody says something and then snivel your way to equilibrium.
I realized the core question last night: "Why does he feel entitled to make me fight for my comfort?" And shortly after that I deduced the answer: "Because he lacks the courage to face his disability."
I went to Western Washington University for two and a half years. It was literally the happiest point of my life, in the environment I have fought 20 years to reclaim. He went to Western Washington University for six weeks, then had a nervous breakdown and flailed back to his parents' house in San Diego. He does not openly discuss the cause for his retreat. I used to think it's because he's a mama's boy who couldn't handle the weather. Earlier yesterday I wondered if he had a roommate there that didn't cotton to used q-tips on their coffee table. Last night I decided it was probably the stairs.
He's 6'3, 6'4. 350 lbs or so. I weigh 200lbs and used to go hiking with a 70lb pack full of cameras. It was challenging but manageable. I realized that every time he gets up to go to the fridge, he's basically me wearing two 70lb packs.
My other roommate (the one I know, the one I like) keeps trying to get him to take a job at Panavision. It'll pay him $4 more an hour than his current job and it has opportunities for advancement. I told my other roommate that he doesn't take the job because he can't stand for that much of the day, but I hadn't quite extrapolated it out to the rest of his life.
This is a man who can take the recycle from the table to the sink, but from the table to the recycle bin 20 paces away is a bridge too far. A man who needs a stool in the shower to rest one leg on while he cleans it. A man who sits in a folding chair because rising from the couch takes a great deal of effort - I've never seen him sit on the couch, he lies in it. I suspect the last time he sat in it was the time it broke (the second time, after I fixed it).
He doesn't clean because it's the equivalent of cleaning while wearing 150lbs of weights. He leaves q-tips on the coffee table because the garbage can is eight paces away and he's conserving trips. If I had to literally carry my wife everywhere I went, I too would be substantially more static in my behavior.
So what do you do with that? He's 27 and his freedom of movement has already been curtailed. His activities are limited due to his limited freedom of movement. He's going to die before he hits 50. His range of motion will decrease, not increase. He eats zero-calorie salad dressing but his diet this weekend was Papa John's and Burger King.
And if we kick him out, he'll go back to his momma's house, and he will never leave, because he won't have to buy his own groceries.
So, Hubski. You must choose your words carefully. One way, you create this.
The other way, you might just save someone's future. How do you have that discussion?
____________________________________________________
There's a third way, of course. My season got shortened by a week. Well, not entirely true but we all thought we were done Dec 7 but it's actually Dec 1. I can conceivably avoid him the next five weeks, considering the way my schedule works. I know for sure I'll never live with him again after that. So I can step aside and let the tragedy unfold. Having established a protocol for saying "do your goddamn dishes" without having to interface directly, I can re-use that channel.
But I'm pretty sure that's how he got to this point in the first place.
I hate to say it man, but not your circus, not your monkeys.
Your desire to help is fucking admirable.
But he isn't going to respond to that until he hits bottom. And he's a long ways from that, still. Sadly.
Bottom won't happen until after he goes back to momma's house, gains another 150 lbs, and realizes at some point that he is unaware of what season it is, and then gains another 50 lbs, decides to kill himself, announces it to someone, and then - finally - gets the help he needed for the last 5 years, but was not "bad enough yet" to accept it.
All you can do at this point is learn from his mistakes. He's an object lesson now. Not someone you can help.
I mean, you're not wrong.
Part of it is altruism. Part of it is a deeply Machiavellian understanding that couching things in terms of "I'm here to help" tends to be more effective than couching things in terms of "quit being a slacker slob you fat fuck." And either way, making the effort may not bear fruit at this point but it may shorten the delay until it does.
And honestly? It's easier for me to have the discussion if I'm trying to help someone else than simply get my way.
I'm also thinking of the practicalities here... what is the conversation going to look like? What words will you use?
Because, he knows everything you are going to say to him. He does. His dandruff. His plates. His eating habits. His fat-fuck-ed-ness. He knows all that, and it defeats him, and inaction is all he "deserves", so it is what he does.
What you do every single day - ride 1,000 miles through East LA, each way, to get to work - is more than he could possibly contemplate. You also lube your chain. Adjust brake cable tension. You can actually bend all the way over and get to the chain. You have a lovely wife and adorable daughter, and a job that pays well.
You, in short, are the problem. You are everything he is not.
And there is just no way at all I can see him hearing the words coming out of your mouth as anything other than reinforcing his existing uselessness. THAT's going to be the filter that all your words come through as they go into his ears... "This guy has EVERYTHING, and hates me for being a slob."
Again, I LOVE that you want to help this dude out. Your heart is in the right place, my friend.
But he is not where he can hear you.
There are some people who float away from the dock in a boat with no oars... and you just gotta let them go until they decide to learn to swim.
Oh I had it all mapped out in my head. Talking points, turns of phrase, everything. The idea was that when I actually had to confront the fucker there would be some form of discussion because that's what friends do, right? And I mean, we've had lengthy discussions about... all sorts of shit.
But no. Not a word.
Apparently my mistake of leaving a candle burning for the two hours nobody was home means our transgressions are equivalent so he feels A-OK about, well, everything.
I was struck last night that by the time Hillary Clinton is no longer president, I will be fifty. It occurred to me this morning that by the time Hillary Clinton is no longer president, he could be dead.
I'm still pursuing gliding as a hobby. About every other weekend I spend a day on the airstrip. So far I haven't had a lot of flights because of the weather. Last Sunday however was just perfect:
With 19 degrees C it was probably the last nice day of the season. I did my first ascension all on my own and am starting to get the hang of how to fly. We did the G-force test, which basically means that the instructor pulls some stunts and I get to enjoy. For something so flimsy looking, the aircraft can easily pull +5G and -1G and I absolutely love that. Part of me was wondering whether I should put more or less time and energy into gliding, but I'm now solidly on the 'more' side.
On the non-gliding weekends, I visit my parents. I just realized that the 3,5-4h one-way trip I make for that could also get me to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, to London or to Brussels and back. Sadly those options are not free while my student pass grants me unlimited train rides in the weekends. But still.
Yesterday I was a bit bored so I downloaded Tinder. I'm not very good at it.
Quick question: Did clicking on a link in Hubski change? I seem to remember that clicking the title of a post in my feed that linked to an article, would pop the article up in a new tab, and open the Hubski Comments page for that article in the original tab. With this design, I could read the article, close the article tab, and would be immediately reading the comments other Hubskiers wrote about the article.
Recently, I believe this functionality changed, and the Comments page is not automatically opened. After reading the article I have to go back to my feed, and click the little "number of comments" number at the far right of the post title.
This is a small change, but I thought the previous functionality had a particular elegance to it.
Why was this changed?
That shouldn't have changed but if it did, you should be able to toggle it back on in your settings.
Cheers!
I had to turn that setting back on after the migration, but it's still not doing it.
I've decided that I don't like my current job. I want to go back to research. I utilize almost nothing that I've developed in the past seven or so years and all my skills and achievements are going to rot. I didn't realize how much I wanted to be in research until now. Wish me luck with postdoc and fellowship apps.
So, it seems I have a crazy neighbor.
PREFACE: DECEMBER 2015 - CHRISTMAS EVE, ACTUALLY
Nearly a year ago, in December, one of my neighbors came downstairs and asked me, essentially, to stop shutting my door so loudly. This was in December, I had just moved in, I was literally baking Christmas cookies. This guy rang the doorbell twice while I froze in my kitchen, dressed in a tank top and electric pink exercise shorts and a lot of flour. When I answered he kind of introduced himself and then said, like, “Hey I know the doors are kind of loaded to swing shut" (they are) "but can you try and close them more quietly?” and I remember I felt this quite the odd request. I knew I hadn’t been going around slamming my nice new doors, and I didn’t know how I felt about the request in general either. On Christmas Eve, you're coming downstairs and telling your new neighbor you find their door habits too loud. It just seemed like...there could've been a better time. Anyway, so what I told him was that I would work on it, a little like all stiff. Because I didn't think I should have to consciously tone down on closing my doors every time I did it in my very own apartment when the sound really wasn't that loud at all? Getting my own apartment was supposed to be about living with me for me, not regularly hoping I hadn't shut that door too loud just then. And that was it.
HERE OUR STORY TODAY BEGINS - OCTOBER 2016 - THE PAST TWO WEEKS
Til now I hadn’t heard anything more from the guy, which made me glad. I'd realized that sometimes, my interior doors would shut with a bang or even on their own, if I'd left all the windows open in the apartment, so I just braced them all open. Solved that problem, I hoped. I mean for once in my life, I was going to try out using the bathroom without closing the door. I was bachelor-lite and it was glorious.
Well, that was then.
Sometime last week, I was unloading things from my car. I had leave and re-enter the apartment to a few times. Maybe three. It was at night, past evening. I was at the car for my last intended trip when I heard someone clearly say, “What the fuck are you slamming the door for?”
Of course, I thought of my neighbor. The complaint was just the same, I couldn't not. But I hadn’t talked to him in months, since Christmas. I couldn't tell if it had been his voice. It was too dark to see anyone. No one was outside in the parking lot with me. So I looked around for a while, then returned to my business. I went in for the night. Maybe I stomped a little going up the stairs, but that was it.
Oh, and I checked the time, curious if maybe it was really, really late and I hadn't realized. It was 8 pm.
Sometime before that, one evening after I'd let myself in, something thunked on the floor upstairs. I figured someone had dropped something. You know, the way I do from time-to-time, quite common. I kind of wondered if that was what it sounded like to my lower neighbors, chuckled, and dismissed it.
Earlier this week I heard that thunk again, when I was coming home again, but it was much louder.
I hoped it wasn't my neighbor being passive aggressive. I definitely thought of it, at first, but I tried to tell myself it was too passive-aggressive and immature and plain crazy for a 40-year-old man, if upset somehow by his neighbor, to start dropping things on his floor thinking it would seriously bother me instead of coming downstairs, trying to be polite, and actually saying something about!
And even thinking like that had me thinking like maybe his request was reasonable, and I was the bitch here.
There was one afternoon I heard someone muttering about the door again while I was out checking my mail, but again, I wasn’t in the vicinity to see who it was or be sure it was my neighbor.
Then, yesterday morning - and now I know it was him.
Tuesday morning I was leaving the apartment, standing on the curb sending a final text before I started driving. This was around 6:30 in the morning. It was light enough out to see clearly.
The neighbor comes out on his balcony. I don't realize until he actually addresses me.
He says like “Do you think you can work on shutting the door more quietly?” or like something. I heard the mystery voice from the other night who'd cursed at me behind the dark as a first fix option. I didn't like how he was hanging out up on his balcony talking to me. Guys speaking down at you from balconies and guys speaking out at you from their cars are doing the same thing, and it's not trying to start a conversation. It's false. It's not a level interaction.
If I were a less angry person, I might've felt attacked. Intimidated, even. But I'm not. I don't go along to get along. I don't say thanks, one more.
I turned and I looked up at him. First blush, I was going to completely ignore him. His words were beneath my contempt. But then, because I'd been worried about this, and thought about this so much for the past two weeks, and mentally practiced confrontation after confrontation -
I said, "Take it to management," and walked, unafraid, straight line, for my car. Because Fuck. Him. He can take it to management. I'm leaving in 2 months. They're going to laugh at him. In the moment, I hoped to god he would.
Well while I walked he said, "Oh trust me, I will, I'm going to!" That wasn't enough and he added, "How about I start waking you up at 4 in the morning? How'll you like that?"
I walked off. I started my car, and I drove to work, and I thought.
I had emailed my notice of not renewing my lease (whatever that's called) last week and no one had confirmed it yet. I figured I should call to check with them, that they'd seen it. Then, since I had them on the phone, I would also let them know about these incidents with the neighbor, you know, just in case they heard from him later. Because fuq dat. If a crazy person is going to take something to the authorities, I am going to get ahead of them. I'm not going to be fucked by some bitter single old 40 year white guy who lives on his own and can't afford a townhouse's down payment. He can't pick on me just because I'm a 20-something small girl. He can't mess with this.
So I did.
There aren't any updates since.
I'll even add, to be clear, that the hours I am opening and shutting my door are not even crazy abnormal hours. Like the other night when he cursed at me? It was 8 PM. Yesterday at 6:30? What do you do, sleep for 12 hours, man?
IN CLOSING - TUESDAY NIGHT/WEDNESDAY MORNING - RESTLESS IN BED
I sat straight up in bed tonight. I poked Jess and I said, "I've got an idea. What if I find him some earplugs and I ship them to him? Then I won't even be getting on his turf. I feel like if I even try to knock on his door now it'll be an escalation, and this dude escalates enough for us both, I think! I can get him those cheap soft ones. They're probably online super cheap! I can do PRIME shipping!"
I haven't done it...yet. But I think it'd be pretty harmless.
Don't sweat it. mk and ecib can confirm it can be a lot worse.
We had a neighbor who used to come over mad as hell and say shit like.
"I can hear you looking in my window and I want it to stop!"
"I hear you making mushroom noises and I can't take it anymore."
"You need to stop moving all those stick around!"
We had one and a half floors of the place, so we shared a ceiling and a wall with this loon. He pounded the plaster on the wall so hard it started to bulge out and eventually pounded a hole through which we could peer into his room. It was a little unsettling but we were bohemian and didn't have any fucks to give.
Every time I hear a story like this, and recall my shitty apartment living arrangements, I look about my acre of yard and crank up some metal. I've been in a funk and debating a move into town, so, thanks for reminding me why I live in the sticks.
Yesterday an acquaintance in college got in touch to ask about a company I had worked for. I said something I shouldn't have, but it was impulsive and true.
"I had hoped you all would have completely forgotten about me by now."
Maybe I shouldn't have said that. I'm tired, Hubski.
- What kind of questions can a self-aware person answer about themselves with confidence?
1. Why do I believe what I believe (about myself and just about everything else)?
2. Do I believe it only as much as this belief can be supported by evidence?
3. Are there examples of the evidence from several sources?
4. Is the evidence really evidence or just someone's stupid opinion?
5. What is evidence anyway?
That wasn't helpful. Let me try again.
- What kind of questions can a self-aware person answer about themselves with confidence?
I imagine self-awareness is so subjective that any confidence we have about our answers is equally subjective.
Here's what I ask myself:
Am I bringing goodness into the world?
I imagine Donald Trump asks himself that as well.
- What kind of questions can a self-aware person answer about themselves with confidence?
Maybe the only kinds of questions one can answer with confidence are about being in the moment:
What are my perceptions right now? Can I hear my being dance from ear to ear?
I went to meditation class for the first time in a long time yesterday and I'm very glad I went. It was a body-scan meditation, and the discussion afterwards was centered around the mind-body connection. Specifically, how we (People with depression/anxiety) live mostly above our shoulders and ignore signals that don't originate inside of our own heads.
The class was at 7, The meditation was about an hour, and the actual body-scan started about 20 minutes in at the toes and feet, sweeping up the body. I had gone the whole day, an entire working day of running around the hospital, without realizing I was having a gout flare. It suddenly made sense why I had been feeling panicky, on edge and withdrawn all day. It turns out that if you ignore the sensation of railroad spikes being driven into your heels long enough, it can make you kind of cranky.
Back to basics with meditation again. I've recognized a pattern I think. Step 1. Habitually meditate with breath observation and body-scan. Step 2. Get bored of body awareness because I have a lot of unpleasant things I am bodily aware of, and I'm not at peace with them. Step 3. Move on to weird, abstract, 'transcendental' meditation because I think I'm 'above that pedestrian body stuff.' Step 4. Feel like meditation isn't doing anything for me. Repeat.
My flares are rare, thankfully.
What it amounts to is take a pill every day, for something that's problematic once every few months, or take a lot of pills for a little while when it flares.
My PCP is happy to have her nurses shove a needle full of prednisone in my ass too.
In my limited experience, I've found the simplest meditation techniques to be the most effective. Though I'm certainly guilty of making the same mistakes, always thinking "I did this meditation, what's next?" as though the meditation itself isn't the end goal.
That's definitely a possibility. The only thing mindfulness meditation really does is cultivate awareness. Ideally, a non-judgemental and passive awareness. That's all.
It does sound kind of underwhelming at first, but you highlighted how easy it is to be unaware in the second paragraph of your original post. And whilst I can't speak for its effect on gout, being simply aware of undesirable thoughts/feelings/bodily sensations and sitting with them can often cause them to subside without much effort.
But if you approach the meditation as if its a treatment, then there's already this judgement that there's these negative things you're looking to get rid of. Not only will this leave you frustrated, but it will hamper the development of that non-judgemental awareness which is the real key.
I'm working a boat load this week and since today is my only day off, Dala took off work to hang out with me. We're currently at the craft store, just dicking around. I'm just going up and down the fabric aisles thinking "Ooh. That ones pretty." The propensity for craters to hoard things like fabrics, buttons, and whatever suddenly makes a lot of sense.
Edit: Ran into a customer at checkout that is a member of the local quilters guild that put on the quilt show I went to the other week. I told her how much I loved their work. She was so nice.
We're gonna make soda bread today, which has me excited as hell. I don't think I've had soda bread for about 20 years now, so I'm long overdue for it. I don't know which recipe Dala chose, but I'm sure it'll be good.
Edit 2: It was a pretty straightforward recipe, just flower, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. It was still pretty yummy though. Next time, I think we oughta toss in some spices.
Trawling through wikipedia last night, I discovered naive art and outsider art. I think both sound interesting, outsider art more than naive art. I'm gonna put it on the list of things to look into. tacocat, mk, you guys know a lot about art, don't you? Have any good books you might point me to?
Check out Norbert Kox and Joe Coleman.
I can't say much right now. I just jumped out of a moving car to avoid rehab/the homeless shelter. I'll try to update everyone on that situation when I get to a phone charger
Over the next 12 days I will have been on 14 planes.
Look forward to the Temecula Hubski meetup!
Someone shared this with me and it rung true:
A student cried in my office hours this week. Not something I did--just general stress, but I still feel bad about it.
I'm getting tired of the students that think learning is a passive thing and put in the bare minimum of effort on the homework and then complain to me that class is hard. You can't pattern-match your way to understanding...
Writing Haskell is fun--lots of meditating on what I want to do, then very little coding to get a lot done. Although, sometimes it feels like I'm learning to program all over again--it's idea of how you structure computation is very different from your standard imperative languages.
Sorry for the programming heavy post but I've been doing nothing but teaching and writing for the longest time...
- I'm getting tired of the students that think learning is a passive thing and put in the bare minimum of effort on the homework and then complain to me that class is hard. You can't pattern-match your way to understanding...
Not all classes are about learning, sometimes you just have to get though classes you have no passion for with the minimum effort possible, pass and move on. Its good to accept that not everyone has the same passion for the subject that you do.
I teach Java(the class is called Computer Science but has just been Java so far) on Saturdays, and have recently had difficulty catching the 'students''(maybe it's too casual to call them that?) attention as we've been doing more object-oriented stuff(objects, instance and static properties etc.). I've not been able to make very captivating examples, because for the real use of objects to shine over spaghetti monster code requires they'd have to be pretty massive.
Anyway, last Saturday I did just a little bit on exceptions and adding jars to the classpath and then we made IRC bots(Using Pircbot, that kind of networking is a little bit much right now...). They loved it, normally they'd be content watching Youtube(it's a very informal class) while they waited for me to help them with their problems, but last Saturday they were fighting for my attention rather than me fighting for theirs. And when they went on to do their own things with the IRC bots, things I went through in previous weeks visibly clicked with them.
Maybe that was just an instance of a bad teacher becoming a less bad teacher, but I think it helps just to have fun with your students in your subject every now and then.
Have you ever started taking a class with no intentions of putting in more than minimum effort, but then been won over by the teacher/subject?
I liked Computer science because I had a great teacher in highschool but I was also there by choice. I guess you need to ask yourself why you students are there in the first place? Is it a mandatory class? Is it elective? Is it just because seniors have nothing better to do on saturdays.
It sounds like you already found something that inspires your students. The IRC bots are interesting, you could just take it apart piece by piece and show them how it works. Then have them remake it. I think that was a big miss about my programming experience when I was younger. We never got to work with real professional level code so it was really hard to see what best practices were. Also reading published code is a real skill that is very valuable that doesn't get enough early emphasis.
- Have you ever started taking a class with no intentions of putting in more than minimum effort, but then been won over by the teacher/subject?
To answer your question, yes. If the professor is passionate about the subject Im pretty easily won over even if I otherwise don't give a fuck about the topic an don't ever see using the info but you gotta be really f-ing good.
sooooo... I've been in Kosovo almost a month and I have been majorly slacking on updates. I haven't written a single blog post since I started work and I have only lurked here occasionally. And I'm sorry about that. I've really wanted to but every time I travel I re-learn that I am fairly low energy and can only really dedicate myself to one mentally strenuous thing at a time.
Know that I am thinking of you all frequently, and that I am enjoying myself and am posed be alongside and part of some good work in the CVE arena. Kosovo's numbers of foreign fighter exports are down (can't take credit for that though lol) and their first big CVE conference is next week. I'm supposed to go to the prisons w/ a psychologist at some point to talk to returnees about their motivations.
I also started learning Albanian which is a silly nonsensical language.
I'm just itching to hear more! Everything! About walking the streets... the buildings... the people...
Albanian? Wow. That is dedication. I'd suggest Serbo-Croat is far more useful. With Serbo-Croat you can fumble along with every Slavic tongue from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea.
But Albanian? You will never speak it well enough to be understood by an Albanian, and nobody else speaks it.
I had a similar problem with Hungarian. I went all-in on it and learned how to speak it. But there are so few non-Hungarians who speak it, that Hungarians can't generally understand my accent. They understand native-speakers of the language, but if you pronounce one vowel wrong, or mis-conjugate a word, they are baffled. Because everyone they have ever encountered speaks perfect Hungarian. (Although I was able to speak in Hungarian to non-native Hungarian speakers, because we all made the same mistakes!)
Anyway, I look forward to hearing more, if and when you are ready.
I mean it's worlds away from Jordan, that's for sure. I'm as comfy walking around at night as I am in DC. And everything is so cheap!! esp since the euro is so weak... the reverse sticker shock when returning to DC is gonna be major lol. It reminds me of all the good things about the Middle East (close knit, friendly, idiosyncratic).
For some reason, I'm interpreted as open to frequent interaction? People approach me pretty regularly for random things... man on the street TV interview (but I don't speak Albanian so that didn't pan out), selling me on a specific shampoo brand in the supermarket, some guys tried to get me to spend 8 euro on honey for some reason. This actually happens semi regularly in DC too but it's definitely weird. Also no one can place my nationality right away. I've gotten asked if I'm English (even after speaking which is weird), German, and Irish.
The way people process the war trauma is weird too. It mostly stays under the surface but then someone will casually slip in the time they got shot at in the back of a van or how their friend got their legs blown off by a mine. It's weird stuff that they volunteer out of nowhere too. I haven't gotten totally used to it yet.
Albanian is what's spoken in my office and how most official documents are written so I wanted to get at least comfortable with hearing it and being able to parse the sentences... except the grammatical structure is RIDICULOUS. people also seem to appreciate it when my friends and I bust out the few pleasantries we do know. it's just considerate i think to try and learn a little while I'm here.
I'm kind of late to the party, but that's in keeping with the way the last couple of weeks has gone.
I have simply hit a wall at work. My productivity has gone to shit and I just, don't, care. I don't know why this has suddenly changed...if it's a question of hitting things too hard in July-September (combination of OT and lots of kung fu) or that I've simply gotten to this point. I've been at my current job for two years, and this is the longest I've held any one job since law school. I mean, I've been consistently employed since then, and every job has been an improvement (or at least looked that way when I took it). My gig is too easy and too repetitive for me. Interestingly I'm not alone--the whole office has fallen off a cliff on the productivity front, and people who've been there for years are starting to express feelings of burnout that I've never heard from them.
I did just put in an application for a job that would seem to be a good step up. More intellectual activity, and a good 35% pay bump. I think I'm competitive, but truth be told I have no idea what they're looking for.
More generally, I'm hoping my funk is short-lived. I can't really afford for my productivity to continue to suffer as it has (especially if I don't get this new job), but the thought of pushing myself is just too miserable to contemplate. I need a break.
I'm working! That old prayer comes to mind. My lack of serenity, courage and wisdom comes to mind. Of course, I am 23. People love asking me how old I am. Is it my face? I guess I do look kind of young.
I was surprised at how much politics people talk about at work. There's always that guy who checks the GBP-EUR exchange rate as a matter of habit, right? Just look at it go. I give away as little of my opinion as I can. Not used to that. Talk less, smile more. I could do with smiling more.
How do you stay above office politics, hubski? How do you compartmentalise everything that might distract you from your work that is not work?
- How do you stay above office politics, hubski? How do you compartmentalise everything that might distract you from your work that is not work?
I make sure I am busy. I have enough work to do each day, that I spend little time on other things. (Like Hubski.) Keep up the pace. If you are busy, then people will interrupt you less.
Drink water. Water keeps you hydrated, it makes you get up and go to the bathroom every hour or two (which is good for your body), and it doesn't take time to make, so you don't get caught chatting uselessly around the coffee maker. (Also, life is better without coffee.)
Let people be wrong. I hear people talking about shit they know nothing about, and spouting wrong information. Usually gossiping or pontificating on topics that they do not have any expertise in. That's ok. They can be wrong. You don't need to correct them, or engage them. Focus on your work.
Headphones. Many people wear headphones at work all the time, which is counter-productive. Wearing them all the time means people just interrupt them any time they want to. I wear headphones only when I need to focus or can't be disturbed. People learn the difference. "Hang on. He's got his headphones on. We can ask him about this stuff later." (I may not even have anything playing. Just have the headphones on to deflect distractions, or simply to lower the ambient volume.)
Reduce. Be "less" while at work. The people I give my "all" to, are the people I love. The people at work see a guy who is always happy, always working, and someone who gets shit done. They only get the work side of me. They know a bit of my life outside of work, but not much. They just see this happy, productive dude. By reducing or limiting my profile at work, it gives people fewer reasons to engage me in non-work stuff. So I don't have to listen to their fantasy football rosters, or their kid's play, or whatever. But since I am the happy, productive guy, I get called into all the cool projects, too, because I have proven that I am fun to work with, and I get shit done.
That's my formula for not getting sucked into distractions.
Interestingly, this is also my formula for not bringing my work home. The moment I step out the front door of my building, work is GONE from my head. And I don't think about it again until I am commuting to work the next morning, and planning out my day.
Thank you. These are some really good suggestions.
Regarding keeping busy, I still haven't nailed this. But I find that not having tasks that totally fill my day really fuck me up emotionally way more than I thought it would. The killer thing for me right now is if the people above me are busy on some urgent task and there's nothing on JIRA for me to do. I am going to keep a list of tasks that aren't on the current sprint that I can work on in the absence of anything else. Not sure if this is the right way to do things (we're using Scrum, this is something I would love to change but almost definitely cannot).
Getting pretty tired of coffee. The stuff from the machine tastes alright but when it becomes part of the everyday routine it loses its charm. What's the point? I know too many people who have got digestive problems from drinking too much of the stuff. Also addiction.
Headphones, yes good call. Sometimes the office is loud and that's a good time for it otherwise they're not needed.
I really love the idea of being "less" while at work. I just got back from visiting my friends back home and I got a bit emotional because I hadn't been around people who were showing so much love and attention to each other in so long. So I'd put that at the "all" end of the spectrum. I'll remember them when I'm stressing out at work.
- I am going to keep a list of tasks that aren't on the current sprint that I can work on in the absence of anything else.
This is also a great time to learn about other things that may be tangential to your current job, but might be useful in the future. For example, if you are working with SQL databases in your job right now, start learning Hadoop. Or look into NoSQL databases, in general. That way, when someone comes up against a database problem in the future, you could mention that maybe a NoSQL solution would work, and mention Hadoop.
Or, another team might be looking for Hadoop people, and you - being already inside the company, familiar with the people and the systems, etc - mention that you have been doing some research on it, and stood up and instance on your home computer to try it out... and suddenly another team is possibly looking to hire you away, and train you on this more cutting-edge database technology.
Sticking with the idea you might work with SQL databases, another option could be to start playing with Tableau, which is brilliant for doing data visualizations. And there is a free version at public.tableau.com. So when someone needs to visualize some data, you could drop it into Tableau, munge it around a little, and produce some really brilliant charts.
So yeah... look just outside the area/thing you are working on. What is connected to it? What interests you there? Do a little research on those things. Figure out if you like them, and get some familiarity with the tools.
As a fairly new person to the workforce, you may not be aware of how important incumbency is. Already working there gets you 90% of the way to any other job in the company, really. It is HARD to hire new people, and is fraught with wasted time, frustration, and bureaucracy. In addition, nobody is productive for their first three months as they try to figure out how to work within a new company's structure, and with their tools, people, etc.
It is way easier to hire someone away from another team. So if you are already working there, know their implementation of JIRA, and are producing good work, then your lateral possibilities within the company are HUGE.
And if I need to hire someone, and I can go talk to two or three other managers you have worked for, and they give you a good reference, then I REALLY want you on my team. Someone who has been around on a few teams, and has been productive, is way more valuable to their next team, too.
There are some insights from a hiring manager's perspective. I hope they are useful!
Oh yeah I love doing tangential reading. We have scope at my job to integrate new technologies / ways of doing things into our work. Much more than in larger companies. Most of the stuff we work with goes through that route (someone reads about it during lunch / at home, they think of a way to include it in our product, they persuade the rest of the team to get onboard).