Certainly a lot I could talk about since “leaving” Hubski. But here’s what I’ve been up to for the last eight months. Not much more I’d rather be doing. What a wonderful world.
It was all good until a week ago - Jay-Z I may be retiring in three weeks. Things went from idyllic to horrific through the nonjudicious pressure of a single power-hungry mid-level manager. There are now two unions involved, lawyers, and a predictable number of talented professionals lawyering up and gearing for war. Meanwhile my work days have gained three unpaid hours on average and my system has become untenable - accounting for packing, dressing, riding, showering, dressing again, working, dressing, riding and showering I am now looking at fourteen hour days. Meanwhile one of my roommates has given up on food that doesn't come in a brown bag and the other is collecting sniper rifles and falling asleep on the couch watching PragerU videos on Youtube. I have never experienced a job going from "good" to "bad" and then becoming "good" again. They go from "good" to "bad" to "oh fuck get me out of here." It's also worth noting that I'm trying to make it through Clavell's Whirlwind, a largely factual account of Bristow Helicopters' attempts to extricate their personnel and property from the Iranian Revolution. And the book is chockablock with "we can get through this" "this too shall pass" "as soon as we hear from X everything will be fine" and "as soon as this settles down we can bring the women back" when no, in fact, the time to cut bait was when the Ayatollah landed. It was revealed through candid conversations with a department head that my department has been shielded from years of bullshit and that whatever difficulty we're going through, it's a weak shadow of the churn that's wracking the rest of the organization. What I thought was standard boilerplate corporate CYA turns out, in fact, to be the craven and dim-witted opportunism of people who should know better but invariably don't. This is an organization that has made over $100m a year for 20 years. It has made me personally well over a half million dollars. My wife ran payroll last night. We're paying out $19k a month. Fortunately our business model is closer to "commission" than "salary" but it's still terrifying to consider that our burn rate is over a quarter million a year.
Ho.ly.shizz. Sorry for the workplace going to hell. Things do not often turn around. However, I have stayed through massive turmoil once or twice, and - as a survivor - wound up with greatly increased pay and a metaphorical bulletproof jacket against other corporate bullshit. The few guys who walked off Culloden Field never had to buy their own drink again... sometimes staying through the turmoil has its benefits. Of course, I have never worked within a Union environment, and have absolutely zero understanding of how that all works.... so my feedback is probably useless. ... anyway ...
Yeah, I'm shielded nicely. I should be able to extricate myself cleanly this season, chill the fuck out a thousand miles away and keep my eye on the economy and the politics and all the rest and then make a dispassionate decision based on the conditions on the ground. But at a minimum my living situation will need to change. It's striking how quickly things went pear-shaped, too. It's one of those situations where if you know where to look you see the trouble a'brewin' but when you're in it things look just f'n dandy.
Helping my best mate propose to his girlfriend this weekend. When he mentioned he wanted to propose at some point, earlier this year, I set to work making a scavenger hunt because his girlfriend is quirky as anything and my friend is far more pragmatic than creative. This has served us very well in our friendship so I don't begrudge him that at all. So this Saturday we'll pretend to go to the gym for our usual training, and instead mission about town handing out clues to specified areas and explaining the situation to the staff at each place. The locations were picked A) for nostalgic purposes during their courting/budding relationship and B) to have her cross the entire city more than once to eat up time because the second I give her the first clue she will piece everything together in an instant - and I'll struggle to keep a straight face as she bursts into happy tears. So I need her to be busy for a good 90 minutes to 2 hours while my friend sets up the place he has booked for the night. Once she stops crying she will set about being incredibly determined and will want to finish in record time, so the longer she has to travel the better. All going according to plan, she'll bounce around locations for 90 minutes then eventually the last clue will have her contact me at a certain place and I'll give her some address details + suggest she pack an overnight bag before heading there. Once she arrives, he'll drop the knee. In other news, my partner and I are taking an extra step, not just living together with flatmates, but moving into our own wee spot of our own. A family friend owns this nice brick, three bedroom house I actually lived in when I was a student. It's been renovated nicely and they're looking for tenants once more. So we'll take over the lease, have the extra bedroom as a studio of sorts and enjoy setting up our lives entirely on our own terms. Plus we're allowed a cat. Once we move in, first order of business is to head to the nearby SPCA and adopt a cat. Preferably one that has been there a while, we want to give a home to an animal that has been denied one for too long. Our Japan trip is coming up! I've mastered saying "I'm sorry/excuse me" and have started sampling some vaguely Japanese food so I'm not entirely flabbergasted when we arrive. My partner speaks Japanese thankfully so I'll rely on her a lot while using my adorable foreigner charm to hopefully step on as few toes as possible. Hope you're all well.
I've got the various hellos/good mornings/good evenings down along with some basic food items, and of course 'thank you'. I can introduce myself with a little bit of pondering! Have heard from a few people that the everyday Japanese person will find a genuine attempt at the language far more welcome compared to just not bothering. So am hoping to be able to greet people comfortably at least! Will be sure to take heaps of average phone photos.
Back to school. Our daughter is in 2nd grade now. That's a crazy thing to me. I showed her The Dark Crystal a couple of weeks ago, and as the credits rolled, she said: "That was a good movie." Ever since, she's been occasionally making the skeksi Chamberlain's "hmmm." Last night I saw that Netflix has a reboot series. However, it's rated PG, and looks a bit too dark for now. It doesn't look too great anyway. I am sure they rushed it out to catch the 80's wave. Interesting, I just came across this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Crystal I do agree with Jim. I think we'll do The Never Ending Story next. Since my wife and her have been to China a couple of times without me, my daughter asked that we do a Daddy/daughter trip somewhere. Next month we are going to Maine for a long weekend. I booked an AirBnB cabin, and didn't realize it has no electricity. That should make it even better. I'm going to get a bow. My dad had a great non-compound with something like a 40lb pull, but I don't know where it went. I'm going to try to track it down.According to co-director Frank Oz, Henson's intention was to "get back to the darkness of the original Grimms' Fairy Tales", as he believed that it was unhealthy for children to never be afraid.
It was probably wood and if it hasn't been stored well, it will crack the minute you string it. My wife took up archery hard. You can get into a decent recurve for like $300, and if you find a local archery range they'll likely walk you through the training to use it.
Please enjoy my rooster boy and one of my hens relaxing in the sun with me: I picked up an ancient differential equations textbook to fill in the big gaps in my diffeq knowledge. (Turns out making plans to get married with only tenuous approval from your parents is not really conducive to studying...) It's nice -- the writing is concise and the author answers a lot of questions that I had the first time through. Also, the typesetting is beautiful and the book smells nice. Planning out my semester and realizing just how much work I have to do. Fortunately almost all the deadlines are self-set, so hopefully that'll be better for my brain than external deadlines that come too quickly.
It's "Elements of Ordinary Differential Equations" by Golomb and Shanks. Published by McGraw-Hill in 1950! I picked it up out of a pile of free textbooks, so I can't swear to it's superiority over other texts. The first couple chapters have been as enjoyable as a diffeq book can be, though!
Just came back from my 3rd Burning Man, and I’d say it’s been the best one yet. Got to do a plane ride over the city, light a fire tornado with liquid propane at tank pressure, get close to a couple awesome folks, become a black rock city ranger and much more mind blowing experiences. I feel like I’m getting the hang of it and can summon some playa magic from time to time. I was at a bar at the tail end of a night and got talking with the bartender who’s been going for 18+ years. He had really awesome stories, and it was great fun. Bar hopping is one of my favorite things out there. When I mentioned I left my bike back at camp for the night he offered me a ride on his custom trike with a built in sound system. It was probably the most epic entrance I’ve ever made in my life.
You are gonna be an EXCELLENT ranger! But... take care of yourself. Rangers are like cops, in that they always see the worst of the city. Make sure you get away from Rangerland and from the other Rangers. If you lock in to that social group you will become an asshole and hate everyone at Burning Man. (I have many many many friends who are Rangers, and probably 80% of them fit this description.)
I don’t think I want to buy into Ranger culture too much. I’m there to burn, not to work. I’ve met too many workaholics. I feel the skills are useful, so I’m aiming to pick up a couple shifts per event to help out and get a guaranteed half price ticket so I don’t need to worry about the main sale. Being part of a camp is not really appealing to me right now. My favorite part about being a ranger is giving bad advice to my close friends prefaced with “As a ranger...”. My least favorite part is wearing that ugly ass khaki gear. Maybe I’ll come back to gate, their swag is badass.
So I was in the studio all three days of the long weekend. The “studio” is actually a house but it’s got walls of amps, a decently treated main room, and a well-equipped mixing room. Leading up to now it’s been a couple of weeks of building scratch tracks and tempo maps for drums to record to, testing them, fixing them, practicing to them, rinse and repeat. Day 1 was just drums for 4 songs. Day 2 we started guitar tracking and day 3 I actually did a little bit of bass for one track that was basically done. Now considering that I was there all three days that’s a lot of sitting around and reading / making comments on tracks every few minutes. We’ve still got quite a ways to go.
Been nerding on books lately. With my newfangled big bookcase next to my bed, it's literally the first thing I see in the morning, so that probably helps. I'm slowly collecting the books I love the most but have read as audiobook for my bookcase. Got myself a nice printed version of Watchmen. Read the first part, but I should really revisit the rest soon. Backintheday I read it as PDF but print is so much nicer. Also (finally) got myself a physical copy of the D&D PHB and made a D&D corner in my bookcase. Last session my character died, (heroically of course) so I got a bunch of spell cards for my new druid. Wrote him to be the member of a cult of informants who believe in Zoroastrian dualism (in a polytheistic world) wherein everything natural has good spirits, and everything man-made / technological removes those spirits and is thus evil. Basically a doomsday Luddite, because I think that's gonna be a lotta fun. Picked up some scifi yesterday in the Audible sale - Bacigalupi, Le Guin and Chricton for the prize 'o two. I dove into sci-fi last year, but ended up running back to cozier nonfiction after a few months. But I want to give it another dive. ilex, I now have The Dispossessed and kb's interested too so we might have to do a Sci-fi club. Paging zebra2.
Hi hubski! I’ll tell you more in the imminent trip report, but I’m currently sitting in an airport terminal waiting to fly home for orthopedic surgery. “But mudsy, wait!” You might say, “Weren’t you driving? Weren’t you on the most fantastic road trip imaginable?!” Yes, this is true. I was. Unfortunately, I broke my fucking leg while stuck in a canyon and very nearly 127-hour’d myself. Consider this post a trailer for the full saga. All I can say now is: “5 hours without anesthetics”.
All things have pretty much come to a stop. The mid-life-crisis motorcycle rebuild. Riding either of the other two motorcycles. Writing. Gardening. Playing games on my phone. I have some sort of Issue with my right wrist. It may be a repetitive stress injury/strain - which I have honestly been expecting the onset of for probably 25 years - but whenever I do much with my right hand, the interior of my right wrist gets VERY painful, and very weak. I've spent my whole life on computers and motorcycles, and the last decade and a half writing (books, screenplays, etc.) and learning to sew. So I have been rigidly conforming to best practices for preventing RSIs... but all the stretching and proper posture and wrist support only mitigates or delays the onset of RSIs. It doesn't prevent them. So I have a doctors' appointment coming up on the 17th (her first availability). And between now and then I just ... stress. And don't do any of the things I have loved doing for years, in an effort to not exacerbate the situation. sigh --- But my Dad turns 83 today, and is still healthy and fit and fun to be around. So I will enjoy time with my family tonight, which is always welcome and wonderful.
I've overstretched a tendon (think that's what it whas called) a while ago. Sucked, took like four months to recover, but at least it wasn't permanent, and it was something that noticably got better over time. I hope it's that - it's better than the alternatives.
I visited my aunt who was hospitalized after changing her medication for schizophrenia. She's doing alright. But visiting a hospital in general makes you realize how real shit can get in a moment's notice. Sick people. Heavy police presence. Vehicles rushing in and out. My dad has a blood vessel bursting under his cheek. And then I see my classmates flexing on social media about their "new expensive" white coats they added to their wardrobe (it's a medical jacket) and bragging about it while giggling and wonder if any of us are ever going to grow up. Ya know, it's kind of serious business. Time to go record a lounge album in the rain I guess.
SUBHEADINGS Cardiac Rehab Rehab goes. I am physically stronger now than I was when we started, so by that metric of success it's going well. I go twice a week and meet with my personal trainer each time, she checks in with me on each machine or exercise. I've become enamored of resistance bands for my strength work but there is apparently disagreement within the PT world about their efficacy. I was put on an elliptical machine for the first time in years and did a solid 10 minutes at 150 BPM without falling unconscious. I haven't had any reductions in symptoms, but we keep at it. Possibly I have a little bit more endurance now just by the metric of I have added rehab to my schedule and haven't taken much else away in order to do so. My chest still hurts. It honestly feels like someone is slamming me in the chest with a baseball bat while I sleep. A sleep study showed exactly nothing, other than I both talk and laugh in my sleep. Woodworking We thoroughly cleaned out the old shed right down to the floorboards with stiff brushes and bleach. Put up shelving, threw out a decades worth of gardening/home improvement garbage covered in mouse excrement, and even found an old power washer and a working, all manual push mower in serious need of TLC. I've since added a workbench made from some reclaimed cabinetry and a big sheet of OSB and I'm working on a storage solution for my few tools that makes me happy. Pictures to come, though I wish I had taken a before/after of the shed full of mouse crap and anxiety compared to now. I finally got all my chisels sharpened last night, that feels nice. I'm in the process of making a mallet, after that a toolbox, then I'm going to start on my small list of projects. If anybody wants furniture to gift out for the holidays, get at me. HISTORY Making progress on The Reformation. I keep waiting for some big 'AHA!' moment or something but I haven't really seen one yet. The story of Columbus and his contemporaries fascinates me though. Not because they were admirable figures themselves but because of the intensity of purpose it must have taken, the personal confidence one would have to have in their mathematics, sailing ability, personal charisma, etc to do such a thing. I suppose the 'AHA!' is that this kind of stuff is likely the reason why the Great Man theory of history had such power for so long. The way that we think about certain places, time periods is entirely defined by the records made of certain hyper-influential people.