Long story short, my manager at this contract gig sucks. Just found out the project I have been working on for two weeks is actually a "rogue" project, that my manager had no responsibility for, and just went off on his own volition to create his own thing... all without letting his team know about this. So I suddenly have my desk surrounded by people who are angry with me. I show them what I am working on. They show me what they are working on... the two things look almost identical, but different enough that they can't simply be merged. (Different interpretations of the project's goals.) I have a bunch of secret meetings with the people who are actually the key players in this project, and make the judgement to throw my manager under the bus and come clean about the stupid shit he has been doing, and his total ineptitude as a manager. And everyone nods their heads and says, "Oooooh... ok... now things are starting to make a lot more sense!" So here I am coming up to the end of my contract, having just pilloried my manager, and thinking about the wedding I need to pay for in 5 months... Other teams are interested in bringing me on board. But... not sure my contract allows for that, and ... shit. Everything is up in the air. And I expect every moment to get a tap on my shoulder, and turn to see my manager ready to escort me out of the building. But the sunrise today was utterly astoundingly gorgeous. So there's that.
Good luck!So here I am coming up to the end of my contract, having just pilloried my manager, and thinking about the wedding I need to pay for in 5 months...
-You engaged or are you helping someone else pay for their wedding? If it's the former, congrats and if it's the latter, my sympathies :)
Only have a few minutes, so just stopping in to drop a realization: People who are busy, unless they're stressed, don't feel busy. I am one of those people. I realized that as a full-time student, active participant in three clubs, applying for an internship program, preparing to study abroad, applying for honours, and working part-time, I have no idea how I have time for outdoor activities, friends, and Super Smash Bros. 4 tournaments. Welp. Time to get to school, great chat everyone!
Interesting observation goo. Stress might be more pronounced if the busy is self-imposed or externally imposed -- although some people have trouble over-committing. (My soon-to-be-ex, for example, self-imposed himself into three jobs and then complained that he had three jobs. Stress is also related to unexpected responsibilities that you take on willingly, but are still onerous (who knew that when you have a kid, your life is no longer entirely your own) and senses of obligation to things beyond yourself. It's complicated. It sounds like you have a good attitude.People who are busy, unless they're stressed, don't feel busy.
Halfway through my 2nd week at my new job. I started working for a defense contractor last week and haven't done a whole lot besides reading hundreds of DoD doctrines on CWMD which is pretty boring because the State Department is still hanging onto my clearance lol. BUT at least I know that I don't have to worry about job searching while finishing my thesis so that's nice. Right now I'm trying to decipher my benefits options... What else... I'm a semi-finalist for a Fulbright grant to Kosovo which I'm trying not to get too excited about because movement on that is going to be glacial (again, thanks State Department) so thinking about it isn't helpful. But it's news. I'm taking a course on Roots and Trajectories of Extremism and the professor is super smart and energetic but doesn't really have direction for the class. We've been reading classics in Arab thought which is somewhat of a review for me but since it's a close read this time around, it's fascinating to see that the same things being debated in the Arab world in the 19th century and the turn of the 20th are STILL relevant today (Islamic State yay or nay, how to govern, who should govern etc). In class though it's mostly our professor (who's a young Jordanian woman who just rails against how awful the state of education in Jordan is which is just hilarious to me after my semester abroad because it was truly abysmal) pulling up videos she's enjoyed of secularist conversations happening online for the first time. I'm enjoying it but wishing it was just a tad more structured.
Kosovo! I used to have a house just outside of Film City in Pristina (Serb spelling, sorry), and did a lot of business with the US forces stationed out at Camp Bondsteel. It was nice having a military ID, while getting to live out with the civilian population... I got to really be a part of the daily culture and life, but always know that I had a helicopter waiting for me if shit really went bad. Hopefully they have finally closed the coal-fired power plant in Pristina. Yellow snow is really unpleasant.
I've studied off and on for the last 6 or so years.
Work's kind of stressing me out. Trying to lead a 6-figure cost savings project but some of the team members want to run run run without properly planning things out and it's hard to reign them in. Working in these groups of different education levels, age, ambition, etc. is tough but that's life I guess. It's starting to feel like I don't have a desire to be in a relationship right now or in the near future. Which is the first time in a long time that I've felt that way. And is also problematic because people keep expressing interest in me and then I keep having to explain "no no no wait I'm not looking for anything serious like that right or not even really looking to kiss you or anything". Oh and I think I have a stress fracture in my foot.
Take care of that foot! They're important things, just ask Joe Montana
I'm really bad at seeing doctors in a timely manner. All I want to do is go for a run tomorrow night. Trying to figure out if I should see a general practitioner first or a podiatrist or just go to urgent care and say "hey x-ray my foot please and thank you".
We bought a good amount of Ether and BTC yesterday. I've been pushing for this for some time and thanks to mk, my wife is finally on board. As you know, this thing that we've been working on and building is starting to come to fruition. It's both exciting and a bit terrifying. The only reason it's terrifying is because I'm not sure if I'll be able to juggle both a day job and this start up effectively. There is only so much of me and one thing will surely suffer. Unfortunately, I'm under more of a microscope at work because I took a promotion. It's a brand new role in the organization and therefore it has lots of visibility. No more hiding out. My heart is 100% in the startup. I'm incredibly excited about it and what we are building. As lil mentioned, I made a strange song last night. It started with the sound my Subaru makes when I turn the ignition without having my seatbelt on. Check it out: https://hubski.com/edit?id=318920 I have been gathering new pedals and toys for my music studio. We had an architect come look at the house recently and we are going to put on a small addition and renovate the inside. The small additon will be a screened in porch as well as a detached music studio/office. I am beyond excited for this.
Hey Steve -- I'm waiting for my US credit card to come through - then you'll match my donation to hubski, right? I suppose you can spend your Ether. Will cryptocoin protect you from a market crash? Is that the whole point of it? It's freezing and cloudy here. Of course, freezing in Key West is, like, 65 F. It sounds colder when I speak Canadian. It's 18 degrees C here. Brrrr.
I've entered the phase of studio reconstruction where the shit that I need to make work is all working and the shit that should just fucking work is causing explosions. Get two computers to speak over lightpipe to a single speaker controller? CHECK. Fit 12 DVI cables into a space the size of a party sub? CHECK. Get a Mac and a PC to coexist on a proprietary Euphonix subnetwork to speak to 6 different Eucon devices? CHECK. Burn through 500 feet of Cat5E with only two connections that need to be redone? CHECK (It helps if you recite "no whammies no whammies no whammies" like a mantra before you slap them in the cable tester). But then the KVM switch you ordered sucks so hard it sends your Mac Pro into SMC protect and it never resolves hotkeys... and since there are, like, four KVMs in the world that'll handle 4x2 DVI you're kind of fucked. And then you discover that while your Netgear managed switches will both handle link aggregation, the big one has no configurability and the small one has no manual to help you figure out how to get them to speak to each other. Which doesn't really matter 'cuz that Intel driver? For the phatty network card in the big box? The one that's driving your link aggregation strategy? Yeah, there are drivers for Windows 10 but they don't work. Apparently the network functionality for the network card ("network" can be factored out of that sentence) is TBD. And you start to remember why you bailed the fuck out of Windows back in 2004. I watched the Super Bowl through an antenna I mounted on a mast on the roof down a run of RG-6 I had to put under the house to a Silicondust tuner I put on the network that speaks to a Mac Mini running Plex that I send to the receiver over a Chromecast. It's a fuckin' technological tour-de-force and it fuckin' worked... but the irony of my putting four networked devices between the rabbit ears and the screen is not lost on me. Nor is the fact that I have the power to watch 46 channels of free over-the-air broadcasts on my phone in real-time, none of which has anything worth watching. I had an epiphany, while sitting there building Cat5 cables and listening to Reclaiming Conversation. Sherry Turkle's last book basically said "we're fucked, nobody knows how to converse with each other" and her new book basically says "we may be fucked, but if we work at it we can still resurrect our lives somewhat." Here's the epiphany: The rise of young adult fiction and the predominance of giant teen movies full of flat affect are both a consequence of the adoption of the written word as lingua franca of young adults over the subtle nuance of speech and facial expression. When your primary means of interacting with your friends and surroundings is via mediated text, mediated text becomes the most powerful cultural and emotional influence in your life. Reality television is as ascendant among young people as it is because it provides a cliff-noted means of parsing emotion - "this thing happened to me" (footage of thing happening) "here's how I feel about this thing" (footage of thing happening refrain) "secondary perspective on thing" (B-camera footage of thing) "here's how I will resolve this thing" (footage of thing happening reprise). Twilight was lambasted because the characters in it are all ciphers for the reader to wear like a cloak. I found Maze Runner to be Twilight for dudes. In watching the big movies these days, it has become obvious to me that subtlety is gone and emotion is writ large, and unless the target audience is literally "old people", the film will be full of stoic expressions, loud on-the-nose dialog and easily-digestible emotional content. The ability of young people to parse emotional subtext is atrophying, and atrophying rapidly. Haven't quite wrapped my head around it, but it makes me glad I jumped from screenplays to novels.
Do you mean you're glad because you now have a chance to prop up the rapidly atrophying emotional intelligence of younger generations? Or because you're jumping into the right business? My personal anecdata to back this up: I matched with a girl on a dating app, and we talked for a long while over text before we set a date to meet. The highlight was when she told me abruptly about halfway through our conversation that I am "v cool," v meaning very. I was jazzed. Partly because I appreciated her forwardness, partly because I am just sort of starting to get over a wrenching break up. But it dawned on me later. We haven't met yet. Except for some mutual interest to meet, I have no idea what she's like or if there is even any chemistry. But the highlight of my week was texting a girl I haven't met yet that I was paired with algorithmically and her saying I'm v cool. How fucking weird.Haven't quite wrapped my head around it, but it makes me glad I jumped from screenplays to novels.
When your primary means of interacting with your friends and surroundings is via mediated text, mediated text becomes the most powerful cultural and emotional influence in your life.
Glad I'm jumping into the right business. Friend of mine wrote the script for Maze Runner. He ended up with the same manager who dropped me. He's got like three projects set up by Charlize Theron. But his work is largely being driven by authors. It occurs to me that as the 'boomers die, narrative television dies with them. The average age of TV viewers is 44, while the average age of broadcast TV viewers is 53. And I've done lots of work for Smosh and the like and the thing is - big, stupid, overblown facial expressions and physical humor and jokes with zero subtlety not only works when your screen is 5" or less, it works when your native tongue is emoji. I spend my summers observing young people who are deprived of their phones and internet for up to 12 weeks. They still speak in memes and hashtags. It's not that people are getting worse at communicating with each other, they're just getting better at communicating with people they'll never meet.
I don't have time to find it just now, but some linguist (Mary Bucholtz, I think) did a study of nerdy high school and college kids before the rise of text messaging, and thought their linguistic quirks were mostly from speaking in the register of written English rather than spoken English, having spent more time reading than speaking. I'll see if I can dig it up later.
Isn't it more of a shift though, from facial nuance to textual nuance? For me at least, I feel like text communication has become more nuanced over the years. The amount of time that I sometimes put into a single email, text or response just to get it the way I want is well above and beyond what is needed to get the point across. It also makes more sense to me in the context of a generation that is increasingly focused on textual communication as a substitute for face-to-face communication.
Makes sense? Sure. But the shift comes at a terrible price. One thing everyone agrees about the 7 percent rule is that the numbers are wrong. But the only two studies to contest it put the number closer to 20 percent. Whatever the actual percentages are, the amount of information conveyed by me standing in front of you talking is between 4 and 20 times as information-rich as you reading a transcript of what I said. All the nuance of the written word - emoticons, emojis, goofy little pictures, memes, the whole part and parcel of modern online communication - comes from the fact that we used to speak in rainbows and now we speak in purple. We've gotten damn good at speaking in purple - far better than back when we had a spectrum - but the part of your brain that speaks in purple has taken over the parts that speak in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo.
Last Friday was very exciting. I saw a <thing I'd been looking for> in my data and now we have at least two drug targets to do follow-up work on. Now I'm entering the realm of staining with antibodies and I'm learning just how few good antibodies there are compared to how many proteins I find interesting. After a day of investigation, I met with a guy to discuss plans for a new project. He sat me down with another member in his lab and then they both explained a rather in-depth project... that was 15 days until show-time... that another post-doc in the lab had begun with them... before leaving for a new position... and had apparently been talking about me doing the work for... Neither I nor my PI had heard anything about this before, so I'm not sure what's exactly going to be happening there.
Too true. I can't tell you how many papers I've reviewed whose main conclusions relied on staining that was shitty. It's hard to just say "I don't believe you" in a review, so you have to come up with something nicer, such as, "The images seem overexposed, and the morphology of cell X seems peculiar. Perhaps some negative and positive controls would be instructive." Seems like biology 101, but the frequency with which it happens is astounding. And I assume that a lot of these papers get through, because the reviewers aren't experienced microscopists. Although I'm sure I miss a bunch of basic shit that other scientists would look at and say, "are you stupid?" If I only knew what those things were...Now I'm entering the realm of staining with antibodies and I'm learning just how few good antibodies there are compared to how many proteins I find interesting.
Yeah, considering how ubiquitous antibody-based conclusions are in biology, I'm surprised there's not a more thorough creation and validation process. I straight up do not trust polyclonal antibodies (it's not a defined reagent!) and vendors have almost zero standards for showing specificity. I'm looking at ~20 targets to validate, and even if I could find antibodies for them all (many do not have mouse-specific versions), the process of formally checking antibody would be close to half a year of work. If I have my way though, "Mass Spec" will be Aim 1 of my thesis proposal, "Staining and Validation" will be Aim 2, "Drugging" will be Aim 3, and "Cell Culture Follow-up" will maybe be Aim 4. I'm hoping the results are exciting enough that doing the first two and doing them well will be sufficient for my (hypothetical) committee.Seems like biology 101, but the frequency with which it happens is astounding
We lately had an interesting target for a mass-spec screen we wanted to follow and found out the THE experts for this protein sit right next door. We had a meeting, they told us everything they do, they have a knockout mouse (yes!) and a good antibody (double yes!) that we could use. We went back to the lab and tested the antibody on our tissue of interest, no signal... Lets test the antibody on kidney tissue, it has been published that it is expressed there. We see a signal! It is different than what was described, but it is a staining. Lets check in the knockout mouse, just to make sure. We see the same signal as in the wildtype. We test a few more tissues. Nope. Their antibody that they rely on for every staining they are doing is unspecific, sticks to everything that has a calcium-dependent lipid binding site and they never thought about making sure it is specific in their knockout animals that they had for yearssssss. WTF? We learned our lesson. Every antibody is tested and then confirmed with an in-situ to see colocalization before we trust it. thundara congrats on seeing the thing you wanted to see :)
Jesus. Well a least you had all of the resources on hand to invalidate the antibody ;-) Coincidentally, the department's new hire who is the door over from my adviser worked on <thing I'd been looking for>. I'm on the fence as to whether I want him or a more neuro-y person evaluating my work (or both???).
I think that having two different views on your matter of interest is very nice! They tend to give you very different but useful insight on how to tackle your problem. Had a similar thought about who to take for my thesis advisory committee. I wanted to add someone who is not in neuro, but my boss doesn't think it is useful. Maybe for next year :D
Morning Pubski! Kind of a slow week, lots of hospital staff take this week or the week after for vacation. That leaves me, good music, and spreadsheets. Had a meeting with the bosses yesterday. After discussing our recent enrollments (Flawless), our recruitment pipeline (Robust, full of patients eager to participate in research) and our plans for the next month or so, we talked about my plans for grad school. As it stands right now, my primary project wraps up new patient enrollment late in the fall, and the time commitment in terms of real hours-per-week will drop dramatically. I could choose to just pick up a new project, or assist on smaller parts of big ones, but by then I should be (Fingers crossed) admitted to one of the three programs I'm applying for. My boss thinks that would be a great idea on all levels. She gets to keep the study coordinator that has the highest data quality in our research group, and who keeps most issues out of her hair, and I get to work the most flexible possible hours while pursuing my degree. It's a good feeling pubski. I was having kind of a bad day monday, and the bad mood persisted into yesterday morning. But I'm pushing back that dark as best I can, and it seems to be working. On a more fun note, I have a date set for Saturday and a benefit concert for a non-profit hospice center on Sunday. The timing wasn't ideal but we've managed to sell quite a few tickets, despite performing a really depressing Requiem on Valentine's Day. Link for the interested, Durufle, Op #9
Last saturday I started my day with a 5k run and then got in the mood for a hike. Went up a 1200 steps staircase to the top of the Königstuhl and took this picture And then I added 15km of hiking to that. Bad decision. I noticed that I got some pain in my hip after the stairway (it is called the heaven-stairway) but ignored it. At home I noticed that I have extreme pain. The next day it got worse. My sister who is a physiotherapist did some skype-diagnosis and it seems like I strained one of my adductors. I had to stop sports for the last few days and the pain has gotten less. Hopefully I will be able to go for runs starting next week! Work has been going good. I had a rough time reducing my weed intake and getting a clear mind. The road was full with anxiety, self-doubt and other weird treats that I thought I have overcome a long time ago. I am feeling better right now, keeping the dark pushed back and master of my own mind. I hope I can keep that up :) Changed my sleeping habit too. I go to sleep between 10-11pm and wake up between 5:30-6:30, work a few hours and head to work at 9. I also keep this up during the weekend. I feel better during the weekend if I have the sun hours to enjoy. I miss out on the crazy parties a night though. Need to find another way to socialize, it feels weird to adapt to this change socially. Who is up at 9am on a saturday and up for doing anything? The majority is not. Very excited about this review by David Nichols one of the oldest psychedelics researchers in the field. It is a 80ish long review of everything we know about psychedelics. I got a meet him last summer at Breaking Convention in london but couldn't talk with him more than a shy "Hi". I felt like fan-boy meeting his rockstar.
Holy shit this past week has been weird. To start, got accepted to a college. It's not my first choice, but it's pretty far up there, especially given how much they are giving me in scholarships. At the same time (early last week) I was rushing to finish a school newspaper article I got suddenly assigned at the start of the week. I'm not even in the group that normally writes/publishes it, but got assigned through another club I'm in to do a feature on one of my club's projects. The vote of confidence from the people who run the newspaper and my club felt good though, and I think the article turned out well. Then on my weekend, things got weirder. Tried to go to a party, but ended up driving around with a group of people who I've mostly never talked to before. It was better than nothing, but still a really weird night. Did shrooms for the first time the next day. That was weird of course. Also just been hearing from really random people throughout the week, who I haven't talked to in months. Then my friends have Valentine's day issues, which I love to give unwarranted advixe for. So far though, this week's been shit. So have a triple for me, and I hope y'all have better ones.
Tell us more about your shroom experience! Two weeks ago "The Dark Side of the Moon" started in germany cinemas. The movie is based on a book with the same title by Martin Suter. It described the life of a businessman who stumbles into a group of people living in the forest and his first mushroom trip. I hope that they release a dubbed or subbed version of the movie!
Okay. mk hope this is cool. I basically had four main types of effects. I'll just kinda go through them, though there was significant overlap. Also, note this was a pretty heavy dose, especially for a first time, and physically it felt like shit. I don't think I've ever felt worse in my life. 1. Hallucinations: Colors and lights were more intense. I'm glad I was inside and not dealing with the actually Sun. Patterns would shift and move too. I sawa recliner and a lamp shrink until they looked like they belonged in a doll-house. After going to the bathroom, I got distracted by watching my face morph into other people's in the mirror. That was really weird. I'll touch on mirrors again later. Also, movement at the edges of my vision. 2. Time Confusion: I lost my instinctual concept of time. I had no clue how long a minute was. Every moment felt like it had lasted forever and would last forever. Compounded with this was an assumption that everyone else was on shrooms too, even if I knew they weren't. Unlike with some substances, confusing things just got even more confusing. If you think about how drunk people can have a hard time sort of finding themselves in space, and then think about that with time, that's what if was like. Like being drunk in time. With the college rush and the way my life was going, knowing "Now is perfectly long enough" was a huge help, and one of the few things from the trip I can say I've tried to apply to my life now. 3. Dissociation: I was apart from my body. With my trip journal, I was composing, but my body, as a separate entity, was writing it down. Then the mirrors again. They say if you actually saw your clone on the street, you wouldn't them. Well, I saw him in the mirror and didn't. I actually waited for him to move first. I saw myself as everyone else sees me (I think, maybe I wasn't seeing that exactly, given other effects). It was very humbling and a little disconcerting. I mean, I literally did not associate strongly enough with the body I saw to recognize it instantly in the mirror. Mirrors are some scary shit. 4. Empathy: There's always been some people whose actions I couldn't comprehend. But I went through so many emotions in such a short time during the trip that I ended up recognizing actions and tendacies that I see in others. If there is one big lesson I got from it, anything bordering on religious, it was this. I've never been naturally very empathetic until the trip. It's pretty amazing.Tell us more about your shroom experience!
Sounds like a good experience overall :) a few comments The dose. Was it your first experience with psychedelics? Always be careful about the dose, it can get very overwhelming very quickly. The bad physical feeling is something that many people (including me) have trouble with when taking mushrooms. A friend suggested fasting the whole day before eating them. Another option would be to go the chemical route with 4-Aco-DMT, be careful thought as this is a research chemical that hasn't been tested in official studies. Scary but interesting. I tend to avoid mirrors unless I feel okay with where I am in the trip and up for an adventure. Mushrooms are currently my favorite psychedelic. There is a phase about 4 hours after onset where I feel like the most mentally strong version of myself. Keep in mind that trips are not always fun but you can always learn something out of them. With time, and increasing amounts of trips over the years one tends to forget the lessons learned. A friend told me that he writes down one thing that he learned from a trip and considers most important.Mirrors are some scary shit
Sorry about the crazy number of notifications, I kept getting the 502 page, and didn't realize it was actually going through. This was my first experience with a psychedelic, though I have smoked enough at a time before to get some similar effects at the peak. And I'm always cautious, and use Erowid heavily. Nor was it that large of a dose, around 3.5g, just large for a first time. I did try a thresehold dose earlier, just to be aware of any negative reactions I might have. But they're hard to source here, so it was sort of an all or nothing moment. Have you ever heard of microdosing? It may be just perfect for you to get that "most mentally strong" version of yourself without the rest of the trip. For major psychoactive experiences, I always keep a trip journal as it happens. This one ended up pretty crazy, and much much longer than any others, even though I stopped writing regularly after about two hours after effects started. I think though I can also be held back by my exposure to both psychonautics and the science. I know what sort of things could happen, and I'd love to have a religious-type experience, but I also know it's more my perception that is changing, not reality. While this can help calm me down, it also means what I learn is more about how I react, which makes me skeptical of many things people "learn" while tripping. I don't want to discount their experiences, but at the same time, I cannot fully believe them.
I actually didn't get any notification for your comment. feels like a #bugski. I have been playing with the idea of microdosing but I am waiting a little until I find "my way back". I noticed that weed influenced my life waaaay more than I thought it has and the past month I have been recovering. Turns out I very sensitive to weed and I forgot how it feels like to be absolutely sober again. I have a friend that tried microdosing for a few days and didn't have so much fun but his initial dose of 10ug of LSD might have been too high as he clearly was tripping... I am also a little careful about doing something like microdosing. What if I like it so much that I want to be in the state all the time? I have my notebook ready for writing but I don't force myself to write. Sometimes I think about stuff that I thought about in the lab and dissect it a little further and throw crazy ideas at it :) By learning I mainly mean the things you learn about yourself a maybe some structures that happen around you that you were able to take apart and examine closely. Religious experience... Depends on how you define such an experience :)
I've never heard of that, but I'd be damn careful about lack of sleep. If you're even a little bit wigged out getting some sleep is pretty difficult, but even you do drift off you'll get some scary real dreams. No thanks!I am also a little careful about doing something like microdosing. What if I like it so much that I want to be in the state all the time?
The doses are supposed to be sub-threshold, and taken in the morning every three or four days, not daily. So, in theory, you shouldn't be be "wiggled out" at all, but all to often, people do stuff like that without proper research, and have something similar to Cumol friend. 10ug sounds pretty high, seems most people do closer to 5ug every three days or so.
I am familiar with the protocol and usually they mention starting with 10ug on a weekend day where you have control of what is happening and if it is too high to go down. Using it to boost creativity for a short period, that might be interesting but I fear a psychological dependence that wasn't observed before at higher doses because you are not tripping balls but 'just' superman in disguise.
I'm seeing Metric, one of my favorite bands, this weekend (ping someguyfromcanada). There's a VIP thing I bought for before the show. Not sure what it'll all involve, but hey, favorite band. I'll check it out. Then the following week I'm going hiking for a couple days. I have new boots and am slightly freaking out about them. My old summer boots lost their water proofing, and my new winter boots didn't fit right, so I returned them (thanks REI). I need to gain some confidence with the new boots.
Hail, Hubski. Been a while, hasn't it? Looks like the last time I was really active here was July or so. A lot's changed on my end, but on reflection, I didn't really have a venue where I could process everything and sound ideas off people until I remembered this place. I hope you've all been well over the past half-year or so. Far too much has changed to discuss in a single post, but to give a highlight of events as it were: promotion, further schooling progress, handled a network expansion and wireless network deployment for the second-largest office of an S&P 500 company (!!!), been bogged with work and projects and who knows what else; celebrated a birthday, flew to Phoenix for a music festival, used a psychedelic as an entheogen, began taking steps to get active in the Masons again; preparing to earn three more professional certifications in the coming months and attempting to complete the bachelor's in a year - 92 credits down in 8 months. Just a whirlwind of activity overall. Now I'm finally slowing down a little and giving myself time to socialize and unwind between my bursts of productivity. Hopefully I'll be here to stay this time, now that I'm contracted and everything in my personal life is significantly more stable. Glad to be back and hope you're all doing well, too. <3
I grew up right next to Livermore and worked at the lab one summer but only in their global security dept. I am not science. At all.
I'm pretty happy today, for the first time I've seen the ISS flyover, I've been waiting ages but usually it's cloudy or I forget. So I rushed the boys outside in their coats and wellies for 5 minutes and we spotted it, almost as bright as the moon it really shone - wow! The eldest didn't quite get it until I explained that a British astronaut is up there [blank face] and his name is Tim [huge grin and excitement]. I think having a standard name made it seem either a bit more relatable -- or perhaps he thought a kids story had come true... We'll see. I'm hoping to get a shoutout for the boys and show them some videos of Tim in space. They've never been interested before but I think this has cracked it!
Going back to school has been oddly similar to the experience of seeing the body shape up after months of hard work, when you wonder why you let yourself go soft in the first place. A lot of concepts are finally starting to cement themselves into place (and some back into place), but never as quick as I'd like. Yeah, LIGO found gravity waves, for sure. Einstein predicted them almost exactly 100 years ago, so that's a nice little anniversary present. Cool.
New courses this week. Gonna start the Bridge Design course tomorrow! It's a graduate course from the architecture department, should be totally dope. New phone arrives soon. I but ended up went with the OnePlus 2, because I don't really mind a bigger phone but I do really mind a better battery and camera. And it just dropped in price like 15%.
So I was typing this out and I'm using the bus system at my school. In my absence I didn't get off where I was supposed to, so I get to take another ride around campus. In other news, I got this pretty cool idea for a novel, and I've been slowly getting my thoughts down on paper in regards to it. I'm going to a dance performance tonight. All in all I'm keeping my last semester at college pretty quiet and easy-going. I also noticed I do not gauge people's age well. Somewhere along the line I forgot I was getting older, and that wasn't the case for everyone else around me. When you are in highschool you interact with people that are mostly your age. I guess with my strict college schedule that kept that premise for the most part intact I am struggling to guess peoples age now with a more diverse course load. I was in class and someone who I thought was a senior as I was turned out to be a sophomore and it confused me a bit. I found it kind of weird that I hadn't really taken notice to how much time has actually passed.