Good morning, Hubski. Haven't gone to bed yet. It's that time of the season. Got hit by a car yesterday. Or more specifically, hit the brakes in time to not leave the sidewalk in front of the car barreling through like the light wasn't even there. Tagged their rear door, launched over the back deck and sprained my shoulder. Didn't break anything - got the x-rays to prove it - but the handlebars are off by 20 degrees or so. Rode the fucker home anyway. Kind of archetypal of my time in LA that I can make it dozens of miles a day but a half mile from my fucking house? Yeah, Mexican nationals try to kill me at 5am. Then think about taking off for 5 minutes. I let 'em go anyway. I have insurance and who the fuck wants to deal with the LAPD at 5am on a Tuesday? That was after being awake for 22 hours, of course. That's the world I live in these days - 8-hour commutes followed by working 10 hours. The commute is a 30 mile drive, a 1000 mile flight, a 20 mile drive and a 15-ile bike ride and I hate the TSA so much. It's become so routine that I flew down with 4 pounds of government cheese. They pat me down every time because apparently my hair looks suspicious on the pornoscanners we supposedly retired in 2012. I won't see home for another six weeks. By then there may be drywall up on the birth center. I get the sense that this is when most of the work gets done; when I'm not there, of course. I really hurt. And I'm really tired. And I hate my roommates. And I know there are those here that actually like Los Angeles? But holy fuck, people. You live in a shithole. And if I could never be here again I would never be here again so hard.
Ouch. I'm glad to hear your are ok. Not much comfort in a second separating you from death, however. I ride the sidewalks in my town, and only venture into the street in the neighborhood, and only then to go around pedestrians on the sidewalk. Bikes are not made to share pavement with cars. Fuck "sharing the road". It has nothing to do with etiquette. It's mass x velocity.
Amusingly enough, I've been creamed three times in LA. Amusingly enough, each time involved a crosswalk. Once I was actively in the street ahead of the crosswalk, but the other two times I was legit on the sidewalk. Once at over 15mph, once at walking pace. It doesn't fucking matter. At some point you will be forced to cross a road. And in Los Angeles, there will either be disinterested Mexican nationals paying no goddamn attention or...
Oh man. How fortunate it was only a sprain (and probably a mild heart attack of adrenaline)! Obviously would've been more fortunate if it hadn't happened... This job sounds like golden handcuffs. Is the shit almost over? Or do you go back to LA after your next time trip home in six weeks? The more I hear about LA from people who aren't twenty year olds, the more I'm glad I was never bit with the Hollywood bug.
Truly sorry to hear about your shoulder and your whip. I hope both mend without serious complications. Like the many other ridiculously hard things you've made it through, you will conquer this as well. And wih it in your rear view mirror, you'll enjoy the union bennies and the stockpile of cash you bled and sweat for. Keep on rockin' in the free world KB.
I'm sorry to hear that. I love my bicycle, but I've pretty much accepted that I'm going to get hit at some point if I keep riding on the roads. I'm kind of surprised I haven't yet, honestly. I can't imagine trying to ride in LA. The suburbs of KC seem hostile enough. It is weird. I'm excited that my SO is showing an interest in bicycling with me, but I also feel kind of guilty about it too. Her going over the handle bars is a totally different thing to me.
Picked a date, booked the room, contacted my committee, the thesis proposal is happening. September 16th. In the mean time, my cloning is finally beginning to work again, and despite having spent quite a few hundred dollars and closing in on 3 months on enzymes, gels, purification kits, and sequencing, I'm feeling optimistic. My aims are in place, my experiments are planned and I'm slowly starting to get a feel for how to optimize the impact of my work and not just contribute to the clusterfuck that is the current state of Alzheimer's research. Life's busy though, and between going to a regional burn a week and a half ago and preparing for two lab meetings this month, I haven't had much time for Hubski. Hopefully that will change next month as I transition from experiments to purely reading papers and writing up my proposal. If there's hubski interest, I may post layman-translated drafts on a few of the proposal sections, such as why mouse models suck, why high throughput science sucks, and why I'm hopeful anyways.
Oh man... Vermont... must have been lovely!! My current favorite is Otherworld, the Victoria regional burn on Vancouver Island. Utterly enchanting. Such a lovely community of people, a small event, in a hard-to-get-to place, far away from everything. There were even whales! Plur...
Been to a few of them then? This was my first ever, and while I'd like to go again, I'm planning to take it slow and figure out in the intervening year what contribution I'd like to bring next time around. Food and personality?My current favorite is Otherworld, the Victoria regional burn on Vancouver Island. Utterly enchanting. Such a lovely community of people, a small event, in a hard-to-get-to place, far away from everything. There were even whales!
Yeah, I have been to several, and know the organizers of several more. (I've been doing the Burning Man thing since the late 1980's.) When I brought my Dad to my local regional (Critical Northwest here in Seattle), he decided we should bring apples and peanut butter: one of our favorite snacks! But we took it one step further... we made our own peanut butter, and then made flavors! Chocolate peanut butter, honey peanut butter, port wine peanut butter, whisky peanut butter... it was GREAT! And it was all my Dad's idea. I'd been telling him about Burning Man for decades, and when he finally went to an event with me, he totally embraced the whole idea. It was fantastic.
Week and a half sober. I don't need no fuckin white chip. I'm trying to get enrolled in an ESL certificate program but it's offered at the career development center at the university so financial aid is kind of a bitch. I have to call the school's financial aid office today and ask them if they'll mail me my loan check even though I'm not a student. We'll see how that goes.
So that house I went to see yesterday? It was criminally disappointing. The first floor and the upstairs were absolutely beautiful. Yes the carpet needed to be replaced and yes the walls needed to be repainted because even though the paint was new, whoever did the job didn't even try to paint within the lines. But the floor plan itself was perfect, the size was perfect, the hardwood floors were those old, thick hearty fuckers. I really like what I was seeing. Everything fell apart as soon as we got to the basement though. There were multiple horizontal cracks on all four sides of the block based foundation, many of them leaking water. No wonder the place was going for so cheap. kleinbl00 more than likely has the right idea on waiting right now, and outside of poking around at something that looks like it might be a steal, I think I'm gonna talk to my wife about slowing down our search. The good houses here at good prices get snatched up left and right within days of going on the market, leaving the crap left overs for everyone else. Even if prices dropped by 20 or 30%, that'll open our options up so much more. Besides, like always, I'm trying to figure myself out. There's no saying I can't do other things while I'm doing that, but the less distractions the better. I have Friday off. I think I'm gonna wake up early, fill my tank to the top, and just drive south for a while.
There are industries and trade groups in the United States that make their money by generating fear around major life events. They then assuage that fear by providing you a vast array of things to spend money on as a ward against the terror. The wedding industry is one of these - "If you don't spend a gajillion dollars getting married all your guests will hate you and your memories will be ruined forever!" That movie Father of the Bride? That's a $143k wedding. Having a baby? hie thee to Babies'R'Us to see just how much plastic crap you must fill your life with in order to ensure your child doesn't grow up eating paint chips. One need only watch TV to see the infomercials paid for by Lowes, Home Depot, Chase and the rest - between the sponsorships and the fees charged the "consultants" who appear on them, every "home improvement" show you've ever seen is profitable to the makers without so much as being on the air. Flip this House. This Old House. Property Brothers. Tiny House. Not-so-tiny house. How many hours a night can you watch charming, smiling people learn that nirvana can only be achieved by spending $30k remodeling their kitchen? That profits are easy and fun if only you buy and sell "fixer uppers" in your spare time? The joys of repartee with your favorite contractor? The game is rigged. The rules by which they would have you play are not for your advantage. Want a reality check? Fill out a loan request from a local credit union. Do not lie. See what they'll give you to buy a house. This is your baseline "sane" spending power. Considering you have no college degree and are job hunting, you may very well be completely denied. Now find a big bank. Do the same. Fill it out any way you want. I'll bet they give you $300k. The delta between "nothing" and "$300k" is the space within the mortgage industry is monetizing cheap money. It is driven by the difference between a thrift that is beholden to its members and an investment bank beholden to its shareholders. The one must stay in business. The other must deliver profits at all costs. The one is sustainable. The other is reliant on central banks covering their asses when shit goes sideways. They do this because the "moral hazard" introduced in 2008 taught them that they will suffer no consequences from writing this loans, and that in the end, your loss will be amortized by the taxpayer, not them. You'll still be out of your house. Your credit rating will still be shot. It will still be fifteen years before you get another chance. And your house will be foreclosed and bought as one of fifteen dozen, at auction, sight unseen, then superficially remodeled, sold to a property management firm, and rented back to you. Unless you keep your powder dry.
It's an incredible advantage to be able to wait and see. The perfect place'll come, I'm sure it will. And yea, one globe's economic contraction is another man's sweet deal. I wish you luck!
Yeah. This is my first rodeo, so I haven't paid attention to the housing market before this. It'll be interesting to see if there will be a crash, and if so, if it leads to a feeding frenzy. Like I said, at my price point, all of the good houses get snatched up quick, so if they go for even cheaper, I just might need to take a month long vacation or something and dedicate all of my time to hunting in order to actually compete with others.
Do not compete. Repeat: DO NOT COMPETE. This is not your game. You cannot afford to get good. You want a dwelling, not an investment. You do not have access to the resources the other players do. Your goals are different. Your wishes are different. You are a mark among the whales and they will scoop you up like so much krill. You know what no one is competing for? Undeveloped land. I mean, yeah - stuff that can be subdivided is in stupid territory right now but if I recall correctly, there is no reason you need to live in or near a major city. Not only that, but you have an unparalleled work ethic and a preposterous amount of patience. Houses can be built cheaply if you're patient and doing your own work. Find a place you love and make it your own. NOBODY is competing against you in that game.
It is insane how much farther your money will go living just outside a city as opposed to living in one even if you don't build the house yourself. You can get a nice old home in good shape with a ton of land for what some people pay for a concrete shell in town where I live.
bleah nothing like being disappointed in a property. could be worse though. i went and saw an apartment in Virginia that looked really good online but was super sad IRL. and then on top of that, the woman in the leasing office, even though I contacted her to tell her I was going abroad, thought it was ok to give my info to other people in her rental management company so i wound up getting spammed for all these apartments I didn't want or need... bad online reviews and the threat of a cease and desist got them to fuck off though
Yeah. It's really interesting how realtors will list properties to make them seem better than they are. If there are photos taken under low light or weird angles, chances are they're trying to hide a flaw in the room. If the place has 3 bedrooms listed but the majority of the photos are of the living room and renovated kitchen, the rest might be questionable. If it's a larger house and there's only five or six photos total, not even enough to cover the entire place, something is really suspect. On and on. Apartment hunting seems to be similar. Also, that rental company sounds shit crazy. I can't believe they would do something like that in general, let alone to a person who basically says "Hey. Don't call me."
right? like hey your rentals are not that great. harassing potential renters is the wrong way to go about it because i WILL hit your social media and cost you other potential renters. i had phone calls and emails almost constantly for about a week before they stopped. weirdly enough, i think it's the opposite for apartments. i've found that extremely bright photos are a bad sign because it means they're trying to hide an absence of natural light. you can also almost hide the fact that they have that nasty vinyl fake hardwood with enough additional light too.
I'm back from Iceland. It was gorgeous, and I had lots of fun.
All of a sudden I'm going to go see Modest Mouse on Saturday, and I'm thriller excited about it. I've seen them once before, at Firefly 2 which I think was 2013, and even then I felt crazy lucky about having that experience. Since then I confess I've only grown to love the band more, tbh. Now I think they are bona dude geniuses and when people call them "indie pop" in bar conversations, I correct them. (D:!) really excited about this. My favorite MM album is The Moon and Antarctica, how about yours? Warning: if you say "Good News For People Who Love Bad News," I might call you basic.
Hey now, Good News at least has a solid tracklist, it's just that everyone knows Float On. Favorite Modest Mouse album? Oh no. I'm going to be that person who says Building Nothing Out of Something. If you want proper studio albums, then it's probably This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About.
Hey! Do you make or fix things? You should make a Shopski post! I love learning how to do new things, and seeing other people working on stuff motivates me to get off my butt as well. It's currently been car-focused because that's what I've been working on, but I'd like to see a wider variety of posts. On a semi-related note, I've been doing really well at checking things off my personal to-do list (hence a lot of shop time), but not so well at the things I told my advisor I'd do. Time management is tricky like that, I guess.
Day 1 of family vacation (Albuquerque). Sister and I are already getting pretty damn annoyed with the parents. Spent the morning at art galleries run by white art dealers who just "buy what looks nice" and sell it divorced from any context. Only two shops I liked were an Amerindian-owned pottery place with extensive explanations of all the styles and an onyx stone dealership with a really great owner that told us about New Mexican land grants and Tierra Amarilla. More to come.
Thought I had a ticket to see Mitski tonight. Turns out I never bought it. That's a bummer. DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S MORE EXCITING THOUGH, HUBSKI!? I JUST BOUGHT A TICKET TO SEE YO LA TENGO INSTEAD. Which, if you know anything about me by now it should be that Yo La Tengo has been one of the most defining and personally influential bands (maybe the most for both of those things) both in terms of how I play guitar, but more importantly, how I look at music and the potential of local music / art communities. Thinking about grabbing a ticket to see Wilco, too.
I'm still a sucker for sub-headings. Here are mine for this week (as links to songs): This Flight Tonight. Leaving the west coast tonight at midnight, arriving in YYZ at 7:00 a.m. Home If home is wherever I'm with you, then why am I going "home." Oh, right. I had this whole other life 2750 miles away (2650 via the US). Elusive Love If love is as elusive as the higgs-boson, I imagine I'll be back on the west coast in two weeks. I have a workshop to give at an HCI conference and a separation agreement to sign. Ironically, perhaps, the workshop is on Teamwork. Is there a song that captures the craziness of life?
I've spent quite a long time in the Hubski chatroom recently. johnnyFive helped me realize that I've been using Pubskitime the wrong way. So. I've made significant progress in figuring out where to go with Weaver. The game starts to take best shape it possibly could, while also promising a great load of work figuring out the true potential of the spell system. All the details are to be kept secret for now, to avoid spoilers. All I'm going to say is that I'm quite excited about its new shape. Figuring out how to talk to people at the moment. What to say. When it's worth it to speak. What's worth talking about. Talking is important to me, so I'm doing my best to excel at it. Soon time will come to go back to Tomsk to look for an apartment for the next uni year. I'm intimidated by the prospect: calling up dozens of strangers excites me in a bad way, which usually leads to mental overload. Finding good price-to-other-qualities ratio would be difficult, too: Tomsk is a student city, which means that rent is high even though so is competition. I'm returning to writing and expressing myself. My last post was a success. Yet to figure out why I stopped. I may be lightly autistic. Got reminded about researching it by Jim Jefferies at his last special, Freedumb. Explains some things about me that made me feel weird in the past. Wish more people would partake in the chatroom. From there, come great conversations, and there's something very appealing about live talks, online or offline. It's great to be here, Hubski. This community is fantastic.
Perhaps the correct term here is Aspergers? I'm not for self-diagnosis in any form, though I'm all for getting more information on the subject. The DSM-5 Manual they reference is what made the change to enveloping more diagnoses into the "Autistic Spectrum" - Aspergers being on the lower end of the spectrum - allowing for more flexibility with defining autism as a social disorder and what else defines the latter. I was diagnosed as an aspie last summer, so I think I'm able to give a bit of insight if you decide to look into it a bit further.I may be lightly autistic.
I was using the idea of the spectrum when referring to it as "lightly". Not self-diagnosing, either: just noticing that some pieces fit. Not sure if I can get such diagnosis in Russia. Haven't ever heard of such testing available. Sounds like it would make lives of a lot of children somewhat easier, given terrible children treatment here and now.
Understood, the intent was more-so cautionary in (what seems to be tough) event of pursuit. Ah! Awesome, then. For some reason, my brain keeps jumping to slap on the word 'salted' after 'lightly,' hehe. Makes for an odd combo of words and reactions when I'm reading that sentence as "lightly salted autism".Not self-diagnosing, either: just noticing that some pieces fit.
I can't imagine what I may have said, but I'm glad I was helpful however unintentionally. This. It's often dead, but when it's not it can be great fun. I'll just say that I'm on there during the day (EST, or GMT-5) Mon., Tues., Friday, and often Tues. and Thurs. evenings, plus a decent amount on the weekend. Especially this month, as I'm working OT every Saturday during the day, and I'd welcome the company.Wish more people would partake in the chatroom.
Completed my first crocheted 'garment' -a shrug- this week. I am happy with it but i could probably have gotten away with a smaller size. Making an attempt at a hat next but I am a bit skeptical as the pattern is written in a way that is a little confusing. Have a wrap that I have been poking away at for awhile, I think I am about halfway there with it right now but I have to figure out how the heck I am going to block something that big.