If you're in Maryland mid September, you might join us!
Depending on the day, I'm in North Carolina. Chapel Hill to be exact. You're most welcome to visit as long as I'm in town. Safe travels!
I had a very important hiking experience this past weekend, where I learned that physical conditioning isn't the only important thing. Trail conditions, nutrition, etc. are all equally if not more important. At one point I found myself alone, traversing an ice field laterally across a slope where if something were to go wrong, if would go very wrong, very fast. Literally had knock knees for about 20 seconds before getting myself under control again as we passed through an area where somebody had died a few weeks earlier. To boot, I had never used an ice ax before and spent too much time thinking about how much I didn't want to have to self-arrest...The body was picked up the day after we completed the hike. It was mentally and emotionally taxing, but a great preparation for future hikes of that magnitude of difficulty and up. Edit: Oh also I lost 3 lbs that day despite packing what I thought was a lot of food, and bringing a water filter to attempt to stay hydrated. It was 90 degrees out the entire day, and as you can see there was no shade.
I'm glad you learned this lesson without consequence. It's one we all make and (hopefully) never make again. I have a couple rules in regards to mountains and just general climbing/hiking/camping/whatever. -Respect the Mountain- As cheesy as this sounds, it's absolutely necessary. Nothing man can do will beat the mountain. Never think your experience outweighs that giant storm headed your way. -On that note-know your limits. Never be afraid to give up. While that is awful life advice, I'd say this is good staying alive advice. Also, watch your friends, and more importantly, yourself. It's easy to see changes in friends, but exceedingly difficult to notice when you're struggling. -Be prepared for almost anything. Carry too much water. Carry too much food. Carry a little bit more water. Hydrate and eat well the day prior. Pack one jacket warmer then you'll think you need. Never leave without matches, a compass, a map, chapstick, and sunglasses. Triple check everything. I'd highly suggest doing this for every damn hike you go on. Build the habits early. As you get into more technical stuff-PRACTICE FIRST. If your'e not comfortable with arrests run through them a couple times before you start. Run through every position(front, back, feetfirst, headfirst) and then throw a pack on and do it again. You should never be in a position where you may need to arrest if you aren't already comfortable with it. Once you master one skill add another-build anchors with an ax, practice roped pairs or whatever else you want to do. Anyways, thanks for the post! Sounds like you had a great time, I'm quite jealous.. Enjoy the future hikes.
Thanks for the comment, it sounds like you know your stuff and hopefully other hikers/aspiring climbers get a chance to read it! Are you a Mountaineer? Had everything which you listed packed except for enough food, apparently. Started with 3L of water and a filter, and ended up drinking probably 6L and a beer (because of course you bury a can each for when you get back down). I'm actually taking a map and compass navigation basics course in two weekends! Very excited to learn a new skill in that, it seems incredibly useful to have at least a base level of knowledge.
Yeah, after this experience I bought some more snow gear to do a good deal more winter hiking so this doesn't happen again.
Took some pictures of chickens last week! Some even turned out: http://imgur.com/a/eHOXF Emailed my advisor on Saturday to say that I couldn't keep working at the rate that I was. I'm missing a paper deadline, which I'm not pleased with, but I also feel like a person, so I guess it's working OK. I'm going to try to figure out how to run my life so I can sustainably produce great research and teaching without burning out or neglecting personal responsibilities. I'm afraid that that attitude is going to mean that I'll look less qualified for faculty jobs. However, if I can't keep up with that level of workload anyway, why would I want a job that expects me to? Hopefully I'll find a job somewhere that fits me OK.
I'm living in a sober living facility. I had really low expectations even upon getting here but I like it much more than I expected. I'm very near my girlfriend for the first time. Speaking of my favorite young lady, her ex husband seems to have been pushed to psychopathy by the divorce. He called her 65 times in an evening. Repeatedly. One after the other. Last night he told her to kill herself. She thought she saw his car in the parking lot during one of these dialing sprees so she hid in her bedroom until I went to check for his car. I'm resisting doing a few things that seem obvious to me. Involuntary psych hospitalization, police report because he's a cop so he'd probably get fired. Then he'd lose his house. Then their six year old would have to learn that her dad is an awful person. And more child care responsibility would go to my girlfriend. I'm near the point of not giving a shit about any of that because I have a serious fucking problem with people who hurt women I love. Right now I'm trying to get outside opinions from her brother and sister-in-law but I'm not sure they care for me too much because of the whole acute alcoholism thing. The only way I know to contact them is Facebook and I'd understand if they ignored my requests and I'm not sure if my PMs worked since we aren't friends.
Not your problem dude. So don't make it yours especially when you already have one problem that you alone are in charge of right now. That is probably the hardest life lesson I have ever had. Took far too long to sink in. I am a helper. That is my natural instinct and it is not always a good one. Sometimes you can not be in charge of making things better. There are other adults in the room and whatever happens is not your responsibility.
Eye for an eye makes everyone blind but that is not the essential issue. She knows you are in a place where you need to focus on you and she calls to cry and hyper-ventilate about the situation she created for herself? Hard facts: Sounds like she either has no idea what you are trying to accomplish for yourself or she does not care. No rational person puts such an extra burden on one who is already carrying plenty of load. Not if they understand what caring is about anyways. I am not at all saying she is not a good person but perhaps she is oblivious to the fact that she is putting a tremendous burden on you in a time where you need no more. You can not be good for anyone unless you put yourself first right now. Codependency is not a wise replacement for booze. I know that sounds harsh and is easy to say from a far but I have been in your shoes and am on your side.
Speaking as someone who has been there, done that, when the ex sets a low bar you can be doubly thankful - in part because it makes you look good, and in part because it gives you opportunities to demonstrate your helpfulness. My wife's ex broke into her car, stole her shit, and got his (her) car repossessed.Speaking of my favorite young lady, her ex husband seems to have been pushed to psychopathy by the divorce.
Vindictive gets you nowhere. The goal of divorce is to get the irritant out of your clamshell as soon as possible because while we all love to look at pearls, nobody wants to make them. You can't move on with someone else until the ex gives up the mental real estate, and that's so much easier without conflict.
Some kind of spaceship. Art As I said in a post a day or so ago, I discovered a ton of science fiction magazine covers on Wikimedia the other day. I keep going back to them, they're so much fun to look at. There's some that I have clicked on and looked at three or four times and go back to look at them again and find something new and cool about them. The above picture is something I kind of drew on a kick and I'm pleasantly surprised how it turned out (two others I tried though, left me horribly disappointed). As I was drawing this, Dala showed me pictures of sunrises and auroras on Earth taken from outer space. Now those were cool. Coffee A while back I ranted how the only coffee ever made in the morning is Maxwell House and while I don't hate Maxwell House, I've gotten pretty tired of drinking it every single morning. I think I've finally turned everyone in the house onto the importance of variety, because for the past week or so, there hasn't been a can of that stuff in the cupboard at all. We got all sorts of bags of other stuff. Starbucks, Seattle's Best, random shit from random brands. I'm pretty happy about that. News I officially hate three out of my four local television news programs now. They're all getting to the point where they'll tell you the majority of the story, but if you want to full details, you'll have to download their app. If that's not a bunch of bullshit, I don't know what is. Books Dala and I went to a local bookstore the other day to hang out with some friends. I've talked about them before a few times, but Fantagraphics has a bunch of books collecting stories from EC Comics. I wasn't gonna buy anything yesterday, but when I saw they had The Million Year Picnic I decided to snatch it up. These books are absolutely fantastic and I can't recommend them enough.
I've had Chock Full of Nuts a few times. It really is surprisingly good. You can also get Cafe Bustelo in tins. Same thing for Eight O'Clock Coffee. Same thing for a half a dozen other brands. Why people would insist on getting the same coffee week in and week out and why it always seems to be either Folgers or Maxwell House is a mystery to me. They're like the Budweiser and Miller of Coffee.
As I said in a post a day or so ago, I discovered a ton of science fiction magazine covers on Wikimedia the other day. I keep going back to them, they're so much fun to look at.
Do you know what they need to do with people like us? Segregate us from everyone. I can't afford to listen to music when I'm working. It even pisses me off when my poor girlfriend begins doing chores, because it breaks my train of thought. There's no way I can blame anybody else (especially my perfect AF gf) for how miserably quiet things aren't. I'm living at the center of one of the biggest cities in the world, for cryin' out loud (...shhh!!). So now, I work at night, because I can sleep through the noise of the day, but I can't think through it. And so, Mr. A++ Devac, what I'm trying to say is that I'd feel even more like a jerk if you came along and implied "Nope, it's fine! I can study and code in between listening to my neighbor's demonstration that they have no future as a metronome!". You're not alone! ...but you wish you were, most of the time, amirite?? ;)
Plenty could be said about your disposition withour resorting to neckbeard jokes. >:) Aren't they lovely. Shame you had to move. Remember our discussing using the phrase "I AM THE LAW!"? Now's a good time to use it. In the middle of the night. BAM! "We've had noise complaints". Fucking congratulations! You told me 5.5 is reserved for extraordinary achievements, so - fucking hell, nice work! This is becoming a thing, isn't it? ref's gonna skin you alive. They say JavaScript should be your first programming language: it may not be up to the standards of stuffy uppity neckbeards, but it does the thing it set out to do with some passion behind it. In this regard, it's like Esperanto: studies show that learning Esperanto cuts the time you need to learn a real language by a lot (just Wikipedia "Esperanto" for sources).Please keep the neckbeard jokes to the minimum.
I was then promptly told to "fuck off."
Got 5.5 from the CFT exam
to grok
Wouldn't recommend it as a first programming language
I'll be honest, I had no clue that GROK was a scifi reference. It entered my lexicon thanks to P.J. and SCO.This is becoming a thing, isn't it? ref's gonna skin you alive.
Went to the store to buy chicken, was confronted by a lot of commotion outside - policemen on the ground shouting at colleagues of theirs running around on the roof. A group of bystanders started to form around a lady who said that there had been an attempted armed robbery - moving from a cellphone shop to into the grocery store itself. Unfortunately for these geniuses the area's police station is right across the road so at least 4 were apparently caught after a shootout (!). ___ On a different note, had some interesting work-related ideas and I thought it might be interesting to share: So a big part of my work involves modelling mining site water balances. One of the most important factors from a risk perspective is the effect of rainfall on dam storage levels. Both in the sense that you can have too little water (halting or otherwise affecting production) or too much water (Bento Rodrigues). Luckily, rainfall is one thing there is an abundance of data on for long time spans and across a broad spatial scale i.e. finding historical time-series data for whatever area you are interested in is not hard. The question is then: how best to take into account the change in rainfall over time from a modelling/simulation perspective? On the simpler end you have the approach I took last year in my preliminary research - average out historical data into two annual groups, a wet and dry season. This is a bit too simple however. The next step is to add a bit of spice by propagating the variance of each seasonal value through the model (probably Monte Carlo?). That way you can see the sensitivity of the outputs to the input as well. I've however been looking at some work by others that seems to hint that we need to go further. In particular, the effect of this kind of (hourly/daily/monthly) variation is felt dynamically - the water-related processes can hardly be assumed to be at steady-state. So now we need to set up a dynamic model of the process. The last spanner in the works is that, in many places, there are climatic oscillations which act on scales bigger than a year (e.g. El Niños and the like). The effect of this is to cause more incidences of droughts and "floods" than what would be expected by chance, if chance were defined by the distribution of values historically (according to these guys). Their analysis was purely historical one, looking into it from the euphemistic perspective of portfolio risk... for me it raised some important questions as to how to incorporate this in a predictive model to evaluate processes in the design stage, or help current operations to adapt to un-envisioned risks. Today I read about a Markov chain-based model that incorporates the chance of switching from e.g. a wetter-than-usual to a dryer-than-usual rainfall histogram based on the historical tendencies. I think this stuff has some wider implementation possibilities - many ore bodies also have this kind of dual character. Complex mineralisations can have you switching from a low-sulphide to a high-sulphide ore. If these are just averaged out, you lose a lot of important insights into how, maybe, the downstream flotation is affected or even the potential for acid rock drainage impacts. So a lot of interesting work to be done in this space!
Lack of Pubski post structure does my heading. Thesis Finally feels like I can go full steam ahead on this one. After waiting a few weeks, I got the Ruby scripts that control the traffic model this monday. Just before I headed back home today I started a new running the traffic model. It'll do a full model run for the next nine hours or so on a beastly dual-Xeon 24-core workstation, calculating 40.8 million choices for 80 permutations of the model. I'm very glad the traffic model guys had some friends in the IT department. Now I can finally run the numbers and build a bunch of Python scripts to analyse the result. I also wrote two chapters and finally made the supporting twenty or so maps. For example, here's a map depicting Rotterdam's job density: (which reminds me! AnSionnachRua shoot me that PM, man.) Writing Had lunch with one of the journalists for The Correspondent last week. I got her in contact with a bunch of urban planning people, so we talked about her (urban-planning related) article ideas. We ended up talking for quite a while and I pitched a few article ideas to her along the way. She ended up liking one of my ideas so much that I've now committed to writing it as a Freelance Journalist™. Deadline in three weeks! If it works out, there could be more down the pipeline for me. Tech In the Tech corner this week: I made this cool diagram on what happens when MyEtherWallet sends transactions after insomniasexx tweeted two flipover drawings of the process. Making an infographic rarely goes easy, yet I knocked this one out in no time: I've been trying to get better at web development, so after drawing that I thought it might be cool to have a mini website that checks how full the pool is for you. Turns out that creating a simple input-dependent bar chart with d3 and jQuery isn't as easy as I hoped it would be. So far I have the text working. The 'pool' is only a single line consisting of all the ticks I want to use for my y-axis. But I am learning a ton. I now understand hex values and selectors, for one thing.
I'm making tedious progress on my framework: When you talk to someone, you can take on one of three ego states - parent, child, or adult. These ego states are preconceived notions you picked up from childhood - parent is how you thought your parents acted, child is how you acted, adult is what you see as logical. Each of these states has a charge +/-. A Child+ might want to play games or explore the world, a Child- might be stubborn and throw temper tantrums. In interacting with another person, we take on one of these ego states and expect our conversational partner to react accordingly. A Child- might pout and demand they get their way, expecting the other person to play a Parent+ and appease them with sooth talks or gifts. The first step in the program is recognizing this framework in our interactions. The second step in the program is recognizing the game this framework creates. The first "player" chooses an ego state. The second player can respond accordingly or choose a different state. The first player then chooses to respond accordingly, double down on their initial state, or move to a new state entirely. The goal of the game is for both players to find equilibrium - for both players to agree they are in appropriate states. "Appropriate states" are where things get tricky, because they change depending on the player's goals. I think this is good, because while the framework is pretty simple it can be applied to a lot of different situations. This is all based on transnational analysis, but I want to be able to make that structure more practical and immediately useful in an every day setting.
Mind I'm not sure if it counts, but I've started reading again after having Gafa sitting by my bedside for about two months, with my bookmark comfortably enclosed at page 10. It's in Irish, so it's a lot harder to approach at the end of the day. I've started reading Pride and Prejudice, which I'm finding hilarious and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be or not. Body Finally got over that hacking cough that was nagging me for several weeks. I need to quit smoking, but unfortunately a guy I know got me cheap tobacco from Spain, and I'm hardly going to throw it away... Heart I'm a little troubled by recent... stirrings. I have this friend, see? (This is about to become very clichéd.) I've very recently started to feel something or other toward a friend of mine. I think. I'm not quite sure. We've been friends for years, and I've occasionally felt a little attracted to her, but always in a fairly superficial way, and one that, to be quite frank, I feel toward all of my attractive female friends. But now I don't know. It could be the beginning of infatuation. It worries me for all of the classic "friendzone" reasons. Fortunately there's no need for me to do anything about it right now, so I'll just see how it works itself out. I wonder - is it because I'm very isolated in my life right now? Is it frustration? Another brief infatuation that will go as fast as it came? If it doesn't fizzle away, I'm kind of fucked. She's my best friend, and we're thinking of maybe living together again some time soonish. Hands Painting again today and again the Swarfega and handsoap barely managed to get it off. Good news, though, I think; my sister's house is rapidly approaching completion, and I'm about to have a bunch of free time. This partially scares me, though, as I'm only working part-time at the pub and don't want to become a bum. But I will finally have the energy to work on my book properly!
My new campaign at work is an unfortunate one, because it involves filling out grievance forms instead of being sassy. The sassy route is less official, but has the distinct advantage of not having to write through three fucking layers of transfer paper. - Union Copy - Company Copy - Steward Copy - Member Copy Full on, regular weight too. None of that easy to use thin shit. My hand hurts. ____ My ISP got gobbled up into a larger affair. This is the first day of service under the care of the new regime. Not a graceful start so far. I'd happily pay a premium for municipal run bandwidth toobs. This is the second attempt to post this. Shoddy service consumed the first one in a conflagration of doing the bare minimum somewhere in Mn. Oh, FUCK. They're 49% owned by Comcast. EDIT: I'd say were are zeroing in on service up-time. Oscillating around it, if you will.
Ethereum transfer is terrifyingly frictionless. Especially when you made your coffee too strong. And you're blasting Tengger Cavalry. _______________________________________ When I got back to LA I knew I needed to change out the chain on the bike. Changed out the chain, needed to change out the cassette. Changed out the cassette, needed to change out the derailleur. Changed out the derailleur, needed to change out the cable. Also needed to change out the tires. Bike shifts much better now. Added another couple water carriers. Boiled through 72oz of water the other day. Adding the other water carriers makes it easier to fuck up the seating on the panniers. Went to go get groceries, had one fall off. The one with the keys on it, of course. And, since I live in Expat Poverty Hell, that bag was gone. might as well have thrown it in the ocean. I can tell you where the dead baby seat is, where the dead desk is, where the dead suit jacket is, where the dead garbage can is, where a million other useless black things are, but the empty bag that does you no goddamn good because it fits on a bicycle and has my keys attached to it? yeah, it immediately went into someone's passenger compartment and vanished. So now I have one pannier. Home Depot, it's worth noting, is zero for 13 on making keys, despite the fact that they use frickin' lasers. It's hard to feel sorry for myself when I fly first class and conduct scary shadow banking transactions online, despite the fact that the tuna fish gave me dry-heave food poisoning and my family is far, far away. Somewhere, there's someone who has it a lot rougher than you and guaranteed, the guys who stole my pannier are among them. Fuck 'em anyway, though. The LA river says hello from crazytown. 
Changed the cable, needed to change out the brake lever? Changed the brake lever, needed to change out the handlebars? Changed the handlebars, needed to change the frame? Changed the frame, needed to change out the rider?Changed out the chain, needed to change out the cassette. Changed out the cassette, needed to change out the derailleur. Changed out the derailleur, needed to change out the cable. Also needed to change out the tires.