I've taken to referring to my time in Los Angeles for work as the time when I'm within the event horizon for the black hole. Communication in or out is tricky and time stretches to the point where your frame of reference is no longer valid.

This time last week I was in Los Angeles which appears to have boosted the Schwartzchild Radius.

My daughter is in an immunotherapy study. It's going to take years but there is a high likelihood that she'll be less allergic to peanuts on the other side. I phrased it to her as "how would you like to help other kids be less allergic to peanuts?" and she went all in, despite the fact that they had to make her back itch and draw her blood. Then her bloodwork came back with low immune response levels (probably because she had the sniffles) so she had to go in again. She likes the "magic cream that makes her arm tingle" but still, she's four and has had her blood drawn twice in two weeks with no complaints. The administrator told us that they really hope they can get her in because while they can't tell me her peanut IGGs, her regular IGGs are the highest in the entire study. Go kid. Glad you're more allergic than anyone else they've ever seen. not.

Had lunch with my buddy. Told him I'd done reasonably well in cryptocurrency, told him that if I couldn't use it for shit like chemotherapy copays what the fuck can I use it for, told him that the point you stop being able to be proud and refuse charity is well before the point where your relatives put out a GoFundMe for you and cut him a check for a thousand dollars. He cried and said it was really valuable to him to have long-term friends around (we've known each other since we were 4) so I punched him in the face and told him to stop being such a pussy. We now have a regular lunch date for as long as I'm in town.

Saw Front 242 and Severed Heads in Los Angeles. mk did not because he is lame. We got wasted - 60ccs of bone marrow aspiration be damned, I drank like four doubles of well bourbon and blasted my fucking mind out with EBM. The last time I saw Front 242 I ran lights for them and everyone was 20 years younger. The local alt-rag made fun of Front 242 back then for being totally into their music and dancing around like "a bunch of boojie boys" well past their primes because alt-rags are always bullshit. And here it is 20 years later and there's Jean-luc DeMeyer, 60 fuckin' years old, black leather jacket, sunglasses at night, rockin' it like it was '85. And the audience was not nearly as gothy as it would have been in Seattle - i mean, there was a guy in a hawaiian shirt and a fanny pack. And fuckin'A I was wearing goddamn cargo shorts so who the fuck am I to say anything.

one of my buddies is insecure. I told him to be more like Jean-Luc De Meyer - rock the sunglasses at night. That mutherfucker has known exactly who he is for 40 flippin' years and nobody remembers that bullshit alt-rag review but me while he's still sitting there headlining sold-out houses ten thousand miles from home. And then I got home and dropped my kid off at school wearing fuckin' house slippers and the same goddamn cargo shorts and realized that everyone else was all dressed for work'n'shit and I realized I have no fucks to give.

A friend turned me onto a Boeing gig doing tedious webcast shit. Sure, why not. So you talk to the recruiter. She wants a "resume." Oh, right. Out here in the world they still care about that shit. Fine, here's a thing I did in Pages like three years ago which I refuse to install on my computer to fix the address and email so here's a PDF with some wrong info because I can't be sussed. Then they want an "interview." Oh, right. Out here in the world they still care about that shit. Fine, okay, I'll pick up the phone, yeah, your rate is half what I make but so long as you give me enough work to not fuck up my unemployment checks until I get to my real job I'll take your money. What's that? You want me to fill out a profile on your website so that other recruiters can reach me? I mean, Okay...

At some point in the not-too-distant past I gave OftenBen a ration of shit about millennials because everybody harshes on the next crew but Millennials are the first posse that thinks it's okay to show up to an interview in flip-flops or some shit. It's a trope that's been in Forbes, Huffington Post, Time, whatever. Ben, I owe you and the rest of your generation an apology. Flip flops are what you wear to interviews you don't give a fuck about. The fact that you don't give a fuck about the interview doesn't say anything about you, it says a lot about the job being interviewed for. It says a lot about your regard for the culture that wants you to jump for their bullshit hoops.

I'm about to be 43 fuckin' years old and I have successfully opted out of that culture. My contempt is cushioned by disinterest and success; I can easily see it coming from a position of despair and resignation. Hipsters? Hipsters are the kids that aren't putting up with your bullshit and still feel kind of okay about themselves. A fully enlightened millennial generation will be a sea of vinyl-listening, avocado-toast-eating, flip-flop-wearing hipsters.

I've been to four watch-making classes. I'm learning not a lot and having the time of my goddamned life. The watchmaker at Vacheron Constantin recommended a book that is hard to find and very expensive. Turns out one of the instructors at the class scanned that fucker to PDF but never read it. It's DOPE. Did you know that there are really only five gears in a watch necessary to tell time? Did you know they're really fuckin' fun to take apart? Did you know that ten years building scale models, 20 years working with surface-mount electronics and 30 years tuning carburetors and otherwise performing fine work on motor vehicles gives you orders of magnitude more manual dexterity and fine motorwork than your peers? I didn't. I do now. I'm fuckin' good at this shit.

That's a pallet fork. It's about 4mm wide. Turns out that 10x macro lens that clips onto your phone that you got in your stocking can be really goddamn useful. So yeah. Took apart a pocketwatch and got it back together again in the amount of time it took everyone else to take it apart. LOVING IT. With a semi-decent CNC machine I could build these things from scratch all goddamn day long and be a pig in shit. I would be utterly and completely divorced from this bullshit "show the recruiter where on your resume the bad career touched you" society and walk around in my goddamn cargo shorts and house slippers all day because I don't have a boss to care.

Finally, my car is dying. It needed $1500 worth of work six months ago and still does. Then I gave a buddy a thousand dollars so he wouldn't fucking die and figured maybe, as a 43-year-old man, I deserve to drive something that doesn't smoke when it warms up and doesn't have gorilla tape keeping the headliner out of my hair.

So I'm negotiating on a Porsche 911 carrera cabriolet because my inner douchebag clearly wants out. Even better, it's the shitty 996 water-cooled one that Porsche nerds love to hate because apparently every time you turn the key Ferry Porsche spins in his grave because it's water-cooled and made with Boxster parts and has headlights like fried eggs and and and. Here's what I know - if I can get a car? That sold for $80k? With 21k miles on it, new tires and $15k worth of service just done on it for less than the price of a Prius C? I'ma do it.

State farm wants $7 less per month to insure an '02 Carrera than they do to insure a '95 Dodge. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

mk, thenewgreen, I might be rippin' through San Fran at some point soon because taking a ragtop Porsche up the PCH in fall sounds like a pretty nice birthday present to myself.

__________________________________________________________________

wellthatwascathartic

Got an A on a big Philosophy paper. I argued that the Earth is flat.

At the end of August I complained about how much that month sucked. August had a pretty significant event or two but, Jesus Christ. At best I remember parts of the September. Highlights:

- Somehow I got discharged from two different hospitals without having my alcohol withdrawal treated. Sobered up a little and released into the wild.

-Seven days of actual detox at a shit community crisis unit

-I may have come close to having a grand mal seizure in front of my mother

-Lost my phone and computer after I somehow made it to a gas station in another county

-Went back to Birmingham to get back in a sober living I left. They told me I had to detox which confused the fuck out of the hospital they told me to go to since at that point I didn't need medical intervention

-Girlfriend let me stay at her apartment one night but called security and had me removed from the property the next day. The security mook pulled his gun when I wouldn't unlock the bedroom door. He was a cool guy though

-Slept behind a Walmart in the pine straw. Slept behind a grocery store where I found a mattress. Aww yiss! Random dirty mattress.

-Got walking pneumonia. Went to the hospital. Felt better. Left.

-Took public transit into Atlanta. The bad part. Stayed up all night because I didn't want to sleep even after a seemingly friendly homeless man led me out of the area where I was offered weed, percoset and heroin in the span of about one minute. He took all my money, my watch and my ring. Not as nice as I thought he was

-Made my way to Montgomery to stay with a girl. In an assisted living with her 68 year old mother. Where neither of us was supposed to be. Mom and strange girl are talking about me moving in and Christmas together. Still have pneumonia. Now on day 2 of alcohol withdrawal.

-Me and my girlfriend fight through email and text message for oh, over 12 hours. Somehow make up and she comes to save my ass.

-Spend three days with her that were maybe the best we've had together!

-Ex husband throws over a thousand dollars worth of her belongings in a dumpster. Including prescription medication and eyeglasses.

-Jump into a couple dumpsters. Two hours driving around poking in them. Nope. He put it all in one with a compactor.

-Go to sober living in Atlanta to start October.

Seems legit here. The staff is all younger than me including the founders but they're stand up guys who want to help other people out of addiction.

I actually worry about my girlfriend not leaving me over all of this and more. I worry she's staying with me out of fear of what I'll do rather than a legitimate desire to be with me. I just try not to dwell on that thought and do my best to prove I'm not more trouble than I'm worth.

FML.

Classes are now in session. I took four of the freshmen students assigned to me for this week and gave them a tour around the science campus. They got right and proper anxious when I told them that there are currently only five seniors left on our physics track. I guess that there are worse ways to motivate people. They seemed to like everything about this place. Aside from that, I told them about possible student research, where are good places to eat, whom to ask about random bureaucratic crap, why should you always skip the student-faculty liaison, where can you get the licensed software and all that other auxiliary stuff that makes your life on campus easier.

Crafting:

I made some soap. Cold process with sunflower oil, nothing fancy.

Both are from the same batch that was decanted four times in a nearly-boiling saturated solution of table salt. Word of advice: use distilled water for this purpose. Both the calcium or magnesium ions (stuff that's in tap/hard water) can and will decrease your yield and purity. The final product's pH is around 6-6.5 (it was 8-9 before the first decantation) so it should have only a slight drying effect.

The one on the left is just your normal soap. The one on the right was mixed with 150 mg of silver citrate. That way it should exhibit some anti-bacterial properties. The difference in colour is mainly caused by the fact the one on the right dries a lot faster (larger exposed area, additional mixing to distribute silver citrate evenly).

Ghetto chemistry at its finest.

Games:

The Call of Cthulhu session was great! Everyone plays as either a police detective or officer so at least there's no need to contrive some lazy reason to explain why all those people are working together. How do you all know each other? From work! Awesome, now there's no need to make the first few sessions mainly about earning mutual trust. Since we play, at best, every other week it's a very well received change of pace.

Chess:

I'm 4 out of 4 and on fire! My opponent (black) resigned from this position:

Computer analysis and the game itself.

In a bit of a funk. I haven't recorded any music or made any clothes since I got my dog in August. I've been starting to write a lot of new music, but haven't been finishing much.

I spend a decent chunk of time reading about new RPG systems now. Been quietly putting together a little homebrewed world, designing dungeons. I suck a little less at drawing now, will post pictures when I get home.

The manager who gave me my job left. Now I'm worried I'm running out of advocates. I've been running the training program without a budget for two years now and the new managers want me to "improve my numbers," but don't seem to be willing to invest.

This is lame.

I'm only gonna do one liners today, period. Cause I ran out of pantiliners on the way here.

That joke would make more sense if I was a woman. I'm probably getting only 70% of the laughs I would have gotten because I'm a man.

I've been killing it at open mic comedy for the past few weeks, I recently switched to a one-liners-only style that makes me impervious and flexible to rowdy bar crowds. Man, it feels good. Without really intending to, I've realized it's been my main creative outlet and the only thing I've really gotten better at in the last month.

There's two open-mics a week (at the bar I made a website for), and it's been a nice place to hang out. I still don't really know people there, so sometimes I just won't talk to anyone and just go up on stage, but people are recognizing me, and I'm making steps to break out of my shell. I'm kind of making it my goal to get to know people there when I get up tonight.

===============

I have to sit down tonight because I messed up my feet on an early morning run. I never thought I'd be able to, but I also never thought the police would find my meth lab.

I fucked up my feet on a long walk awhile ago. They've hurt for a whole week and a half now, at least while standing. I'm pretty sure it's because I still keep walking on them. Today is the first day that they've actually felt like they've been healing, so I'm glad about that.

===============

I just told my therapist that I was going to do stand up comedy tonight. He said, yeah, that's perfect for you, your life is a joke.

A thing about pubskis is that it coincides with when I visit my therapist, so it's like I get a double dose of therapy on the same day. I'm a little irritated at my therapist today though. The theme since I've been seeing him is to embrace my hobbies, even though most of them are online. He's did a complete 180- you gotta stop spending so much time on the computer. I know that he's someone who's a drug counceler, and I don't know, I thought the entire point of my therapy sessions was to relieve myself of guilt so I could spend more time on work, but hell. Alright. The computer screen is cocaine now.

===============

My favorite city in Alaska is Juneau. It's the place where tourists get off cruise ships and look at the mountains and say "This is it? They have this back in New York!"

Things. I booked a trip impulsively recently, and now I have a ticket to Spokane I won't use, and I didn't buy the travelers insurance. But that's alright.

I got accepted into an innovation sprint for ocean technology in Alaska. It's kind of weird because I'm a designer working with engineers and marine biologists and people more qualified than me, but I'm excited to bust out my college skills again. I do have to stay here for a month.

A friend from the debate team is offering me a digital media job at the governors office in Juneau. Juneau really is my favorite city in Alaska. I'm currently procrastinating from sending him my portfolio, which I really should be doing. I hope I can get my shit together.

My headspace is ambiguous at best these past couple of weeks. Went on a nice, long (13.8 mile) run on Sunday but have been dealing with a hamstring issue for about a month now. Thinking about seeing a PT for this and a couple of other small, nagging issues. It's a constant journey and I'm always meeting a lot of interesting people through running. Starting to give back by volunteering at races, too, which is very rewarding but in a different way. Seeing people succeed or push themselves against themselves for 26.2 miles (or 13.1, or 3.1, etc.) is inspiring especially when you understand what they are feeling.

So, that's mostly good. Likely going to be joining the Board of Directors of a second Non-Profit in November(ish), this one will be running related. It's funny how once you maintain a residence and involvement in the community you start to see the same people in different organizations and capacities, and you start to be a name that pops up in rooms you're not in. The same thing is happening at work. All of these things are good.

There's a lot of emotional difficulties, though. I don't feel capable of having an intimate relationship at this stage of life. After the last breakup I went back to the whole online dating thing for about 3 weeks, deleted all of those accounts (not just disabled, to remove any temptation). I'm slowly trying to remove myself from the dating pool but honestly, it feels like I've been removed for a while now. My emotional availability is just not where it needs to be to be fair to another human being in a romantic capacity. It's nobodies fault, but it has become incredibly easy for me to strike up a conversation with somebody and hell maybe even be friends with them but anything beyond that is a massive struggle. Does anybody still get that kind of fluttering, nervous sensation when they meet somebody or are out on a date? I don't. I haven't in years.

With the kind and magnitude of work that Work is throwing at me (has been throwing at me steadily, ramping up from at least midyear on) - I'm probably crazy AND stupid, but it's possible I could see a promotion come Q1 2018.

It's what I've been working towards for a long time.

They're throwing good things at me and I'm trying to run with it. Well, I am running with it. I'm just holding myself back from running with these things without thought, direction, consideration, or pulling in others.

(I want to. They want me to automate things and I see how and where and I want to just dive in. But they're right: this is a project that will go much better if I pull a few others in to get wit me.)

I would fully want and deserve my promotion, if they gave it.

But also I have a coworker and friend (she sits literally next to me) who has seniority (like she's about 12-15 years older than me) (has been working at the same level as I have, in this same department, for longer) (then again I was this level in a different department beforehand) and a consistent, determined "slow and steady wins the race" approach to work which I wish I had, & to her same degree. I told her last year that I thought, if anybody got promoted that year [that wasn't me - but I knew I wasn't going to be promoted then] that it had to be her. I was pissed for her at who got promoted instead and I felt her value was not appreciated, that flash and bombast got chosen over her consistent, thorough, and considered approach.

But like, I don't think this year's her year.

I'm going to feel awkward and somewhat shitty if it turns out it's mine. I'm going to feel bad.

Of course, I'd never feel bad enough to turn down my own, and well deserved, advancement. Just bad enough to feel awkward when we make small talk in the morning for a couple of weeks, or months.

She isn't glamorous. The work she turns in doesn't light the world up or flash or make loud noises. But, more importantly, you can trust it. I'd work with her again in the future, anytime. I'd put my back to her.

That's just the way it goes.

I have yet to get away time down to less than 50%. Most of that is SF time. It has a lot to do with raising money, but I know there are plenty of reasons that are going to do the same on the other side of this. I've got CAx2, NC, and NY already for the rest of this month.

Posted a-ha unplugged with the pubski account. :/

My daughter is 5yo and is surprising me in the best ways. She is clever and empathic, and I worry about doing anything that negatively impacts her trajectory. I'm asking my wife to be too resilient.

I'm writing and painting as much as possible, and took a long walk to Mozart yesterday. The busier I am, the more I need to balance it out. I did this with a painting the other day:

Boring... what about this?

Gawd, imgur has photobucketed. Where do we turn? Anyhow, that's just a new beginning, but I'm far more optimistic about it. I'm learning what not to do.

I did some literature diving the past week (which has some jazz to it) and have a number of experiments that I'm almost giddy about. I can't get them underway soon enough.

Our chicken laid its first egg Monday, and my daughter saved it for me. I can't blame the chicken for its timing. It's a coin toss.

I see drafts are still not drafts, veen. Will fix.

I wrote a poem too:

  I am here at the ready
  For all the dream strangers
  Who defy explanation
  As my actual loved ones
  Passed on some time ago
  And without abatement
  Destinations, layovers
  These oddly familiars
  Feign only to co-opt
  My fashions remembered

My bud is back from the Navy. For good. I got to see him a few days ago, the first time in ten years, plus a bunch of people in our circle of friends I haven't seen in literally almost a decade. It's amazing how each of us have changed so much but at the same time haven't changed at all. They're all good people. I'm gonna make a sincere effort to hang out with them all much more often than once a decade.

I played Dark Souls III for the first time the other day. I'm not much into video games anymore, but I picked it up today cause I couldn't stop thinking about how fun it was. I'm about to start up in a bit.

I think I still might be a bit sick. I'm very tired.

In case anyone was wondering, yes I'm still a nerd:

Back in February-ish I started time-tracking work and university projects. I've found it to be just valuable enough that I don't mind the hassle of tracking (elizabeth, totally inspired by Cortex!). For fun I decided to start analyzing the data to look for patterns, which resulted in creating the above graph in Python.

Think of the graph as a frequency heatmap for each of my 7 Toggl 'projects' throughout the day. Darker colors in the left graph means I have tracked a lot of time in that project at that moment. Darker colors in the right graph means I have tracked a lot of time relative to other moments in the day in that project. So you can clearly see my morning and evening commute in the right graph, and you can clearly see I've been spending most of my time working on my thesis in the last half year. There are probably more patterns, I'll see what I can dig up!

I gave a talk on Bash yesterday; you can see the slides if you're interested.

Figured out that it'll take 3-4 weeks to print my lab book, which effectively means it needs to be ready to print by the last week of November, so that's where my Thanksgiving break is going to go...

Had the best weekend ever atBuffer Festival and met a bunch of travel Youtubers. Also flew a drone into my face 15 minutes ago. I’ll be fine but it’s a bummer. I might have a scar and will have to explain to my boss that I’m an idiot in order to file the insurance claim.

Moody interesting thing in the last couple weeks -- my wife & I are putting plants on it balcony. It took a while to decide on plants we wanted. Our balcony gets no sunlight at all, and we wanted flowering plants that could survive summer & winter outside.

We got a little Turks cap bush which has these really cool spiral flowers.

(Picture from Wikipedia, my phone takes awful close-ups)

We are planting Spanish bluebells & anemone bulbs this fall. The rest has to wait until spring.

I don't have a picture of the whole setup yet.

I saw Broken Social Scene last Wednesday. I like them a lot. Other bands I see give off vibes of hopeful defeat, sort of "the world sort of sucks right now, but we have each other." BSS is different for me. They feel so much more optimistic, like "the world sucks right now, but we're already stronger than them. We've already won the war even if they won a battle."

This was my first time seeing them with Ariel Engle as the only female vocalist. She killed it, even or maybe especially on songs that aren't "hers," like Hug Of Thunder.

I'm really glad I went. The show felt good.

So in the past month and a half I've spent my weekends in the following cities; Pheonix>San Francisco>San Diego>LA>Pheonix>and finally St. Louis. I'll be in durham this weekend. I move to Germany next month. Life is hectic.