Is it weird that I recognized blackbootz from a 3/4 view in an instagram photo? (Just too damn handsome to be ignored). I’m super excited to see the three of you hanging out.
We're two weeks into our Kickstarter (tessellation puzzles) with 3 weeks to go, and backers have slowed down. We're contacting science centers and pulling the stops on people we know to get the word out. Still optimistic. It's been a really fun project -- I've made friends with math artists around the world licensing designs, and then it's been a really tough process getting the designs to work into a puzzle that can be put together in a lot of ways. Got the samples from the factory yesterday, and they look great, so production is a go if we get the funds. mk and steve have backed the project already -- kudos to you both! here's the link to the project In other news, I joined a men's choir. They're a bunch of fun and funny guys, with a good sense of low humor. We sing all kinds of songs. At 51 years old, I'm the youngest by quite a bit. Going on a retreat with them this weekend.
I've been planting trees on our vacant lot for the last month and it's starting to feel like a forest again. We have a ridiculous amount of chipmunks and red squirrels. ecib and I gave blood yesterday. TBH the donation part was the secondary motivation. There's pretty compelling data for something called the "healthy donor effect", where blood donors have lower risk for cardiovascular disease. There's some debate about the size of the effect, because people that donate blood tend to be healthier in general, but even with some aggressive controlling for that, the effect seems to persist, especially when the population studied is older. Some posit that it's due to a reduction in ferritin, but I doubt it is one factor. I almost passed out last time and they had to stop, but I made it through this time. A pint is not a small amount of blood for me. More progress on mike's painting. I'm trying to figure out trees. I think they are so fucking hard because your brain can pick out what's wrong with them so easily due to the contrast on their edges. I've been looking at a lot of paintings to understand what success looks like, but it's one of those things where the process of application is critical. I'd love to see how Inness got this feathery effect: steve, thenewgreen and I are in Denver next Tuesday evening. Text me bro.
I used to regularly give blood. I had a super creepy phlebotomist last time I gave blood. She looked like she was on drugs and kept talking about how tired she was and how she worked a 12 hour shift, got no sleep and just had an unsettling demeanor. I should have gotten up from the chair when I got a bad feeling but I didn't. Next time I went to give blood I broke out in a cold sweat and went pale as a sheet, I just couldn't do it. It's been over a decade since this happened, I should see if I can get back into it. Making new blood takes a fair amount of resources, it's supposedly a decent way to lose a little bit of weight.
I've been trying to increase the frequency of my visits to the climbing gym. It's going well - I'm feeling stronger and have finished most of the problems I couldn't complete last time - but I think I'm going to have to fork out for a membership to keep things financially viable. I lost my fingerprint on my index finger for a couple of days after the last session and my phone didn't want to unlock for me. I haven't found any Indonesian classes nearby that will be suitable for me (I still have a decent foundation in grammar etc, so maybe DuoLingo will suffice for vocab), but turns out there is a Spanish school run out of a hotel across the road from where I work. Google reviews make it out to be quite good - they run 1.5 hour beginner classes for 8 weeks and seem to have a very heavy emphasis on speaking. I'm wondering if they do any sort of free trial classes, but it doesn't look promising.
I broke Hubski today and then made git spaghetti. It was a parentheses. Lisp. :/ That’s what happens when you code in notepad. I pushed against my better judgement. forwardslash fixed it. :)
Just commenting on mk's post about the painting he's making for me and this walks by the window: Seen deer, mice and weasels walk by, but never a fox and never one this big. Guess I should share this, too. This is from Friday, three Orca whales swimming by the window: We get harbor porpoises fairly often, but Orcas only a few times every summer. Usually it's these three. Seems like a strange number to always be seen together. Very small pod, I guess. UPDATE: my fiancé just told me of this video from the same day, taken by a group of teenagers on a boat that followed the orcas for two hours. Turns out there's four of them, probably a mom and dad and two kids. Check out the footage here
Here's another critter we had visit in February. It's a weasel in his winter clothes. In Norwegian weasels are called røyskatt, which translates to "cairn cat", røys = a pile of loose stones (cairn) and katt = cat. "Røyskatt" is a much cuter name than "weasel" imo.
I'll henceforth (try to remember to) call weasels cairn cats.
Love the wildlife shots. Dala and I are similarly blessed with various interesting neighbors where we live. On the more mundane end, I tend to arrive to work a little early as I find it's less stressful to get to work before rush hour and relax in the parking lot listening to the news than trying to deal with a million crazy drivers out there. Right now there's a baby rabbit that lives in some brush near the parking lot and I'm lucky to see him for a moment or two almost every morning as he wanders around looking for food. He's my favorite, but I also enjoy watching the song birds in the early morning swooping down to catch insects too.
Mailbox A very rural midwestern epilogue to my very rural midwestern mailbox tale: I can't believe the DOT is going to make me look at this every day. The lady at the DOT office told us that they no longer put up "DEAD END" signs after a widow complained. Chickens They're doing great, but the raccoons are being very persistent this year. Last summer we lost one of our birds to one and I have no intention of that ever happening again. I chased one out of the run late last week and patched up the hole, only to find it digging in a different spot a few days ago. Two days ago I saw it had been in the run and last night I caught it in there. So I fetched my wife and she got the gun and we sorted that out pretty fast. Tonight she's like, "I have a feeling, can you check on them" and lo and behold there was another bugger in the run who got out while I went to get the gun. So we set a trap and we'll see what comes of that. I don't really care for killing animals but I'd rather have my lovely little chickens be safe! Research The other grad student in my lab quit the program yesterday. Maybe I will pick up a bit of his project since there have been grants written for it and thus the project needs to make progress. I recently got reviews back on two papers we'd submitted a couple years ago -- both said "the references are very out of date", which, yes, but it's not my fault they got stale waiting for reviewers to get around to it! One of them is on some research I did and won't be a big deal to update but the other is a survey paper and I'm really not looking forward to figuring out what to do with that. Nobody wants a stale survey paper.
Apropos of nothing, your chickens will happily eat almost any dead varmint lying around if you didn't know that already. I may or may not know someone who is happy to let his small flock have roadkill deer from time to time. He says it cuts down on his grain bill substantially.
It's been an interesting week. We had 9 tornados touch down in my state. Two of them went and trashed some of the poorer neighborhoods in my city. I can only hope those affected have insurance but I know that's unlikely. It's sad to see but interesting on some level since I have never seen a natural disaster before. https://ibb.co/FXkvKtk https://ibb.co/Pt78vwR https://ibb.co/W0vcJPB There is fundraising and community out reach going on. I'm not sure how to get myself involved. The only option I've seen for me to contribute is donation and that is not viable right now. It is encouraging to see the community come together. In my personal life I have had a productive week. I have started my apprentice jeweler position. I'm gonna be broke and pretty much just polishing and rhodium plating rings for the foreseeable future. That's alright with me though, I am grateful to get my foot in the door and willing to put in the time to earn my education. In my free time I have been working through jewelry design tutorials for the CAD program Rhino. Ive been playing with design ideas to start a small side hustle dropshipping the jewelry I design. That is until I get the skills and equipment to do more technical pieces/interesting pieces at home. Rhino is also one of the industry standards so perhaps that will come in handy later on as well. Hoping to have CAD design and bench work under my belt and become an unstoppable creative force Haha. All in all things seem to be moving in the right direction. Hope everyone is happy and productive until the next pubski.
Back once again after a long hiatus, missed being here. Glad to see this site is still chugging along. Just got back from my Mamaw's funeral service. It went well, but the whole thing has me in a minor existential funk. I've got a lot of writing, journaling, and organizing to do.
Thank you lil. I may write up a post of my reflections, and will definitely ping you if I do :)
I picked up a lot of good books. Also, I got proposed to. (No one is supposed to know my answer though for a bit)
I will list my newest books in the next pubski. Expect to be updated on my answer later this year.
I passed fifteen years at my current company. I also applied for two jobs at a different company out of state, both of which I'm very qualified for. One specifically wants someone senior, and since it's a niche job I expect my experience stands out. The idea of moving to a new area is overwhelming, and in my personal life I feel like a lot of great right now. I have running friends, and I've been swimming a lot with my pool routine and starting to get comfortable with lake swimming. I'd start all that over in a new city. But work is no better. I can't see staying here. I have an HR screening call today.
Still mid-life crisis-ing. Gonna buy this today: And after a year or so of work turn it into something else. I kinda like the mods made to this one, but I want to do more with the seat and rear suspension: Also bought this, to help me feel better about being a generalist, rather than a specialist: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. And I'll be re-working my LinkedIn profile to make it patently obvious I have read this cutting-edge must-have soon-to-be NYT Bestseller book. And other stuff. Last rugby game of the season is on Sunday, and we are in a 5-way tie for 3rd of 4 places in the Semifinals. Pretty much locked down a semifinals position, but how much we win by will help define whether we get a home game for our semifinal match... and a MUCH better chance of winning and going on the Championship game. Not going into the post-season as strong as last year when we were the Champions. But other teams are starting to fall apart due to the extra length of the season this year, injuries, and just tired players. But we seem to be doing better and better. The San Diego Legion are our big nemesis this year. We shall see what happens this weekend... it would be REALLY GOOD if we faced any of the other two teams in the Semifinals, and only had to go up against the Legion in the Championship game. That would be a great final. Not that anyone here cares about sports, but... waves...
Nope. It's about the extension. .jpg works, .JPG doesn't even if it's not https. http://www.outsideconnection.com/gallant/vx/exhaust/fs/a1010007.JPG https://www.outsideconnection.com/gallant/vx/exhaust/fs/a1010007.JPG The last one (https, .jpg) won't load because their website doesn't seem to support it.
I'm on a cruise ship deck in the Mediterranean. It's late at night, I'm having a drink. Alone. The staff told me earlier that they get bottles thrown at them routinely at the reception desk. I hope you're all doing well. Being an adult sucks.
Godzilla So, it's coming out in a few days and while I almost never watch a blockbuster movie on opening weekend (I hate crowded theaters), I might make an exception for this one. The reviews for this film have been mixed. The general concesus seems to be that the human story is pretty weak and the characters aren't all that compelling, but the monster fights more than make up for it. So, you know, a typical Godzilla film. Chances are it's gonna be weak, but I want to go because I love Godzilla. I guess I owe one of my nerd friends an apology, because they've seen every DC film even knowing that they'd be rough because they love the characters so much, and I've honestly razzed them for that. Now I'm in a similar position and I can see that I was wrong and it was unfair of me to treat them that way. Music For some reason, the browser on my tablet refuses to play media from American Routes' website without glitching like crazy. So that's aggravating. On the upside, I discovered that the American Library of Congress has tons of hour long performances on their YouTube channel, so I still have interesting stuff to listen to in addition to other great music channels on there. TBD I had other things I wanted to share, but I forgot what they are. I'm gonna do some cleaning, if I think of them, I'll pop back in and edit this. Pins Hurt It's a good thing I'm up to date on my tetanus shots, cause I've pricked myself more times with sewing pins and needles than I really should. They kind of put a smart on a finger. Coincidences I try to be positive these days, just because it's so easy to be negative, but I wrote an edit to this being critical about some going ons in the world. I felt in my heart like I shouldn't share, but chose to anyway, only to be greeted with the Tightrope Walking Monk from Abbey 502. I'll take it as a small sign that I should listen to my conscience and exercise some discretion. I hope you're all doing beautiful Hubski.
I have a little over a week left in France, where I've been studying (and more recently research-interning) since January. I've got a big research report due the day I fly home that has been preventing sentimental reflection time, but I have noticed one thing: I don't have very many photos of the city I've been living in! My camera roll has oodles of photos from spring break, but what about the big plaza here in town, the pretty timbered houses on the way to the bus stop, or the giant-ass medieval cathedral literally 150m from my door? I don't have pictures of them! This is a problem that I am working on resolving before I leave because I want to make a tacky sentimental photo album with my mum when I get home. So my question: how often do you guys photograph your own neighborhood? Could you show someone your daily life through photos? When I got here, I had similar struggles in the opposite direction, trying to find pictures of my everyday life in the US to show my new friends. I'm sure your every day surroundings are beautiful in some way, but do you have a record of that? Do you want a record of that?
Home from Africa for 5 days now, and it has been crazy busy. And it’s not stopping anytime soon. But I don’t mind. Jet lag makes me feel so productive waking up early! I’ll try to keep it going. Weather is great, my friends are awesome. I missed my city.
Came in for my cardiological visit, saw a different doctor, walked away and waved in next patient. Fool me once and all that. I mean, I know that sooner or later I'll have to visit someone else but fuck that guy with a rake. I'm one seminar presentation and one exam from being able to defend my theses. Both are in less than two weeks, and I only want to get it over with. This is so fucking stupid. I can recite most of my notes and textbooks backwards, but some fucked up part of my brain still thinks I'm not prepared enough. Fortunately, there's a lot more to pass on chemistry, so that takes my mind away from other things. EDIT: I went to another doctor. She also wanted to meddle with my meds but seemed to understand my reluctance. Or at least it didn't bother her to the point where she wouldn't give me a refill.
Repairing a bracelet that broke and I need to go check the glue to see if it’s dry but applewood is napping on the couch and I don’t want to go making a bunch of noise opening the door and rattling around in there. Maybe tomorrow, craft project. Considering taking a nap myself.
Every post on this is fascinating -- but I don't have a chance to comment. I'm packing for a motor trip to Baltimore. Who knows, I might run across blackbootz but I think he's in Europe. I'm not thrilled about having to leave home for this trip, but I'm going because: loyalty (or something). Meanwhile, at least it's 29 degrees there. It's 10-15 degrees colder here and enough already. It's June.