A few years ago another coffee shop moved in three blocks from my shop. It pissed me off because I knew the numbers and we were going to be eating each others dinner to the extent that I was pretty sure that they wouldn't make it but that they would hurt my bottom line pretty bad. It was a nice couple who opened it, they had a background in dance performance and were pretty thin on service industry experience. They had a nut roasting company in back of the shop and decided they would open a retail location for their nuts and open a cafe to help make the whole thing balance out. They had a nice big nut display. Their coffee was decent and they had FOOD! They had stuff like quiche and egg sandwiches and shit like that. Another thing they had that didn't were walls painted in mocha and espresso shades with a natural edged counter all cut from the same tree. I know many people thought I was doomed, it was a very nice counter. Friends said that I should start doing food to stay competitive (I just have bagels and pastry). I think it wasn't long before they nice couple realized that nuts weren't a destination shopping attraction, the nut display dwindled to a few shelves but they reportedly sell a lot of nuts online and to fancy shops. They double downed on the food and became more ambitious. You could get a motherfucking breakfast there with potatoes eggs and toast on the weekend. Food margins are way shittier than coffee margins and it entails a whole bunch of work and forethought to keep the machine running. The two of them couldn't man the shop and keep the nuts flowing alone so they got employees. I know my numbers and and could pretty well judge their costs in relation to how busy they were and what their prices were. They were right about FOOD bringing em in. They were a bit busier than I was but all that labor and the worsening margins meant that the return on the work wan't panning out. I knew baristas who worked for them and they said it was a shitty unhappy place to work. I'd go in for a cup of coffee and not see the owners working or see the owners and note their strained smiles and weary eyes. On a sidebar, why don't I have FOOD! Food has shitty margins when you have to add an employee to give any kind of decent service. If I had food I'd have to work significantly harder to eek out a relatively small amount of extra profit. I also know that the thousandth time I scrapped cheese off a plate I'd go down to the basement and hang myself from the rafters. I suppose it mostly comes down to the fact that there is a value to happiness that a small increase in marginal profit and brow sweat can't make up for. So, I kept my head down, donated to local causes and kept getting to know the people in my neighborhood better. Most importantly I made better coffee than the other guys, all I cared about was coffee and relationships. The other shop changed their hours about ten times in a year and a half trying to find the magic hours to bring in the most money and keep labor and work to a minimum. In the end they opened later than I did and closed earlier. I loved it. One day the other shops roaster came in to pitch me on his wares. He walked in, saw who I carried and said "Oh, you are carrying Courier!." He had half a dozen bags of coffee in his arms. "You aren't going to be interested in switching roasters, Joel is the guy that inspired me to go into coffee, he's a great guy and his coffee is amazing." He gave me a few single orgins and told me to look him up if Courier ever went out of business. I kept my head down for a year and a half and waited for them to go out of business which they finally did. They said they had to quit for personal reasons, which may to some extent be true but when you aren't making any money or having any fun personal reasons are nagging. They immediately sold the business to another nice couple. This couple also had a background in performance and little food experience. They really went all in at the FOOD! They tried it all and were good at very little of it. I had one of their bland $7 quiches and wondered that anyone would buy such a thing twice. One of my friends got and egg sandwich and tossed it out declaring that it tasted oddly of fish and tossed it in the garbage. This couple slowly worked their own shop less and less relying on expensive employees to cover more and more shifts. Their employees were mostly unhappy and gave shitty service. I work my shop 6 days a week for about fifty six open hours. I have two ladies who cover the seventh day alternating every other week and pick up an odd shift when I need it. They are both gems who trust to always act in my best interest and to treat people as well as I would. Neither are the all that great as baristas but they are both decent. I never worry about the shop for a second while they are there. I also have a friend who can pick up shifts who is an ace barista and great with people. My service is consistent if a little wild and weird sometimes. When the group home goes out for coffee they come to my shop, I know their names and talk to them. I've got the vast majority of the minority business because I am happy to get to know and grateful to put coffee in the cup of almost each and every person who walks in the door. One of my black customers who has become over time one of my friends remarked that she didn't like to go in the other place. She said they were all smiles but she could tell that she wasn't welcome there. I let every mail man, UPS driver or construction work crew use my bathroom, they've become customers and the word has spread that a person out working can always get a glass of water and use the john at my place. It's really my joy when I look out on the floor and see every slice of my neighborhood life sitting at my tables. It took a couple years of development to get there but it's probably the thing that has made me the most proud of my spot. I'm sure that there are more than a few people who hate my spot. They hate the color scheme, they hate that I don't have food, they hate that I don't have lilac rose marry infused honey lattes, and they hate that I don't have all natural edged counters cut from the same tree. I'm not kid friendly. I'm not kid unfriendly but if the shop starts to look like a fucking day care with children running around and bouncing off things like bumper cars I'm like to put on NWA until things thin out a bit. Finally the next nice couple has their dreams shattered by my unwillingness to lay down and die and just make room for the new order of natural edged counters all cut from the same tree. I worked like a dog (I like working, its not all that hard but it's long and I almost never have bad days). I kept love in my heart for all the people who chose to support me. I'm grateful for having had this chapter of my life be at least moderately successful. The second couple were out of business. I went to their equipment sale and purchased a Ditting grinder an almost like new Mazzer for $900, what a fucking deal. The Ditting is a godamn dream. It's been a few months since they went out of business and I knew sales were up but I hadn't run the numbers and compared them to last year. I figured I was up about 30%. I just ran the January numbers and compared them to sales last year and I found that I was up 66% from last year! It's huge. It's money coming in long after fixed costs have been taken care of. I could probably make more money doing any number of things but it wouldn't be my gig and my customers. It makes me feel pretty great. They are going to tear my shop down in about two years and I'm ok with that. It'll only be two years of the type of money I had hopped would be coming in all this time but it'll be all the sweeter for having buried a pair of starry eyed dancers dreams by being consistent and friendly and enjoying almost every day of my work life.
90% of restaurants are dead in two years. 70% of coffee shops are still open in 5. People open bars because they think it'd be great to have hangers-on who worship you like you run Studio 54 but the survivors are the ones who know that clubs exist to sell alcohol at radically elevated prices. Show me a place that spends $150k on lights only to go under in 9 months and I'll show you the VFW that upped their shot price a dollar in 2004. Like anybody with a food truck? Invite 'em to park out front sometimes. Better business for both of you.
That sounds like a pretty fine life you have crafted for yourself there, my friend! Maybe you can keep an eye out for another one like you, and when you close down in two years, you can sell him/her a really great Ditting grinder (and some other stuff) for a deal, and pass it on. Keep the vibe flowing...
Your shop sounds like just my type of place. When I think back to my favourite shops it is one of these two things: 1) great, welcoming service: like that kebab place in Ulm, Germany, that was everything but a fast food place. True, they didn't have chairs to sit, but it was the go-to place for lunch for all the workers in the area. They knew your order, they handed me an extra cup of tea once in a while, and their lahmacun with döner meat is godlike. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. And I am on my way to bed. 2) "one-type-of-product" kind of places. I grew up eating hummus from a shop called Lul, in the heart of my hometown Tira. They are known for their "one pot" rule. They prepare one big pot of hummus a day and when it is empty, they close. Usually around 11/12. The only exception is saturday as the city is flooded with people from the neighbouring towns that come for the saturday market. It is a simple place. for 20 shekels you get a plate with a lot of hummus, fresh pita bread, and some cut vegetables. Nothing fancy, no decoration. And I promise you, it is the best hummus you will ever eat. One of those days I will make it to the states, even though I am hesitant. Where is your shop? I want to try your coffeee!
Awesome to hear of your success, cgod! Well earned. Onward!
Took Monday off work, because - seriously - who in America today thinks we DON'T need to think deeply about Martin Luther King Jr., and his message? Spent the day playing heavy metal with old friends, and writing some new material. Two vignettes to consider: Scene 1: Bass player: "Hey... remember that song we never finished 19 years ago? That would be cool to finish." Guitarist: (pulls out phone and plugs into PA system) "This one?" Bass player/drummer: "Yeah!" All: look around at each other, silently wondering how it took less than two minutes to find a recording on a phone of an unfinished song the band tried to write 19 years ago. Scene 2: Me: "We should play (old metal song we haven't played in 30 years)." All: "Yeah!" Bass/Guitar/Me: "But how does it start...?" Drummer: "Like this..." plays the intro drum figure... All: instantly begin playing the song, and play the entire thing through, with only one moment of confusion where we mis-counted the number of bars during the guitar solo... song ends All: looking around at each other, "Woah." --- Right now I am at work, in denial about the goddamn 100-page proposal I need to produce in the next 24 hours, because the customer is unreasonable and the sales department has failed to provide me with ANY information that I need to build this document before the shipping deadline at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. I hate being taken for granted.
i'm disputing a fraudulent transaction with Chase, they have already incorrectly denied it once, i got mad tonight and i escalated with the CFPB because FUCK YOU, this bih DIDN'T receive any $757 order from vistaprint nor did she make one Y'all, if shit ever goes wonky with your bank, a) dispute dispute dispute, b) escalate to your regulator, c) loop this bih in and I'll fight for you. This is literally the kind of shit that I spend years validating was performed correctly for my own bank, and what Chase is doing is exactly what I would've flagged in a deep dive as (as the kids call it) "inappropro" behavior. i m mad that's all just wanted to vent thanks for listening
Rocky week. Seemingly out of nowhere, my company has been taken over by a big (20x nationally, 200x internationally) consultancy firm. On paper it's a hostile takeover. It was decided entirely behind closed doors by our shareholders, and that did not land well - we value transparency, candour and working together with all things internal, and this is the direct opposite of that. Lots of coworkers specifically joined our company so to not work for one of the big consultancy firms in our field. Myself included. I happened to figure it out earlier, so I had some more time to think about it (/go through all stages of grief). My conclusion is that I'll be fine ( - maybe even more than fine)? But a large part of what I like about my work is that it's filled with interesting, engaged people who hate corporate BS as much as I do. I worry about the rest, the team, what will happen when 10, 20% decides to leave after a year. The longer people have been around, the more negative their attitude towards this change. We've changed before - in my two years here we grew from 55 to nearly 90. But we have kept a common denominator alive, and I'm worried about that. Rubbing against Boring, Inc. will definitely change things one way or another, as much as they're emphasizing that they don't want to change much because we're doing so well already. In other news, I had my final private lesson in electronic music creation yesterday, which was a good change of pace. My teacher had a room full of synths and modules and he showed me some of his beats and work process. My girlfriend and I also booked our tickets for our Scotland trip. We're going there by ferry and back by train - I was adamant to not fly there. It's funny, the time it takes me with the Eurostar from London to Rotterdam is a good ten minutes longer than it used to take me to travel from one corner of the Netherlands to the other. Already looking forward to that trip! I'll be out of office for a good four weeks in total.
YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS The office is a legit office now with dozens of appointments per day, six employees with grad degrees or above and a dedicated team of three subcontractors whose livelihood is the commissions they earn for doing battle with insurance companies on our behalf. I, Job Creator. Seriously looking at turning my wife's office into a stairwell and claiming half of the upstairs. We have two EHRs, because God is dead, and our business is one that attracts bright, earnest and selfless young ladies who excel at personal interaction and empathy and suck mutherfucking ass at technology. Nonetheless we have two EHRs, because God is dead. Technological solutions can be had. We can fax within both EHRs. One of them has e-prescribing. I now have a phone system that will handle everything from, well, us clear on out to a resort (with wakeup calls!) or a call center (with prioritized hunt and recording!) or a multinational (with videoconferencing!). Unfortunately we're the worst kind of client - there's no consistency as to who is doing what on any given day and our clientele tend to be the people who aren't interested in making an appointment online to get the drug their television told them about. No, ours are the records that get "touched" a lot. So these granola-ass Luddites end up not only dealing with two EHRs, because God is dead, they also have a formidable amount of folklore spread across a variety of platforms. OneNote. A contact manager. WhatsApp. A corkboard. Post-it notes. Three different spiral-bound notebooks. They don't use email - at all - because they're all under 35 and Luddites. And they'll go "this Bluetooth you got me sucks because it doesn't talk to the front desk phone from 75 feet away and it's your fault for not knowing that's what I needed it for." You've got a choice: you can say "the universe works this way, fucking cope" and decrease job satisfaction and the camaraderie that one gets from a Coven or you can say "...lemme see what I can do" and recognize that the telecommunications requirements of your wife's business are substantially more complex than the 1500 seat GSA call center you designed in 2006. The thing that sucks? They don't care. They resent having to do any of this shit because if they wanted to do TPS reports they wouldn't have sunk $80k into a degree that pays them $60k a year. Whatever stupid ad-hoc solution they've come up with that doesn't really work? It's their solution and then obviously better than your solution, which works. Yesterday? Yesterday I had to deal with the utter hopelessness of moving the "HOLD" button two inches to the left. Despite the fact that it moved so that now four phones would ring, rather than one, the way they wanted it. Despite the fact that it took two hours of command-line warfare to get that working. Despite the fact that my front desk can now be answered from Kathmandu if need be because fuckin' hell, one of 'em was in Mozambique last month. And I can't really bitch. If I were being paid to be tech support, this would be my job. I'm not being paid because it fucks with my unemployment - which has been held up for three months because apparently you need to resubmit to the state of California four times (and have a hearing about identity fraud) before they go "uh, hey buddy your wages are being reported to Washington". But all I'm getting out of this? Is scorn. And the iron-clad conviction that CRM is everything wrong with commerce, Slack will never be worth $12 per person per month (or $99 per person per month if you want HIPAA-compliance) and that Comcast may Care? But the fundamental tools used to interact with customers are not dissimilar from the fundamental tools used to interact with beef on the hoof. "Hey, Joe! Haven't talked to you since" (checks notes) "Thursday January 18 2019 at 18:47GMT! How's your... Daughter... Josie? ... Oh, he's Joe Junior now? "(types furiously) "And you'd rather never talk about it again" (typing intensifies) "great great! Yeah! How's that pallet of widgets we shipped on February 4th 2019 that was signed for by Lars doing? Oh yeah?... Hmmm..." (searches answerbase, IMs tech support with caps lock on) "Have you tried restarting them?... Yes you're right it's stupid to restart an entire pallet of widgets so..." (searches answerbase, caps lock intensifies) "Have you tried logging out and logging back in?" My shit? My shit's on hold 'cuz we had three and a half snowdays followed by four births in three days in the middle of which I got "we now have three front desk girls not two how long will it take you to recreate every goddamn customization" and I had to rip down there and rebuild the world because ZOMG THE PHONE IS NOT RINGING because someone decided to "tidy" and unplugged it. And neither of the two extant girls decided to tell the new girl about the magical folklore that makes things run so she invented her own new folklore. And I can deploy a whole new system? That was designed to catch all the spilled marbles? But apparently we play marbles and wartops and WHY IS IT NOT CATCHING THE TOPS. But they are ever so thankful When you tighten the screw on the handle of the shred bin Because they understand "screws" And for some reason have judged them to be beyond their abilities So really, if you want thanks and accolades? don't try to glue two goddamn EHRS (because God is dead) across four accounts and a phone system that works from Kathmandu because really, they're much more impressed if you open a fucking jar for them.phone rings JOE SCHMO ANYPLACE USA WIFE STELLA DAUGHTER JOSIE LIKES HAMBURGERS DON'T BRING UP CANCER
I used to be an audiovisual consultant. I got out right as the entire industry was about to die - and it's f'n gone now. Probably 15% of the employment it was at in 2006. But some segments died sooner than others. The high-end home AV universe really took it in the nuts right about the time the iPhone came out... 'cuz if you have a choice between the lights and shades and screens and sounds and speakers are controlled by your wife's iPhone or controlled by a $30k Crestron system that took eighteen hours of programming and a $350 truck roll every time something breaks? Karen's iPhone is your new control system. They had trade magazines, though, and the content slowly shifted from "how to install this widget" and "Spacely makes the best Space Sprockets" to "how to survive an economic downturn." One of the things they kept hammering home was that your employees are your business. If you have to sell trucks, you can buy trucks back. If you need to liquidate some gear, you can buy (and amortize) more gear when it's time to gear back up. But Joe? Who has been with you for five years, knows all your customers, knows all your folklore, is completely trained on everything that you do and handles all of Joe's shit without you thinking about it? Yeah you let Joe go and it'll take five years to replace him. The people we have working for us are unparalleled. They are the cream of the fucking crop. Not only that, they'd walk through fire for my wife. We have their absolute loyalty: every single one of 'em was in a bad way when we started cultivating them, things took a dire turn for the worse for every single one of 'em, and we arrested their falls with goose-down pillows. But I mean, even a Golden Retriever doesn't love you very much when you take them to the vet. And 99% of the time, I'm the guy taking 'em to the vet.
sometimes you're riding tall, queen of your domain, on the lookout for anybody gonna take it from you other times you're grazing, just vibing, waiting for your troubles to get off your back i dunno that metaphor makes sense to me
saturday and sunday dictate the rest of my year. need to get an 80/100 on a mountaineering practical exam and pass a conditioner hike to be accepted into the course I'm hoping to take. stressful, yo. i was nominated for the "most inspirational" and "most grit" awards in my running club so that's fun. 10 year anniversary of the group is next thursday which is nuts to me.
Work is finally looking at adjusting my contract to match the pay with what I actually do. During their massive 'restructure' (mass firing and culling of roles) I was dropped down a level - I fought to keep my salary the same and they agreed, but the lower level meant my pay increase ceiling got much lower and I've now hit that ceiling after only 2 years in the job. So my boss and her boss and his boss have agreed to figure out a way to keep me on board, because if I can't keep making money I bounce. If I bounce, an entire Department goes tits up as well as any others I was supporting in my spare time. When your restructure planned to cull about 100 jobs and you lost nearly double that, things get a little hairy and you suddenly ask even more of your remaining staff than ever before - thankfully, I like being needed. But I also like being paid. Current plan is to reinstate me at the higher level, which should allow for about 3-4 years of pay rises and by then I'll have ideally moved to a higher up job. However, nothing will compensate me enough for being the in-house "tech support" for a bunch of Academics. Some earn around 180k a year for a cushy post-medical role. One used to be a neurosurgeon. Operating on brains with precision and an absurd amount of knowledge crammed into his head; but I got a call from him asking if I knew how to attach a document to an email. Another stormed into my office saying her computer had died - so I went in and pressed the power button. They're good people - just amazes me what they appear to have traded in for the pursuit of academia. Got a collar for our cat - he ventured outside for the first time since we got him! There's a lovely three part photo series of his wander - first he is sitting by the open door, next he's outside looking back through the glass and realizing his safe space is actually in there, the third photo is a blur as he streaks back in to safety. Still, he went outside again soon after and seems to be happy to try his paw as he feels comfortable.
It amazes me how little academics know about computers. And some of that stuff I thought was common knowledge. A post-doc came to ask me yesterday how to connect to the network printer... Google "how to connect to network printer"... I am completely puzzled. For basically every computer-related issue, I am the #1 person to ask. I never say no. I want to help. But sometimes it really makes me wonder how those people manage their day-to-day life. But there is another level of weird. Does something like "programmophobia" exist? Some deeply rooted fear of anything coding/programming? Because I swear, academics (specially in biology and medicine) have a major case of that. The moment my boss was not able to open a file (with 10k rows and 40 columns) in excel, it probably downed on him, he is doomed. Instead of accepting that he has a problem that he needs to fix (learn coding), he directs it to other (like myself). The battle between us started 3 years ago when I started using R to analyse my data. Since then, I have been constantly told that my data analysis is "too complex". I have a few terabytes of firing neurons that I need to make sense of. How the fuck am I supposed to deal with that??? I think anyone in science that is under 50 and cannot code (or is not learning coding) will be jobless in 10 years. No way around this.
So here's the thing. For whatever reason, roughly 80% of any given task can be accomplished without too much advanced knowledge. That probably seems like a gross oversimplification but if you think about your day, how much of it could someone else do with some rudimentary instruction? Now granted: the roughly 1/5th of your day that requires your advanced knowledge and experience will likely tear down all the good the 80% has (and then some). More importantly, you as an expert likely have a sense of where the dividing line is: they won't be able to fly the plane into the ground if you hand the stick over at 30,000 feet but if you go take a leak while you're on approach, there might not be a cockpit to come back to once you've zipped your fly. The people you deal with? Yeah. Nearly all of the stuff they're asking for they can handle. But they don't believe that. More than that, they don't feel familiar enough with the technology to be able to distinguish between the stuff they can screw up and the stuff that ends up as twisted metal. Dollars to donuts every single one of them has a story where they were simply following directions on the Internet and before too long they'd BSOD'd the entire lab. "How to" and "network" often give you results involving "sudo" which gives you dire warnings about passwords and thermonuclear armageddon and frankly? Scaring people who don't have the confidence to hack at root keeps a lot of trees from dying. I find that the more intelligent a person is, the more weight they give to the risks of attacking something they don't understand. And unlike you, they didn't grow up with it - they were peacefully typing on an email and then all of a sudden they need to figure out what Dropbox is. Before too long they're expected to screencast their lectures and have their notes up on Canvas and every year brings yet another digital encumbrance that they're having to integrate into a practice that was working just fine, thank you very much. And really, it's all just an excuse to be laughed at by the people who understand it. You say "learn coding." They hear "learn Hindi." How do you start that? And how do you keep the nose up while you're doing it? Because if you're doing it on work stuff at least you're getting paid, but you're also likely to go Tango Uniform. If you do it in your off hours you now have a thoroughly lame hobby. I think you're right - if you can't code under 50 you're screwed. But I also think that you can make your own life a whole helluva lot easier if your instinct is to sherpa them through the nasty bits. You have a skill they don't and if you can be open and forgiving and friendly about their shortcomings they will come to you for help and it's always great to have a superior that depends on you for the stuff they're too embarrassed to be able to figure out.
I get your point. Showing them (and explaining) how it is done is the better solution for all, but it takes so much more time than doing my 3 clicks, specially on tasks done only once on a machine (like the network printer). Funnily enough, my boss seems to try and get rid of me. Even though I won the coding battle (the whole lab is learning coding now) I seem to be someone he doesnt want to have around too long. There could be many reasons (I am not easy to control) but it still feels weird. When you feel like an asset to the lab but it's not enough to be kept.
I was a SysAdmin at NASA in the 1990's. Best SysAdmin job ever. Geeks everywhere, who WANT TO KNOW why something doesn't work, or how it is supposed to work. I even had lunch one day sitting on a decommissioned one of these:
Calling all well traveled and European Hubskiers! My brothers and I are planning an EU trip in May/June and wondering where to have a layover: Madrid, Barcelona or Rome? We haven’t been to any of them, so it’s a rough call. My main question is between Barcelona and Madrid, where would you choose to experience Spain?
I have only been to Barcelona, around that time too, I loved it!! If you are into architecture, food, or just having a cold beer in a bar talking to strangers, you will love it :) I haven't been to Madrid but friends who have been were amazed. Specially when it came to the local music scene. If you need any more connections, I have some good friends living in Madrid that could show you guys around (I could ask them). And a friend that studied in Barcelona that I could ask for tips too :) I only heard bad things about Rome 😂😂
That's a BIG pull for us. 80% of the reason for our trip is music. I'll keep this my back pocket, in case this becomes our destination. Thank you for offering! That's taking Rome down a few notches (for us then)☠️Specially when it came to the local music scene.
If you need any more connections, I have some good friends living in Madrid that could show you guys around (I could ask them).
I only heard bad things about Rome 😂😂
Out of the 3 cities mentioned, I’ve only been to Barcelona. I was 16ish, with my parents. So I didn’t experience any nightlife but found the city very vibrant. I was sad when we had to leave after only 4 days. Architecture there is top notch, food is great. I just felt a great energy there, the kind where you realize you’re in a big city, that doesn’t really sleep. Rome has a terrible reputation, but so does Paris and people still enjoy their time there. Madrid might be if a more manageable size if you are short on time. And it would be a more « Spanish » experience if that’s what you’re looking for.
I wish I could be in any way helpful, but I've been to Madrid when I was eight (done about as much clubbing back then as I do now) and stopped in Rome for two or three hours to walk around Pomerium on the way to Palermo. Gonna keep monitoring responses of others though.
I am back in Heidelberg and functioning at 120%. No other option left if I want to have a first draft of my thesis by the end of june. I joined hubski just after finishing my masters thesis, time flies. Last saturday, good friends celebrated their double birthday and I made ceremonial grad cacao. This is probably my favorite non-alcoholic drink (next to Khat/Qat juice) for parties. It is stimulating but still nice. Too much of it will fuck up your stomach though! The friends that celebrated are musicians that sing in a 2-person-ban together. They also invited some of our musician friends and we ended up having a 2.5 hour long concert with them alternating. One of our friends is exceptionally talented (probably the best singer/singwriter I know in person). She sang one of her favorites and it was one of those magical moments where everyone in the room is absorbed by the intensity of it. I just found out she has a recorded version of it on bandcamp, give it a listen! :) Apart from that I am worried that my candle will burn out before the end of the tunnel. The longest I was able to sustain this mode of work was 3 months. Back then, I was smoking weed daily to cope. This time I don't smoke, I am single, and I am not allowed to do sports after my ACL surgery... Any suggestions how to balance this out better?
I'm in a bit of an emotional state today. Somehow, this has robbed me of the urge to write a dissertation on it like I normally do. I'm working from home at the moment. I've got good music playing, a massive pot of pour-over, and a comfy flannel. Same work as always, but I'm taking care of this mind today! I solemnly swear not to lose this introspective attitude between lines of code
Ah, I wish I knew it well enough to do it justice! She hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail last summer with our cousin and some of my cousin's friends. At some point in bumfuck Pennsylvania, while looking for a cheap place to lay their heads, they stumbled onto a nudist colony / resort. They're family, so no one elaborated on the nudity except to clear the air about some misconceptions! Apparently nudist colonies are not very sexy, and eventually you just get desensitized to the nudity. Apparently nudists also know how to drink? Like, prolifically. They had a bar on the property, and for some reason or another people kept buying the group drinks. I think the place must've been a cafe during the day, because my sister claims she just walked off with the mug while drunk and found it in her pack the next day! I know my sister, though, and I have to assume she got sticky fingers after all the night's celebrations Ah well, judge not lest ye be judged. And this mug is huge - it's hard to be a concerned older brother when the porcelain is this choice Keeping in mind the spirit of 'judge not lest ye be judged', here's the snapchat I sent to some friends this morning :)
i have an apartment picked out to move into this august with my boyfriend - a friend of mine lives there now and needed roommates so if all goes according to plan i'll be living a very happy domestic life with the mans soon, i'm really excited :) academics remain fine so far, i've been finding my japanese courses especially fun this semester - the pop culture class is interesting (we talked about postmodernist theory a bit last time [distant kermit the frog screaming]) and the professor of the language class reminds me of my nana if she were an academic i've been sick as hell for the last week but i'm getting better even though my cough sounds worse now that it's loose anyway, best wishes to everybody and hopefully the wind stops soon
Next week I'm going to housesit friend's one-bedroom apartment for a few days, and the place is going to be available for rental in two months. Pretty stoked about that. It's affordable (still can't believe that I can say something like that) and since it's on the way from my parents old home I know it's not going to impact my commute. Fingers crossed that the landlords won't demand some balls-out insane collateral for renting to someone my age, but supposedly they're a reasonable couple. My weekend was pretty crazy. Celebrated flatmate's successful MEng defence with a bunch of our friends, wasn't obliterated at Heroes III, derived under influence and still managed to grade my students' physics homework by Sunday. Lastly, I now officially have an adviser. We've been talking and emailing for the last few weeks, and it looks like it's gonna work. He recommended two courses I should take in the upcoming semester, warned that he's pretty hands-off and that we'll probably switch from weekly meetings to twice a month as difficulty ramps up. Cool, I'd take that over some micromanaging freak 15 times out of 10.
I was thinking about how in the not too distant future, we will be able to change our race/ethnicity. After some reflection, I’ve concluded that not only am I ok with it, but that it will likely be a positive development. I don’t think gender purity is a healthy concept, and I feel the same about race and ethnicity. This probably has much to do with my feelings on “cultural appropriation”. Of course, mocking/stereotyping cultures is s shitty thing to do, and if that’s the definition of appropriation, it’s plainly wrong, but if the definition is broad, then anyone that listens to music is a guilty beneficiary.
I’m interested to discuss this more... and to the point of the rest of your comment, I wonder how much this will happen... and what the backlash could/should be.
There seems to be an unspoken rule in Silicon Valley that says you don't have kids or politics. I downloaded my 23andMe data the other day, and have been perusing my SNPs on and off. This has left me feeling that: 1) I'm genetically OK, and 2) SNPs are not very useful in isolation. Combinations are probably far more useful. I think that this is a place where massive computing power and sequence analysis should be coupled with every clinical trial. In fact, I think you could make a pretty kick ass biotech company that just took results and DNA from completed trials, and looked for subgroup effects. As this could revive IP, companies would probably pay for you to take a look. I have a feeling that Klobuchar might surprise in Iowa. Not first or second, but maybe third.