Missed the Pubski yesterday in favour of a real life pub with ButterflyEffect ! Went to a nice Italian restaurant, then a shady dive bar to finish up with a student bar with greek blues. It was a fun evening, always happy to meet any of you internet weirdos in person :) In other news, I came back from a regional burn in florida about a week ago. Drove down 35 hours with the keg-o-fryers to serve some Poutine to americans with this badass crew: I think our tagline ended up being ¨I drove 35 hours for this?¨I had a blast, probably one of the funnest burns in my life, in big part because our team was just fire. Everything went smooth like (I can't believe it's not) butter, no drama, and showing up with poutine gives you superstar status the whole event. It took 9 burns, but it's like I'm finally getting the hang of it. I've learned so much about interacting with people, leading a team, frying potatoes and just how to be a better person in general. People were efficient, thoughtful and fun. I had some great talks with the camp lead, at the "Lost Island" which made you feel like you are living in a painting. Highlights include caviar in a jacuzzi, doing a little welding, seeing my friend rocking her first ever ranger shift tracking down a prostitution ring, getting bombed down by excessive fireworks like it's Dresden followed by the firefighters putting out the fire - worst burn I've even seen and got genuinely scared for my friend in a wheelchair when the crowd started panicking for a second, improvising an epic party at our camp the last night like it's no big deal ( With the worst cocktail ever: hot sauce, tequila, pickled jalapenos and corona beer. You know how we called it, we all got unwillingly infected) et j'en passe... A weeklong vacation by the beach while there was a massive snow storm in Montreal was definitely the right call, even if my finances are a little fucked now. But I'm back home now, working full steam on a bunch of stuff for free! Setting up the whole ticketing system for our local regional with low income options this year, getting an epic bar camp called MIRAGE started (and we're already in trouble because too many people want to join in on the fun) and working on the local Precious Plastic recycling project. Things are moving fast with the plastic: we are getting contacted by companies left and right. I'm really enjoying meeting people and doing what I guess is called Business Dev. But that also means I need to write a goddam project proposal today and I have no idea how and it's stressing me out a little.
Awesome update! Makes we want some poutine. It’s really great to see you and ButterflyEffect together. Two of my favorite “internet weirdos,” that I’ve never met in person.
I finally seem to be on an antidepressant that works, so that's pretty cool. We just upped the dosage a few days ago, and so far it's been that much more effective. I'm able to get a lot more clarity about what's going on in my head; rather than lifting my mood per se, it's instead making things quieter so that I can just relax more. It's easy for me to get lost in thought in a bad way, and this has helped with that a lot. In other news, I got my newest tattoo finished last week as well. Here is a brief "fly-by" of it on my artist's instagram. The background music is a little loud on my default volume (and instagram doesn't seem to offer a volume control), although most other things in Firefox are too. It's the biggest and most visible one I have, and I'm super happy with how it turned out. Not much else going on right now. I'm trying not to go crackers now that I feel like I can "do" more, and to let things happen more organically. Time management is a big problem for me: I tend to take on too much too quickly, but then lose interest equally fast. I think there's a fight in my head between the logical side and the emotional side, and I've been working on finding more of a balance between the two. Shower thought for the day: a passion is something that becomes more interesting the more I understand it, not less.
Thanks! I'm definitely happy with it. I remember that there was someone on here talking about moving to Richmond, but that was awhile ago. Was that you? Is that still on the horizon?
That was me! Currently, I am either moving to Richmond or to TX. I applied for a job that would pay to move me to TX. It’s kind of funny how much can change with a single action. I won’t know about the TX job for probably a month so til then, my future is in limbo! :)
Gotcha. Well, it'd be cool to have another hubskier in the RVA, but you gotta do what makes the most sense for you!
Thanks! I'm really happy with how it turned out. I definitely recommend perusing the artist's instagram, as there's a lot of great stuff in there.
Yes! Still a bank. Trying NOT to talk all about it as I am only in very early stages. A recruiter reached out to me. It would require relocation, but the job would pay for it. This was appealing to me as I plan on relocating to my current work headquarters when my lease is up anyway, except my current work is not paying for it. I thought, why not move somewhere totally cool and different, and get someone else to pay for it? (There’s also a fair amount of instability at work these days driven by some recent re-orgs. No significant layoffs but a number of people leaving that indicated a lack of confident in our new direction.)
I print a lot of stuff. I'm still using my HP Laserjet 1012 (discontinued in 2006, compatible with Windows 98). Even with my fabulous new eyes (!!!) I often find it easier to read on paper. And I have huge stacks of one-side-good paper. Weirdly, what just came up in my one-side-good paper pile is thenewgreen's résumé from 2015. I guess we were editing it. Very fun to come across this. and very fun to see elizabeth's post below with a pic of ButterflyEffect. Always great to see my friends as real people. I've been a hubskier for 8.5 years. Hubski has been around for about 9 years. I'm quietly planning our tenth birthday party. mk is there an exact date?
I guess the anniversary date would be from this post, right mk? As of posting this, 10 years is only 286 days away. Or Wednesday, Dec 2nd 2020 Also, how random that my resume popped up? I’d love to see that thing. So much has happened. I can’t imagine ever needed a resume again. If I do, something has gone horribly wrong. I can’t wait for that 10 year party. I’m 100% in
December 2 is not that far off. Is there a barn or stable or manger where hubski was first born. A basement? A lab where mk was tinkering. Perhaps the 10th anniversary party should be in a pub near there. Let's make it for the weekend. I can drive down to Michigan. Unless Trump was re-elected. Let's agree to have the 10th anniversary party in Canada -- Windsor or Sarnia -- if Trump is re-elected. Or for that matter, my house, but it's a bit further.
Good morning hubski! Things have been kind of dark lately, but this weekend I attempted this "talking about your feelings" thing a little bit and now I feel better? Wild. I am itching for the weather to get a bit warmer so I can start on some car projects. Unfortunately the ground leading to my semi-heated garage is saturated with water, so all the stuff I do has to be done outside or in an uninsulated barn with a gravel floor which is about as much fun as it sounds. The survey paper updates progress, but slowly. My advisor submitted another journal paper I've been working on, so hopefully that will get reviewed quickly and not need much in the way of revisions. I'm still waiting to hear if a conference paper we submitted is going to get accepted but I have pretty high hopes for that one. I'm still not entirely sure on the etiquette for posting preprints — am I supposed to wait until it gets accepted/I send in the final revisions or is posting earlier better? Either way I would like to see more stuff end up in preprint servers as I can't see a downside to more widely distributing your work!
I donated $20 to Elizabeth Warren's campaign today. Or tried to. ActBlue charged me 3 times. Would like to get it fixed, but I won't be too upset if they refuse. Also donated $10 to Bernie. I still have a 2016 campaign poster of his kicking around somewhere.
My daughter has expanded her cinematic horizons beyond four Miyazaki films. Due to her current reading material, Harry Potter has become fascinating. Thus there is a lot of effort to internalize the mechanics of Harry Potter, why things are the way they are, the reasons for stuff happening, etc. Yesterday my daughter asked me if my parents were like the Dursleys and if her aunt was like Dudley. I deflected and said that the Dursleys were actively mean to Harry Potter, while my parents weren't actively mean to me and that yeah, things weren't great but my parents did the best they could. I talked to my wife about it later; she argued that from all my stories, my parents were the Dursleys and she thought I was giving them entirely too much credit. While there's no obvious substance abuse problem amongst the Dursleys she figured that yeah, actually, they were a pretty apt model for a 7-year-old to incorporate into her cosmology. We're at a ski lodge in Alaska. there was supposed to be a conference tomorrow through Sunday. it got cancelled last Monday so we said "screw it" and are spending a week at a ski lodge. I texted my physical therapist "I want you to imagine the hilarity of my physique attempting downhill skiing" and she texted back "I know I shouldn't, but I can't stop laughing." Every atrophied muscle I've neglected for 45 years because of my fucked up gait forms the basis of "skiing." It could be worse - I've been doing yoga for two years and physical therapy for like a year and a half - but when "slowing down" and "stopping" require you to point your toes inward, and the rest angle between your feet is 50 degrees, there's some contortion necessary in order to reach normal human baseline. Even when I'm doing my best "I'm twisting my leg so that my toes are forward" walk I'm still duck-footed a good 20 degrees. So I'm processing some resentment right now. My leg has always pointed that way and nobody ever did a thing about it. I didn't so much as get a checkup from 4 to 12 or so. They pulled me aside for scoliosis screening in 5th grade and sent a note home informing my parents that I desperately needed a workup and nothing ever happened. But then, as my wife pointed out, they dealt with my 2nd grade trichotillomania by threatening to murder me if I ever pulled my hair again so my untreated 50 degree leg is par for the course. But then, my wife also pointed out that statistically I should be dead. I should have a substance abuse disorder and a criminal record at minimum. Every now and then I'm reminded that I'm a survivor, I've exceeded beyond the wildest expectations of everyone except myself and that I should maybe beat myself up less. I'ma call my insurance and say "my leg is bent fifty fucking degrees and it's time to fix it. What order to I need to tick the boxes to make you fuckers pay for it." 'cuz I can tell skiing would be fun if I had the kinematics for it, I'll be better able to run if I can bump out of "halfway between broken and fixed" and fucking hell I shouldn't feel goddamn guilty for going on a vacation 'cuz this is my fourth in twenty fucking years NORMAL PEOPLE DO THIS SHIT.
Final few days of work before my 4+ weeks of joyous uninterrupted holiday begins. Noticed for perhaps the first time in forever that I didn't even have the time to read Hubski the past few days, so that's telling. Mostly working my ass off to make sure nothing goes wrong while I'm away, both at work and during our trips. I'm the kind of person who sends out longass emails with relevant info and who has pages of travel notes in a shared GDocs with my gf. People underestimate what miracles good planning can do, though, so I'm not regretting my choices, just wishing I had more hours in a day.
Mornin', y'all :) I'm wrapping things up at my second job and getting ready to go full-time at my first. All I need to do now is upgrade 8 PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10. What a great parting gift, right? It honestly is bittersweet leaving, mostly because I can tell how much they really need me at the second job. IT skills are rare in the humanities, and they'll have trouble finding a decent replacement. This is, of course, nice for my ego, but then pesky little empathy gets in the way. Ah well. In more exciting news, I booked a flight to New York!!! Will be coming in on March 31, hanging out in the city for a minute, and then staying for a week with izzy417, whom I have not seen in far too long. Can't wait to spend time with my best friend. Maybe we'll record an EP or a podcast ( #pretentiousopinionsabout?) or something :) New England Hubskiers--anybody up for an intercontinental spring meetup?
I want nothing more than to see Bloomberg get absolutely fucking bodied out there. The guy deserves to get annihilated, eviscerated, gutted, vivisected. Put his oily biomechanical heart up on the pulpit with 'WE STOP WHITES FAR TOO OFTEN AND MINORITIES FAR TOO LITTLE' writ large above it. Force-feed him his own detestable ideology until he fucking suffocates from the weight of his ideological gluttony. Borrowing this command from the interminable legacy of stone-cold killer Giles Corey, "MORE WEIGHT." We already had one racist billionaire buy an election, ffs.
annoucing it right now i will be there tonight for a hatewatch chat
I was saying to my wife yesterday that Bloomberg is probably Boomer racist. It's that old fashion racism that isn't racism in your mind because you don't use racist slurs. My grandpa tossed racist slurs around casually, and his kids made real progress by not doing the same. However, racism is not simply a choice, it is an understanding that changes your thinking. I don't think that all of my grandfather's kids have succeeded in that understanding. I suspect that Bloomberg is racist in that manner. There's also some evidence to suggest that he is a misogynist too. I also hope that he performs poorly. TBH Sanders not releasing his full medical records is BS. He promised to do so, and he had a heart attack. It's quite possible he has CHF. Everyone would demand the same of an opposition candidate.