The kid was sick from Friday before last to last friday. Saturday she had a swim meet. Sunday she had company. Tuesday we got a notice that there's COVID in the classroom. Today she's vomiting all day (but passed a COVID test this morning, at least). Me? I was sick from last Monday to this Monday so I'm stoked for whatever the vomits are from.

Soundminer now comes with a sampler with eight voices, a quad voice mixer, a surround panning engine per voice, granular synthesis per voice and a global FX rack. I literally built up a 5.1 cloud of swirling zombies in two minutes. Fed an Atari into it and transcended into eight bit valhalla.

I thought I was mixing this movie for free. No, I'm mixing it for producer points so only probably mixing it for free. Fortunately, I'm extremely good at my job, it's actually a good movie once you peel away the poo, and I have the tools to make swirling clouds of zombies. Who knows, I might get paid.

I don't even remember what I was looking for but I stumbled across a phat stack of horological wheeling hobs for a pittance so I went through the "what sizes do you have" through "I wonder what sizes i need" through "I wonder if I have any random books that talk about how to calculate modulus from leaf count and diameter" through "when did I buy Malcolm Wild's Clock Wheel & Pinion Cutting" through "how the hell am I going to measure that accurately" through "oh yeah I have an Olympus microscope with a Mitutoyo stage and a metrology camera and software package" to "huh these are mostly pocket watch and carriage clock wheels but they're such a screaming bargain I should buy them anyway" in about 45 minutes and you're just finding out that in horology, it's not gears and teeth, it's wheels and leaves.

Then the guy who taught me watchmaking called me up to ask for advice about learning CNC for an hour.

This week I realized that my fundamental outlook on life, as taught me by my parents, is "no one actually wants to talk to you." I found myself actually noting, for the first time in five decades, that I fundamentally assume anyone making conversation must have an ulterior motive... rather than simply acting on that assumption.

Called my dad for his birthday two weeks ago. Relayed how my daughter's chess timer broke for stupid reasons, and how I had it apart, had a component designed, had it printed and had the thing back together better than new in under an hour. His response? "Yeah, I never thought you'd be any good mechanically but I guess you're a halfway-decent repairman."

Intellectually? I know the man has spent the past five years playing FREECELL. I have left him utterly in the dust from a tinkerin' standpoint. Emotionally? The ability to measure and calculate the modulus of a Seiko 7009 keyless works wheel from -go- in 20 minutes is, by definition, not worth doing anyway.

fucks off to construct parakeet tornadoes