I guess I'm having a great time with this semi-quarantine thing. I'm super productive, did a ton of stuff around the house, washed the cars, cleaned, been creative, made bread, lots of home cooking, and I have zero work anxiety right now

Awww yesss. I'm ready for you this time, craftski.

Finally got around to finishing that Metal Earth bass model. It's super nifty. I would totally do another.

I've been doing lots of music stuff too.

A couple friends and I started recording things in the garage when the band isn't practicing in it. We came up with one track which I think is actually kinda cool. We have a couple of branches going on for the arrangement of parts, but this is the one I've been working on, which adds in sound clips from The Brain That Wouldn't Die and other stuff:

I dusted off an old scratchy 4-track tape loop I had recorded years ago and did something with it. There's not much going on, just layers coming and going, but I kinda like it:

I also started playing a lot of guitar and throwing down ideas with them. My playing style non-deliberately tends to be kinda southern metal, so I really leaned into it this time. I came up with 4 or 5 demo songs, the best of which is this:

Then there's a #breadwatch I need to post too.

I've made loaves like that before. There's an almost artistic juxtaposition between the hole in the loaf and the cutting board in the last pic.

"work"

I think I'll tidy it up some today.

Naan seems like a hard one. Never tried it myself. I've always been under the impression that if you don't have the crazy heat of a tandoori oven, you're gonna get a wonky imitation of naan.

I went out to get flour and there was none. TP-hoarding flour-miser bastards got it.

For sure I’m gonna be making some bread with the extended time off that is coming up.

I actually thought the article was going to take a slightly different path once she mentioned foreign languages. Like, this is the literal corporate Newspeak.

If you're Adam Neumann, you can't tell people you go around buying up real estate and squandering venture capital for your own lifestyle, having no clue how to make a viable business. You can't tell that narrative to your employees. You can't even tell that narrative to yourself.

So instead you use the subtle powers of language to alter the reality around you. You're not a fraud, you're

a community company committed to maximum global impact. Our mission is to elevate the world’s consciousness. We have built a worldwide platform that supports growth, shared experiences and true success.

And when you see a company plastering that language everywhere, you should be afraid.

Nuggets I can generally go without, but I'd probably pick up some of those dinosaur veg nugs to try. I know for the substitute meats, chicken seems a bit more advanced than some of the other ones. I also heard there's a place nearby that does a really good non-chicken sandwich. I'll have to try it.

Do they really? As a kinda-not-really vegetarian, fried chicken is my achilles heel. I am intrigued.

For sure, my interest in modding isn't a practical pursuit. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be driving this car until it falls apart, and it's pretty cool, so I've been a lot more keen on doing something to it. I don't think I'll go too crazy though, but I've been watching a lot of exhaust mod engine note videos the last couple days.

It's nice and rainy here. At least it was yesterday.

I've been browsing potential obnoxious mods for my GTI. Headlights? Spoiler extender? Not sure what I'll do. All that stuff is pretty ridiculously expensive.

Edit: oh yeah, almost forgot there's a video for an old song up on the ol' youtube:

That's the way to go for sure, I just need to figure out the logistics of it.

I'm worn out. Work has kinda settled into the normal flow of things, and the normal flow of things is a bit like a burst pipe. Every day is filled with tasks that are of the better get this done today or this whole project gets bumped back a week sort. I get all these professors and students that bring me big projects to do and are like "yeah, we're hoping to submit that data on a grant this month". Things would be a lot better if I had some help, but as it is I am running a core facility solo, which is basically unheard of for my area. I'm spending like 70% of my time on benchwork, 25% on instrument maintenance, troubleshooting and runs, and the last 5% is divided between whatever else I'm supposed to be doing. Ideally, 30% of my time should be consultation and data analysis.

For now, I'm gonna have to plan a way to get a volunteer in here. That's how I got started on this field myself, but I'll need to invest all of that remaining 5% time into finding and training someone. I seem to remember outlasting a dozen or so peers when I was a volunteer, so that will be a thing.

It sure is. They're pretty neat kits. The tabs that will be a bit tricky are the ones that come straight out of the face of the body. You can see them flattened 90 degrees onto the body surface in the picture.

I have this model bass that I got as a Christmas present which I've been sloooowly working on, and I never remember to take a picture. For reference:

The body is mostly done on mine. It's not all that complex or big, but it's a bit tricky to make given how small it is. I can't find my needle-nose pliers so I've been using tweezers.