Got an email this morning about registering a tradestone profile as a vendor for Urban Outfitters, it's a bit frustrating that things are happening right before we leave to Asia for 4 months, but we'll figure it out, this is huge :D Speaking of Asia, I'm finally done with my site: http://elizabethtravels.com/ I even filmed a little intro video! I'm not a huge expert on web design and SEO so if any of you has suggestions on improvements, I'll be super happy. Looks like a lot of progress but since I'm out of school, I've been feeling really unproductive. I went and bought a notebook and started reading Getting things Done, hopefully with a system I will somehow make things better :)
I can't tell you how RIGHT your decision is to do this NOW. Travel now. Travel young. Meet people. Participate in other cultures, food, festivals, and events. Your life will be richer and more interesting because it is built upon the sure and confident knowledge that you are a citizen of the world. Whether you choose to live in a penthouse highrise apartment, or a cabin in the woods, for the rest of your life, these experiences you will have on your journey will be a key part of you for ever. And hey... I bet it's not four months... I have a feeling that you might be out there for years. I'll be watching your site. (Which is great, by the way.)
Travel old, too! Nobody is too young or too old to try something new.
Agreed 100%. It's cool that going on a big trip is sort of a rite of passage for young people but I don't think it's accurate to say it's the best time to travel, there is really no best time in my opinion. Traveling is great at all ages and situations and you will inevitably discover and grow :)
There are times in ones life when it is clearly easier to travel than others. Especially if you plan on having children and a full time career. Go have a blast! I'm following your YouTube channel and look forwRd to you posting here on Hubski too.
I suspect each phase has different pros and cons. Pre kids and career? Easier to get away but low funds. Middle of career? Easier to afford a trip but hard to do much more than a week. Retired? Can get away but moving slower overall. My life phase is "career, no kids, single, has cats." I can take short trips pretty easily. More than a week I feel bad about the cats (even with someone checking in), and I stress about leaving work for longer. But a four day weekend and occasional full week? Oh yeah. When I was traveling to see concerts, my friends and I used to joke if there were any amazing concerts announced with short notice, all we needed was about a week's notice and could be anywhere in the US or Canada. The shortest notice I followed through on was 24 hours. I once got a friend to fly from Washington DC to Milwaukee in less than three hours. Being in our late 20s with careers but early in them, with no kids was a fun time.
I love the question mark on your itinerary. That is the way to do it!!
:D I changed my mind on the places i'd like to visit so many times I decided not to commit to an itinerary just yet. Right now, I'm wondering if a visit to Laos is worth it. Not touristy and higher Malaria risk than the neighboring countries but some people did say it was great.
I wound up in Morocco once due to a question mark on my itinerary. Met some people that I got along really well with and that is where they were going, so why not! Always recommend that approach.
If you get orders from UrbanOutfitters, the kids in my high school will probably fund all of your future business endeavors within a holiday weekend.
I quit drinking for a week starting Monday in preparation for a minor medical procedure I'm undergoing this coming Monday. I'd like to be healthy for it, and although I'm not at all convinced drinking has any bearing on my short term health, it is at least good for mental preparation. That said, I currently have what is probably the worst cold I've had in many, many years. Life is cruel. I'm not even getting to enjoy the benefits of waking up feeling fresh. Maybe alcohol was holding back a pent up supply of germs that have been lying in wait in my tissue for years! Anyway the procedure isn't due to illness, and isn't cosmetic, but could have life-altering consequences. I'll write about it when the time is right.
and smoked my cigars too My dog drank all my whiskey and smoked my cigars too I don't know what to do So I cry here with my puppy And sip my Tullamore Dew source hubski archives My dog drank all my whiskey I miss you so much baby
The painting looks awesome. Good luck on the homebrew? What style are you going with off the bat?
Thanks. I am starting with a basic IPA. I want to know how close to the mark I can get, while learning the ropes. My greater plan is to make a beer with adzuki bean, which is often used in Chinese food, especially desserts. Chinese beers are boring, almost all light lagers. My wife is Chinese, and I want to create a beer that has some Chinese character to it. The bean is instantly recognizable, and as it seems to give a red color when fermented, I think it could be a great to have a red Chinese beer. I will probably go with an ale, and first try adding it in the wort boil.
Happy Wednesday! I'm pretty tired. Ever since I got the new guitar and the loop pedal, I end up zoning out for hours, late at night looping guitar tracks and working on building sound scapes etc. It's really, really, really fun. It's awesome to use the guitar in new ways. As an artist that has control issues, the ability to loop yourself over and over is very appealing :) As a side note, meet @War:
Did you check this out? Just released today, a cool quick app for saving musical ideas you come up with on a whim. http://www.apple.com/music-memos/ I thought I read it stores snippets uncompressed. It can export, and it also has the most dead-simple electronic tuner I've seen on an app before. Kinda cool.
My last roommate had a 0retty large collection of pedals and I loved creating a wall of ambient noise then noodling over it. I can't say I ever made anything usable but it was fun.
I toured a nuclear reactor this morning. I think I had a picture of the plants being many many city blocks in size, but this one seemed surprisingly contained. Just one large dome, a few stories, and a core surrounded by layers of concrete. Mind you it was just a research site, but it was about the same size as a water tank back home. Still cool though and it was an interesting way to start the day!
My cat didn't die. I had an appointment to put him to sleep on Monday but he rallied over the weekend. He's eating about 3 table spoons of food a day and drinking a bit of water. I don't think he'll last too long but who knows... The wife was rushing to take him to a vet appointment last week and took a tumble down the stairs. Nothing broken but she is on crutches and is various shades of black and blue. Fuck January. Scares me a bit that February is usually the worst month of the year. That all being said, when I count my blessings things are still looking good. Guy who won a bunch of medal's at the big coffee tasting this year came into cold sell me on his coffee. He saw who I'm carrying and said "I was going to try and sell you my coffee but Joel is one of my main inspirations to start roasting. I know you don't want to change roasters..." We drank coffee and shot the shit for a half hour.
Cgod my parents' (and by virtue, my) older cat is having serious Kidney problems at the moment. Stage 3 of 4 of whatever she has ( I was at work when she had the vet appointment). It feels so weird to have this 16 year relation with her suddenly put in jeopardy - She always seemed immortal and invincible. Thoughts with you.
Last night I went to a local boxing gym with a good friend and we joined a class of 1 other person. It was the best workout I've ever experienced and I came out feeling great. Even better is that this morning I don't feel like I've been run over by a truck! I'm just happy that I was actually able to get to the gym / class without a ton of anxiety and I really feel like I can stick it out. Being active feels good... I think I'll keep it.
Remember kids: never throw away receipts of any kind. Because EVEN THOUGH: - the dishwasher burst into flame - the dishwasher is one of 600,000 being recalled - the cause of flame has been determined to be caused by the recalled part - the recall has been in force 8 years - the recalled dishwashers were manufactured up to 18 years ago - the IRS recommends destroying all receipts after 7 years - the appliance stores only keep records for 1 year - the dishwasher itself was purchased 13 years ago ...Bosch won't move forward without a copy of the fucking receipt. Added bonus fun, this sentence was actually uttered by the "inspector": "Well, it's going to need a new fascia, a new liner and a new control board but since the power connector is melted to the board, I can't send in the control board without cutting the wiring harness and the wiring harness is no longer available so that helps your case." ("But it caught ON FIRE.") "I can only tell you what they tell me, and I'm a repair technician." ("But it BURST INTO FLAME.") "I can see that."
Man at least you have a claim against someone. I just found out that a water leak in my house, that still hasn't been located despite a $400 inspection with an infrared camera, has cost me $600 (for context, I haven't spent $600 on water in the last 9 months combined) in the last two or three weeks. One has to assume that it's under my slab, which itself is covered in a very nice maple floor. All I can see are dollar signs right now. I think I won (lost?) the anti-lotto.
This situation is being complicated by the fact that the leak is in one of my boiler lines, so that my choice is between not having heat (it's 20 degrees atm), and barely having heat but paying $50 a day for the privilege. As of now, I'm opting for the no heat, supplemented with a fire and space heaters. The best part is the conversation I had with my insurance company. Me: I have to tear up my floor and the concrete to fix a leak. How should I go about it so that I make it easiest on both of us? Evil insurance adjuster: Are there visible signs of damage to the house, sir? Me: Not that I can find, but I'm losing 12 gallons of water per hour. I can surmise that it's going somewhere. EIA: Well if there's no damage, then you don't have a claim. Me: But the pipe is damaged. EIA: That's wear and tear. Something has to be damaged as a result of it. If any insulation, for example, is wet, then you have a claim. Me: They don't put insulation under slabs. EIA: If only the soil is damaged, then that would not be a claim. Me: So what if I let the leak go for a year, and a sinkhole opened up and swallowed my house. Would you pay the total loss claim on that? EIA (without a hint of detectable irony): Yes.
This is the sort of situation where perseverance might be beneficial, and where it might be worth reading the fine print of your contract. Talk to your insurance agent, too, not the guys on the claim line. There's a line of robotic if-then statements that drives most insurance and the ability to slap the pinball machine, tilt it and get a human draw again is useful. I'll bet that your insurance agent can figure out the verbiage that your contractor needs to write on the estimate in order to have the claim be valid. I would expect that 300 gallons a day at ten below freezing might substantially contribute to frost heave, which might be extraordinarily detrimental to your foundation... and as the remedy is comprehensive, you might win. For example, yesterday I got a nasty-gram from my health insurance. They want twelve (12!) pieces of documentation related to the time a choad in a limo swatted me across the 405. Which was in 2014, and which I received no injuries from. But I had to explain to them that I'd sustained no injuries, that my medical claim was an urgent-care physical exam to ensure that my instincts that I was unharmed were correct, and that no insurance company had paid a dime on any injury related to the accident including them. They then told me that in order to bypass the 12 pieces of documentation, I had to write a human-parseable letter explaining this fact. So in the end, I got a letter asking for 12 pieces of documentation that I was (hopefully) able to banish with half an hour on hold and a 3 paragraph email. But up until that point, it was kafka-esque.
We have a much-beloved piece of legislation here in NZ called the Consumer Guarantees Act By law, a seller can't require you to produce a receipt (although evidence that you are the purchaser through other means - i.e. bank or credit card statement, can help your case if there is a dispute). They cannot refuse to remedy ANY problem with almost anything sold. It's got to do what it's meant to do ("be fit for purpose", for a reasonable time - often longer than offered warranties), or else the person who sold it has to put it right. It's wonderful. Just mentioning the CGA is often enough to get a retailer to sort it out, because if it goes to court, retailers almost always lose.
Love it. Here, of course, once there's been a recall the manufacturer can't request a receipt at all because date of purchase doesn't matter. If they don't have conclusive proof that they've fixed it already, they're required by law to fix it. Which didn't stop Bosch from being extra-douchey about it but once the magnitude of the issue was rubbed in their face, they got civil.
Feels like I have nothing of interest to say to anyone right now and most of my thoughts come across as too bitter or callous towards anything that people care about and will only result in nonconstructive argument or disappointment on my end. I don't know, in a "falling off the grid" or "how can I reconcile being around all these 'professional' or 'tech' or 'engineers' or what-have-you" when my values and interests and your values and interests aren't the same thing and deep down I just want to mock this entire thing for the absurdity that it is. Sigh.
I think engineering is more stable, but it's a frustrating time to be a techy. We come from the counterculture and academia. We're at our best when we're talking more Whole Earth Catalog/Mondo 2000 than Fast Company/Wired, which means we're at our best when VCs and other business types aren't part of the conversation. HN should never have become the central watering hole, and silicon valley needs to stop being the center of the world.
thenewgreen brought up a similar sentiment during our IRC earlier this week, completely agree with both of you. I went to college with numerous Computer Science, Software Engineer, etc. students who had their eyes set on Silicon Valley and only Silicon Valley. It's...culti-ish and kind of unsettling. This is way more interesting to me. I'm at my best working with other creatives and on a smaller, local level trying to make change or bring something new or at least different to communities. What that looks like depends on too many factors to list.silicon valley needs to stop being the center of the world
We come from the counterculture and academia.
I went for another two runs this week. I'm feeling good and my km splits are improving! Next step I guess is pushing my distance out to 10kms. There's a race coming up in about a month that might be worth entering. I also have been practicing my latte art at work. Making progress, still a long way to go. This is pretty much what most of them are currently looking like. Every now and then I get a really pretty one that I forget to take a photo of. I'm trying to improve consistency and symmetry.
Right there with you. I've been collecting lists of companies I'd be a good fit for that are hiring since the company I've worked for for seven years got bought by a large, management-heavy corporation. Then I remember how much I hate preparing resumes/writing cover letters/interviewing. Last time I went job hunting I got offers from everyone I applied to, I'm not bad at it, I just really hate doing it. Spinning yourself, buying a tie, face hurting from forcing too many smiles, that stupid handshake grip game, putting up with questions like "if you were an animal, what would you be?" from HR drones, getting dragged to lunches that are really tests to see whether you know you're supposed to order whatever the highest-ranking person at the table ordered, pretending to be impressed by the CEO's Vision, pissing contests with the technical interviewer where you have to prove you know your shit but also not make the technical interviewer think you know your shit better than he does, ...
My top worst interview questions were getting asked my 3 weaknesses ( why are you asking me to lie) and getting asked the liquid question from die hard. I procrastinated resume writing all day, I hate that stuff too. Finally sent it out to my friends for review at 1am, now I'll take a second pass at it today. I'm torn on the objective statement, do people do those anymore? I started looking 2 days ago and I have a phone screen w. Google and an informational at valve lined up. Gotta get rejected from the dream jobs fast so I can start applying to the practical ones :)
I'm doing a project involving nursing homes. One of the services nursing homes like to advertise is "escort service." Now, when you're paying $ridiculous to keep granddad in a home, I could see wanting to make sure he's having a good time, but the usual meaning of "escort service" still seemed implausible. it took me forever to find someone who could and would explain what it really meant. They mean that they can have someone escort their residents to doctors' appointments.
First day of classes today. I'm only taking one class this semester, thankfully. After that I'm all done. My one course is entitled, "Economics of Health Policy: Your Money or Your Life".
Laphroaig with one ice cube, barkeep. Yes, I know it's 9:AM. Cheers. After a fitful night of sleep, I gave up on driving in to work today after the first 10 minutes of my commute took 40 minutes. (Top speed: about 10 minutes per mile.) Took a u-turn, dropped my carpool buddy off at home (where she called in "sick" to work), and went to my favorite local coffee shop to try and get a grasp on a day that is rapidly slipping into shittiness.
coffee and Bailey's please, barkeep, no wait, I'll slide over here next to OftenBen and have what he's having. I'm leaving for a roadtrip shortly so keep we'll keep it to one shot. I have a car to rent, a border to cross, and then I have to stand in front of 65 CS undergrads and sound authoritative!
I picked up a fitness watch yesterday. I want to push myself a little harder, and I think monitoring my heart rate will help me understand where I can push harder while giving me the confidence to know it's within my capability. Related, there's a 10K here this weekend, and I think I want to try it. Five to six miles is about the top end of my runs, but that seems perfect for doing the 10K rather than the 5K. I'm not sure how it happened, but I seem to have accidentally become a runner.
Oh shit, pubs open early. Barkeep, coffee with Jameson please. Well, I'm going to my first networking event as a Study Coordinator soon. One of my older cousins runs the 'Young Professionals Group' where she lives and recommended I try it out. The way she explained it to me, these sorts of groups are mostly populated by transplants like me, who left a social network behind when they moved for work post-college. Just from a little poking around the group page for my area it seems like a fun bunch. The event I'm going to is just a mixer at a local (Swanky) bar, but they've also rented out a climbing gym, done some volunteering for the local Humane Society, among other things. I got a 10lb kettlebell this past weekend, did my first real workout with it last night. We'll see if I stick with it, but I felt like I needed some kind of workout beyond yoga and stationary bike cardio. The idea is to start with this small one and learn the motions to work out with it effectively without hurting myself, then once I feel like I'm not going to tear a rotator cuff just looking at the thing, move on up to a more appropriately sized one.
What's it feel like to be part of the coveted demo that is the Young Professional? The thought blows my mind. I don't really know why I chose to rule that out for myself. And that meet-up group sounds like a great way to meet other transplants, let us know how it goes. I love kettlebells. I did the 10,000 Kettlebell Swing Challenge and it was an incredible learning experience. Kettlebells have a pretty high Perceived Rate of Exertion (PRE); kettlebell swings gets the heart pumping and the sweat going and the muscles screaming. I found that I was constantly bargaining with myself in the beginning, it was difficult to even finish a set. But the auxiliary benefit is that if you learn to push yourself with kettlebells, which are the best tool I've found to exercising self-discipline. Running is good for it, too, but I running screws my knees up. But yea, great idea. Start slow and don't injure yourself.
Good I guess? I feel like now I actually am the thing that lots of people said I would eventually be, in some sense. I'm trying to work on being grateful more than being prideful, but I have done some kickass things and deserve to feel good about having done them. I'll certainly report on the venture. I think I'm going to like it too. I especially like the sumo deadlift, can't really say why. Any advice on not hitting yourself in the ass/taint when doing a swing that goes between the legs? I feel like it's just a matter of controlling the rate of descent of the weight, so it doesn't flip up and hit me in the nethers, but the guy doing the demo I watched seemed not to mind getting repeatedly violated by a 40lb bell.
Ooh. Advice? I did a bunch of reading about the KB Swing Challenge in anticipation, and one guy said something that stuck with me: that he only knew how to do a proper KB swing after the challenge, or at least nearer the end. Watching all the videos, or having someone experienced show you, is great guidance. But I thwacked my taint as you call it more than once, and only got the move down pat after thousands of repetition. I would say that it was more my forearms that were making contact with my groin/ass, not the KB itself. So the trick is to have your shoulders and arms fully extended during the KB's swing down. But that's the easier part of the swing. The money maneuver is the hip hinge that is the snap of the swing that sends the kettlebell up either to eye level or directly above your head if you're comfortable. Does that make sense?
I've been in a bit of a slump. My girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks before deciding to move into a place together. Which is about the best time to break up if you're going to break up at all. But it's rough right now and it tints my glasses a color decidedly other than rose. I'm all sad and shit. But I saw this the yesterday, and it has had the most calming effect on me. Dr. King I'm in the middle of making new plans and charting trajectories. Been seriously flirting with the idea to buckle down and make a lot of money, though not sure exactly how. But seeing this releases a lot of tension for me. I still have no idea what it is I'll be doing six months from now. But I'm reminded to not forget what's important.Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'
I used to have time to myself. Used to have at least 30+ hours each week when it was just me, or just me and two cats. Had a major lifestyle change, and now I am never alone. It's gotten down to literally one or two hours/week, the closest semblance is walking by myself in (very) public spaces for perhaps 30 min/day. I didn't realize how much I needed that time. So today I made my first pilgrimage to the library, and found the most private space that I've occupied in weeks. Then I wrote some pretty slick code. Only sleeping 4-6 hours each night. Wish I had the time to hit the gym and then get a proper night's sleep for muscle regeneration, but other things take priority right now. At least I'm eating right, which is almost single-handedly my girlfriend's fault. :)
I wish you could have heard the Kafkaesque conversation I just had with my insurance adjuster. Apparently, they will pay to fix a leak if and only if there is visible damage to your house. So if I have a leak, and there is no damage, I can wait for damage to occur to report the claim, costing both of us more headache and them certainly more money.
I'm on my way to figuring out relationships. Right now, I'm waiting in a mall for a girl with whom I've had rather... difficult relationships with for the past two quarters of a month. "Difficult" in that they haven't been healthy or productive in any way, and yet I'm drawn to her because she's a broken bird with problems that I've went through earlier in my life - and in my nature is to desire helping others, no matter what. It's been a difficult conversation for me to discuss the relationship with myself. On one hand, she can give me attention and even some sort of twisted affection as long as I bend to her wishes and condone her fake smiles - and for a person who grew up experiencing none of those, they're an important factor, emotionally. On the other, this is damaging me, my self-esteem and my belief in future relationships, and I now realize just how important those are to have; how important it is to care for myself, because I'm important to myself. It's been a battle between short-term pleasures and long-term authenticity and... as much as I'd rather not use the cliched word, happiness. I'm still inclined to help her if there's a good reason for us to continue spending time together. I'd like to find out today if we could make good friends, or was the mutual attraction merely the result of weak boundries for both of us. If we couldn't, there's no point in me helping her, either: that way, I'd be spending time with a person who drags me down along with herself, and that, I realize now, is not a good way to go about living. I'm willing to be open, honest and blunt about what I feel: for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm worth it, and I'm not going to give it away to a person who thinks they aren't.
...she woke up with a flu, an hour after we've appointed. Naturally, she couldn't come. I feel partly relieved because I didn't have to go through the hard talks, but... partly, I feel unsatisfied. The moment of truth was about to come, and it vanished with as little as a phone message. I also realized that, no matter how antagonistic towards the girl I might feel, I don't have it in me to not care about her at all while she's sick. Providing a little compassion and wishing her to get better feels like a good thing to do. I'm not going to go out of my way to comfort her - which is new to me, and it's a progress in setting up boundries - but it doesn't mean I have to be a dick to her, either. How peculiar is life: in nothing happening, you can still learn things.
You're right: I shouldn't. It's that I've been stuck with the idea of being not worthy of doing good by myself for so long that makes it so important to me right now to see that I rise above it. Wanted to share it with the Hubski folks for the same reason. Thank you.Best of luck.
Just got an email a couple of days ago from the group I sub'ed with for their Christmas concert in December - They want me back for their next concert. In fact, once I confirmed with them that I would be interested in the next concert, they offered me the rest of the season! So now I have a few nice little gigs lined up over the next few months. Maybe I can turn it into more with other Northern Ontario orchestras.
It's finals week, but the worst was today and it's over now. Except for the work I put off that's due tomorrow. I managed to scrape an A in my writing class by .06%, and it's considered the hardest English class my school offer, which feels pretty damn great, and my teacher wants my term paper as an example for future classes (a little #bragski there). I said I'd share some ideas from the paper once I had it back, so I'll do that soon. I had to make up a Calc test yesterday though, and it dropped me pretty well. If I can keep an A in Physics, my GPA should stay up pretty good for colleges' mid-year check. Apparently, very few important Supreme Court cases get decided in the calendar year that's the same as the term year. So, it's taking me a bit to go through the cases I need to. Probably shouldn't have put this off for a month. And it's one of my best friend's birthday today, so have a drink for him. Went to a pre-finals party this weekend, which was a nice way to relax some. Picked up a seat post and chain for my bike, so I finally got to put something together: saddle on the seat post. Except the seat post might be a size too small. I think it will fix itself once I get a clamp though.
I'm stuck on this problem. I think I've been given some good advice so far, but anything else helps.
So accidentally signed up for an non-fiction class which focuses on writing memoirs. I'm probably going to stay in the class because I like to go with the flow when I stumble on a new, interesting, yet uncomfortable experience. It will definitely be an experience to revisit my memories and try to extract my version of the truth from them. So far my last semester of college is shaping up to be really constructive. I'm beginning to think more and more about the general direction I want to take when I finally get out of school. I've ultimately decided that graduate school is gonna be on hold until I find the drive to pursue a deeper education for the sake of truly wanting to learn more in my respective field. I figure a cool experience might be to work during the primaries, and general election (if Bernie wins, only one I support enough to be able to donate my time). If that doesn't work out I was thinking it might be time to start do some traveling. Things are up in the air, chaotic, and I'm ok with that for now.
+1 for travel. The benefits of experience are huge. Writing memoirs sounds pretty interesting. I'm really interested in learning about other people's stories... I sort of want to get into a position where I can actually sit and write some people's stories, but I can't quite figure out the angle.
Wow, I'm always way too late for these. What a great way to get caught up on everyone's preoccupations!
Buot to head into work. I've been working mostly morning now which I'd awesome. Getting tired at 11pm is kinda crazy for me though.