Update on my brother and family: I managed to talk with him for a few minutes. It was rather disturbing. He rarely showed any strong emotions, rarely changes voice intonation for that matter, but it was like talking to a Vulcan. No reactions, no wit, no humour. Just this unnerving intellect that tries as it can to not be confused and fails. While understandable in his condition, I can't keep myself from thinking that I'm talking to a completely different person. Practically no eyeball movement as if he was blind. He isn't, but in his own words "it takes too much effort to recognise what I'm seeing". I don't know what happened. I know that due to brain damage people can stop recognising shapes, faces, writing or stereoscopic vision. I had no idea that mind can make you effectively blind by losing this innate ability to quickly analyse what you see, that thing that still puts us above supercomputers. I hope that's not permanent, but with my mother being evasive to my questions I have that much more doubts and concerns. Truth be told, state of my mother is just as concerning. She looks like she lost ten kilograms and hadn't got a good night sleep in weeks. I can't even being to imagine how it must feel to be a doctor with that level of attachment. Knowing her, she probably can already recite from memory every single textbook on oncology that keep on being added to the bookshelf that I can see in the background during our Skype talks. According to my father it's even worse than when my brother and I caught rubella over a decade ago. All of that amazing experience as a doctor disappeared. I don't remember the event in detail, but I recall her perceiving everything as another problem or symptom. I would not be surprised if she could convince herself that we somehow caught Dengue Fever. It's silly and I know that it comes from her caring for us, but I can't help myself from smirking when I recall her commendations for help with prevention and management during actual pandemics. Anyway, I ramble but I hope you guys/gals get what I try to say. Returning to my brother, I know that his chemotherapy started, although I don't know anything specific. Update on me: I got some nasty flu, made me barely lucid for last few days. It's the second time I got sick this year, before that the last time I got ill was nearly a decade ago. I guess that's normal as before I wasn't surrounded by hundreds of people in the dorm, but it sucks regardless. I'm mainly reading my research assignment material and try to keep up with my homework. But on top of that, I'm tired.
Thanks for the update, Devac. Good health is the starting point for all our dreams and desires. When it goes from one or all of our loved ones, we feel it in the pit of our being. The sad/worry never quite leaves no matter how we try to get on with our own lives. Best wishes to you.
I'm answering to you, lil, but it's also in response to veen's and goobster's posts. Honestly it applies just as much to jadedog, kantos, rob05c, wasoxygen and kleinbl00 all the same. I hope I hadn't forget anyone with whom I had any related correspondence. Just knowing that there are people who are willing to listen and sympathise is more help that I can say with words. Having the likes of you around is enough of a support to not feel alone, and that's a major factor. Having people sparing a moment to think of it. There is no way I could thank you enough. I wish that I will never need to, but I hope to be there for you just as you are for me and my brother if need be.
Sadly I know how unnerving and disturbing it can be to see only the shell of a loved one. I think it's so upsetting because you're so close to them in the family sense, yet so far away from the person you knew. Take care of yourself and get some sleep, the homework can probably wait.
I have nothing substantive to say. I read your stories and empathize with your position and feelings. And I wish all the best for your brother's speedy recovery. But what you are experiencing... I have no map for. I have no tools to loan you in this journey. You and your family are in my thoughts.
Good morning pubski. It's Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar and those inclined towards hunger, self-reflection, and repentance have until sundown. Religious observances offer the possibility of transcendence, community, and connection to the Great Oneness to whom prayerful people pray. mivasairski says that humans have real indescribable experiences of transporting awe; religions and rituals were created to help people understand and replicate those experiences. However, he says, if you learn to feel awe, wonder, gratefulness and oneness with all of creation, you no longer need the weight of religion. I do like rituals. There might be fasting.
I like rituals too. I grew up going to catholic mass. As an adult, people have invited me to their "rock and roll" born again churches, thinking I would love it cause they have a "drum set" and a fog machine. -nope. Give me a pipe organ and a choir. I like keeping my rock and roll and my Jesus separate. I dig the ritual of a catholic mass. I'm not catholic, I don't go to church, but if I did go to church, I would want it to be steeped in tradition.
I'm the same! My grandmother used to sneak me off to midnight mass on Christmas Eve (my mother - her daughter - is a staunch atheist) and it was magical to me. Partly this was due, presumably, to the feeling of illicitness, but also all that gold and pomp and ceremony and incense and chiaroscuro and Latin. I'm working on a VR movie at the moment, and it's hard to create such an immersive experience. The Vatican is really onto something...
I have very vivid dreams. Last night I dreamed I was the middle sister of 3 witches. You can think like "Hocus Pocus," but less caricature. Kind of like if "Practical Magic" and "Hocus Pocus" combined. Anyway, there were 3 of us, the other 2 lived in a house across the street from me, and I had my own. The goal of the movie (because it was a movie, even though sometimes I identified with the middle character) was that all 3 witches had to get married by (obscure timeline). The movie was a comedy. I woke up this morning and tried to find this movie to no avail. It is disappointing. The movie was pretty funny, and if it were real, I would totally watch it.
Your dream sounds much more interesting than one I had recently. I dreamt I overheard a conversation about the sweetness of scones.
I was half asleep in the shower and daydreamt the best invention that oh-my-goodness-we-need-it-now, it was seriously the best invention in the world... and I cannot remember the faintest detail about it. The takeaway from that is, something doesn't have to be real to give you real joy and pride. But it does if you want the real money and real nobel prize.
Being dehydrated sucks. Met with the nutritionist on Friday. It looks like my goals for further weight loss and blood chemistry management are viable. She's skeptical of my ability to maintain a 500 kCal deficit, but I've done it before. Evidently I need to eat more nuts though, because reasons. I have a group chat going with some long-time friends in the HCM community, and they continue to be my best coping resource. It's not a perfect solution, because all of them were diagnosed and developed disease as adults, but it does help.
Some more progress on the most recent painting. tng and I are off to SF tomorrow for two nights, meetings and stuff for Forever Labs. Next weekend, I am back in LA for someone's wedding. Life is a busy rollercoaster atm. FYI we know that Hubski is slow, particularly for users with a lot of data. This will be remedied.
And here I thought Hubski was just a bit more thoughtful than usual. I like the painting, although I would have preferred a darker/more saturated blue sky to balance it out a bit more.FYI we know that Hubski is slow, particularly for users with a lot of data. This will be remedied.
SQL transfer is almost complete, but what happened here is that calling on the data that migrated to SQL rather than what was in memory revealed inefficiencies where I had taken advantage of reading from memory. I think there may be some more low-hanging fruit in that regard.
Thanks. That much is coming to the sky. The whole painting is a bit flat atm. I actually started to darken up the sky, but the process I am using requires some drying in between application.I like the painting, although I would have preferred a darker/more saturated blue sky to balance it out a bit more.
This ended up being huge, but it felt good to write and like a waste to throw away. The TL;DR is that I turned 21, went to a wedding. Met a girl there and I'm not sure why she's still on my mind. ----- I turned 21 this past weekend. It happened to line up with the day before one of our close family friend's wedding, which is actually a pretty convenient time for me since everyone was already in the spirit of buying drinks (+ I'm not really huge on having a day of people focusing on me, so having something bigger going on while still getting acknowledged was the right amount of attention). I got really political the first night, and kinda wish I didn't. I drunkenly parodied the alt-right to one of the grooms' dad who is a serious Trump supporter, and got taken seriously. I was a bit drunk at that point and realized I was being a bit of a dick. If he found out I was mocking those views, I thought it would be hurtful so I kept up the charade for the rest of the weekend around him. We later went out to this club, The Library, it was pretty nice. People kept buying me shots and I kept taking them. At some point an older (not old, just the age I think of as an "Adult" - 40-50?) person egged me on with different topics. This time I took stances I actually hold which I don't think was welcome in that crowd. It ended when he grabbed both of my shoulders dragged me in and screamed into my face "YOU'RE WRONG." We bought each other a beer the next day and pretended like nothing happened, so I think things are fine. The wedding was the next day at the TCU chapel. The other groom's parents refused to attend. Seeing the our friends' family as they walked their son down the aisle while immediately followed by their now son in law being escorted by his aunt and uncle induced some pretty complex emotions in me. First sadness at the thought of the parents' abandonment of their relationship, then anger over the same thing, then anger over their taking away from the moment, then back to happiness in seeing that he IS loved, just by other people than his parents. Finally the reception. Way better when you can actually drink. Hit it off with a girl a couple months younger than me. Snuck her drinks from the bar which she seemed to appreciate (her mom didn't seem thrilled with it when she saw her drinking though, felt a little conflicted about that). We talked all night through the reception. We both like alternative music, which I guess was a big deal to her because no one else in Nebraska does. I asked her to dance and was secretly relieved when she said "when they stop playing bad music" since I don't really like dancing in a crowd to pop music and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do when we got to the floor. She later grabbed my hand and walked me over to where people were smoking cigars (allegedly Cuban). Someone handed me a cigar and all I could focus on was how wet the tip was. I took a couple puffs, made up something about how bold and great the flavor is and handed it back. Stood there for a bit and talked about life & how great people are. The same girl grabbed my hand again after a bit, and took me to the dance floor - I guess the music was okay now. We're dancing to wedding reception music and I'm doing okay. Not good, but acceptable. I have really long limbs and I'm just never sure what to do with them while I dance. Then a dance circle opens up. I'm again led over, and eventually in - which is not exactly the place I want to be. I freeze up a bit and then back out and I'm cringing writing this. I'm sure it wasn't that bad in reality. I should just learn how to dance and then none of this would be an issue. The girl's mom was with her for the rest of the night after this, I think she finally put her foot down about her daughter drinking (which is fine, not a judgement - just made me feel like I shouldn't be around). Around this time we saw the grooms off and everyone went to a piano bar, and then back to the club from the night before. I stayed back, exhausted and about as drunk as I wanted to be. The girl and I didn't trade numbers, but she did ask for my Snapchat & I added her back which is almost the same thing (it's not). I don't think I'll reach out, not sure anything further is what I want. The real question for me is, why is she still on my mind? I've had girlfriends & actual relationships I haven't felt the need to write about, yet this girl and that experience is still on my mind, even though nothing actually happened. This turned into a mountain and if you read this whole thing, you're awesome, and if you didn't, no judgements. I know I'd probably skim over it.
This was an enjoyable read. Have fun being self-conscious about everything you put on your snap story from now on =-)
You guys wake up too early. I have been getting work done at a rate that is uncomfortable for me. I finished off my midterm and went "I'm...doing things? Early? Multiple things, all done long before the due-date?" Naturally, this means something terrible is going to happen pretty soon, most likely. Being more serious, part of this is probably because my roommate is cool and I actively want to hang out with him so I do work early to make time for it. I walked into the apartment last week and saw that he had vacuumed without me having to ask. I almost fell to my knees and cried. Here are my best inktobers this week: 
I've been up since 5am. It's convenient because then I don't have to deal with my roommate. He's filthy. He threw a party and left beer bottles on the counter for four days. The dishes sat in the sink while I was in Seattle. He did them before he went to work yesterday. I came home to find them drying in the strainer. Here's a coffee cup after he's cleaned it. He has dandruff. The couch (which he broke) is brown velour. I sweep it every day. Here's what I came home to yesterday. I just bought tickets home this weekend so I don't have to be in the same place and time as he is. It's worth the extra $200 to not deal with his slovenly, oblivious ass.
My roommate weighs 350 lbs. He eats a lot of burger king. 'sokay though 'cuz he eats zero calorie salad dressing. But his business takes a while and he's got his phone so he'll be on the can for 45 minutes to an hour. And then he gets up and his ass is numb and his leg is asleep so he stumbles. And that's why the toilet is broken off the flange. It leaks. Onto the floor. And that's why the towel bar is broken off the wall. And that's why the couch is broken. And that's why the end tables are broken. He went on vacation during the summer. My other roommate literally threw away his sheets and pillows and bought replacements. They were beyond laundry.
I didn't pick this guy. He's an acquaintance of my actual roommate, who is in NM filming something for Netflix until Dec 17. My buddy rides herd on the slob and gives him grief about it, but has never seen how bad it is when he's gone. So either I can scold the shit out of a 27 year old grown-ass man or I can passive-aggressively take photos of the damage and book flights.
Oh, the joys of roommates. Have I mentioned when the lease is up, I'm moving in with the girl? 'Gratz, hubski, you're the first people I've told. Is it scary? Yes. Is it also, to my mind, the best possible housing choice I could make? Hella yes. cc: lil
This week's lesson: when you're stuck, change it up. I've felt increasingly frustrated about my place lately. It was a culmination of things: housemates that don't clean anything, heating that sporadically works, showers that can't last more than a few minute, no AC, little to no proper ventilation... Enough to make me look for other places. But I had a hard time finding something significantly better for a similar price. I thought about it some more and realized that I wanted change more than I wanted to move. So I moved things around my place, tailoring it to how I use it most. I fixed my audio setup, mended my bed, did some cable management and created some new shelf space. I changed what I could, the rest I should just accept. In other news, my bike's gears are completely worn out. Chain fell of two times in three days. The bike shop is fixing it for me as I write this. €50 in new parts, damn.
Folks, it has been quite the week. New Homes I am now officially living in Chicago! The house/area I am staying in are beautiful and near a bunch of interesting stuff. Not particularly missing CT, but I do miss my family a bit. I have a roommate! Her name is Kippy, and I am more than a little allergic to her. She sleeps in my closet. Music Things I finally, finally, FINALLY finished mixing my friends' album. I'll post it here once they release it, I am pretty happy with how most of it turned out. It's pretty complex "math-funk" (their term, not mine), and the guitarist is, uh, terrible. I ended up re-doing the majority of her guitar recordings. It is a huge weight off my shoulders, and I can actually focus on mixing my own stuff now. General life I'm applying for a job this Friday at a restaurant in Wicker Park, and going to start whoring myself out for music gigs after that.
Anybody want to buy any art? I fucked up again and probably lost my job. Donate to the tacocat cigarette and car insurance fund and receive a gift. I do commissions sometimes too.
I'm back to square one - in that I don't want to write anything because I think people don't give a crap about me. The reason for this, as they usually are for young men, is girls. I'll be fine. At least I'm figuring out exactly what I'm looking for and the person I want to be. Missing the clues is easy when you want to be loved more than you want to be yourself.
Is there any Hubski consensus on phones? I've been using iPhones for all but two weeks where I had a Samsung Galaxy Nexus that I loathed. I went back to iPhone. I'm currently using my four year old iPhone 5. The battery is waning but manageable. But every time Apple changes something, I can't help but feel it made my experience worse. Is it any better on Android? I know lots of people like Android, but I can't help but feel they're just managing like I am on iOS. My current, primary complaint is my phone seems to forget my music playlist. Like, as the phone runs low on memory, it dumps the playlist to free up space. Then I go to music and hit play, and something different pops up. I like listening to full albums. I like resuming where I was. Are there any good options out there for someone who wants basic functions to be flawless before adding advanced functions? I've had to correct at least a half dozen bad autocorrects while typing this. "Be" became "Ben." "Can't" became "can tell." These things don't feel like getting old and resisting change. They feel like genuine flaws. Am I off base?
We just switched my wife over to Android. I've been on Android for two years now. iOS, OS X, Android and Linux are all versions of Unix. It's the shell that changes. Android is closer, in my opinion, to OS X than it is to iOS. It also takes a lot of configuration to get happy. NOT running a cell carrier's bullshit ROM helps a bunch - garden variety Android, or Cyanogen, or any of the cleansed/purged ROMS are a radically better experience. The Play Store will still be a wretched den of scum and villainy and the Emojis will still suck, but it's manageable. Swiftkey is radically better for autocorrect and predictive behavior than the iOS keyboard. Even the stock Android keyboard is better now. For music I currently use Google Music. That will probably change to Plex once I switch to Fi because Fi will hit me for bandwidth, but we'll see. I can't really complain about Google Music, especially since I'm not paying for it. I have 200GB of music and it's all semi-instantly accessible. I've been running a OnePlus One for two and a half years now. In a few weeks I'll be on a Pixel. I don't like paying the price but having run jailbroken Oxygen for two years I'm ready for some updates and compatibility. Adblock is nice but...
Excellent reply, thank you. This and the replies that followed will give me things to research further.
A friend of mine just switched his 5 out for an SE and is quite content with it, so there's that option, although it seems like it might become the last compact phone Apple will ever make. The big advantage to Android is that you can change most of what you see, with the downside that you won't always get the latest features unless you're in the Google phone branch. I think of all Android phones, Samsung has the most refined OS. It might be a good idea to just go into a store and try the S7 out. If you want to look into a wide range of devices, I highly recommend MKBHD's reviews, they're always on point. I've bought my three latest phones and a bunch of other tech mostly based on his reviews.
I decided to switch to Pixel too, but I'm currently on a verizon plan (Mom works for Verizon, so bills are violently cheaper). I heard some obvious negatives about buying through verizon, but it is significantly cheaper that way(For me at least). I'm still looking forward to what google produces with this line of phones though.
I have a Nexus 6 and Google Fi. Pay for the phone up front, then I'm averaging 25-30 bux a month, and no overage charges. If you use more than the 2GB of data (and with the way they connect to wifi I doubt you ever will) its 20 more a month. They refund you based on how much of that initial 2GB you use. The piggy back off of TMobile and ATT, so if those signals are poor in your city, keep that in mind. The good news about that is that the way Fi works, if there is an open WiFi hotspot, the phone connects and creates a VPN tunnel that acts as your cell tower. The phone is big, but I use it less for a phone and more for data anyway, and I have giant hands so the phone feels more 'normal' sized for me. The Pixel phones look decent in the reviews I've watched so far.
Hey Pubs. I'm wearing my new Laphroaig rugby shirt, so pour me a Quarter Cask and put a single rock in it. Work Totally kicking ass. Way too complex of a situation to explain, but had an "impossible" job thrown on me before lunch yesterday, and delivered the presentation - to 100% positive reviews - at 9:AM this morning. AND only stayed an hour late last night to hit the deadline. (My predecessor in this job couldn't have produced this work if given two weeks. I did it in hours.) Left several people (VP and C-suite executives) pretty much speechless. They were blown away. Home Decided to sell my amazing and wonderful BMW r100, because it turns out that my motorcycle preferences have changed, and I am no longer a "vintage bike guy". Having no garage, and no place to effectively work on it and do the never-ending little tweaks and adjustments that a classic bike needs. So bye-bye BMW: And hello Honda ST1100: Of course, Seattle is battening down the hatches today in preparation for the storm to end all storms that is supposed to arrive tomorrow, and continue through the weekend, at least. Oh well. I have a safe and warm house, and plenty of food in the pantry.
Drove from New Orleans back to Montreal at the end of last month so I'm editing some pretty dope videos right now (NO is so fun! I've also stuck some hubski stickers some places but imgur seems convinced i'm a robot and won't let me post anything right now... I'll re-try later. I've been back about a week but got a crappy flu in the states - probably the longest of my life. Still coughing. And I got a very generous offer from my parents to tag along to their 4-5 days visit to NYC tomorrow! I'm not one to refuse a free trip but I haven't travelled/lived with my parents for a while now. Time to mentally prepare to be an enjoyable travel companion no matter what :)
My week has been plagued by car problems. I drive a terrible old V6 Firebird, build long after after the classic Firebirds were gone, when it was nothing more than a knockoff Camaro with a different name. It's had no problems in the last few months of course. My wife drives a '09 Corolla. She's been driving it a few years, but we only got around to buying it from my father-in-law this summer. So now it developed problems. Last week a bearing went bad on the alternator, that was pretty easy to diagnose, and obvious when the alternator was off -- turn the pulley and it made a nasty crunch. But occasionally from a cold start, it idles slowly, sounds like it's going to stall out our something, but then after a couple seconds, it idles normally and shows no more symptoms. And also occasionally at a cold start it has a fairly loud rattle, again for only about a second, and then no more symptoms. My father law was pretty sure this was a starter going bad -- odd idle sounds from the starter gear not retracting right way, and rattle from the gear not retracting completely and remaining in partial contact for another second. So we replaced the starter, and the sounds went away for 24 hours, and then came back with no change whatsoever. So now I have no clue about the weird idle sounds, and I'm starting to think the rattle might be this:
A bad Bendix on a starter motor presents itself in a greatly more dramatic fashion than that. How did the starter look when you pulled it? I'll bet it was fine. Loping idle while cold is generally related to the vacuum logic not adding up. This means a cracked vacuum line or a plugged vacuum valve or something like that. Basically the ECM is getting the wrong manifold vacuum values so it's got the wrong advance but it can't self-compensate by dropping the RPM so it throws it into that regime and waits for something to change. Usually the ECM ignores that value once temperature has risen to operating values so the problem goes away once it's warmed up. It's become increasingly common for manufacturers to lower weights by going with smaller batteries and smaller starter motors, which requires some sort of intake/exhaust bypass to lower compression pressure. This bypass is often centrifugal or solenoidal and closes once the engine hits idle. If it doesn't hit that idle quickly it may hammer, which often sounds a lot like your problem. The hose that's compromised is small, non-obvious and deep in the engine. Should you find it you will never be sure if you fixed it, and you may fuck up two or three others in the process of diagnosis. This is a great thing to farm out.
Yeah, the old starter seemed OK. I'll look into some more troubleshooting for vacuum issues. I do think it's odd that both sounds only occasionally happen, and never for more than 3-4 seconds after ignition.
The 3-4 seconds after ignition is because the ECM is in "START" mode as opposed to "RUN" mode or "WARM UP" mode. Fuel curve is different, ignition timing is different, combustion mix is different, exhaust gas has different makeup. It's all a big mess of look-up tables and "START" is a whole different table than "WARM UP" or "RUN." There are varied indicators that push the engine onto a different table. One of them can be vacuum.
3 days ago I was driving with some friends through Eastern PA and I started feeling really shitty. Like, mild headache, mild nausea, but mostly I was just super anxious. Told my friends that even though it sounded stupid, I felt like something bad was going to happen. I couldn't tell on what scale, but I felt it. That night my grandpa passed in his sleep. I'm not too broken up about it. We weren't close. I'm more worried about my parents, but my sister's going home to help with the funeral etc. I'm staying up here, since I have 2 midterms next week, plus I'm withdrawing from a course, plus I'm super stressed because I have a crush on one of my friends again. (Last year this same shit happened, I talked to her about it, things were awkward for like a month, and I got over it. As of a few weeks ago it's back. It kind of feels like this time she might reciprocate, but then last time it felt like she might've reciprocated.) But I'm apparently doing well enough in my web design course that my professor emailed me to ask if I'd help him with some urgent UX work with some visibility. So yay.
Dude go date someone else. Anyone else. Blowing up a friendship and failing the only move back is to exorcise those demons with someone else you can care about. Mooning around and going for a do-over will actively kick your ass out of the friendzone even.
Usually don't remember my dreams, but I had a particularly weird and vivid one the other night. It wasn't even anything special and I'm not sure how it started. I was at home and started getting messages from an old ex-girlfriend, one from college. The only one from college, in the grand scheme of things. Anyway. There was an air of sadness around in the way the voices moved and the way my dream flowed, she said she was moving out west and wanted to spend some time together. The conversation ended, the phone hung up, and I either kept sleeping or woke up. I don't know what that says about my subconscious. It's surprisingly hard to find volunteer opportunities for evenings after work, that are something I actually have a moderate interest in, and don't require a year commitment. That's got me pretty down.
Hello? Local Humane Society? Can I come in during the evenings and some Saturdays and feed/walk/play with some dogs? What's that? You only take volunteers who can commit to four-hour shifts four days a week for a period of at least three months? Bye. It sucks to want to give back and have no way to do so. How's the leg?It's surprisingly hard to find volunteer opportunities for evenings after work, that are something I actually have a moderate interest in, and don't require a year commitment.
Right!? It's driving me crazy, and I don't want to volunteer with any religious organization so there goes half of them right there...beggars can't be choosers but dammit, if that's not going to stop me from complaining. Not sure. Been having this horrible pain in the middle of the night that's a bit worrisome. Goes away after warming up, but holy crap does it hurt when extending, in particular. During the day it's not really there, either. Ready to rip off the leg, really.