Life is great. To me at least. From a different point of view it's a dumpster fire.

I picked up my 60 day AA chip yesterday. It's the longest I've ever been sober since before I had pubes. I told my story the other day in IOP (intensive outpatient rehab) and everyone was very impressed by what I've been through and where I am now. Last weekend I went to a reunion at the residential program I was in and my girlfriend came from Alabama to be with me. We went to an art show that night that my old boss was having.

But when she sat in my car, which I haven't driven since October, there was a pint of vodka behind the seat cover. It was embarrassing. I had her throw it out of the window. I honestly also wanted to drink it. I don't know what I would have done if I'd found it first. It was my worst craving since February.

I went to see her at her place last week. Which was awesome but I was sitting with her in her apartment and looking at the life she has, which is not even that representative of where she is since a lot of stuff is at her house where her husband is living, and I felt like such a loser for wasting so much of my life drunk. She's unbelievably successful at a young age and I have no idea what she's doing with me. I try not to question it and accept how lucky I am. Also, while I was there and she was at work there was a bottle of liquor in the freezer. But I didn't want to drink any. I thought, "That is something that people can drink," and that was about it.

It's advised not to start a relationship or make any major life changes in the first year of recovery. And I am not taking that advise. My new relationship saved my life. It's a bit difficult sometimes. We both have baggage, she's going through a divorce and I'm a newly sober man-baby, but I think I'm handling it pretty well for the most part. I sometimes delude myself that I'm uncommonly mentally healthy when I know I absolutely am not. But at least I'm willing to work on myself. And I think I conceptually know what a healthy relationship is like even if I've never been in one and I'm very in love and very committed to making this work.

Thanks to everyone who listened to my story. I know it's long, longer than the attention span of the Internet, but a few people have listened to it and I hope they enjoyed it.

WOO!!! I've booked the tickets for my trip to Canada and America - I hope to see some of you there. I'll be starting in Vancouver on the 17th September then heading to San Francisco to leave on the 28th September. This will be my biggest trip yet (without my parents). Now to compile a list of all the things I'd like to see/do/eat/drink...

Art

Recently I discovered and fell in love with Hale Woodruff’s block prints. They feel so energetic and modern and I love the white lines on black backgrounds that he has going on. It just adds so much to the energy.

A while back, while looking up Folk Art on Wikipedia, I discovered Jose Guadalupe Posada, and let me tell you, his work is crazy cool. It’s very energetic stuff and while he often used skeletons as a theme in a lot of his works, their behaving and posing like everyday people creates a feeling of both being down to earth and otherworldly at the same time. He drew more “normal” stuff too, but man, those skeletons really stand out.

Seriously, words can’t do either of these guys justice. Check them out.

Car Problems?

This weekend I was driving down the highway when I heard a loud, forceful, metalic “ping” in my rear driverside wheel well. When I had my summer tires put on for the year, the tire shop busted one of the wheel bolts. It turns out that for the FR-S they’re pretty crummy, so my first thought was one busted while driving. The family friendly auto-shop that does my car maintenance is closed on the weekends, so I dropped it off at the brake place near work, asked for a tire rotation, and asked them to check out the noise. All of the wheel bolts were intact. They checked all of the wheel wells, suspension, and undercarriage and there’s no sign of damage or impact. Car drives fine. No wobbling, shaking, or weird noises. I’m gonna assume that everything is fine, but I’m getting my oil change next week and I’m gonna mention it. kleinbl00 or lm, any ideas on if it could be something, and if so, what I should ask the guys to check for? Like I said, the ping was loud as fuck.

Phone Malware?

The fucking DailyBeast website on my phone kept on redirecting to a Free IPhone scam website last night, even after I did a system restore, so I ended up doing a second one just to be safe. Malwarebytes shows nothing on the scans. Not one to leave things alone, I looked all over the internet last night and came across two possible scenarios. The scary thing I came across was that maybe somehow the router for our wireless network got hacked and some program changed the DNS settings to exploit Andriod phones. That strikes me as . . . unlikely but it makes sense in a weird way. So I woke Dala up, much to her frustration, to have her reset all of the router settings. The DNS before the reset was (edited per Dala's advice but it looks like the default DNS address that comes with the router) and the DNS after the reset was the same. A little Googling shows me that’s a default DNS for a lot of routers out of the box. So I think we’re safe there.

The more likely scenario is that its just a bunch of ads from some ad network being all fucky and jerk ass because people can’t leave shit alone. If that’s the case, it’s the ad server on the website and not my phone, so both it and the router should be fine. Unless I’m missing something.

I called my dad and sister last night (two very tech savy people), explained the whole scenario before them, and they both say “Yup. Ad Networks being all fucky. Don’t worry about it.” Except, you know, it’s my phone. My E-Mail is on there. I Hubski when I’m on break from work. I need it for 2 Factor Authentication for literally everything I do. So. I’m worrying.

kleinbl00 (again), Devac, bfv, all you other savy computer bros. Any thoughts? I’m wracking my brain here. With the exception of Malwarebytes on my phone, it’s running just Andriod and the apps that came with it from Google, Samsung, and my wireless carrier. My PC runs Linux Mint, nothing extra added. I go only to sites I know, double check sites I don’t know with Norton Safe Web and Google Safe Browsing before going to a website I don’t know. So I’m very careful. No clue what’s on my wife’s windows box. Same for my roommate’s tablet. My wife is the tech pro of the household, so I trust her. My roommate? Well, don’t get me wrong, he’s a cool guy and all, but I let’s just say really wish he’d listen when we tell him about being careful on the internet.

House

Gonna look at it this afternoon. Don’t know if we’re gonna pull the trigger. I’ll share my thoughts tonight or on next week’s Pubski.

Hubski and its users

This is just the occasional reminder that you’re all awesome. :)

In which we...

Use the royal we, for no real reason.

-

... marbelize things.

... make stamps.

... cut, fold, and glue flowers.

In non-art we...

...do 3x8 diamond pushups 3 or more days a week, mostly

....have logged every day in MFP for 153 days

...and have lost 15 pounds in the past 4 months.

Not to mention,

...have a now-established boyfriend (going on three months - first date story )

What else is there to mention?

Research

Looking back at my time-tracking history, I can safely say that I have been very productive the past ten days or so. I spent most of last week on finishing the Hyperloop research project I've been working on for the last ten weeks. We presented it yesterday to the transport consultancy that asked us to research Hyperloop. Our findings were received well, even by the two guys from two Hyperloop startups whom we invited.

From Saturday until about an hour or two ago, I spent most of the day doing research for my thesis and writing my proposal. I was legitimately stressing out about my thesis so I put in all the effort that I could muster until I had something that I think is great. Yesterday, instead of spending yet another day between these four walls, I trekked around The Hague from one cafe to the next with my laptop which is definitely something I'm gonna do more often. After presenting our Hyperloop project yesterday, I talked to someone who has also done research into automated vehicles and traffic models, and he thought my proposal was really interesting, which took away the large amount of self-doubt that I had all weekend.

Basically, what I want to research is in a nutshell 'AVs as a force for good', quantifying the potential benefits of a small-scale AV network on areas that are currently poorly accessible and suffer from so-called transport related social exclusion. I think it would be fantastic if the first AV networks, which are most likely won't be much larger than a neighborhood, can provide good and affordable transportation precisely to the people who need it most. What I hope to be able to tell cities at the end of my research is a precise(-ish) number on how many people will be positively affected by AVs coming to their neighborhood. If anyone wants to read my current proposal, I pasted it here. If anyone wants to call me an SJW, go ahead. ;)

Home

I'm very probably going to move this summer. There's a new apartment tower opening up on campus with only studios for students. While I can likely only live there for about a year, I would have a room that's about 40% bigger with my own damn bathroom and shower for about 40% less per month. Which means that I can finally have room to make a small home gym so I can finally exercise and have no excuse not to stick at it. (Yes, I know about the /r/bodyweightfitness stuff, but I get RSI from their routine.)

Next up

Tomorrow's Kingsday here in the Netherlands! I'm going to Utrecht to spend time with my gamedev friend, help him out with some artwork for his most recent Ludum Dare game. It's a fun game and he's thinking of putting it up on the Play Store, but it can use something better than ugly pixel art not moving on a grid at all.

I'm going gliding for four days in a row this weekend. I'm still in doubt whether the sport is something for me. The club is great, but piloting an aircraft is frustratingly hard and I wonder if I even can become good at it. Constantly paying attention to everything is not exactly my forte.

LIFE CHANGES

I bought a car! Lil bb 5dr Impreza (WanderingEng) and I love it so far. It's going to be very nice for getting me to/from work, and to/from mountains and a bit more rugged areas.

To help subsidize this, and to deal with the fact that I will be gone for large chunks of the summer, I'm moving to a less desirable area, but with two people I know, for very little money each month. Planning on this for the next 9-ish months, and then revisiting at that point. Likely to move into a studio after this endeavor.

THE THING I REALLY WANTED TO TALK ABOUT

This past Friday for work I ended up going to the Global Specialty Coffee Expo, and had an amazing time. Went up to the convention center in Seattle, and entered this crazy busy and high-flying world of the coffee industry. One lecture on Agroforestry, one on Roasting Automation, and probably 60 ounces of coffee were drank from various roasters and companies. Got some great knowledge out of it from talking to some of our equipment manufacturers, as well. The more fun part, though, was the after-parties. If you're good enough at talking to people you get to go to after-parties. Which means I spent my evening drinking with the Arbor Day Foundation at Speakeasy, and then in this crazy industrial art studio near the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, and now have an open invite to Papau New Guinea. So that's kind of cool. Giving me a lot of thoughts about the Coffee Industry and what kind of role I actually want to have in it in the future. Yikes.

Hanging with tng in NC. Off to SF for one night tomorrow.

We got baby chicks. My daughter is over the moon about them. I have built about 1/3 of the chicken coop. I'll post some progress in the next Pubski.

Mastering the album. Should be out in a week or so.

Started regular aerobic exercise, stretching, and eating well.

The focus is "Fit and 50".

I have 18 months.

The semester is almost over. I am so ready for it to be done. I want to get out. Next semester is going to be hella busy. I have to do 50 hours of community service. This semester I only had 15 so it's going to be a big change. I think it is wonderful my major requires it though. I think every college should require community service. The world would be a better place.

Everyone at this university is do damn self absorbed. I helped someone possibly fail a class yesterday. She didn't help at all in the group project and wanted to exaggerate her hours. 15 hours is not much. She left an important event early to go to a party. Community service is a great opportunity and she does that. Fuck her.

I don't think I could ever work in the service industry. People are fucking assholes and I'm too petty to deal with that shit. I work at the front desk of my dorm and when someone walks up and hands me their ID, it's obvious they want a package, but until they ask, I don't move. My record is 10 minutes. And I don't think that asshole would have noticed if I didn't catch the look she gave her friend and I commented that I can't read minds and she should clarify what she wants instead of just assuming I can read minds. I hate assholes.

Books

Having a hard time getting back into War and Peace. Haven't gotten reinvested in the lives of characters, which is a problem since that's the crux of the book.

Instead I've started into Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I tried reading it ages ago, but couldn't get into it. This (Penguin Classics) translation is much better.

Bread

So. If I process in 2oz increments our miniblender can turn wheat berries into a rough approximation of flour. I did a 24 hour fridge ferment at 100% hydration (8oz 'flour', 8oz water, 0.15oz yeast, 0.15oz salt) and hot damn if I didn't get a loaf. Not a lofty loaf, to be sure, but still: a loaf. Not bad since I decided to try using soft wheat berries, which have less gluten than hard.

It made me realize I've never tasted fresh whole wheat flour before.

The next step is, I think, to try soaking the wheat before I blend it. It should result in more flavor (as the seed starts to wake up), and should make things easier on the blender as the bran softens.

World Building

I've officially given up on my playgroup ever getting back together in meatspace. If we do play, it'll have to be play by forum, as every day of the week sees someone working.

So, I'm taking some of the world building I had done for the microlite campaign I had started to run before things fell apart, and I'm taking the opportunity to rework it to (hopefully) be more hard/low fantasy. I want to keep the races close to what they were, but I'll probably toss out everything else. I'm kinda interested right now in recasting the world and magic system as pantheistic.

The plan is to release it as a CC0 setting on github.

Finally switched to summer tires this weekend!

Replaced the rusty back door while we were at it (bought it last year at the scrap). But the handle where the key's supposed to go rusted through too, so we'll have to make another trip to the scrap before hooking up the door completely.

Fixed the front glovebox, hoping if would stop that knocking noise when we break, but we drove around wihtout the glovebox for a few days and the noise was still there... a mystery I don't know if I want to solve honestly.

Lots of car stuff this week in pubski. I also have car stuff.

I had gotten new ignition coils for my car, after getting quoted $700 to have the work done at a mechanic and realizing that the parts themselves are less than $300 and the labor is like assembling legos.

So I've had the coils for about a week prior (and I needed them BAD at this point as the stutter and misfiring was getting pretty common), but the simple process of putting them in was stymied by an unsuspected obstacle. The screws for the cover to access the coils were totally seized in place. Nothing would make any (bar one) budge. The screw tops were starting to strip before the screw would move, and I warped two torx bits! I even took it to a mechanic to see if they'd get the screws out, but they didn't know what they could do and recommended a bolt specialist.

Finally after seemingly exhausting all other options I took a drill to them to drill off the heads so I could remove the plate and do the repair. I would at least have one screw to put it back on with.

Turns out that drilling through the screw head loosens up the screw, and I was able to remove all but one without having a shaft stuck in the hole. Still only have one screw holding the plate back on though.

After the swap it runs like a dream. Now I only have to deal with:

Anti-personnel Takata airbags

Oil leak

Burnt out marker lights

Occasional random electronics systems failures

It's Concert Week!

Come Friday I'll be singing the Missa Solemnis again, this time with the Toledo Symphony under Maestro Sanderling. The first rehearsal with the orchestra went well last night, though they don't have the same panache and ease with the music as the Ann Arbor Symphony.

Work is work. The coordinating center for one of my studies is way behind in paying my unit for the work we've done, and the resulting budget hole has me on reduced hours until they pay up. I've been told in no uncertain terms that nobody else is going to be making getting paid on time a priority, so that's now been added to my now much smaller plate. It's bothersome that there is such a lax attitude towards this stuff on both ends. It bugs me that the coordinating center isn't invested enough in the project to make sure that we get our operating funds. It bugs me that my time is institutionally low value because of the relatively small number of letters after my name. I am getting 'compensated' in other ways. My perks maintain even if my hours dip. I have a stack of letters of recommendation and a list of high value professional references as long as my arm.

Despite my griping, I'm trying to come at this from a place of gratitude. My problem-set is very interesting, and is composed of things that are not actively threatening my health, safety, and security. I have been given a lot, and now have the responsibility of fitting the pieces together in a way that makes sense to me, and I'm doing that.

Late to the party. Didn't think I have something to share until now.

I met a girl about two weeks ago. We played a match of Dota 2 together, and she was a good player and a nice person. Ended up talking, voice-over-IP, almost every day since.

I like her. In a twist of events, she likes me, too. It's an odd experience, but one Hubski helped me get accustomed to. We share a lot in common, and we enjoy spending time together, even if it's just voice chat. There's four hours of difference between us, so I end up staying up most times just to spend a few with her. This screws up my internal clock, which I come to realize more as time goes on. Hope we figure something out.

I worry that she stops liking me all of a sudden, like all the rest of the people did, but I think my fears are unbased. Everyone else was nice to me but stopped at one point or another. She keeps being nice to me. I'm anxious that sharing my worries with her might push her away - most of my previous experience with people - but... I think this is not the case. This, however, paves way to mistrust towards her, in a convoluted "avoidant control freak" manner. I'm trying to keep these thoughts at bay because finally, maybe, I have a shot at being with someone. God knows, I don't want to mess it up.

Also, check out the latest #tfgbeenupto post. Several people here enjoy seeing me do better. This might end up being one of those moments.

My buddy just put a fucking bayonet through my foot and the hospital won't give me painkillers :(