Hey Pubs. Just a water for me, barkeep... I'm still not remembering to drink enough water every day. Keto. I can deny it no longer... I have actually lost more than 20 pounds now. That means that - for the first time in my life - I weigh less than I did before. From a skinny 175lbs in 1987, to 269lbs at Christmas 2017, I have always gotten heavier. Amortized over time, that's only about 3lbs/year, but of course the weight did not gracefully grow over time. It grew rapidly, then leveled out for a few years at the "new normal" weight, until something happened and it went up again. For the first time in my life, my weight is going the other direction. I had to put several pairs of pants into storage. (Note: I wanted to get rid of them. But my wife insisted we keep them until we know whether I am going to keep the weight off or not.) I am maybe 2 months away from departing the land of XL, and purchasing L shirts... for the first time since the 1990's. I feel better. I don't "crash" at 2:PM every day. I no longer eat two antacid tablets every night. I don't fart prolifically anymore. My diet has changed significantly, and I now strongly identify with Michael Pollan's quip, "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." I haven't started working out or stretching regularly. Which I planned to do Feb 1. Not sure why I haven't started, but I need to get on that. The road to "Fit and 50" is looking pretty good right now. Food Perspective. Mushroom hunters talk about "putting on their mushroom eyes" when they go mushroom hunting. You go out to where the mushrooms should be, and you see nothing. Damn. Wrong place? Was someone already here? Am I at the wrong elevation? Then they just go calm and stop moving for a few minutes. Scan the landscape. Be still. POP! Oh! There's one! ... and another!... oh! there's another one!... woah... they are EVERYWHERE! Holy crap I am STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF SO MANY MUSHROOMS!! With my new diet, which generally avoids most carbs and sugars, I have my "Carb Eyes" on. Vending machine? Nothing in there edible. Coffee shop? Nothing in there either, except black drip coffee, espresso shot, or an almond-milk latte. Restaurant? Side dishes start to look REALLY tasty... and main courses look heavy and unpleasant. "Can I just get these two sides, and a steak?" And now, I will post this message, and walk out into the lobby where my company is providing everyone with ... Valentine's Cupcakes. And I am going to enjoy the shit out one of those carbo-sugar bombs. Because carbo-sugar bombs are AMAZING treats. But that's what they should be: Treats. Not Food.
My train ripped a broken piece of overhead line. We got stuck without power or safe evacuation method, so my commute, which I'm still in, enters it's fifth hour soon. Eep. Work is going super great. It's as close as I can get to working in a start-up: the freedom to make great things happen but without all of the failings and insecurity that that usually brings. One of my ideas is to help municipalities prepare for autonomous vehicles by building dedicated bus lanes that connect to highways. Pitched it to a few coworkers and we're now going to brainstorm about an MVP. There is also a large chance I'll get to work on a project for mapping the potential for geothermal heating NY, Baltimore and Washington DC, so there's that. Cool stuph, just getting started. :)
eventually, yeah... only to go back home a few hours later. It made national news though! Unlucky me. ;)
I don't know yet! I have been told that we (the Dutch) are world-leading with the technology, so a venture that's a subsidiary of my work wants to export that knowledge and want me to ride along. Hopefully I can get a neat trip out of it. East coast 'ski meetup anyone?
Interesting :o the man I shadowed under was from Germany, and Waterfurnace's parent company was Scandinavian iirc. Y'all European's got it down pat, I'm sure. Would be sweet to get a ride across the pond, too! Not actually sure who from the 'ski is up there.
LEFT LANE ON/OFFRAMPS for autonomous vehicles! I've been thinking about this a lot, and the left lane (in countries that drive on the right) is largely reserved for "specialty" traffic, like HOV, dedicated bus lanes, or even just the passing lane. Left lane exits for vehicles that are "smarter" than the average driver, would allow shorter on/off ramps (acceleration/deceleration lanes), easier merging into the normal flow of traffic (because human-driven cars are generally turning right), and eliminate the need to negotiate lane changes with humans (moving right across multiple lanes to a human-driver exit). Am I wrong about this? ...help municipalities prepare for autonomous vehicles by building dedicated bus lanes that connect to highways...
Well, for one, the idea that the leftmost lane is reserved for speciality traffic is something that you guys have in the US but that hasn't permeated to a lot of other countries. Highway bus lanes are generally on the right over here. In almost every country the left lane is a passing lane, so it doesn't hamper your idea, just something to note. What people do often forget is that AVs are heavily sight-based, and will not risk something they can't see. So while I can see the first part of the ramp being shorter, any yaw or negative pitch change will have to be taken significantly slower than we would take them. The benefit of not having to cross all lanes is obviously a great one, but the fact that many urban highways don't have a significant median might make it really difficult to construct. My idea was not at all focused on highways, really. Here's my elevator pitch now - I invite anyone to gimme some feedback because it's a relatively early idea. (kleinbl00?) The context is European city centers. Autonomous vehicles present a threat to public transport, so it is wise to design autonomous infrastructure in such a way that it also strengthens the public transport network instead of only competing with it. At the same time, due to the high uncertainty of the precise development path of AVs, it is important that any infrastructural investments are already useful now, instead of waiting for the revolution to happen. Thus: the idea to build bus lanes or expand the bus lane network in cities so that they connect the most important locations with highways. In the current PT paradigm, this would allow regional buses to easily drive on into cities and compete with cars more easily. In that sense, it's a 'no regret' investment. In a highway-AV-only scenario, the highway location could be an important transfer hub for the last miles into the city. In an AV-on-separated-lanes scenario, the bus lanes provide the AVs with the separated environment they need to maintain high speeds in dense urban areas. And because they enhance already existant high-quality PT with intermodal transfer hubs, they can significantly strengthen the PT network. You know why I have an iPad? This is why: Autonomous vehicles are coming, but their biggest challenge will be to conquer the densest urban areas. Precisely the places that most people will want to go, are also the most difficult to traverse on public roads. Some estimations put dense urban autonomous vehicles at at least 40, 50 years into the future. Infrastructure changes, most notably dedicated AV lanes, will likely be a necessary step in the transition to autonomous vehicles.
If the goal is prepping the layout for autonomous vehicles, designing for buses forces you into some compromises you wouldn't ordinarily make. Your roads have to be wider, for example. Your overhead clearance is higher. And you have to select routes that maximize foot traffic. Vanpool? You could build for that now and assume it's future-proof. After all, any AV fleet isn't going to seat four passengers. It's going to seat ten. There are lanes in Vancouver BC that are limited to 8 passengers or more. I would say expand the bus network such that the definition of "bus" includes lower-capacity vehicles but doesn't include carpool. It'd be an easy pilot project to roll out.
You mention width, which makes me realize something: there's no reason for a bus-lane AV service to stop everywhere. This means that cars should be able to pass at stops, which is possible when the road is as wide as bus lanes are. Bus lanes here are around 6.5-7.5m, and car lanes can be as slim as 2.2m, so bidirectional bus lanes now could be three-lane AV lanes in the future. Overhead clearance is a good point, although I think clearances are pretty well-standardized at 4m.
Here in KC, the bus lanes are actually in the marginal "shoulder" area to the right of the actual road. I know High Occupancy Vehicle lanes are to the left in the Dallas Fortworth area, though. We're improvising all of this I think.Highway bus lanes are generally on the right over here.
Ah. I see we have different base assumptions about what an autonomous vehicle is going to be. For me, the self-driving, smart-as-a-chauffeur, version of the AV is really a pipe dream. The real map of the world is just too complex and changing for anything other than a true AI to be able to operate within. What i see is that all AVs will be interconnected, and constantly communicating with each other. So they will be able to "see" several blocks, even miles, ahead, and adapt their operation for the conditions. This means following distances between vehicles of inches, rather than car lengths. Road widths with tolerances measured in less than a foot. Visualize independent train cars that are virtually linked together, rather than physically. This seems far more likely of a future for AVs. This already exists on production lines today. Scaling it up, and providing safe operating zones for these transport pods, are really the only limitations. Segregating AV traffic from human-driven vehicles is key, though. So reconsidering road widths, composition, merging, etc, you wind up with something much more like bicycle paths, than the streets and highways we use today. That's my pipe dream. (And the AVs can operate someone autonomously - but slowly - in the suburbs, until they pool together and move as a unit to the AV-only road.)
What i see is that all AVs will be interconnected, and constantly communicating with each other. Funny, I think of it exactly the other way. Mapping the real world is within the realm of possibilities - I mean this article is 5 years old by now. Besides, sensory input will always trump map knowledge. I talked to someone from TomTom a while ago. IIRC, when a dozen of their users drive over a new road they'll push that update to other users. Permanently connected and highly reliable wireless connections that risk taking depends on? I'll believe it when I see it. When you have such a train of V2V connected cars, it only takes one malfunctioning / package-not-arriving car to screw it up for everyone behind it. 4G LTE (or even 5G) might be fast, but whenever I am at a busy train station it chokes the fuck out. My Bluetooth gets choppy when I move my head too quickly, and that's at a distance of less than a foot from my phone. Wireless tech is worse the denser your urban area is, while for AV's the opposite needs to be true. It exists on production lines because those are static, isolated environments, while (urban) roads are much more dynamic and prone to errors and interference. I think so too, at least for the near future, unless Google seriously gets their shit together. There's also a handful of public road tests, which could prove hopeful, but they are quite far removed from the ideal high-frequency, high-capacity bus replacement that I'm looking for.The real map of the world is just too complex and changing for anything other than a true AI to be able to operate within.
Segregating AV traffic from human-driven vehicles is key, though. So reconsidering road widths, composition, merging, etc, you wind up with something much more like bicycle paths, than the streets and highways we use today.
I finally got my driver's license! Only had to take the test 3 times. But now I won't be stuck at home bored for the next two weeks, thank god. Wow, next two weeks. Only 14 days and then I'm flying to Berlin! I'm so excited and getting kind of nervous. Especially since I'll be totally on my own for the first week and a half that I'm in Germany. We'll see how that goes, I guess! Mostly just really really excited though. Antidepressants continue to be decent, I guess. It's hard to tell if my floor is actually higher or if I just haven't had a really bad day yet, since even off meds it comes and goes. Hopefully the former. Oh, and happy valentines day! How are you guys?
Hey all. Four beers down. His Excellency, the president of the Republic is busy addressing the proles in re his feelings about resigning. For all its faults, I am grateful that in SA whether the big man feels like doing so or not is largely irrelevant. A motion of no confidence will occur tomorrow and, with the support of his own party, remove his ass. But I can't type fast enough to keep up with the speech so hold tight for some retrospective analysis.
Alright. So Msholozi has stepped down. TBH I am somewhat surprised. Most of his speech was about being beholden to only the constitution (as opposed to the resolutions of his party). And then in almost no time at all, finished it off with a "that being said". As the president-in-the-wings finds it sufficient to enrich himself through only vanilla capitalist exploitation, the global investment crew seem to think this is a positive development. As to whether that is true on any more fundamental level remains to be seen. But tomorrow the sun will come up and there will not be any military on the streets and people will be as free as they were today and there are reasons to be happy. Happy Valentine's day!
I helped teach junkies how to paint on Saturday and I'm going to do it by myself this weekend. Much complaining was offered about how their thing that has no objectively correct appearance didn't look right. We're probably going to do a sunset this weekend which is ridiculously easy as far as paintings go but I'm still expecting a lot of bitching. And interestingly, everyone thinks everyone's painting looks great except their own. People are silly things. My ex contacted me on Friday. I would have ignored her but she sent me a David Foster Wallace quote about suicide that I've always liked. So that's a good introduction if you want your interlocutor to be worried. She did apologize for the way she treated me. Which is un expected and uncharacteristic and a bit worrisome on its own. I was still mad at her since I had just reminded myself of the time she came home from the bar early because I wasn't answering the phone and was pissed at me for not making dinner. Instead of being concerned that I wasn't answering the phone a week after a suicide attempt. A little bitterness is helping me not be depressed. Anyway, I shot a few barbs at her about how she treated me and how her ex husband is a fat piece of shit but overall I tried to show that I was concerned and let her know that you can be upset with someone for a long time and not hate them or wish to never speak to them again. I still don't know what the fuck her deal is and I question her motives for contacting me. But my therapist said I did a good job of establishing clear boundaries. And it was only a little depressing later to speak with my ex. Happy Valentine's Day!
I read about the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect yesterday. It's credited to Michael Chrichton: In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” In the space of two paragraphs, you observe: And I know this much: I determined in my early '30s that I was attracted only to deeply broken women and that their deep breakage led to a shitload of unhappiness. I was fortunate in that my wife was feeling broken when we started dating, but wasn't, really, which allowed me to fool myself into doing the right thing. What was astonishing was how much easier it was to not be broken when I was with someone else who wasn't. I doubt I will offend you when I point out that your life wasn't exactly flying high when you started dating her. One might reasonably conclude hers wasn't either. It's possible you're both in a better place now... and a little forgiveness might go a long way.“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
And interestingly, everyone thinks everyone's painting looks great except their own. People are silly things.
I still don't know what the fuck her deal is and I question her motives for contacting me. But my therapist said I did a good job of establishing clear boundaries. And it was only a little depressing later to speak with my ex.
Relative to me I get the impression she's in a worse place and after a while together last year I realized she was in a bad place from the start. I tried to offer reconciliation with some patience (that ran out) and an offer to go to counseling together but I got the same old shit. I just gotta keep my distance for a while. I tried to leave it so she understood I'm here but that it's not good for me to always be there for my own mental health. She has a hard time with subtleties of emotion. Tends towards the black and white. It's not fun And while she works through her shit I'm not going to pine for her alone. I'm trying to find someone closer to mentally fit as I feel I am or at least I'm working towards
I dated a girl - twice - whose problems were dire. They were entirely of her own construction as well. It was the second time around that I realized that unlike every other girl I'd dated, I couldn't "fix" this one - I told a friend (who I had fooled around with, but not dated) that I felt like I was reaching down onto the rails of a subway to help her up but I could see the train coming and wasn't sure if I could pull her up before she pulled me down. It was a watershed moment. From that point I started dating defensively. There are people with so much baggage that you can't carry them and the more you try, the more you delay not just your own travels but theirs as well.
Yeah. I thought I could just love her and she'd get better but so many problems for so many people are entirely of their own making or in their own mind and expectations of life. :
I'm not trying to find anyone who's perfect but I'm also done thinking I can fix anyone. Especially if they don't want help. We can improve people; we cannot fix them
I read something the other day that said something along the lines of how a good relationship doesn't make us want to change the other person, it makes us want to change ourselves. I'm still digesting it ,but it definitely stuck out to me. If someones wants it they'll work hard to grow and become the person you need in a relationship and you'll do the same for them. It's like we can only fix ourselves, and as much as we can support others we can't do the heavy lifting for them.
I think maybe it's because what they're desiring to make and what they're actually able to make through skill are two different things. The final result doesn't live up to our expectations, we can see where we've made mistakes, and we become disappointed. When it comes to looking at the works of others though? We don't have any expectations and it's near impossible to see what of their work is deliberate and what is a mistake, so it's much easier to be impressed.Much complaining was offered about how their thing that has no objectively correct appearance didn't look right. . . . And interestingly, everyone thinks everyone's painting looks great except their own. People are silly things.
Been a real nice week. Saw some friends I haven't seen in a while, booked my train tickets home, and after today, I have a 5 day weekend. No idea what to even do with that much time off. Also, I've been messing around with pastels. Included here: a Black-Eyed Junco, a Yellow Crowned Night Heron (my personal favorite bird), an attempt to draw along with an episode of the Joy of Painting, an abstract little triangle thing, and a tree. Pastels are fun but real goddamn messy - might mess with some watercolors next.
Man, so I'm reading through this interview with two of the original employees of Stumptown, and this quote comes out of nowhere: And full disclosure, yeah, I do (still) like Stumptown, they're not the best but they have some really cool origins. But there's something so simple about that. Just pay attention to life. It's so simple, it's so vast, and it might be a bullshit quote but I am really into it right now. What else can you do but pay attention to life. I'm still hurt but improving (limited to 20 miles running per week, no more than 5 miles at a time), so that sucks. But I bought a bike, still have a great girlfriend (stoked for our Valentine's Night date), and the year is filling up so-goddamn-fast I had to make a calendar to even attempt to keep of track of it. It's hard to just pay attention to life.Just pay attention to life.
Had a long conversation with a friend last night who is worried about his life imploding should a recession hit. I was able to peel back the onion to the point where he's really just resentful of a short-term work problem but still. No easy fixes. Me? I'm about to spend $3k on the paint on my car. I wonder how much of the callousness of wealth is associated with cloistering. I went to a class held by my financial planner back when I had no finances to plan. He played a game with us: he told us to write down our five closest friends, guess their income, and then average and lo and behold, there was our income. He used this to point out why country clubs exist: when you're wealthy, you don't wanna hear about poor people problems. YOU HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT POOR PEOPLE PROBLEMS. I rode six miles in a downpour on Monday. I could ball up my toes and watch a sheen of water build on my shoes. My gloves would drip when I made a fist. And I got home and took a warm shower and poured myself some Armenian brandy and played Destiny on a 4K TV. Prior to that? I rolled past a half dozen smoky, shitty garbage fires, orbited by homeless attempting to stave off hypothermia. I yelled "are we having fun yet?" at one of them and I think I heard "Fuck you, you're going home." Hard to say. I was deep into my second book on the determined hopelessness of the Japanese war in the Pacific. Boojie AF. The whole of the financial press is about interest rates and unemployment statistics. The popular press' take on all this is "the stock market is not the economy" but to the people doing the hiring? The people deciding on layoffs? The people purchasing industrial robots? the fuck it's not. I saw a breakdown yesterday that points out that 80% of stocks are owned by 10% of Americans but if you don't recognize that 10% as the ownership class you're delusional. I subscribe to Garden and Gun. It's hilarious - it's claims to be the "magazine of the genteel south" or some shit. They've got ads for Flexjet and private duck-hunting vacations and they clearly don't bicycle past the homeless very often. But I also managed to con Elite Traveler out of a free subscription (instead of $155 a year for six issues) and they legit run ads for Embraer. Trump is Elite Traveler readers telling Garden & Gun readers to help them trick TV Guide readers into thinking they matter. And I wonder how long they can keep it up. Longer than we'd all like, I think.
What do you have? My house is full of Ararat from every visiting relative and family friend from back home.poured myself some Armenian brandy
That was Queen Tamara 3yr. Although now the Tamara's all gone and I'm on a bottle of Ararat 5 year. Super King is my local.
My brother is stable, starting the road to recovery. He's going to move to inpatient rehab sometime this week after a pneumonia scare. The pain pump wasn't quite doing what he wanted, so they actually gave him an epidural which I didn't know was possible for this kind of injury. Thanks to a quirk of Michigan law, his car insurance is picking up the entire bill, including the months of inpatient rehab, a rehab manager/coordinator, and even some renovations to my dad's house to make it easier for him to get around once he gets out of the hospital. I wish that there was more that I could do.
We were about to buy me plane tickets out of Montreal, when we realized we looked at my passport and realized I could actually stay here for 6 months, not 3. So I'm going to be helping them out till the end of the Candidates tournament broadcast, it's expected to be huge. End of March. I still don't know what I'm going to do once I leave. I wake up every day in the fear that I have slept the better part of the the day away- my sleep schedule is trash, and getting progressively worse. Since I've been here I've been sleeping at 2am and now I'm all the way to 6am, comfortably. I usually wake up around 1pm. I start off the day with a cup of coffee from a fancy coffee maker, check my rounds on my computer, and it turns out that Aman and/or Eric have already been up for awhile and are going to get lunch- my breakfast. There's a few regular restaurants I visit regularly for lunch- a bahn mi shop, an indian food place, a burrito place that just closed down, a place that specializes in chicken sandwiches. The quality of food in Montreal is amazing, with menus built around emphasizing the quality of a few ingredients. There's also a 24 hour grocery store nearby with fresh baguettes in stock, so my sandwich game has been on point since I've been here. There are a multitude of deli meats on sale at all times, and a surprising amount of fresh produce. My favorite new ingredient so far is cream brie- it's all the goodness of brie cheese, in cream form. There are also premade (high quality) salads and soups available, so I eat ridiculously well. I still haven't been able to shake the "play money" feel of the Canadian dollar- its plastic feel in the hands and how strong the US dollar converts into it. I'm weird in that I have a lot of work to do at all times, I have freelance design work in addition to Chessbrah stuff. My work / life seperation aside, you get a lot of free time at the cave. There's a lot of exploring to do- there's a synthesizer shop that I like to dick around at, a pinball place I go to weekly, a gym that I need to go to more often. There's also a lot of interesting niche things- a cat cafe where you can pet cats and drink coffee, a gypsy musician bar with three bands every day, a board game bar where employees pick out board games to your tastes. It's almost as if Montreal is a magical place where if you can have fun doing it, you can make a modest living off of it someway or another. There are more bars on this street than points in my ELO rating. I used to live on a similar street in Pittsburgh- and I thought that the startup that I worked at went out for drinks a lot. Not even close. There's something about the culture here. People are going ham on the streets on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday. Why Thursday? Apparently because people show up to work on Fridays still drunk. I love it here bunches.
Happy you're enjoying the city! And to be honest, you haven't really experienced Montreal until you've been here in June/July. Everyone's in a depressive winter slump right now, and it's amazing how the city comes alive to enjoy the little bit of summer we have. There is no palace like Montreal in the summer... Come back and visit, the transformation is amazing. There is this electric energy in te air that just makes everyone happy :)
I'm late to pubski. 3D Printers My delta 3d printer project stalled out in November. I've printed everything I need to finish it, but I haven't bought the "vitamins"; i.e. all the fasteners and such. I liked designing the bits that I did, but the idea of building wasn't so exciting. Today, I started designing a new printer based on a really old cable layout. My goal is to use as little fasteners as possible without compromising quality. We will see how I do. My bet is that most printers are vastly overbuilt in the name of precision that won't really be visible anyways after the sloppy process of spitting out molten plastic. Work My old boss was actively trying to fire me. Well, not just me but all of my family that worked there. He wasn't competent enough to actually pull it off, but the effort was there. The best he managed was an offence I could have gone to the Department of Labor for and gotten him shitcanned, and teaching me that management can't produce a written copy of the attendance policy. My new boss? He keeps telling me what a good job I'm doing. He's calm. He's respectful. It is fucking weird. I'm so use to being in combat with management. It's weird.
Printer progress. Design is a little weird since I'm working around the aluminum extrusion I'd already bought. Smooth rods would make more sense. Should work though. Pink bits still need work to mount the motors, which will probably need to be inverted. I also need to throw together the bushings. Green bits are ready for test printing. Screw count for the x/y bits seen here should be a maximum of 14: 3x per motor to mount the drive spools from Richrap's sli3dr printer linked above, and 4x per motor to attach to the frame. The dollo printer bits I'm using as a library have worked well in the small test pieces I've made.
This weekend I downloaded a ridiculous voice synthesizer VST called Alter Ego and had a blast messing around with it. Evidently you can coax a sort of Ghost In The Shell Bulgarian choir-style sound out of it, which is something I've wanted to get for a while. Related, reading up about SAMPA is pretty interesting.
Well, now I'll have to download another VST. Alter Ego is tons of fun. I've found you can stumble onto 2-3 note stretches that sound surprisingly convincing, but making a whole line sound realistic would be some kind of wizardry. Still, the thing has enough parameters I think someone could do it
this synth is so cool, definitely gonna check this out
Turns out editing headshots in a pain... I mean, I'm sure it's taking me way longer because it took me a while to figure out how I want it, so now I got to backtrack and edit the previous shots. But I can't do it for more than 2 hours in a row, even while listening to my favourite podcast. Whitening people's teeth is just not as riveting as one would think (?) Went on my first ever press trip the other week, it was a lot of fun. Also, in the process of applying to AirBNB's "experiences" program. In the past 2 years, I've been covering my rent expenses for the year by renting an airBNB for the summer. So since I'm stuck in Montreal either way, we decided to try offering a tour of the best speakeasy bars with a friend. Loving the seasonal type work, and I calculated we could make 200-300$ per day for 4h of work! I feel like I woudn't be a bad tour guide, but I'm terrible at remembering information accurately so I'll need to work on that if our tour gets accepted. Exited!