Shit I can't badge things twice ║╔═╗║────────────╔╝╚╗──║║──╔╝╚╗ ║║─╚╬══╦═╗╔══╦═╦═╩╗╔╬╗╔╣║╔═╩╗╔╬╦══╦═╗╔══╗ ║║─╔╣╔╗║╔╗╣╔╗║╔╣╔╗║║║║║║║║╔╗║║╠╣╔╗║╔╗╣══╣ ║╚═╝║╚╝║║║║╚╝║║║╔╗║╚╣╚╝║╚╣╔╗║╚╣║╚╝║║║╠══║ ╚═══╩══╩╝╚╩═╗╠╝╚╝╚╩═╩══╩═╩╝╚╩═╩╩══╩╝╚╩══╝ ──────────╔═╝║ ──────────╚══╝╔═══╗─────────────╔╗───╔╗───╔╗
Someone with copious amounts of badges throw one on there for me too. I'm fresh out. Congrats, flac! At some point, you need to share the details :) ... in song.
What a crazy month. Forever Labs hired three people this month. We will hire 4 more in the next two months. Lot's of press around the closing of our round. Here are some links if you're interested: FAST COMPANY CNBC On Monday, mk and I were interviewed on the floor of the NYSE. That was pretty fucking dope. Being there, aware of the history in that building and the surrounding buildings was a very cool experience. It provided us a moment to reflect on how far we have come. You can watch this interview below and see a VERY RARE occurrence in nature.... I am of course referring to mk wearing a suit. After seeing it, ecib said, "well it only took you 3 years but you finally got Mark to wear a suit." NYSE INTERVIEW We also interviewed with NowThis, Women's Health and Well + Good. I think we are getting good at this whole PR thing :) Still, what matters are client signups and the past two months have been pretty stale there. Still, I am encouraged because the plan is working. The plan is to switch from direct to consumer signups to signups that come straight from physician referral. It's a far more "scaleable" model. While our numbers have been flat for April/May the number from physicians referral is increasing. We also have our second "product," coming. This is super exciting for us. I am heading to the mountains of NC this weekend for some much needed R&R with my family. I will literally turn my phone off all weekend. I need to unplug for a bit. I hope that you are all doing well. I talk about Hubski often, it's part of the genesis story of Forever Labs. Onward!
do insurance packages exist that include your procedure (at least whatever up-front costs there are, presumably not the periodic payments)? i assume it falls into the "elective" category, even though it has nothing in common with, e.g. a nose job. is there somewhere i can go to read more details on how the medical industry categorizes the extraction?
The insurance companies are not covering this yet, however some HSA and FSA plans will cover it. You should PM me your email address and I’ll put you in touch with Kelly on our team. She is amazing and can answer any questions you have. You will find it’s not as costly as you would expect.
Some updates on last week. I did end up breaking up with my girlfriend, in person. It did not go over so well with her, I received...five or six messages over the next couple of days. So that's unfortunate, but the way things go. I think with time some of these wounds will heal. But it does raise points of what I want/need in a relationship which, right now, I don't even want one. Almost every weekend is committed from now to mid-October, because I'm committing to myself. A good friend and I have started to scale more adventurous outdoor areas, continue to climb, run, etc. This is a year of personal development. Maybe next year will be, too. What I can say for certain is that this is an interesting life in the now, and that it's hard to argue against spending three hours on a summit at 7,500ft with some great friends doing things like this:
A combination of travel, and just being outdoors. Regional trips to various mountains and outdoor climbing areas with a combination of people. There are a lot disparate, not quite connected, groups of people in my life who all want to do stuff. Naturally, I say yes...Goddamn. Travel? Work?
TIme will heal you up, mostly. You get to learn a lot about yourself, too. Best of luck with your next year--gotta say I wish I'd be climbing mountains like that!
It's been a while, barkeep. A tall glass of something cold and refreshing. - Moved from Los Angeles to Seattle. - Finished out my internship at SpaceX, started one at Boeing. - Place in Seattle has a grand piano, which has been amazing. - I made this data visualization over the weekend. - I bike to work now (don't always bike home...¯\_(ツ)_/¯) So yeah, things are good.
You're in Seattle and haven't told me or kleinbl00?!?!
Pubski is often my de facto self-check-in. Part journal, part commiseration, part celebration. • My third semester back at college concluded yesterday. Grades haven't been officially posted, but by my estimation it'll be straights As. Woot! • I netted $17k of the $40k so far in scholarships and grants that I applied for next year. Total cost of attendance is $26k, so I have a good feeling about taking on minimal debt my senior year. All cause for celebration. • The Morgan Stanley internship starts soon. Which is great, money is getting really tight--I'm definitely not the brokest college student ever but I didn't do part-time work this semester and the runway is nearly all gone. This next month is going to be rough. I can't wait to have a normal income.
Marnin. Vacation this week. Spring break, except summer. Using the time to read Peter Brook's The Empty Room (essays about theater from the director of the RSC) and to finally get through 100 Years of Solitude. Wheels are in motion to explore transferring here permanently. Had this conversation: "Yeah, I have no desire to go back, but it's only one year, and then I have my bachelor." "...it's still a year of your life. And you can get a bachelor here. If you really have no desire at all to go back..." And it's cheaper to live and to study here. And I'm getting a better education. And I can count a good number of my previous courses as transfer credit. And for a degree in German lit, 3 years at a top American university and 1 or 2 at a top German doesn't look too shabby. And even if it lasts a little longer, I'm fucking 19 and I'm enjoying myself. So that's what's up.
you know thenewgreen is busy when someone mentions 100 years of solitude and he shares the comment but doesn't say anything...
Lol. Good memory, flag. It wasn’t just a book, it was an experience. The characters from it visit me in my dreams to this day.
Howdy all. Life has been fun recently, other than work being dreadfully slow for the last week--that ended today with four bass clarinets that need some TLC. I've started brewing kombucha like the goddamn hippie I am, and first batch turned out nicely (though it needs a good bit of fine-tuning). I'm also learning GNU/Linux on my Raspberry Pi 3B (now my primary workstation), and that has been an adventure. I feel dumber than I have in a while, but computers are starting to feel less and less like witchcraft to me. Lastly, I'm trying to get myself out there again after a long period of not dating and generally being a hermit. We'll see how that goes.
In NYC the last few days doing FL PR. thenewgreen and I were interviewed on the floor of the NYSE by Cheddar. That was different and fun. Headed back to the lab to isolate some stem cells from fat. Not what I would have anticipated a few years ago. I'm really looking forward to a weekend with family on a Michigan lake. I've picked up editing Under Odysseus again, lil, StJohn, and _refugee_. I'm almost done.
I submitted a very cool, very exciting art project to a journal I have a good relationship with and had previously contacted about their interest in art -- so, crossing my fingers, but I am hopeful I will be able to share it with you guys soon. Until then I'm afraid I can't share any images - and I really wish I could because I think you lot would get a serious kick from them. I had been knitting like a fiend on a sweater, but with the hot weather, knitting in wool just...I mean, sheesh, I'm already sweaty. I feel like I'm funneling a lot of that time towards sketching/art lately - at least this past week - I appreciate both how seamlessly that transition's happened, and how much fun I'm having doing what I consider to be Cool Stuff with my downtime. Here's some more fun pictures because, well...they're just kinda fun. 
Hey pubsters! I'm taking two summer courses, Computer Science and Linear Algebra. I'm trying to worm myself out of the liberal arts and into a computer science/engineering degree. I had fun, but in addition to the economic anxiety those things should give me an opportunity to express myself creatively as well while making bank. I also found it to be too easy. I like math, and I shouldn't be doing what I feel is fuck all and still finishing poetry class with an 86. Thank God I actually have the courage to pursue music again. I was in a funk band in high school and missed it SO FUCKING MUCH. I physically cannot restrain myself from picking up a guitar at least three times a week. At the end of the day, that kind of irrational love is what should drive one's career. I fully plan on it, I'm just trying to a) have a backup plan and b) make enough cash that I can funnel it into non-profits and art collectives. Peace.
My sister has the cutest pup, which I finally got to see this weekend. Ball of energy. She's a little biter, too, but not in a way that hurts. (Yet.) Paper is going well. I think after another revision, it'll be good enough to be called 'Draft' instead of 'Rough Draft'. In a way, writing an actual paper is more fun than doing all of the research before it - instead of grinding at a problem, I can focus entirely on perfecting the text. Which is the difficult and rewarding part. Yesterday I went by train to another date. Sadly, someone jumped in front of a train before my train, so I got stuck for a while and had to cancel those plans. Grabbing lunch with her tommorow instead! I happen to have a conference tomorrow in the same city as hers. So far, I have had a whole bunch of conversations and dates (one or two each week), and there are two girls that I'm quite into. We'll see. :) Also, I just today learned that nobody uses the krul outside of the Netherlands. I thought it was universal, but it totally isn't.
finals tomorrow, HS graduation in a week for a minute it felt weird to think about but it'll probably just be the same suicide is pretty much the only thing that makes high school troubles serious because other than that, if you're rich and white, you've pretty much got nothing to worry about, so if you can't deal with whatever it is you can't deal with, you'd still end up alright except if you can kill yourself i've always kind of thought that because the advice people'll give you for dealing with things when you're young is "you're young, things get better" but quite a few people can't last that long i think we need some better short term advice it was almost freeing to get diagnosed because it made me think "oh, maybe i'm not just incompetent" and i haven't had any suicidal moments lately which is nice this sounds more grim than i want it to, but i've been thinking about how when college students kill themselves, a disproportionate amount of them seem to hang themselves in their dorm rooms, and i question how tall some of these rooms are, because when i was looking at colleges last year, none of them had enough airspace for that i hope i don't get a really tall room
😐 It doesn't get better. That doesn't mean it gets worse. It continues. The capacity for improvement increases with freedom but that's not without the risk of a capacity for truly crushing failures. "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem," is some grade A "I want to throat punch you now," dismissive platidudinous bullshit that is usually trotted out by people who don't understand what it's like to not want to live. Suicide is the ultimate expression of hopelessness. Keep hope alive and you can probably not get to that point. How? Understand that even if you are plagued with insecurity and a self awareness that makes you analyze every mistake and decision and character trait you have, that you are valuable for reasons you have to come to understand yourself
It only took me about 18 months after high school to realize that absolutely nothing I did in high school was relevant or interesting to the outside world in any way, shape, or form. After about 3 years, I couldn't even remember my classmates names. Now, my friends' kids and my nieces are graduating from high school, and I know that absolutely nothing has changed, and - unless you are shot by an angry white american boy - high school will soon be a thing you vaguely remember, like a book you read once for a fourth grade assignment. Just graduate. Get out into the world and become a participant in this thing called life. Nothing of material interest/value happens in high school. Just get through it.
"In a week, who's going to care?" got me through. Although "week" scales; substitute for "month" or "year". Some of high school required "ten years" and even that wasn't enough. However, when you can't dilute a problem through time you know you've discovered an actual issue. "In four years who's going to care" got me through the worst shit in high school because my problems were largely situational. "That which does not kill you makes you stronger" but it can also make you a mean sonofabitch. When my mom divorced my dad he stopped drinking and started exercising because the settlement gave her (and her new husband) half of his estate "and he'd be goddamned if he'd let that bitch outlive him." The suicides of my generation all involved tall balconies. I suspect they've locked all those off from you whelps as a consequence. My apologies.
Awesome relationship partner person moved away and it no longer feels awesome. Feels like something big is missing and I'm not really doing anything about it. She's doing fine though, keeping busy back home and seems not as affected, which is good. We had a phenomenal final weekend together and everything reminds me of those few days now :P Other than that, gearing up to get to some summer training, hopefully I'll blow enough shit up to feel better. I was planning on writing some actual thoughts and introspection come this Pubski but it's still just feelies.
Storing - cough cough, RIDING - my friend's Suzuki C90T for the summer while he is traveling. It doesn't suck. And I am getting new tires on my bike this week, so I'll be back to riding my ST1100 regularly, as well: And my Chevy Volt is loving the warm weather, and we are almost up to 40 miles of battery-only range every day, as opposed to the 26 or so I got in winter. So my vehicles make me happy. --- At work I moved from building all my giant documents in Word, over to Adobe InDesign this week. Catching on pretty quickly. Haven't used any page layout tools in close to 20 years, but was a rockstar at PageMaker, FrameMaker, and Quark eXpress, once upon a time. So the learning curve seems to be pretty dang quick for me. Expect to be fluent around the end of next week. --- Keto is still going well. Down 40lbs since January. Decided to lose another 20lbs before my birthday in October, so am starting to work out and exercise now. --- Spending a lot of time in my back yard, with my wife and my dog, having picnics under our beautiful Douglas Fir tree, watching the Japanese Maples grow, the Irises bloom, and our little Apple Tree flower and produce far more fruit than is wise, for a plant of that size. Raspberries are coming along nicely. --- Got out and socialized with my old friends last week, and it wound up being about 40 of us Old Skool burningman people, who no longer go to the desert, but still revel in the insane shit we used to do. Twas frakkin wonderful! So this week, one of them decided to have a crepes party on Sunday. Most of us dropped whatever holiday plans we had, and decided to go there instead. Gonna be pretty lovely, hanging with the old friends, and shooting the shit and talking big fish stories, again. Life is good.
Great stuff. I wish I had a noble band of good natured ruffians that I belonged to. I sort of do, but we’ve drifted. Congrats on the weight numbers. They’re just numbers but that’s a lot of them.
I'll come out of my lurking to say hello! lots happening in my life since we last spoke. I finished my early music certificate at U of T, and got accepted into Tafelmusik's summer baroque program, which is a two week educational crash course. I got a scholarship for half of the fee, which is a big deal because they don't have many scholarships to give out. I'm also prepping for an audition. a bass spot in a baroque orchestra has opened up and I'm submitting a recording for the tape round. That's taking up most of my time and energy lately. I think I mentioned last time that a poem I wrote has been accepted for publication in an anthology of works that centre around the themes in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. There's a kickstarter to increase the amount per word for the authors, and to also include an audio book so if people want it I can post it. I'm also looking at submitting some poems for Poetry Magazine's issue focusing on trans and gender nonconforming people. I think I've picked out the ones I want to submit. So, lots of stuff. Sometimes it feels like I'm doing nothing, but when I write it out like that I guess things are moving forward.
Started rock climbing after shying away for fear of my foot not being able to handle it and let me tell you being able to do it was a big relief. I think I convince myself I just don’t want to do certain things I don’t think my body will be able to handle because it sucks less than having a major setback once you’ve decided you really want it. I’m a tad mad at myself for not hiking more last year, pretty sure ButterflyEffect has explored my home more than I have in the few weeks he spent here and I’m feeling pretty motivated lately to change that.
ORLY?! I'm heading up to either Jasper or the Bugaboos in July.