I rewarded myself with a shiny bauble: an atmospheric dispersion corrector for my planetary imaging adventure. I'm hoping to do better as the summer moves along. Mars is coming out of a major dust storm, and I hope to have better images this month. I can do better. Assuming all goes well I am going to get a better telescope and sell the current gear.
I got a talisman in the mail a few weeks ago. It is one of a kind, and I take it as a good omen. I'm on a 9:55 pm flight to NYC because I forgot to look at the whole am/pm thing when I booked. It actually worked out, because I needed an office/lab day. Forever Labs is most of what occupies my time. A normal day is cell culture, fix something/set something up/figure something out in the lab, answer questions for staff or docs, have a phone call meeting or two, have an in person meeting or two, deal with some administrative stuff, troubleshoot a random issue, and make some headway on a project. Interviews, lawyer things, investors, events, and a good amount of travel fills in the rest. It actually sounds pretty manageable, but a couple of these things always takes up more time than they should. I like it. It's just busy. On the side, insomniasexx (who is plenty busy herself) and I have been rebuilding Tin-Can. Actually, we've been having it built by a very impressive shop. We just got the MVP yesterday, and it works beautifully. If you recall the first version, wifi hotspot carrier and manufacturer fragmentation fucked it up. The new TC uses wifi direct, BLE or ultrasonic NFC. It never connects to the internet. It'll be a bit before we release it, but it looks like it will be both Android and iOS this time around. Pretty happy about it. Now in Uber headed to a short hotel sleep before a doc meeting tomorrow and conference tomorrow.
Has anyone visited the Faroe Islands or Iceland? I'm headed out that way shortly and would appreciate any tips or places to check out. In other news I bought a motorcycle. Unfortunately in order to ride in Germany, I need a license from California. Which you need to apply for in person. I assumed I would be able to get my license during a short visit last week, but after 4 hours of waiting I had to leave the line in order to make the wedding I was there for. I'm guessing I'll have to send a whole bunch of emails and cross my fingers for this to work. Trumps treatment of the Baltics is absolutely infuriating. Our support/article 5 is the biggest thing they have in an extremely precarious situation and here we are ready to say screw it all
I went to Iceland last year ! I did this map to prepare for the trip, it might help you, target what you want to see : https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=18uWnQ0053LtnbjZp0X09FcjU7eY&ll=65.45996267168805%2C-20.252259514062416&z=6 Here is my tripreport on Hubski : How long will you be staying there ?
Dude! That's incredible. Those pictures are absolutely gorgeous. I didn't think I could be any more excited, but here I am. I have about 5 hours total unplanned time in between now and the flight so you're an absolute lifesaver right now. Were there any reasons you didn't camp besides saving money? Our current plan is to use the public campgrounds along the way. 150 euros/two people for a week doesn't seem terrible. We're going for 7 days, and then 3 in the Faroes. I wish we could spend more time(7 days is still fantastic), but I'm headed off to meet family in Amsterdam afterwords. I'm also hoping to climb Mont Blanc but we'll see how the timing works out.
That's some amazing plans ahead ! Main reason for not sleeping at campgrounds was that we didn't pack a tent with us. I wanted to have the campgrounds in the map to be able to sleep in the car in a safe spot but when we saw we had to pay we tried to find other safe spots being on a budget :)
Yeah man, I'm in Stuttgart. Should you ever head this way let me know, though the chances of me actually being here are quite slim
Jeez. Got hit by a car today while on my bike. I’m ok. Didn’t find any broken bones after a trip to the emergency room. Was riding to work wearing my helmet, not two blocks from my house, when a girl backs out of a diagonal parking spot right into me. Not sure whose fault it is, despite her not looking back thoroughly enough to see me (there were no parked cars next to her to obscure her vision of me). I don’t even know how one would partition blame in as bike-hostile a city as Baltimore. It was fucking scary. Flipped completely around on my side, was in a state of shock before the pain set in. The heaviest thing about the whole ordeal was the act of calling my mom to break the news to her. I know how much she hates me on one of those things. But she took it really well. I’m lucky have only some lumps and bruises. Posted up on the couch. Gonna watch the World Cup and relax. Fucking hump day. kleinbl00 You recently completed your 8,001st mile by bike, not to mention motorcycle. How do you think about accidents?
You know what's an eye-opening experience? Lane-splitting through rush-hour traffic for 30 miles a day on a tall motorcycle. 1) Everyone is stoned. EVERYONE. You smell weed the entire way. 2) Half of the people are on their phone. So that's 50% of traffic that is not only chemically inebriated, but also distracted. 3) What's going to get you is the SMIDSY. There are studies I can't find at the moment that indicate drivers in traffic see objects that look like cars. Vertical objects like motorcycles and bicycles? Those get filtered out like the invisible gorilla. It's her fault. 100%. She hit you with a goddamn car in a parking lot. You get the consequences, though, because you're on a bicycle. So yeah - she needs to be paying your medical expenses (because here's a fun one: if you went to the hospital and reported that you were in an accident, YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE IS NOT GOING TO COVER YOUR BILL). But you also need to understand that the cars around you aren't trying to kill you, but they're also studiously NOT trying NOT to kill you. I haven't been hit by a car in... two years now. But I've been hit by cars three times. Four, if you include the motorcycle. In all cases, it was people paying absolutely no goddamn attention and 100% their fault. In three cases the only way I could have avoided it was to not be in their vicinity at the time. I think my primary skillz over the past 7000 miles have been widening my vicinity.
Thanks. I've used the word SMIDSY twice today explaining what happened to me. I realize I have to be even warier and more distrusting than I was. Because I want to keep commuting by bike, it's become a total joy to me to get my heart rate up, not sit in traffic, feel the sun on my face, etc. etc. But I have to ride with 600,000 cranky indifferents. Does this apply to Medicaid? Hope not.because here's a fun one: if you went to the hospital and reported that you were in an accident, YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE IS NOT GOING TO COVER YOUR BILL
Medicaid is just insurance. There are dozens of companies that administer it. I got hit on a motorcycle. I went to get checked out. I was fine. When the urgent care clinic submitted it to my insurance, it got kicked back because my insurance company determined that any injury (or medical treatment) due me needed to come out of the insurance company of the guy who smacked me across I-5. Yeah. That company ruled I was at fault until I gave them a police report indicating that their driver was 100% at fault and violating three laws. But since I hadn't made the claim yet, I was out $200. Fuck insurance companies.
Fuck. I have the chick’s contact info. I told people at the hospital I was hit by a car. Am I gonna get a bill in the mail soon? Fuck.
Thank you—will do this ASAP then. Jesus I don’t know the first thing about this shit.
I told several people at the hospital, including some hospital insurance scribe, that I was hit by a car. Probably too late for that.Depending on the extent of injury and quality of insurance you have it sometimes better to say you had a bike accident and lie.
Hey 'ski. Anniversaries. Two of them: our date-a-versary was on Sunday. 9 years. Our wedding anniversary was on Monday. 2 years. Things just get better and better. And they started off great! So am happy and in love. As usual. Rugby. The Seattle Seawolves won the inaugural season of Major League Rugby last Saturday, in San Diego, against the Glendale (Colorado) Raptors. My wife and I were there, and it was AMAZING. Old Friends. Caught up with old friends in San Diego. One of them I hadn't seen in close to 30 years... and we picked up the conversation right where we left off. Like we had never been apart. The other friends have been in my life since before I was born: my Mom's old college roommate. Like my aunt and uncle. Fantastic people, retired, and living a life of luxury on the beach in La Jolla. (We got to stay with them. It did not suck.) Job. This job slowly degrades, as the company attempts to catch up with more nimble johnny-come-lately competitors. So I am looking around. Turned down a job at Vulcan. Wasn't the right fit, unfortunately. I would love to work for them. Interviewing at the "Big A" for several roles, mostly because they are ridiculously high-paying. And just had another come across the bow for a groovy company doing actually groovy legal shit. Not shitty legal shit. Good legal shit. For good organizations. My inside-man is married to a dear friend of mine, so things look good there. Renovations. Holy crap have I got Projects planned for the home! Replacing the appliances in the kitchen... the ceiling in the downstairs... putting in a hot tub... replacing the back deck... building a garden wall... and probably a couple other things I am forgetting. I think I am digging this whole "home ownership" thing. Raspberries. Are not on my diet. But my yard is full of them, so I spend half an hour a day picking and eating warm raspberries off the bushes in my garden, while watching the sun set. It does not suck. Weight. I'm down 40lbs after switching to eating in a keto-friendly way. I haven't even started exercising yet. People notice every day, smile, and comment on how good I look. This is awkward for me. I have never actually lost weight before in my life, so I am trying to thank them for the compliment, receive it gracefully, without imploding. It's mostly working. Oh. And I am making cold brew coffee at home, and invented my own version of Starbucks' "Bacon Egg Bites" that are PHENOMENAL, and so am saving $10 every morning. Life? Its good.
I recently received a viewing of my uncle's domestic violence and divorce hearings, about 2 hours of footage disseminated by said uncle in full to family in an emailed plea for financial support and to "set the record straight about the court's obvious bias and the manipulation of my ex-wife." I've never seen someone so disillusioned. He really thought the court's tapes would paint him in the best light. This guy hasn't made more than $600/month in 20 years and forced his ex-wife to never seek employment because of their Christian family values. All 8 of his minor children have restraining orders against him, and he'd voluntarily ended visitation before that (while still arguing to claim them as dependents). Has never paid child support. After the separation, the old home burned down due to fire hazards that were named in a previous hearing with some evidence pointing to arson. He had kept all the family's photos, and they burned too. And on, and on, and on. It's grotesque. He represented per se, and I have never seen someone come across so poorly, so unprepared. The judicial disdain in the courtroom was palpable. He tried to explain how the "physics" of knocking his wife over and prying their sobbing daughter out of her arms were actually not as violent as it sounds. That the force he exerted on her must have been equally returned by her according to well-known scientific principles, and so she abused him just as much as he had abused her (if not more since she initiated the action by keeping their daughter from him in the first place, he says). Kept offering a photomontage of his children as evidence. Called the proceedings a modern-day example of Hitler/Stalin-esque kangaroo courts when the photos weren't admitted. I won't even talk about the emailed jeremiad he sent. You, dear reader, might be assuming this is a drug situation. Or mental health. Or blind hatred. It's not. This is just another example of my white trash Evangelical family (as I wrote about in my last Pubski contribution). The shit of it is, nearly everyone in my family supports him. Whole-heartedly. My cookie-baking, British-royalty-loving, Rick-Steves-reruns-watching grandmother has written his ex-wife hate mail. Several times. Wife-initiated divorce in this culture is ungodly, sinful. The near unanimous consensus is that his ex-wife should have stayed with him, that she's lied to ruin his life and poisoned his kids against him as well. Not even my mother's spoken to her nieces/nephews to judge the situation from their perspective, and like...there are a lot of witnesses to the shit he's done. Eight kids. Yet, this is entirely framed in Biblical wife-husband terms, and Evangelical patriarchal norms means that argument's been won by male figures since Abrahamic times. Divorce is recent and secular, not Christian. I'd cut them all off if I already didn't see them so irregularly. I know my family's crazy. I know religion has caused it. I barely got out. But now I have an excellent job, a fantastic and supportive wife, and in our early 20s we have the makings of a life on our own now. We want kids, and we definitely don't want them exposed to this lifestyle. So Hubski, does anyone else have a background in this culture? Something similar? Does anyone have advice for cutting out a truly dysfunctional family? What are your stories?
I've never had anyone as bad as your uncle in my life. But I'm basically sundowning my family. When my mom left my dad without so much as a note (we got the FBI involved - she was utterly incommunicado for a week) she called me and my wife picked up. I told my wife to tell her I didn't really feel like talking at the moment. It was glorious - she didn't call me for two years. Then she had a stroke and I felt guilty so I called her. It was a mistake. Robert Frost said that "home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in" and my family made it clear from when I was a small child that they didn't owe me shit. On the other hand, I've built myself a lovely family. I'm still unsure it's real. And the end result has been that the stuff I used to shrug off about my own family now bugs me to the core because I've conclusively proven to myself that it's unnecessary, it's cruel and it's not the way families are supposed to be. I'm sure social workers and psychologists would pillory me for this, but follow your bliss. Surround yourself with the people who make you happy. The people who make you unhappy? They have to meet you on your terms. "No, ma, I'm not coming to Christmas. When I was at the wedding it was clear I was in an environment that viewed my wife as less than human and I'm never subjecting myself or her to that ever again. If you want to come see your granddaughter you can come out here where I don't have to worry about the toxicity. Sorry. I'm happy now and that happiness is something I cherish."
My mom cut off contact with her dad a few years ago. He was always kind to me and my sister, but was always manipulative towards my mom. Then his wife died, and all that was left after grief was bitterness, so he became even more of a manipulative jerk to my mom. It still took her two years of exhausted headaches / migraines after each visit before she could cut him off. Family is hard to let go of. Personally I wanted her to cut ties way earlier - you might owe some family a helping hand, but you don't owe them your life or your kids.
The Speakeasy bar tours we've started with a friend are going surprisingly well! At 66 reviews, we're definitely the #1 bar tour of the city on Airbnb right now :) I've also gone down some weird internet rabbit hole reading about Magick and the Occult in the past few weeks. I'm mostly just curious about this whole subculture I've never heard of. But the fact that there is some research that has been done around wacky stuff like mirror gazing - and it's not 100% BS is just fascinating to me right now. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219253/
So glad to hear the tours are working!! That's fantastic!! Being a successful tour guide is also a ticket to almost anywhere in the world. Anyone can remember facts. Few people can be engaging and interesting in person, and relay those stories in a way that people like and respond to.
This week in bfx thinks about his future and how to side-hustle! I keep turning a business idea around in my head. I think I could make it work, but it would take a lot of hustle and finding somebody better at marketing and graphic design than I am. Operationally, I could do it right now with ~$2,000 investment for start-up which is...maybe fine? Also looking into taking a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt course and getting that certification, which would be a big jump forward professionally.
I keep turning a business idea around in my head. According to Quicken it's already cost me $20k. I hope I can make it work - but ye gods I don't wanna do 26 credits in my spare time ever again. On the plus side, I got like a 3.8 GPA (not that anyone will ever care). Also just booked a trip to IMTS in Chicago to help determine how many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machine tools I will eventually need to buy.
I think Hubski(well, at least me) can get together an extremely large investment of... moral support, for the small return of some pictures and storieshow many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machine tools I will eventually need to buy
Oh wow, IMTS seems awesome. There are going to be so many shiny toys at that show, should be a good way to meet some vendors!
I have six people in a dire need of tutoring (each at least twice a week) and found a few people in the building wanting to learn how to play chess. The latter is fun and rewarding. Three nights a week I work as a cashier at a nearby supermarket. Finances are OK without dipping too much into my savings and I don't even need to commute anywhere. Could be better, could be a lot worse. Plus I have a lot of time to catch up with my reading list. Still looking for a job that's at least marginally related to my skills and interests, but half-heartedly. It's hard to stave off apathy about it.
Heh. I have a goatee. As for illegal stuff: no, and not even because of some moral compass or whatever. I know that I have a breaking point and will hopefully never need to find it. However, there's something about me that makes police immediately suspicious whatever I do. At this point, I sincerely think that if a patrol would see a knife fight and me jaywalking, I'd be the one taken under arrest.
Hubski seems too quiet lately and I have only guesses as to why. One guess is me incessantly posting Trump scandals and news about the border crisis. I'm planning a news round-up of scandals and whatever is happening in that dumbass pocket dimension that spilled into our own somehow. With one easily filtered tag. The dump Trump Trump dump or something because I seem to really want to write headlines for the New York Post I'd also appreciate iOS keyboard recommendations. SwiftKey has been getting progressively shittier. It's developed a fear of profanity for one thing. When I first used it on Android it was like a mind reader. Now it's no better than the default keyboard. I'm just more used to its quirks so I keep using it
I think it's because we've all but lost several major contributors due to time consuming jobs. The problem is every major contributors stimulates more conversation than just what they write, so the effect of losing a few is pretty big on a site this small.
Yeah, for me it's work and life consuming most of my time. I'm writing an academic paper based on my thesis as well, and I notice it's not easy to find the time for that. But I have also drastically cut down my time on Reddit, Twitter, HN, and reading newspapers which has limited my exposure to cool things to post here.
Venus is the very bright star in the evening where the sun just set. Mercury in in the twilight between Venus and the sun. Jupiter is the very bright star almost due south at sunset. Looking to the left, there is a red star that twinkles, that is Antares. About the same distance in the same direction is a bright whitish star that does not twinkle, that is Saturn. Then, there is Mars. Mars is currently brighter than everything in the sky other than the sun, moon and Venus. Mars rises about midnight, and at sunrise in the AM, Mars will be a very, very bright red beacon of light low in the west that does not twinkle. It's a great time to be a planetary guy.
Mars will be directly opposite the sun on July 27. This is going to be the closest Mars has been to the earth since 2003 hence it is brighter than normal. Which makes the dust storm a pain in the ass for anyone wanting to take pictures of Mars; all we are getting right now is a featureless orange ball.
i haven't been feeling my best lately, but i'm trying italy in 6 days
So, I'm not sure how welcome what I have to say is, but: Sometimes, trying is all you can do. Sometimes, doing something isn't an option. Sometimes, you have to lie in bed all day and let your energy and mood fill themselves back up. Best wishes. I'm sure things would turn out better soon. Like, Italy? Holy shit. That oughtta turn them brain cogs around.i haven't been feeling my best lately, but i'm trying