My next door neighbor is a lovely single mom from South Africa, and we have suddenly become quite good friends. Her daughter is older now, and less shouty. Her dog is lovely. And our yards adjoin and plants mingle a bit, so we have actually seen each other outside and chatted on several occasions. Then we invited her to a Seattle Seawolves rugby game. She brought her (also a Saffa) mom, and they both had a lovely time. While chatting the other day in the front yard, loving on her dog, and enjoying the outdoors, she asked if I knew a handyman, because she has some things she needs done around the house. I said, "What kinds of things...?" And so now I am fixing a rotting beam, replacing some gutters, repairing a wall in the garage, and removing an old arbor before it falls down. Not for payment, or anything. Just to help out. To have fun projects to do. And to be the change you wanna see in the world. Crazy, huh? At the same time, I have pulled the engine from my Mid-Life Crisis Motorcycle, built an engine stand for it, gotten a better service manual (with better pictures and descriptions), and am actually moving forward with rebuilding this beast! Of course, I need to tear it down, and see how bad the pistons and cylinders are... and then stop. Because I don't actually OWN the bike. Yet. The title was lost. So I need to apply for a new one. But that is A Process, and I haven't begun it yet. I do have the piece of paper with the instructions on it. Somewhere. Just need to locate it, and plan that part of the project. But for now, I am stripping the bike, as assessing how bad it is. Before I put any money into it, I will take care of the registration/title issues. But I am getting closer. Optimistically, I might have something running by my birthday (October). More likely March of next year. We shall see...
I sued for a title once! If your state's policies are anything like mine, the process is mostly file the right paperwork at the courthouse and pay ~$50, wait a while, show up to your court date and re-state everything on the paperwork under oath, wait a while, get the paperwork in the mail, take it to the DMV and wait while they call the statewide DMV office to figure out what to do with it. FWIW my local DMV did not know anything about this process; I had to call the state one to figure out what paperwork I needed.
It's super easy in WA State. Send a registered letter to the last known address. Wait for it to be returned unopened. Go to the police station and show them the bike, so they can certify it exists, or whatever. Go to the Dept of Licensing and get an interim title. This makes me the owner of the bike, with all the rights of the owner, for 2 years. If the ownership is not contested in that time, then I get the full title. If the ownership is contested, the "rightful" owner has to go through a dizzying array of hoops to prove that the bike is stolen... like filing a police report back in 2015 when it was last registered. (Its had 3 interim owners, two who have started the title-petition process, but never completed it.) So it is safe to say the last title-holder has no interest in the vehicle, and it'll be uncontested. But before I spend $600 powder coating the engine cases, and building a new under-seat gas tank, and boring out the cylinders and getting new pistons... well, I'm gonna do the due diligence first. .... but paperwork just isn't as fun as wrenching on a motor! So I keep putting it off...
Hi there. It's Devac, have some account recovery problems and made an alt. Sorry if I didn't respond. The last two weeks were a tad hectic. I met lots of people, continue playing and anxiously await news on the PhD placement front. My cardiologist is retiring, but she recommended me to one of her past residents, and he's been both understanding and accommodating. mk - I used a non-gmail email for this account and messages from Hubski aren't filtered out. It's Wirtualna Polska (wp.pl - can't link), which probably won't help anyone, but it might be relevant for your diagnostics.
Moving: This week I'm moving out of the apartment I've been at for the last two years and into a rented house one block into the sketchy part of town where the rent is dirt cheap. Got into a bit of a scuffle with the UHaul by knocking the paneling off of a parking garage that was ever so slightly too short to fit the truck. They said they'd call about what's going to happen with that sometime in August, still waiting to hear how bad is bad. Meanwhile, I'm boxing up everything I own and realizing I probably have too many boardgames. Miscellania: Tonight is Wallace and Grommit Night for UF's boardgame club, and I've been buying cheese and crackers for that. Super hyped for all the new people joining in Fall. We've been doing house parties on the regular and that's been one of the hilights of the year. I've also been getting slowly into competitive rap battle at the behest of my friend Evan. It's a lot sillier a scene than I was expecting.
I'm rebuilding the bike. Whole new groupset. Guess what. Brakes don't fit. See, you can mix and match parts all you want but you can't, not really. So the calipers you ordered don't actually fit in the caliper holes on your forks so you need to use the v-brakes. Except the pull on the shifters for the groupset is too short so you need to order mini-vs. And the cassette doesn't fit on the hub so you need a new hub, except it's cheaper to buy a new wheel than a hub, so now you need new wheels, and since you live in the tiny rural hamlet of Los Angeles none of these parts are available anywhere locally so you have to order from Amazon and because you're ordering from Amazon in Los Angeles, and Amazon Los Angeles hires drivers that just don't feel like it so they say your address is undeliverable, eat shit. They did this to me last year. I sent them a Google Streetview shot of the house I live in because it happened to have an Amazon Prime Delivery truck in front of it with a driver holding a package and walking through the gate. It appears that whoever replaced the people I got fired last year got sick of it and have been replaced with more people who just aren't feeling like getting out of the car in my neighborhood. I mean, I wouldn't feel like getting out of the car in my neighborhood either. But I'm not driving around with the express purpose of getting out of the car. I talked to an Amazon driver back in my old neighborhood. He told me he'd been delivering for two weeks which, at that time, was a week longer than most people delivered for Amazon. This is one of the things that happens when you let the Internet eat the world - you have to deal with the world at a local level. And on the one hand, fuck Amazon for making it impossible for me to buy a goddamn brake lever. But on the other hand, all that money is being sucked out of Los Angeles and right into my back yard in Seattle and that, right there, is what globalism is about. Fuckin' hell tho I've changed transmissions on cars with less hassle than switching from Acera to 105...
Has it seriously been a week since the last one? In the last five days I've... 1) Moved out of my apartment (and into my parents') while the ink dries on the new lease 2) Finished a long-running freelancing project of mine (AND I got paid in a timely manner!!!) 3) Started a new project at work (with Ethics and Morals included this time!!!) 4) Reconnected with a few old friends who are going to be in my city in the next few weeks It's been busy, it's been hectic. Days are a huge blur at this point. I love how much I've gotten done, but I'm hoping I can relax a little bit between now and Pubski: August 7, 2019.
Had lunch with my colleague slash mentor yesterday. He’s one of the people I talked to while applying for my job, and he was the one who saw a lot of potential in me. After a decade plus of working at our company (which is a lot considering it’s technically only six years old and anyone over three years is effectively a veteran) he announced his resignation last week. It was an interesting conversation - on the one hand, we reflected on his work and time at the company, and on the other hand we discussed my future. His chapter closing, a new chapter for me opening up. We finally found someone to join our team, which means that the extra load I’ve been under since February is finally coming to an end. The perfect moment to re-evaluate priorities. He sees a lot of potential for me to grow into what is effectively a product manager. I didn’t really know what that title meant until yesterday, but it almost perfectly matches what I feel I should be working on. What I think I can become great at if I give it my best shot. Even though I absolutely hate the word manager, I get excited by the skills described here and get excited at the prospect of developing along those axes. In other news, my older sister is not just pregnant, but also getting married and her soon-to-be-husband is gonna take over his father’s farm. All in the next twelve or so months. Times, they are a changin’.
Awesome that you'll get to work as a PM! Knowing what little I do about you, I think you'll be great - Having someone so thoughtful and well-spoken is going to be a huge relief to the devs you manage. How do you feel about your colleague slash mentor leaving? It'd be hard for me, so I'm curious where your head's at
Currently I don't manage many people, I mostly manage myself and do most of the dev work on my own. For example in the past three days, I've spent 70% of my time in either GIS or Python applications. But I am definitely not super attached to that kind of work - if anyone else can do it, I'm fine with them doing it, as long as it's up to par. Part of this transition is (hopefully) moving closer to a role where I figure out and get to play with technology and datasets, and then surrounding myself with people who are much more eager and qualified to do the legwork. My attitude towards him leaving is mostly that I embrace panta rhei, that the only constant is change. In my 18 months here I've seen my company grow by two dozen people and lose almost a dozen, on a company size that is now in the eighties. I'm happy for him, he seemed to be struggling to find his place for the past year. Wasn't that attached to him, but I do think I'll miss him.
Research Handed in a paper for a conference. I rushed parts of it and so I kind of hope it gets rejected so I can re-do it correctly. Going to have a talk with my advisor about realistic deadlines because I'd rather not repeat this experience. Now I'm updating the related literature part of a paper that ought to have been published 4 years ago, but at least that work doubles as reading for another project I'm helping to run. Fortunately I'm still proud of the work in this paper even after everything I've learned since I wrote it! My advisor wants to change my research direction to something more...pragmatic? primarily so I can publish some more and graduate. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but graduating does sound pretty nice. Personal I realized recently that over the past year, for the first time in 15 years, I've had long stretches of time where I'm not even passively suicidal (and not because I'm distracted by some sort of accomplishment or just too busy to feel anything). What the hell. This is so nice. Is this what it's like all the time for some people?
Cars Yesterday Dala and I passed a late '90s Jaguar XK rolling on 20s. The car was in good shape, but the wheels looked awkward. I wonder if maybe 20s were too small and it would have looked better with stretched wheel wells and 22s. My car's body and finish is so messed up from multiple hail storms and years of being baked in the sun, I've decided that a few bumper stickers won't hurt. I quickly decided that if a few bumper stickers won't hurt, completely covering the rear bumper with stickers until none of the paint can be seen is the way to go. I'm not gonna put on anything religious or political, so I'm just gonna do bumper stickers for local stores and such, or things that I think just look nifty. So far I have four stickers on there, all from local coffee shops, but ironically, none of them are shops I frequent on the regular. Jobs That job I talked about last week? I was offered it, and for specific reasons I won't go into, I turned it down. It was a hard choice for me to make, because I knew that if I didn't take the job and stayed where I'm at, I'll continue to be profoundly unhappy and stressed. If I did take that job though, I'd also be profoundly unhappy and stressed, but in different ways. It's amazing how having to choose between two awful choices can be so incredibly difficult. Television I'm almost done with Avatar: The Last Airbender. While I can't say it's really my thing, I completely understand why people like it. It's got some wonderful characters, good story development, and the two go hand in hand to show people grow and change. Out of everyone in the series, I think Uncle Iroh is my favorite, because he's not only a strong and loving man, he is a wonderful example of someone who has made the conscious choice to not only seek redemption and seek betterment, but to use what he's been through to help someone else who is walking down that same path. That's a good character to have, for any kind of story, not just one aimed at children.
I did appreciate that this series spent a considerable amount of time exploring ethics and character development in ways that a lot of cartoons I watched growing up didn't. But due to the target audience a lot of that exploration was very surface level though, especially compared to the overall setting that the story takes place in and some topics, such as the genocide of the Air Tribe or how the main hero Aang literally destroys fleets of ships with little effort and how whether or not he's wielding such power appropriately, aren't really concepts you can delve deeply into in a children's show with ease. That's not to say that the creators did a bad job telling a story, but man, the themes of this series are actually very big. Now, to their credit, there are tons of shows and movies aimed at adults that touch on similar themes and don't even give them the exploratory consideration they deserve. So to get even the level we did in Avatar is kind of impressive, even more so since it was made about fifteen years ago.
I usually watch anime and some of my reccomendations are all-time bangers that are well known :) For relatively short series, death note, tengen toppa Gurren Lagann, mushishi, attack on titan, cowboy bebop, samurai Champloo Longer anime tend to lose their edge with time. The o ly one I still enjoy is One Piece.
You're the second person to tell me this recently. I'm kind of curious what makes them lose their edge. Do the stories just meander and drag on or does the storytelling get more sloppy? Or do you just kind of lose interest in the characters? While I don't know if it's technically anime, Netflix's Voltron series was pretty frustrating to watch. As the series dragged on, plot points were often abandoned or rushed to be resolved, character development was often any combination of forced and unnatural, abrupt, or non-sensical. On and on I could go. In general, it felt like starting out the writers had a clear vision for where they wanted the story to go, but by season three, they were starting to say "Eh, whatever. We guess these ideas will work."Longer anime tend to lose their edge with time. The o ly one I still enjoy is One Piece.
The main issue that most of then have is that they seem to keep the show running just to keep it running. This leads to many filler episodes (see Naruto). Another "longer" show that is amazing is Hunter X Hunter. It takes a break and the mangaka makes only 10 chapters a year, but it stuck to its "no filler" nature and it feels like a high quality work. Currently watching it.
That's something I'm pretty familiar with actually, as that happens a lot with Western Comics too. Sometimes, titles just need a rest, if only for a while. Coming back to a character after they've been on hiatus for a while can make them feel new and refreshing again.The main issue that most of then have is that they seem to keep the show running just to keep it running.
Snow I'm trying to get through this week as quickly as possible. We've had some... ...OK snowfall in the mountains in the last week and looks like there might be more on the way. A group of us have rented a ridiculously large house 30 mins from the mountain - the same one we rent around this time every year. I spent an obscene amount of money on a new snowboard and bindings (although it was on sale, so not as much as I could have spent) and I'm looking forward to breaking it in. Climbing I haven't been and I'm missing it. I've been incredibly lazy the past few weeks. No physical activity except the short two-block walk to work from my tram stop. I think I'm rationalising it to myself by saying 'well I'm going to be very active in the snow'. Planning to get back into it when I return. Spanish I've been enjoying the classes a lot. There has been a lot of absenteeism. Last week I was the only student there and I felt like I got a lot out of the class. This week though, a student who hasn't been there for a few weeks was back - and was struggling. It's selfish, but I was pretty annoyed. Most of the class was taken up with everything I'd already gone through last week. There are two classes left now. I'm planning on continuing to one of the next levels. Looking at the descriptions of the classes though, we seem to have gone over a lot of the material already. I'm going to ask my teacher (hopefully in Spanish...) whether he thinks I'm ready for level 2 yet... (¿Crees que debería intentar los clases nivel dos?). I have no idea if that's right - or if I'll be way too far out of my comfort zone. Anyone here able to tell me if I'm on the right track with that sentence?
I think it definitely helps having a set topic for each week. On Tuesday, we were discussing: Lots of interesting vocabulary and history! The Mexican government has primary school books available here if you're interested!¿Qué tanto conoces Latínoamérica?
Indeed! Some of the vocab videos on Youtube, while useful in other ways, can be frustratingly random. A sentence like "I bought a new purse" will be followed up by "Did you remember to brush your teeth?" On the one hand it's great because I'm getting a lot of nouns and verbs splashed in front of me. On the other hand though, it's annoying because the sentences aren't really related to each other. That said, Dala let's me play around with her DuoLingo app from time to time and it seems to have a problem in the other direction, where a ten question exercise might ask me about "pantalones" in three or four out of the ten questions. I'm really enjoying reading Voice of America and DW in Spanish. Some articles I can get through relatively well on my own where other ones will have me busting out the dictionary for every other word. Either way, it's great immersion wise. Random aside, do you have Rosetta Stone where you live? I remember ten years ago, that software was expensive as heck, like $2-300 a level, and some languages went up to five or six levels. It seems like all the new resources out there have really put pressure on them to offer better deals, because I recently saw a lifetime account for Spanish for only $200.I think it definitely helps having a set topic for each week.
I've been meaning to check out Voice of America and DW. Thanks again for recommending them! I'm not sure about Rosetta Stone. I've never looked into any of the language learning software packages. While classes are expensive, I think they're the only way that I'll actually learn much. I'm a terrible student when I have to hold myself accountable. I did try the "Language in 10 minutes a day" books. I have Russian and Spanish sitting around somewhere. Can't remember where on earth I put them though.
Greetings my fellow animals. I have nothing interesting to say this week so I'm just going to say a whole lot of nothing. Summer is half-over, and I'm excited to announce I have accomplished 5% of my goals. Work: Nothing. Talking about work outside of work grinds my gears. Always has. I had some comment complaining about older folks telling me I'm young and dumb. But the truth is, they're right. I know nothing and I should listen to all older people. All the time. In fact, I should do nothing but listen. I should never talk. I should have no identity. Keep telling me I'm young and dumb! I'll promise to never say a single word ever again on this planet! What is young anyway? 16? 24? 37? Who fucking knows! Only when I'm 80 and finally get the fuck-you money I'll start talking! Buddhist vow of silence! life eeeexxxxppppeeeeeriiieeeeennnnccceeee. Reality: Nothing. I'm back at the parents' house for the weekend. They're going up to the cottage, so I'm going to be enjoying myself here. That means weed, and girls, and rap music, and setting my stupid fucking degree on fire. 3 years baby. THREE FUCKING YEARS. This is proof we need to design a virus to lower the average life expectancy to 20. A computer virus. Otherwise I'll exist. And you'll be reading this diatribe wondering w.t.f. is this sphere of burnt-out consciousness is on about. Imagine going from being in a band, having a rap mixtape on SoundCloud (that for some reason is still slapping in the high school 4 years after I graduated), getting suspended in school for hacking, doing charity work, pretending to build a school in Ecuador, top grades in math and science and raising your ontological level beyond the boundaries of this reality to literally being Bryan Caplan. That's the trajectory of my life. And not bailing out of this by the first year because you have a rational program in your head telling you it's rational to continue. Rationality. Forget about your gut-feeling. Maximizing the utility function subject to a budget constraint using a Lagrangian. That's what "the twists and turns of living" do to people. All because I cared, or something. Politics. Politics: I had a professor that was exactly like him. He too, punished his children using the extensive-form game in game theory, and wanted to emulate the practices of the business school. Baby pictures. Loads of baby pictures. Pictures of his kids. So cute. Oh, I only posted half the assignment. Let's fail half the class. Let's argue about it. That is, not accepting assignments if they're handed in when class starts. Nope, has to be at 8:29am. Like how could anyone tolerate this for a second? For the privileged of becoming a trade assistant in America? Big yikes. I'm convinced becoming upper class is just a function of how much bullshit you can take. I think total failure is better than mediocre success. Mental Health: At some point during this process and realizing I might be in school forever just to not hate myself I tried to go to therapy as a joke. I knew it wasn't going to work, I just thought it would be funny. This girl was like "oh, well your twenties are kind of like bouncing around from interest to interest here check out Gary Vee! He's an entrepreneur!" bruh. So there's only one way out of this mess really. I'm not a whiner, although I play one on TV. I'm a fucking problem solver. That's to start rocking out with our sock out EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. Getting laid. And to do it now, because the present moment is the only thing any of us will ever experience. As opposed to spending the rest of our lives "waiting" for the opportunity to do so. Oh, after I graduate high school. After this semester. Once I finish college. Sure I'd really like to make a film. Once I'm on vacation. Let me tell you, bullshit. That's a formula to turn you into reddit.com. Am I the asshole? Fuck you! Only way out is to blow past the squares with an unpredictable surge of creativity. Then I think, we'll finally understand why we're all here.