So the album releases on Friday, but it's on Bandcamp already https://elkbird.bandcamp.com/album/nature-expansion-pack Go ahead and take a download code for it!
Bit late to the table and typically a lurker here, but today I handed in my two-weeks notice to my bosses, which felt momentous. I don’t have a new job lined up yet and my current job isn’t bad, paying decently and with good coworkers, but I find the work (solar panel sales) incredibly draining. I can’t fully explain why, but I have been craving a change for months. Even unemployment would be more than welcome at this point. My brother in law told me that he is moving to LA to try to make a career in music. I guess that inspired me. I can’t tell you where I’m going or what I’m going to do, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so strongly I’m making the right choice. Something something divine inspiration, maybe.
First day of Physical Medicine and Rehab (PM'n'R) today. I've never had my form for various exercises critiqued so thoroughly. Truthfully I'm excited to go back. My physical therapist has been helping people with spinal injuries for almost 30 years and has stunning reviews, hopefully things go well. There is this super strange sense of relief I feel with regard to all of this back stuff. I have a problem that can be given a conclusive differential diagnosis and effective treatment. I have a problem that can actually be fixed. I have a problem that can actually be fixed. Excited to say the least about that. Bad body day otherwise. Early appointment combined with muscle-relaxer wean makes for a sore day. Take care of your meat-wagons hubski.
Hey, that’s fucking awesome that you have a clearly actionable and fixable problem. I hope that goes well for you!
Coffee I bought an espresso machine. An actual espresso machine--with non-pressurized portafilters, a 58mm grouphead, &etc. Very, very excited. To the right of it you can see my coffee roaster. Running This is a little late for Pubski but halfway through November I ran my second ever half marathon. I beat my old time by nearly 11 minutes by running a 1:46:06 (8:06 pace). Race report is as follows: I was trying to beat my "PR" set at the first half marathon I ran earlier this year. I was aiming for 1:55 since my last time was 1:56:59 on a fairly flat course, and I figured that was a reasonable goal since Berkeley is also a pretty flat course. I originally started training with my housemate, but he wasn't as consistent with the training towards the second half of the training program, which will come into play later. Used the Hal Higdon Novice 2 program for the most part. I tended to extend the weekday runs by .25 or .5 of a mile. I rarely (if ever) did the suggested Sunday cross training, and I may have flopped the order of a couple of the Saturday runs. The last two long runs I did in the week up to the race were only 9 and 10 miles, but I did them on some local fire roads to gain the benefit of hilly runs. Most of my long runs were on those fire roads. Before the race, my housemate and I decided that we'd start running together and we'd go our own ways once he couldn't keep with my pace. On race day, the corrals were pretty crowded, and once the race began it was difficult to make much forward progress--we were kind of stuck running at the pace of the group until things began to thin out and we ran onto wider streets. Once we got onto the UC Berkeley campus about 2 miles in, my housemate told me to go on ahead and I started running at a little faster pace. I only ever looked at my average pace on my watch during the race. As we had a sort of slow start, I ran until I saw the average pace hit 8:49, but as the race went on, I kept feeling on top of things and I saw my average pace continue to drop. At that point, I started running based on how I felt. As we crested the last rise before heading all the way down to the edge of the San Francisco Bay, it seemed like it'd be a good time to take advantage of the gradual downhill and keep up the quick pace I was running. At the 6 mile mark I saw my housemate and another friend on the course, running the other direction as part of the race has an out-and-back section. Once we were back in the residential part of town, and passing the mile markers, I clung to the pace that I had mustered for the earlier part of the race and told myself it was only a 5k to the finish. Folks along that part of the course who were cheering us all on were a welcome morale boost. At the 13 mile marker, the finish line was in sight, and I just booked it with all I had--after all, I wouldn't be running for a few days after the race, right? Ran past the finish line and immediately my quads just wanted to cramp up. Thankfully they had volunteers with water and bananas right at the finish line. Checked the final results and was absolutely floored by my finish time. Never expected I could possibly run that pace for that long.
Mostly Sweet Maria's. They're local to me so I don't have to pay for shipping, which is handy. I am also local to Cafenated Coffee, a roaster and café. I met the owner when they opened the shop and he agreed to sell me green beans from the farms he has relationships with--so occasionally I do that.
I also used to buy from Happy Mug Coffee when I lived in New England, and was satisfied with both their green beans and their roasted coffee (but for roasted, order the 1-lb bags; the 1/2-lb don't show up in vacuum sealed bags). I started out roasting with a popcorn popper!
God, you're making me miss good coffee. I've got all of my stuff packed away right now, and my parents' old, scaly Keurig makes me want to die on a daily basis. It hasn't felt worthwhile to dig it out with my broken leg before now, but...I mean, I gotta
Chickens My dear Annie passed away suddenly last Friday. I knew something was up on Thursday night; when I brought her in Friday she just curled up in my lap and drifted off. We built an enclosure downstairs for Bertha and Lion so they can be warm during the winter. Put it together from stuff that was lying around! I also put a 'ladder' I made from some tree branches screwed together where I'm standing in the below photo; Bertha loves to have something to climb on. It took probably half an hour for them to stop playing 'the floor is lava' with the pine shavings but they're pretty comfortable now: Shop My wife wants to make something with the lathe, which means I need to fix the spindle. It runs fine but after a few minutes the bearings heat up and slowly seize. I had cleaned and lubricated them as best I could without taking the spindle apart and that didn't quite fix things. The disassembly went pretty easily, although whoever was in there last did not have a pin spanner and really boogered up the holes in the collar for the spanner with a punch. It has two taper sliding bearings which can seize in their races if there isn't enough running clearance. They both can be adjusted independently, so once I get some shim stock in I can tweak the clearance for both. The bearing surfaces themselves look quite good for being 100 years old, although I may eventually get some lapping compound and try to lap them in a bit. I'll take some pictures when I put it back together so you all can appreciate how neat the design is.
Sorry to hear about Annie passing away! Seems like you did everything you could to keep her comfortable before she left. I love your basement enclosure! I've never seen anything quite like that before, but it's very clever. How's Bertha doing? Putting on any more weight? Reading about it has me intrigued, pls doI'll take some pictures when I put it back together so you all can appreciate how neat the design is.
I haven't checked her weight recently but she's adjusted well to life as a chicken again. We're fortunate that she and the rooster get along well and seem to enjoy each other's company. She'll still eat as much hot dog as you'll feed her! I think her appetite for snacks increases whenever she's forced to eat standard chicken fare instead of begged bites of whatever I'm eating.
Art kingmudsy has got an arts and craft thread up. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's awesome as heck to have something like that going again because Hubski is legit filled with some super creative people and it's always wonderful to see what people are working on. Cars The other month, I talked about how the third, fourth, and fifth generation Camaros just didn't age well at all, visually speaking. They're all just pretty bland and underwhelming, even with clean bodies and fresh paint. Well, the other day, I was thinking about the Isuzu Vehicross and while it may have been a bit of an odd duck in its day and a bit ahead of its time, it still looks good. I can imagine, with only a few tweaks, the same car could be released today and still fit in. I kind of regret never buying a lightly used one when I had the opportunity. The combination from being a limited run car and from an abandoned brand kept me away, for fear of difficulty getting repair support for it, which is a shame, cause I probably would have loved that car. Ditto for the Pontiac G8. Videogames I recently got the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection and have been enjoying the heck out of it. I'm a bit at a loss though, because with the exception of Super Street Fighter II for the Sega Genesis and a little dabbling in Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and 2, Inever really played Street Fighter, instead opting for The King of Fighters series from SNK (I literally had ever King of Fighters game from '94 to XI, plus games like Neo Geo Battle Colosseum, etc.). So I'm basically in the process of learning to use and fight against characters I'm not too familiar with, with a series of fighting systems I'm not too familiar with, and I gotta say, it's quite the challenge. I like Fei Long in Super Street Fighter II, Ken in the Alpha series, and Sean in III. I think I owe it to myself to do a bit more exploring though. Keep being beautiful everyone.
I had a buddy who went through two Amigos; we were in the unique position of pitching a Vehicross ad to Isuzu in 1999 and came up with an idea blending a bunch of Road Warrior mofos and Joe Isuzu with the tagline "what's your Y2K solution?" They passed. Ever driven a Vehicross? They were sloppy like a truck but cramped like a sports car. I made a serious run at buying one in '02 but it doesn't take long to recognize that they've got the brakes and rolling stock from an Amigo with a really big turbo. They also have a lot of tupperware that bleaches real nice to the point where it looks like a car wearing an apron. It also doesn't take long to realize why the Japanese put a rear-view camera in it (which wasn't DOT legal); the rear-view mirror gives you a great view of the sky overhead and absolutely nothing shorter than an 18-wheeler. Still, I run past one two or three times a week. They're... interesting. It was designed by Shiro Nakamura, who went on to make pretty much everything at Nissan from '05 to now, including the Juke.
I almost wrapped my head around one. There were two problems for me: 1) Between the turbo and the CVT, it feels like a driving simulation, not a car. The connection between inputs and vehicular responses feels a lot like flying a Predator UAV over satellite link. 2) The fact that it's a Versa with a tall body means that it isn't particularly off-road-able, which, for a car that's gonna front like that, is a damn shame. I recognize that 99% of all things with AWD will never so much as see dirt but I really think that if Nissan did a version of the Juke that had some modifiable suspension bits they would have captured a whole bunch of the PunisherPants market. Examples exist but they're so much work.
No. But I can imagine, even with sportier suspension, it would still drive like a truck. I think I'll always be more inclined to like cars, especially performance cars, but I gotta say, there are some compact SUVs that I like, at least visually. The Kia Niro and Toyota CHR come to mind, but I think if I went from driving the FR-S daily to one of those daily, I'd be pretty disappointed in the handling.Ever driven a Vehicross? They were sloppy like a truck but cramped like a sports car.
The CH-R with 6 cylinders and AWD would have been a car. I guess it makes sense that the highest-performance vehicles available are all electric; after all, you get that kick off the line for free. But I really wish the rest of the market hadn't capitulated so heavily.
I remember the day Toyota released the specs for the car and feeling really let down. To give something as aggressively styled as that car such weak engine options, I kind of felt like what some people probably felt like during the malaise era.
Bobcats are part of the lynx family, and pretty nifty too. Wikimedia didn't have any pictures I liked, but iNaturalist has quite a few gems.
This week I talked two people out of resigning from our programme, and they joined my current study group to keep up with the pace. That's five in total. Not gonna lie, this place is hard, and it goes double for competitive types (i.e. nearly everyone), but that doesn't mean we don't have each other's back. nowaypablo's comments about life/attitudes at WP didn't go amiss. I hope you're doing well! Yesterday I delivered a presentation about my research project to a mock symposium composed mostly of senior staff and other students. After q&a, I had to do the only proper thing: approach the professors who asked all of those measurement-oriented questions and get them to explain what I messed up. That took most of yesterday and today, and I was invited to see a similar setup next week. It was a lot of fun and it always takes me by surprise just how most of the seniors here are eager to teach. Didn't happen much outside of studies/research, unfortunately. The girl I mentioned last time fizzled out, but at least I can honestly say it's for the better. Aikido is a lot of fun, though, at some point, I hope to learn something beyond hitting the floor safely. Gonna give it a few months more and see where it goes from there. Barely had the time to even lurk around here, and I miss you all.
Wow what a throwback. I resent that anything I say on Hubski is held to any regard, but I appreciate it. I'm 6 months away from snatching my diploma and commission and getting out of here. How did the follow-up mock symposium go? I wonder if you improved on the feedback or overthink and oversell like I do. Aikido is such a cool martial art especially for its philosophy. Much respect. Luckily you have a mat so the harder you hit the ground, the more bounce you get on your way back up. edit: hijacking your conversation with applewood, you should seriously hop in for an hour or two at that Sambo spot. And report back. I hope to learn something beyond hitting the floor safely.
We didn't do a follow-up. I went for their help because it annoyed the hell out of me for not having even considered those kinds of questions (e.g. how the hell would I confirm my theory). Symposium was to familiarise us with the format, and for staff to get the gist of what us PhD freshmen could do on our own in two months/how are we handling it. This week, I spent all of my free time in the experimentalists building trying to get myself up to speed with their methodologies. The gap between theoretical and experimental physics is almost comically wide in some respects, and I definitely should be putting more effort to bridge it. We already got new assignments, though. I'll get to see if I improve/learn my lesson in February. As I said, we shall see about Sambo. I'm not a fan of sparring with guys who likely have my entire bodyweight in muscle, but the interest both of you showed makes me intrigued enough to try it at some point.
Unless the gym spars at a real high intensity, you shouldn't have an issue because people will take your size and weight into consideration. If the gym does spar at a real high intensity, especially frequently, that's a big red flag that the gym is an unsafe environment because that alone greatly increases the risk of injury. When it comes to things like learning techniques and running drills, you can easily work with people who have twenty to fifty pounds on you, because the focus shouldn't be on overcoming the person working opposite from you, but learning the body motions and the theories behind the techniques. Case in point? One class I had a judo partner who was over a foot taller than me and had me by at least fifty pounds, if not more, and they worked with me so well and were so helpful, I didn't even notice the size difference. No pressure though. You gotta do and worry about what feels safe and comfortable for you.I'm not a fan of sparring with guys who likely have my entire bodyweight in muscle, but the interest both of you showed makes me intrigued enough to try it at some point.
Are you just looking for staying healthy or do you have self defense in mind? Have you considered giving Judo or Wrestling a shot? I ask, because Aikido is great if you're curious or just looking to stay active, but if you're looking to martial arts with the additional goal of finding a style that is practical and effective for self defense, competitive sports, etc., Judo and Wrestling benefit both from having not only a more cohesive and straightforward vocabulary of techniques, but the additional ability to practice competitively also allows you to develop familiarity and confidence in both the techniques as well as your own body. You live a lot closer to the region than I do, so while it was never an option for me, Sambo might be worth looking into as well, for the same reasons stated above. Personally, I did Karate growing up, a little Judo in college, and finally Boxing as an adult, but that was disastrously short lived, which is a shame because I fell in love with it. If I had a chance to do it all over again, I would have stuck with Judo. Also, this goes without saying, but please don't fight fight. We're all too good for that. :)Aikido
Mostly self-confidence and it's a decent group activity. I hadn't worked out with other people in quite a long while. My choice of aikido was predicated on already having some exposure to it and not hating it. The 'landing on the floor' part was a bit tongue-in-cheek, though it does begin to feel samey despite the fact I know it's one of the pillars of this high-mobility sport. Time will tell. Judo isn't taught anywhere where I'd be willing to commute after work, and that goes quintuple for wrestling. Sambo is viable, there's even a place for it close to where I TA, but I'd rather stick to what I have now rather than switch one intro for another. Really, I think that part of the problem is that I'm not passionate about it. My last homework gave me more of a rush than any martial art or fight done so far, so it's a bit hollow but better than not doing anything.
Another week, another funeral. I dunno how much more emotional battering I can take! I feel quite adjusted to it now though - it's just when I see someone else tear up, I suddenly feel the tears coming on for me. Gonna tuck into a beer this weekend that's for sure. Plus side, we might be getting a cat this Saturday. Photos will be shared.
I once lost 9 people in just under two years. Five of them to lunatics with guns. One who died instantly at his turntables when, while bopping his head to the music in his headphones, his undiagnosed spinal meningitis kicked in and basically turned him off. They say he was dead before he hit the ground. There's no answer. There's no easy solution. There's no rhyme or reason to when or where you will go to pieces. It just happens, and breaking down is not a weakness in character or a problem you can "solve". What I found most helpful was to going and doing things that I know they specifically would have liked. Being active, doing something I may not have done by myself before, or simply thinking "If Drew was here, he'd seriously dig this!" helped me make new, positive memories, of the person and established a new positive narrative that I associated with them, rather than just their death. Good luck with your journey, my friend.
Appreciate the kind words. I agree too - I intend to do things that my grandfather would be proud of. Taking good care of the gardens, inheriting his piano so practicing more often. A part of me is sort of waiting for everything to hit. I feel like I've been coasting through but maybe I'm actually handling it well. This might be what being adjusted feels like to me!
With all the conferences and talks and project presentations I've been doing this fall, I've always had a Next Thing In A Week or Two to work towards. That series of sprints ended with my trip to Belgium recently. Now I just have one minor presentation this Monday and then it's waiting for Christmas break to kick in. It's funny, as soon as short-term urgent matters drop to the wayside and I have some space to ponder my plans I always seem to overshoot and end up at the Big Questions of Life and What to Do with It. It doesn't help that it's the end of the year. Maybe I'll write another reflection like I did the past two years, that was a useful exercise to do.
Whaddya wanna do, ya know? Just got into my Intermediate Alpine Climbing Course so there goes 2020. Alpine climbing, endurance running, ski mountaineering...I’m excited for the now but I’m even more excited for the five years from now when maybe I’m competent at combining those passion and skills. Hmm. Kind of makes you wonder what the fucking point of it all is when you could just go play on a mountain. Been listening to Modern Baseball again and thinking about 2013. A good year.
Tonight is one-shot night so I'll be playing dnd, or call of cthulu or something exciting I've never heard of. I've never really been a fan of one-shots before, but that's been because they've always been dungeon crawlers. But one-shots that aren't are really fun! It's kind of weird to play with people who I never hang out with otherwise. A guy I played with last time stopped me on campus and said he finally realized that he recognized me from dnd. It's weird being more familiar with the names they chose for their characters then their own name.
I'm running a starfinder one-shot in a few weeks, trying to keep it far far away from dungeon-crawling since I have a similar disdain for them as a player. It will be my first time GM'ing, and I'm nervous! My friends have been pushing me to try it since forever because I'm great at voices and improv, but I'm worried that I don't have a mind for mechanics. I get that feeling, though. If it bothers you, you could always try organizing something outside of the normal sessions? How'd you meet these people, anyway?
It's a student association for role playing games! Usually with really good dms and fun quirky stories since they don't have to be a part of a larger narrative. But it's not the same as having your "own" group. I'm hoping I can get something more regular going with my friends but as of now I haven't had the time.
If you haven't checked out Matt Colville's YouTube series called Running the Game, you're missing out. There's no need to watch it in order; pick and choose the topics that you want to improve on and watch those. TTRPG's are so much richer, fuller, and fun when you tie everything into the settings' world, instead of cardboard cutouts to slash in a row.
This study has been criticized multiple times. I am not saying it is wrong, but the effect is exaggerated. Dosing once in a while here and there has (according to current understanding) no bad effects. There are even results suggesting that long time use can also be "fine" (by looking at people who abused mdma in the late 80s early 90s, abuse being weekly). Binges are a different story. Specially things like amphetamines. It boggles me how easily people get amphetamines prescribed nowadays...
as far as i can tell i won't be failing any of my courses this semester so that's worth something i accidentally overdrafted (overdrew?) when i bought a bag of popcorn so now i have negative 35 dollars in my checking account but i get paid tomorrow so that's worth something 8 more days
Hanging out in London! I might have overshot by planning to be here for 2 weeks, but hopefully I’ll find enough stuff to do. I have lots of friends here, but they all have jobs so I have my days free. Planning to hit up some museums to pass the time.
The Tate Modern is a wonderful museum. It is also very close to the Globe Theater, which has a BRILLIANT tour! And from the front of the Tate you can walk across the Millennium Bridge, and up to the Victoria & Albert. I did this with my wife when we were there a couple years ago, and it's a nice day worth of touring and taking in an enormous range of history.
Yes! The Tate was the first place I went to - I even saw a Klein blue, but the reflective plexiglass over it kind of spoiled the experience. All the other stuff was great. I wish I wasn’t broke and could afford going to all the paid expos there - but 3 x 20£ is a lot. The barbican, The portrait gallery and the V&A are on my list. Ill have to look up what’s going on at the globe theater :)