Backstory - my parents help run a Shakespeare thing, and we have a lot of fabric just lying around. They gave me one of the bolts of wool (/~20 yards) for my birthday, and I am ecstatic! I am really really pleased with this vest. Completely self patterned/drafted, fairly well tailored (still some work to do, have to fix some puckers and add some lining). Close up on the collar Coupled with the jacket: the dropped sides are intentional! b-b-b-bonus pic of the shirt I'm working on, made with fabric from an indie fabric store in Chicago (which, of course, I found the day before moving out of chicago...) Seen here on the duct-tape form I made yesterday.
Sitting in a coffee shop in Detroit with mk. We are so, so, very close to closing our seed round of funding. One of the doctors performing our procedure wants to invest. Pretty neat. We are now operational in San Francisco, which we anticipate will be our largest US market. I'm working so much that my personal life is suffering. My wife's grandmother died, she was 99 years old. We all decided to wait and have her memorial service on her 100th birthday. We drove to Asheville NC for it. On the way to Asheville I had to take several business calls, kids in the back seat, wife annoyed. We got to our hotel and I realized that in my crazy dash to get my work done and prepare for my calls, forgot to pack my suit. I went to my wife's grandmothers funeral, a woman that I adored, in jeans and a sweater. I forgot my wedding anniversary this year. My kids see less and less of me. Still, I've never felt more alive than when I'm working on Forever Labs. I need to find some more balance. Damn, this coffee is good. If you're ever in Detroit, hit up Ashe Supply. Nicaraguan.
Good morning tng and mk. You're just over the border - tantalizingly close. I wish I was there having great coffee. Instead I'm heading to the west coast tomorrow, short trip, no time for hubski meetups. Not that you asked, tng, but I think "work-life balance" is some kind of myth and striving for it makes people feel guilty all the time, especially when your preceding sentence was that work made you feel most alive. People say that about all kinds of drugs. But we do have love relationships that need deep listening and attention and commitment, otherwise what are we here for? I am noting that you wisely just said "balance" not work-life balance. Yeah - balance. GOOD MORNING pubski - off to do that life thing. Wednesdays are my busiest day so it's nice to see the pub open early.
Is that the cause for all the harried activity? Is it truly close to being done? Will your load lighten afterwards? I'm currently in the throes of being very busy. I don't think it compares to your situation because I'm not providing for a family, and it promises to only be a few weeks and not a few months or years. But I've rationalized missing out on important social activities, foregoing any celebrations or seeing friends, because this period will be over soon. I think a prolonged spike in activity can't be avoided. And as long as it's not made a permanent feature, then it's completely understandable. That said, we live in the age of digital calendars. Set that anniversary on a reminder! Don't leave to memory that which can be done perfectly by an email reminder.We are so, so, very close to closing our seed round of funding.
Wisconsin is a great place, lovely people, wonderful winters. If your job is where I think it is, you are a 4ish hour drive into Chicago. Park at the airport, get a weekend transit pass and go do whatever looks interesting. I've flown up there to meet friends, do a museum crawl and crash at the airport for my early AM flight home. And it is cheap to live up there. If I did not end up in the Ohio Valley, I'd have probably ended up in Wisconsin.
I read this and thought "so Epic" and then scrolled down and saw yes, Epic. If you have any questions on the area, hit me up. I came to Madison in 1999 as a student and have been here since. I have coworkers in the Verona area, and they seem to like it. Plenty of Epic people commute from the rest of town, too. I know one guy who lives in Monona and bike commutes most days. Madison has a lot to offer, if you look for it. Have you lived in cold areas before?
I'm in the Detroit airport now. How did you find it weird, in relation to other airports? I think it's actually quite nice. Especially McNamara. Great Sky lounge, good restaurant options. -For an airport :-) Edit: Also, congrats on the job!!
I think the music is Brian Eno's "Music For Airports" famous piece that couldn't be used more appropriately. I always liked that tunnel. I'm a big fan of unusual airport stuff. There is an awesome kinetic sculpture in Boston's airport. Stuff like that breaks up the hideous banality of the experience.
Have you heard Eno's soundtrack he did for an Apollo documentary? I've been digging it lately: The track Silver Morning at 25:55 has some really nice slide guitar that he incorporates into these ambient tracks which definitely does it for me when it comes in kind of unexpectedly after the first half of the album.
Yeah, that tunnel is a trip..no doubt about it.
There are actually quite a few EMR software companies. My wife is an doctor and recently had to implement EPIC at her hospital. It was a rough transition. Important stuff though. Congrats!
Brother worked there for about a year, they have bad retention rate from what I hear. Almost always hiring, too. He applied as a technical writer and got re-assigned the day of to QA. Hope they either stepped it up since then or your other interviews are even better. On the bright side, once my brother's non-compete was done he got hooked up with UMiami which paid for his M.B.A. and he's the golden boy at work due to the tons he learned from EPIC . Whatever happens, coming out the other end, your skill set will be HIGHLY relevant and in demand if things continue the way they are. Congrats!
Last week I bought green onions to cut up for a salad, soup, omelet. I cut the tops off (just the whites, no green) and put them in a glass of water. This is what happened. Now I have a sustainable source of green onions. Try it. Thanks byonic for telling me how to post pictures on hubski and thanks to mivasairski for onion lessons.
Are you saying that all that green stuff grew up after you cut the onions? That's proper farming, right there. I potted a grocery store basil plant and hung it near a sunny window, hoping for a sustainable source of basil. Then we went on vacation and I forgot to water it when we came back and now it's a short-term source of dried herbs.
The highlight of my week (so far!) was on Monday when I attended an event for the #SickNotWeak mental health awareness campaign and a local youth suicide awareness group. SickNotWeak is a campaign initiated by "famous" Canadian sportscaster Michael Landsberg to destigmatize mental illness, with an emphasis on depression because that is what he suffers from. A lot of the publicity for the campaign comes from sports figures who are willing to honest about their struggles. This was a dinner and speaking event with several very known well athletes who all have connections with mental illness. Clint Malarchuk and Hayley Wickenheiser were the opening speakers. Clint was incredibly emotional talking about his ups and downs and admitted he still has the bullet in his head from when he tried to kill himself, which is not something that was public knowledge before I do not think. He always had OCD and was a goalie who suffered a slit throat from a skate and was only saved by a team doctor who stuck his fingers into his neck to pinch off the loose carotid artery ends. He never watched the footage but when he saw a similar accident happen several years later he developed PTSD and was prescribed anti-psychotics so he could continue playing, but that was the end of his career. Big tough guy that could not handle seeing a bit of blood. But that was not something you talked about back then. He began boozing and drugging and only sought help after his 2nd suicide attempt. Hayley is the greatest female hockey player of all-time. A household name in Canada. She went into a deep depression after losing the Olympic gold medal game at age 19. She was always the best and all of a sudden was a big failure. Even though it is standard procedure now, that was not a phenomenon that sports psychologists managed at that time. She also had very bad post-partum and had a NHL friend that ODed. She probably had the best laugh line of the night when she said (about the time that the US just missed an empty netter that you have never seen a bunch of women so happy about 2 inches. Theo Fleury, an NHL superstar, was the headline speaker and it would be an understatement to say that he was an incredible speaker. He grew up in a household with 2 addicts as parents, was always told that he was too small to play in the NHL and so had "not good enough" syndrome, was mentored by a coach that promised him it would happen then raped him hundreds of times, ended up drinking a case of vodka and snorting $3,500 of coke a week, would take the Trump helicopter to Atlantic City after games and, after gambling and screwing hookers all night, would get back to NYC for morning practice. He got kicked out of the NHL and after buying a gun and sticking it in his mouth decided he needed to talk. Theo had a very good point at the end of his talk. As someone standing on a stage with a mike in front of a big audience, most people want to hear laughter or clapping and whatnot. But he likes it the best when there is absolute silence since that means people are thinking. There was a lot of clapping and laughing, but also a lot of silence. And he was masterful in utilizing those moments. I can't stress how much he was an amazing speaker. That is what he does now full time. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, please do so. We were the event sponsor so he sat at my table and was quite chatty during the 4 hour event. Other hockey guys with local connections were there as well: Steve Larmer, Cory Stillman, Jody Hull, etc. Luke Richardson talked briefly about the foundation he started after his 14 year old daughter committed suicide. His 14 year old daughter. I have never asked for a picture like this before but but here is a pic of me and a rather dapper Theo Fleury:
Flurry was awesome when he played. My neighbor was a "short" kid and really looked up to Theo. I imagine there were many such kids. He gave lots of them hope. Man, was he fast! Glad he's doing alright and turning tragedy in to triumph!
Soccer season just finished, and now the kid is talking nonstop about baseball, wants to go to the park and play wiffleball in the dark when I come home from work. He doesn't get it from me, I never got past tee-ball and find televised baseball a tiny bit less boring than golf. Still, I thought I could be an adequate instructor, and could probably work out the details of the infield fly rule if I think about it. But his questions about rules made me recognize an ambiguity. The batter is allowed to overrun first with immunity from a tag out, but if he decides to go for second, he is again in play. The status seems to depend on the runner's state of mind. Does this ever come into play, and how do the rules, or the umpire, decide? I love being able to research these questions online, but I also miss the time when the best way to get answers was to interact with other people. Sometimes asking someone questions leads to more and better insights. The kid now has a wooden bat and glove but keeps asking for more gear. He never asked for toys before this year, and now he is making up for lost time, always asking for more stuff. While he was searching for catcher's equipment, an autocomplete mishap caused us to learn that body armor for cats is a thing.
Judgment call, generally based on the runner's trajectory. It's pretty obvious the vast majority of the time, because runners either a) are going to make the turn to second automatically in case of an error in the outfield, or b) need to run for their lives to be safe at first and will find themselves well into foul ground. Note that the call itself is entirely about intent and has nothing to do with fair/foul. For context, many judgement calls in baseball cause a lot of controversy, but this isn't one of them. What's the kid doing with a wooden bat? Is that a league rule, safety thing? Wooden bats are rare until the pros, normally.
I don't know! Maybe because that's what I used when I played in the same century as Hank Aaron? We played a lot, in fact probably through the majority of daylight hours, over the weekend. Two-man baseball is a good deal of running. First session of the winter training program is tonight. We will see what kind of equipment they have and recommend. I was unable to master my dread of throwing a hard object at a minor, with the result that my pitching was wild. Perhaps a batting helmet will help with my aim. I did send him some lively grounders and he took one or two on the chops, but no long term damage. There was one YouTube video showing a guy being put out near first after having "squared up" toward second base, probably exceptional. Lots of great trick plays and charging incidents. I love baseball highlights on TV, it's just that they are so infrequent during games. Only one other tricky question came up: Is the catcher ever called the home base man?What's the kid doing with a wooden bat?
No, but the dad in Calvin and Hobbes would say yes out of spite, and that's your blueprint, yeah? EDIT: by the way, the thing I regret most about my baseball career was not strengthening my arm from an early age via long toss. However far he can throw, for some amount of time each day or every other day that you look up on the internet, then gradually expand. And don't forget to stretch and build up to it first.Only one other tricky question came up: Is the catcher ever called the home base man?
I learned it the exact opposite - that the batter could be tagged out after running through first into fair ground, but not after running through first into foul territory. Maybe my coach didn't want to bother teaching the nuance of it, and decided turning into foul territory was a clear indication of not running to second.Note that the call itself is entirely about intent and has nothing to do with fair/foul.
Your second sentence is probably correct. You can feel free to look up the rule if you don't believe me. EDIT: of course, it's a good idea to run through in foul if you have no plans of advancing to second, to eliminate uncertainty on the part of the umpire.
I'm in a shitty fucking mood, Hubski. Thanksgiving is my holiday. It's the one holiday I've been able to reclaim from my family and I'm going to be spending it alone. I'll be making a shit-ton of money but it still sucks. Saturday is the LA auto show. There's nothing I want to buy and I don't have any money to do it anyway. Sunday I get to rip down to San Diego for a visit with my mother and my sister and my brother-in-law's whole family. My sister got in a knock-down drag-out screaming fight with me on the phone last week because I dared to suggest that Trump's threat to foreign policy is his incompetence, not his malevolence. The number of Facebook "friends" I have eager to go zero-to-Hitler in 4 seconds is discouraging, appalling and frustrating. I suppose it's far easier foretelling the end of the world on social media than it is actually attempting any sort of incremental change but still. Every time you compare the United States to Weimar Germany you diminish the horrors of the Holocaust. I'm under 200 miles on the bike from being done. I'll broach 3,000 miles and 200,000 calories. Zero weight lost. Blood pressure the same. It's funny - if you tell someone you can eat a plate of Cheesecake Factory nachos every day and not gain weight, you're a lucky sonofabitch with a killer metabolism. If you tell someone you're burning the equivalent of a plate of Cheesecake Factory nachos every day and not losing weight, it's because you can't add, because you're not doing the workout you claim you're doing, because you're cheating on your diet somewhere, or because, basically, you're a fucking idiot how dare you assault the core principles of /r/fitness heathen infidel IT'S OBVIOUSLY YOUR MACRONUTRIENTS. So fucking sick of it. The house smells like a fucking monkey cage. We threw away my roommate's sheets when he went to Ibiza for a week. That was June. 100% positive he hasn't washed the new ones. Odds he will wash his dishes before he goes away for Thanksgiving: 20%. On the plus side, the swamp that is my car-with-leaky-sunroof grew less fur on the seats this time. Putting a car cover on it and leaving the windows open drove out some moisture. And the garage door is much quieter. Quieter because a lift spring broke so I had to replace both springs and 2/4 pulleys and re-arrange the lift geometry and reset the screw drive and repair the place it ripped out of the wall and remove one of the build struts from my 1959 garage so that there was room for the draw pulley system. So that was five hours of fun on my 36 hours off and I didn't even drop a 200lb wooden garage door on my daughter. My wife is making cheesecake from scratch. When I get home nine days from now she'll be at a conference a hundred miles away.
To clarify, is this a holiday that you do want to spend with family? Sounds like extended at least is problematic (God knows I understand that). Seriously dude, I haven't been on Facebook in at least 6 months, and it has done wonders for my emotional health. Has your body fat % changed? It's the one holiday I've been able to reclaim from my family and I'm going to be spending it alone. I'll be making a shit-ton of money but it still sucks.
The number of Facebook "friends" I have eager to go zero-to-Hitler in 4 seconds is discouraging, appalling and frustrating.
I'll broach 3,000 miles and 200,000 calories. Zero weight lost.
Fact: I haven't listened to any news since 2:00 am the night of the election. I read Hubski and Twitter, and besides that, I haven't intentionally navigated to or opened a hard copy of any news source. I'm just not ready. On the other hand, it makes paying for NYT, WaPo, and New Yorker seem silly. I'll get over it, but I'm just not there yet. Prefer to listen to records and pretend the apocalypse isn't nigh.Listening to radio news analysis of President Elect Trump makes it more difficult for my brain to make the transition from sleep to awake.
Work-wise, I'm dealing with some uncertainty (I'm a federal employee, and Trump seems hellbent on Making-America-Greating me out of a job). This wouldn't be a big deal if I had marketable skills, which I don't. People aren't exactly lining up to hire still another lawyer whose experience consists almost entirely of government benefit programs. Needless to say, morale is not at its peak in my office. In more positive news, we had a kung fu seminar last weekend, which was awesome. About 20 hours of training over the course of Friday-Sunday. I learned a lot, and there's something about intensive workouts that really gets this stuff under your skin. I really can't wait for the day when I can ditch this law thing altogether and start teaching full time. That's still a ways off, unfortunately, so I'm just trying to cope with things in the meantime. On the short-term, we're taking an easy night of it. My wife's watching some rom-com or another, while I'm here typing at you lovely folks and deciding what game is next on the agenda. The youngin' is off with grandma for the evening, and they'll both be over tomorrow morning. Grandma will help in the kitchen (where I'm not allowed), while I get drunk on the sofa. Politics lately has made me aware of how little I actually care about the large-scale and abstract. Part of figuring out how I deal with life in the short-term is going to be looking for ways to affect my immediate surroundings for the better. It's easy to become distracted by wonkery, but the end result is a heartlessness that is unhealthy. Studying Greek and the Bible is helping some; most of Christ's teaching seems to be "stop worrying about rules and just be decent."
Wait and see man. He has never had a consistent ideology so no one knows what will happen. The market for attorneys in the States has been absolutely crap since 2008. I was in a bad position in 2001 when the dot com bubble burst. Was lucky that I was able to milk it when I could. At times I wish that I would have been happy being a small town general practitioner relying on real estate, wills, family and criminal but I would have hated it. So I have had to roll with the punches along the way as well.
Yeah, it's more the uncertainty that's wearing on me right now. At the least, though, his stated plan of a hiring freeze means I'm unlikely to get promoted, y'know, ever (at least unless and until there's a new administration). But you're right that it remains to be seen, and it's more resulting in giving very few fucks. More generally, that sums it up pretty well. I tried the small town thing, but hated it as you say. The truth is I dislike about 99% of legal practice, so at this point my job is a means to an end, namely a way to pay the bills until things align so that I can do what I actually want to do.
What is it you really want to do, if you don't mind me asking?
Hanging with my nephew last night and his friend dropped the N-word.... This is a 23 year old kid working on a university degree. He must not have gotten the memo that it's 2016(almost 2017) and that this kind of language, and more importantly, that kind of mindset is ridiculously and tragically wrong.
So, this is a bit embarrassing in hindsoght, but could you elaborate on what was discussed? My last roommate would do the exact thing with the same argument: "I'm not a racist." Despite using it to explicitly reference black people, when I hear that argument I can't help but be dumbfounded. Raging doesn't help the situation so I take the sloth's approach and back off to avoid blowing up on him. The weirdest thing is that it's coming from a fellow Jew of all people which gets me all the more riled up...
Got a go ahead from the comic shop to use one of their tables during the day, as long as whatever games we play are ones that they carry. I think that's perfectly fair cause they are trying to run a business after all. I'll put up my first Craigslist ad for next week. This week is too busy with the holidays and all. I've also decided I'm pretty much done with Reddit in its entirety now, for a various number of reasons. Out of respect for the smaller subreddits that are still decently run, I won't list them. But seeing as how I'm an infrequent poster/commentor over there since I've found Hubski, and how I aim to be on the internet less in general, there's not much point in being over there. It's been a long week otherwise. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's turkey induced coma.
Since last week my university workload is significantly lower (I'm intentionally doing less courses) so I've been working more and doing more fun stuff. Work is still enjoyable; I'm getting paid to experiment with geodata/programming and to make maps, both things I would still want to do if I didn't get paid for. Ten points for anyone who can guess what this map is about! It's around Amsterdam. In the next ten days I have 7 meetups / dinners / parties with 6 different circles of friends in 3 cities. And there's a symposium on AVs this Friday. Only minor downside: I spend so much time sitting in trains and on chairs that I've been having lower back aches.
It's not an easy one to guess but you're closer than mk: it's subsidence sensitivity. The level of subsidence is dependent on the type and thickness of the soil, which in most of the Amsterdam area is very subsidence-prone layer of peat (which is veen in Dutch). Essentially, the Netherlands not only has to deal with rising sea levels but also sinking land that is already below sea level. Whohoo.
Work I'm starting to drown in work. I like to learn, and due to that I've become involved in a wide array of projects and tasks involving a lot of different people across the company. Which is great. But also awful when I keep getting questions or asks for things that aren't even really my job and takes time away from the big picture projects of my own, which I'd rather be working on. Health My PT wants me back up to 15 mpw running four or five days a week. Feeling nervous over that, hopefully my knees are in a better place. Biomechanically I've never been better. Mental/Emotional
At my old position I eventually learned how to do most of the things we did in that office, and got a lot of questions not relevant to what my actual role was as a result. Most of the time I would do the gracious thing and just answer if it was something quick but if it was a long, involved explanation or the same person asking me the same question over and over, I would explain to them that I was busy with my own work and that they really should be seeking assistance from their supervisor. This was difficult for me at first because I am a helpful person by nature I guess. But it got so bad sometimes that I quickly got over feeling like a jerk about it. When I changed positions it was weird and a little bit of a relief to not be the one in the office who knows all the things. Good luck with trying to deflect and get your own stuff done!
Last week coming home from New York, I left my phone in the rental car. I got it back today. The long version of the story is my flight was scheduled at 6:20 am. I set an alarm for 4:10, giving myself a comfortable 40 minutes to wake up, get ready and out the door to drop off the rental, check my bag and clear security. Well I wake up and see a text that my flight has been delayed, and I've been automatically rebooked. I wake up more and see I'm rebooked for ALB-ATL-DTW-MSN. Two layovers. I was able to rebook on my phone and found a 5:45 am flight. Once vacation is over, I just want to be home. Now 4:15 am, my mind grinds mental time math. I can make it. I'm out the door and checked out in a couple minutes. The airport isn't far. Despite knowing the way, I set my phone to give directions. The phone is wrong, and I ignore it. It's before hours at the rental agency, so I park the car, grab my bags, head inside and drop the keys in the before-hours drop box. Then I put my hand in my pocket. I know instantly what I've done, and I know the options are wait for the agency to open and completely screw up my flights, or just press on. I opted for the latter. I put my phone into "lost" mode from my iPad, and by the time I land in Detroit I have a text (on my work mobile phone) saying they have my phone and will mail it to me (at my expense). I got my phone and aux cord back but not my car charger. The car charger was free, anyway, courtesy work. On the scale of things that could go wrong, it worked out pretty well.
A video of me performing another poem: Feel free to ask me anything about this weird incident.
I'm cooking dinner for my family tomorrow, and my brother has decided to attend instead of flying down to Texas. I'm not too excited. It'll mean hours of listening to rants about Trump, and asking when I'm going back to college and leaving my job. It's hard to put up with him brushing off my union won benefits as not being worth doing blue collar work (he's a green party member no less), and then having him turn around and complain about his health care costs. Yes, I was stressing about dealing with my insurance from the dog bite a few weeks ago, but not because of the costs. I'm lucky in that regard, for most people it would have been a lot worse. I was pissed about how the city didn't communicate with me. If I'm feeling sassy, I'll bring along the information pamphlet I have about how my plan breaks down. On another note, my friends are doing a secret santa this year, and the website they chose has a wishlist section. I'm populating mine with links to donation pages: if you've got a favorite cause I'm open to suggestions.
I missed my job interview this week, woke up at 0600, rush down to the train station for 0705 and everything is cancelled. This happens a lot down here, we're basically cut off from the rest of the country if two or three roads and the rail line flood or get snowed in. Was meant to be at 1100 and train should have arrived half an hour early, or could get the next one that would get in 10 minutes later, I should have known better. I should be in the next round of interviews next year. I've nearly been stuck stranded in the snow before, coming back from Uni with a friend... I checked the map and convinced him to take a last minute turn, down a dark country lane, with the petrol light on... driving past shut petrol stations... we made it. I think he vowed to never drive me anywhere again, he has kept that promise. But at least we weren't stuck in the snow.