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=[[2022.07.10 Missing My Little Vampire Slayers]]=
=[[2026.01.17 Dad Thoughts Evolved For Today]]=
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This was the first week of vacation, which I'm taking in alternating weeks while I've got the kiddos.  And we got to spend all of it doing all the things as well as lots of down time.  Bike riding, D&D, walks to the park, playing Magic, learning Python, beach trip, yardwork, and lots of naps.
So, I've written a bunch of Rants about my dad.  Some as I realized he was mortal - which was a weird realization to experience as a rational being.  More immediately when he died to metabolize my grief, and others over a period of a decade afterwards.  Many of those were reminiscences of childhood defining experiences and mythologies for my own catharsis, and with burgeoning hopes of there being a way for my kids to know something of him.


The week was somewhat impaired by a power bump and outage that revealed a flaw in our newly-installed solar+battery system (not yet commissioned) which left part of the house without power - so we've had to improvise powering the internet, be mindful of regulating the house temperature with airflow, and washing lots of dishes by hand.
I think he would have really liked them both.  They have a lot of different parts of him, and his mom.


The crescendo of the week was last night - as the Spice Girls (the party name for the D&D characters) stumbled upon the secret base of a vampire pirate ship.  In its entirety, the Pale Prow with its vampire spawn crew and its elven-vampire captain would have been wildly overpowered for the Spice Girls.  But they happened to poke them before sunset proper, which allowed them to face the crew separately from the master, and with a couple Daylight™ spells was enough to let them prevail.
Except doubts bubble up from the corners of my memory.  And I find myself working through extrapolations of the son-ward facets I could see into the person he might have actually been.


We perhaps ran a little too late, but fuck it - it's summer time and they would be stuck in a car all day on a trip to Canada with S.  They get to camp in a fun tent trailer, but are completely insistent that they can't do it because of the impossibility of being civilized to each other.  I struggled with how to ease this ridiculous impasse, and ended up outraging Simon by belittling the difficulty.  Here's hoping he gets to sleep in the car.
Obviously, my dad was pretty cool.  And I don't just mean that in the idol-worship way sons have for their fathers - which I kind of do - but also he seemed to have an effortless way of making people want to be his friend.  I don't actually know where he fit in the Letterkenny Spectrum as kid - hick, skid, or jock (definitely not a native or a christian, or Québécois for that matter nor a degen from up-country).  But the vast majority of people I saw him encounter already knew him, or of him, and respected him if not overtly expressing happiness at seeing him.


And now they're gone for a week.  And I'm am heartbroken.  I just immediately miss them a ridiculous amount.  I can't wait for our next week off together.
All of which I couch as being the basis for assuming that he was pretty comfortable in our pasty-white mostly monoculture small-town circumstances.  That sort of comfort breeds a sense of confirmation about one's own cultural identity.


It really puts the foolish work anxiety in to context.
And, honestly, while my dad was great at talking philosophy with me - especially about the why of things - whenever topics of other places or peoples came up he was consistently dismissive and unkind.  And occasionally overtly racist, and sometimes simply xenophobic.
 
Over the past decade, I've worried about how my boomer dad might have responded to the weird right-wing stumble of western civilization.  If I try to comfort myself with how he was smart and would be disgusted by the stupid lies, it's hard to deny the persuasive power that hate has had over people.  Especially boomers.
 
It occurred to me to try to talk my hypothetical conservative father away from the lure of fascism, but it just hurts my heart too much to think about it too much.
 
But then I imagine how he'd react to his grandkids both being non-binary and fabulous.
 
The deepest well of my hope is that he would have spent a lot of time knowing them all through their lives and see how their development into who they are becoming is a lovely and natural extrapolation of the brilliant and lovely potential they've always had.  And that his love for them would ease any struggling conservative confusion he might experience so that he could be the same cool and inspirational patriarch for them that he was for me and my sister.
 
That doesn't change the fear that he would have not been as close, or as accepting.  And that fear sits on my heart.
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=[[2022.06.15 Waiting For The Robots]]=
=[[2026.01.09 Men With Hats]]=
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With a really cool science-fiction sounding title like that, you're probably expecting another AIF tale. Or at least perhaps another nerdy chunk of fiction, as I am supposed to be practicing producing.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_0138_copy.png


Except, nope.  It is literally what I'm doing.  At 20:30 every night, the floor cleaning robots start their sweep of the kitchen and dining room. The vacuum isn't too noisy, but it's enough noise to make it difficult for my tinnitus-filled old man ears to hear tv shows. So when I settle down to contemplate what to do with the rest of an evening, I check to see how long until the robots are unleashed to figure out if I can binge a quick episode of something - either something fun with Amy, or something cute with the kids, or something horrifying by myself when the other two options aren't available or inclined.
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But... there's not quite enough time this evening for that.  So I thought I'd retreat to having a bath and reading a book.  Then the thought flitted into my head, "shouldn't I be trying to write something?"
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And, well, yes - I should.  So I gave myself the window of "until the robots start rampaging" to see what I could come up with.  Et voilà.  Here we are.
=[[2026.01.02 First Day Of The New Job]]=
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Sadly, my epic new seat was not ready to set up.  So I just admired the view for a minute - both out the across the river, and into my director's office at the giant Millenium Falcon LEGO set.
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This was going to turn into an awkward section of "well, I did the thing, but I'm not out of time yet".  But luckily the kids started fighting, and Charlie is scratching at the door needing tribute.  So that's run out the clock.  Cheers.
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=[[2022.05.28 Gun Safety?]]=
=[[2025.12.30 - 2025 Wrap-Up]]=
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The whole country is still just calming down from another massively horrific school shooting - "nothing could prevent this, says only country in the world where this regularly happens".
==Fredmas Crash==
On the wet and rainy morning of Fredmas, Ember and Violet were commuting to Hillsdale for school when they were the tail-end of a 5-car pile-up.  Speeds were modest, and the 2018 Subaru Impreza did all the safety-engineered things to sacrifice itself such that neither kid was injured in any way.


Aside: that is the classic [https://www.theonion.com/latest The Onion] news headline that they used to post every time one of these happened.  I wondered if they still do that.  Um, I didn't find it, but I found some relevant gold:
Communication was not stellar, but Violet managed to let us know right away.  So without actually having all the details up front, Amy and I knew they had a problem and could see that they were in the middle of the Fremont freeway bridge and jumped into Velma to go help.  When we showed up they were the only ones there - shivering in the rain on the side of the freeway.  Amy onboarded the kids to drive them the rest of the way SW, and I stayed in the shivering sideways rain for a couple hours with the wreck to wait for the tow truck. Fun times.
* Scientists Discover 90% Of Earth’s Atmosphere Made From Thoughts, Prayers
* Tearful Uvalde Residents Thank Police For Protecting Parking Lot From Gunman
* Entire U.S. Police Force Flees Country After Hearing Gunman Inside Nation
* NRA Convention Applauds As Gunman Massacres Entire Crowd
* Wayne LaPierre States Mass Shootings Can Be Perfectly Safe When Carried Out By A Trained, Responsible Gun Owner
* The Pros And Cons Of Letting Children Die


It is true to say that I'm still fuming over the idea that a fucking SWAT team stood around for almost an hour during the rampage "because they were worried about getting shot".  It really goes to the cowardly, spineless posturing that is the heart of gun advocacy.  The whole "good guys versus bad guys" is such bullshit - it's all just "assholes".
Some lessons learned, and Ember has yet to get back in that saddle.  Scheming about how to proceed with commuter vehicle plans is still ongoing.  It seems like a logical time and place to make a plug for the replacement to be an EV, but probably shouldn't push too hard.  Because reasons.


Moving on, though, this outrage is entirely too familiar.  And we know from bitter experience that this by itself is simply not enough to persuade the political will in 'Merika to enact sensible gun control laws.  Every other country in the world is able to do it, but we can't in the US because... we suck.
==Work Transformations==
December as a whole has been weird with trying to finish handing work batons to their new responsible engineers.  It's been the longest that I've been in any group - 10 years! - and recognize that it's going to be a long time to ever fully extricate myself.


So, clearly it's time to try something else.  And that something else that I hear people discussing is systematic gun safety.  The selfsame second amendment which has been twisted into this horror show clearly admonishes it be "well-regulated".
At the same time, the new Vehicle Level Engineering role is both exciting and boggling.  Frankly, it's a lot.


The need to have licences is just the obvious beginning.  Much more important is the express assertions of the full force of the US legal system to enact financial consequences - letting people be sued for the pain and destruction of the effects of firearms.  And, as has been idiotically established, companies are effectively people.  Gun manufacturers should have their financial culpability considered for facilitating citizen-on-citizen violence.  Individuals should be driven towards needing insurance proportional to the potential destructive power of their toys (like we already do with cars) as they become directly responsible for what those toys are used for.  People become responsible for children under their care - and what they do with the things they sell them.
Simultaneously, Amy is changing shifts to stop the 5 12-hour shifts in 6 days marathon every couple weeks and jumping into 3 shifts every week with her best non-Clayton friend.  We're all very excited for the shift in energy.
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=[[2022.05.14 Automotive Meta-Analysis]]=
==Other Stuff==
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This winter break had been bookmarked for a bunch of reading and writing plans, all of which have basically unravelled as I'm actually spending most of my time just mouth-breathing my way through the exhausting cold/flu that Ember gave me.
For many years, I've often joked that the vehicle you drive says a lot about you.  As much as I hate to ascribe too much merit to stereotypes, and readily agree that general use of stereotypes is a bad thing, there are still clearly <i>messages</i> being sent.  These messages need not accurately reflect the owner/driver of a vehicle, but they remain complicit in them nonetheless.  Like the clothing we wear, even if we don't intend to have a meta message, it's still like the tag line of a political ad: "I support this message".


<pre>Turns out there's a few self-burns in here.</pre>
Now that the kids are back, I do intend to inflict all kinds of old but beloved movies on them.  So there's that.  There's also a butt-tonne of sugary foods from all the sources to keep me overfed while I quietly lament how few bike rides I actually went on this year.
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So it goes.
 
=[[2022.05.05 Cinco De Covid]]=
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Tuesday night I had an oddly scratchy throat, and Wednesday morning it was still there so I did a quick COVID test while I readied my stuff to bike into the office - and the damn thing came up positive.


While I did work remotely somewhat on Wednesday, I took it easy.  Today I'm still without fever, but I am definitely ill.  Fortunately, I am fully vaccinated and boosted, so it's not likely to become anything more than annoying flu-like symptoms. 
Things I'm looking forward to in 2026:
* bunches of Amy+Clayton adventure time regularly
* diving into a dream job (should probably write a separate post about that thought alone)
* defeating fascism


The urge is to write something cutesy-poignant about finally meeting the global pandemic up close and personal, but it's way too late for that.  The world has changed, but it's also grown weary of this bullshit.  And it's hard to focus on these now-mundane global catastrophes with fresh horrors being summoned by human shittiness.
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=[[2022.05.04 May The Fourth Be With You]]=
=[[2025.11.30 Movember]]=
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What I used to do was write regularly, with the conceit that I had potential to get good at it.  And my visual creativity was overflowing with ideas after decades of collaborative storytelling with my comrades.  As I went along, the catharsis of expressing myself became important by itself.  It started feeling like craft.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_0072_small.png
 
Which, I suspect, is when I started making excuses to be critical of my own work.  So my budding capability for writing has suffered the same fate as my drawing: me poking at it fondly, but not really following through with most ideas.
 
The rare exceptions keep me wistfully thinking about it, though.


The drawing is a less-dear skill to put down and occasionally pick back up simply because I get so much satisfaction from drawing-like work as an engineer.  And, frankly, the fantasy of becoming a comic artist is not the shining hope it was when I was a kid.  But being an author, however...
Not my best effort.  I suspect that the grey makes it incrementally less impressive.  Plus I kept trimming to avoid poking Amy so much, and the surrounding scruff softens the effect even more.


...that continues to flicker seductively to my career-frustrated moth mind.
Gone now, but not missed. Other than the daily startle of seeing my dad in the mirror.
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=[[2022.04.16 Apathy]]=
=[[2025.10.18 No Kings]]=
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I've been wallowing in that place where I know that I need to be writing, and want to make progress on a couple stories, but seem to always run out of time.  And it's clearly true that my life is very busy these days, packed full of work and parenting and a life with my vampire life partner.  Yet it's also true that when I do dig out some time to recuperate, I let myself vegetate online.
40,000 people in Portland sending a clear message.   


So it goes.
Awkwardly, the current administration has also been sending a clear, fascist message.
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=[[2022.03.13 A Terrifying Absence of Fury]]=
=[[2025.10.04 Federal Troops In Portland]]=
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Is it so wrong that I just want most of the world to just shut the fuck up and focus, quietly, on why they are so fucking stupid?
It's really weird.  Just, you know, profoundly weird.
 
Before this phase, I wrangled philosophically about what is the most effective way to make the world better.  I generally came back to the idea of improving education everywhere - that knowledge would elevate everyone.  Not that we would all agree, or anything as impossible as that.  But just that by every slight increment in understanding collectively would share with everyone a sense of the innate wastefulness of most of our conflict.


It doesn't bear admitting how I stupidly use to rage at the unfairnesses and inequities, because pretty much all young people do.  The idealism is usually blunted down down from cocksure generalities by experiences with complicated realities.   
Acknowledging for a moment the footage from 2020 looked bad - as shown on cable news.  But even then that was basically constrained to a couple blocks downtown for actual protests.  Meanwhile there were other simultaneous marches about police brutality throughout the city that were completely peaceful and not newsworthy.


There also appears to be a strong trend for people to idealize what was familiar when they were younger, project from there hurtful justifications as excuses to cling to their revisionist fantasies.
I suppose that if one were to conflate the "hundred days of protest" in 2020 with the rising homelessness problem, one could squint and see the folks cowering in tents and vehicles and pretend there's a direct connection of some kind.  I mean, other than the systematic violence done to the worker class both strip mining us for wealth and trying to overtly pit us against each other.


And I'm just tired of wrangling with all this bullshit.  It worries me to reflect on how hopeless I am about humanity having any possibility of tackling global climate change without massive suffering.  Much less face any other challenge on a global scale.  We suck too much as a species, having no apparent appreciation for all that we have to lose.
But in context of what is actually happening right now - which amounts to a group of 6-16 people regularly taunting ICE agents at a single building - it's wildly disproportional.  Especially with the Portland Police Department stating, in court, that all the altercations they have evidence for so far are mainly cases of untrained federal agents trying to instigate meme-worthy moments with the peaceful protestors.
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=[[2022.03.02 Ukraine]]=
So the federal activation of 200 National Guard to "pacify Portland" is, well, purely for show.
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It's been a week of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and like virtually everybody in the world, I have thoughts and feelings about it.


Firstly, it really does seem like Putin has marinated in his crazy long enough to believe his own bullshit.  For a while it seemed like blustering to distract from the crumbling Russian economy, but the bullshittery rolled on way past just being distracting.  To get people to actively protest in modern Russia is a testament to how fucked up the actions are.  Now it really does just feel like the desperate death throws of a dying husk of a superpower.
Which makes Portland's main reaction one that endears this city to me even more: to be silly.  Dressing up in harmless costumes, dancing, and handing out cookies.  Doing whatever it takes to make the video bites nearly impossible to weaponize politically, as the fascists so clearly desire.


The bravery of the Ukranian defenders was very moving - the Ghost of Kyiv downing 6 Russian jets, the 13 defenders of Snake Island telling a warship to go fuck itself, the old lady handing sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers and telling them it's so they'll grow when they die, that farmer stealing a Russian tank with his tractor, and President Zelensky being such a ballsy rock of defiant leadership.
And to the person in the inflatable costume that had the inlet of their suit sprayed with pepper spray: I hope you are OK.  As much as that must have sucked, and possibly could have caused serious medical repercussions, you embodied the shallow idiocy of their position.  In no way could a bumbling inflatable costume be considered a threat, and to assault you was to show the cowardly and loathsome depth of their antisocial motivations.


And holy shit did I feel humbled when Trevor Noah pointed out the raging racism of the world's reaction to a "white country" facing violence versus what has been done to "other" countries.
To the federal fucknugget that used pepper spray on an obviously-harmless person in an inflatable costume: Now we all know why you have no real friends and your life is empty of meaning.  You obviously don't belong in Portland.
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=[[2022.02.05 Disillusionment]]=
=[[2025.09.17 Bertrand Russell On Fascism]]=
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Here I am again, staring down the cold hollow of my ambition.  I'm not really good at giving up, and scheming is part of my core nature, but it is awkward to consider lately. Yes - I do think I would be a good leader; yes - I want to be "in the room where it happens"; yes - access to a higher pay scale and a company Mercedes would be nice. But the fact that management has de facto told me not to bother trying to be a manager <i>should</i> really be a really strong counter-argument.
As mentioned on BoingBoing today:<br>
In 1962, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, invited Nobel-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell to a debate. Mosley aimed to persuade Russell of fascism's merits.
 
Russell, who was 89 at the time, replied:
 
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Stubbornly, the plotting mechanisms in my brain keep considering possibilities for "management" to change its collective mind.  Which is actually kind of important for me, spiritually, because I enjoy trying really hard on things that are difficult - and without the ambition-class reasoning for it, I fear it would wither into a dull grey existence.  So I haven't officially banished my quiet stirrings of ambition.
Dear Sir Oswald,


There are counter-arguments, however. Firstly, I do legitimately love actually doing engineering, especially 3D CAD design - and managers don't get to do that. Secondly, there is a tonne more hours expected of an E4 manager, and they are clearly the sphincter of the management beast.  It's a hard job. OK, quandary there - I already put in a tonne of hours, and I actually relish the challenge.  The circumstantial consideration of this should be indexed with facts that the kids are still interesting and present, plus I have a lot of outdoor playing to do with my mountain biking crew, and dialling effort down would also make more time for all the good times with Amy (my Vampire Life Partner).
Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one's own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.


This week, I also had renewed insight to even more problems with my managerial ambitions.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.


While I firmly believe I am a great team player and dynamic contributor, I definitely lack much ability to "play the game". The game being to earn management's trust, and as open communicator I am often perceived as being challenging.  Years of me helpfully suggesting progressive ideas that the company is structurally impaired to consider has me brightly marked as a problem.  To change this would require, well, not being me.  Tough one, that.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.


There's also the reality that much of the "management" side of the E4 job is painfully tedious administrivia.  A budget meeting this week where I was sitting in for my recovering-from-brain-surgery boss highlighted how very much it's more reassuring storytelling than it is useful planning.
Yours sincerely,


Lastly, due to the gravity of it, is the hard truth that management is where a lot of assholes are.  Not that I'm entirely against assholes - I've been one myself more than I wish I had.  And there are definitely assholes everywhere - or, more correctly, people willing to act in assholish ways.  But the problem is that acting like an asshole is actually a successful management technique (from a career-observational standpoint, not a holistic one).  That philosophical argument can linger seductively, but my point is more about how much one has to interface with assholes.
Bertrand Russell
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=[[2022.01.11 Night Shift]]=
=[[2025.08.15 If Not Stupid, Then Why Stupid-Shaped?]]=
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One of the odd rhythms of life now is interfacing with Amy working night shift.  It means some long overlaps of time together, but also a chance for some intervening solitude.  It has also provided for some reflection.
Seriously, there is so much political stupidity going on.
 
ETA:<br>
Examples?  Hell no.  It would be like admitting a vampire into your home to post anything like a meaningful set.
 
If there is permitted to be accurate news and history recorded of this era, simple searches will reveal enough to explain.
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I've worked night shift before, myself.  Not just the gruelling all-nighters that were too common during engineering school, but shifts labouring in the pulp mill at my home town while I was saving up for school.  All of which completely failed to help me be empathic about the struggles of shifting sleeping schedules, because it mostly happened in a period of my life when sleep seemed largely optional anyway.
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More tellingly is how I have found myself smothering the kids when they're here, to keep them from disturbing Amy while she (might be) sleeping. Discussing my overenthusiastic guarding of Amy's sleep sanctorum, I unearthed the memory of my dad working shift work while I was a kid.  He worked hard, and it definitely resonated with me as a sensitive little kid to be worried about my dad's wellbeing.
=[[2025.06.25 Corporate Culture]]=
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Big changes at work.  Not going to talk about that overly much - it's too boring to even write out.


Ironically, this cascaded to a memory of a time when I did accidentally waken my dad while he was trying to sleep between night shifts.  I had stumbled into the door of home in Castlegar after school, desperate to look at my wristwatch.  A wristwatch that I had not on my wrist, but in my pocket, because that's where I stuffed it after picking it up off the street.  Which is where I had to retrieve it from hurriedly, lest the kids that were chasing me managed to catch me.  And it had only flown off my wrist because I had swung my arm to break free from one of the kids grabbing at my backpack.  So when I finally managed to get home, and discovered that my wristwatch that was a gift from my dad, was broken in a way I couldn't fix, I let out a scream of frustration.  This woke my dad, but instead of being angry with me for disturbing him he was worried about me.  And even then, I could bring myself to tell him that I was being systematically bullied at school - for fear that he would be disappointed in me for not being tougher.
BUT.  An aspect I find interesting is who is excited about these major changes, and who is worried about them.   


One of the things I have found myself doing at night, though, is write.  So, here we are.
Now, obviously, both reactions are simultaneously valid and possible.  I feel both myself.  But whether the excitement is more important compared to the various individual level of concern does speak to where many of us are.  Which, in turn, is strongly indicative of the sense of trust we have with the company - or our sense of trust in ourselves to offset any lack of trust in the company we have.
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So, good job on the scrolling. Sadly the secret message at the end this time is... filler. There, I said it: the cool [https://waitbutwhy.com/ turtle-link-class] zen morsel I try to work into the end just isn't up to snuff this time. Sorry.
RESISTANCE STATUS:
 
* US citizenship: APPLICATION (still) PENDING
* local politics: NULL, homeless situation correctly one of the main foci
* global politics: NULL, wait - Justin is dating Katy? Nice.
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Latest revision as of 01:05, 18 January 2026

claytoncastle.com

2026.01.17 Dad Thoughts Evolved For Today

So, I've written a bunch of Rants about my dad. Some as I realized he was mortal - which was a weird realization to experience as a rational being. More immediately when he died to metabolize my grief, and others over a period of a decade afterwards. Many of those were reminiscences of childhood defining experiences and mythologies for my own catharsis, and with burgeoning hopes of there being a way for my kids to know something of him.

I think he would have really liked them both. They have a lot of different parts of him, and his mom.

Except doubts bubble up from the corners of my memory. And I find myself working through extrapolations of the son-ward facets I could see into the person he might have actually been.

Obviously, my dad was pretty cool. And I don't just mean that in the idol-worship way sons have for their fathers - which I kind of do - but also he seemed to have an effortless way of making people want to be his friend. I don't actually know where he fit in the Letterkenny Spectrum as kid - hick, skid, or jock (definitely not a native or a christian, or Québécois for that matter nor a degen from up-country). But the vast majority of people I saw him encounter already knew him, or of him, and respected him if not overtly expressing happiness at seeing him.

All of which I couch as being the basis for assuming that he was pretty comfortable in our pasty-white mostly monoculture small-town circumstances. That sort of comfort breeds a sense of confirmation about one's own cultural identity.

And, honestly, while my dad was great at talking philosophy with me - especially about the why of things - whenever topics of other places or peoples came up he was consistently dismissive and unkind. And occasionally overtly racist, and sometimes simply xenophobic.

Over the past decade, I've worried about how my boomer dad might have responded to the weird right-wing stumble of western civilization. If I try to comfort myself with how he was smart and would be disgusted by the stupid lies, it's hard to deny the persuasive power that hate has had over people. Especially boomers.

It occurred to me to try to talk my hypothetical conservative father away from the lure of fascism, but it just hurts my heart too much to think about it too much.

But then I imagine how he'd react to his grandkids both being non-binary and fabulous.

The deepest well of my hope is that he would have spent a lot of time knowing them all through their lives and see how their development into who they are becoming is a lovely and natural extrapolation of the brilliant and lovely potential they've always had. And that his love for them would ease any struggling conservative confusion he might experience so that he could be the same cool and inspirational patriarch for them that he was for me and my sister.

That doesn't change the fear that he would have not been as close, or as accepting. And that fear sits on my heart.

2026.01.09 Men With Hats

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2026.01.02 First Day Of The New Job

Sadly, my epic new seat was not ready to set up. So I just admired the view for a minute - both out the across the river, and into my director's office at the giant Millenium Falcon LEGO set.

2025.12.30 - 2025 Wrap-Up

Fredmas Crash

On the wet and rainy morning of Fredmas, Ember and Violet were commuting to Hillsdale for school when they were the tail-end of a 5-car pile-up. Speeds were modest, and the 2018 Subaru Impreza did all the safety-engineered things to sacrifice itself such that neither kid was injured in any way.

Communication was not stellar, but Violet managed to let us know right away. So without actually having all the details up front, Amy and I knew they had a problem and could see that they were in the middle of the Fremont freeway bridge and jumped into Velma to go help. When we showed up they were the only ones there - shivering in the rain on the side of the freeway. Amy onboarded the kids to drive them the rest of the way SW, and I stayed in the shivering sideways rain for a couple hours with the wreck to wait for the tow truck. Fun times.

Some lessons learned, and Ember has yet to get back in that saddle. Scheming about how to proceed with commuter vehicle plans is still ongoing. It seems like a logical time and place to make a plug for the replacement to be an EV, but probably shouldn't push too hard. Because reasons.

Work Transformations

December as a whole has been weird with trying to finish handing work batons to their new responsible engineers. It's been the longest that I've been in any group - 10 years! - and recognize that it's going to be a long time to ever fully extricate myself.

At the same time, the new Vehicle Level Engineering role is both exciting and boggling. Frankly, it's a lot.

Simultaneously, Amy is changing shifts to stop the 5 12-hour shifts in 6 days marathon every couple weeks and jumping into 3 shifts every week with her best non-Clayton friend. We're all very excited for the shift in energy.

Other Stuff

This winter break had been bookmarked for a bunch of reading and writing plans, all of which have basically unravelled as I'm actually spending most of my time just mouth-breathing my way through the exhausting cold/flu that Ember gave me.

Now that the kids are back, I do intend to inflict all kinds of old but beloved movies on them. So there's that. There's also a butt-tonne of sugary foods from all the sources to keep me overfed while I quietly lament how few bike rides I actually went on this year.

So it goes.

Things I'm looking forward to in 2026:

  • bunches of Amy+Clayton adventure time regularly
  • diving into a dream job (should probably write a separate post about that thought alone)
  • defeating fascism

2025.11.30 Movember

IMG_0072_small.png

Not my best effort. I suspect that the grey makes it incrementally less impressive. Plus I kept trimming to avoid poking Amy so much, and the surrounding scruff softens the effect even more.

Gone now, but not missed. Other than the daily startle of seeing my dad in the mirror.

2025.10.18 No Kings

40,000 people in Portland sending a clear message.

Awkwardly, the current administration has also been sending a clear, fascist message.

2025.10.04 Federal Troops In Portland

It's really weird. Just, you know, profoundly weird.

Acknowledging for a moment the footage from 2020 looked bad - as shown on cable news. But even then that was basically constrained to a couple blocks downtown for actual protests. Meanwhile there were other simultaneous marches about police brutality throughout the city that were completely peaceful and not newsworthy.

I suppose that if one were to conflate the "hundred days of protest" in 2020 with the rising homelessness problem, one could squint and see the folks cowering in tents and vehicles and pretend there's a direct connection of some kind. I mean, other than the systematic violence done to the worker class both strip mining us for wealth and trying to overtly pit us against each other.

But in context of what is actually happening right now - which amounts to a group of 6-16 people regularly taunting ICE agents at a single building - it's wildly disproportional. Especially with the Portland Police Department stating, in court, that all the altercations they have evidence for so far are mainly cases of untrained federal agents trying to instigate meme-worthy moments with the peaceful protestors.

So the federal activation of 200 National Guard to "pacify Portland" is, well, purely for show.

Which makes Portland's main reaction one that endears this city to me even more: to be silly. Dressing up in harmless costumes, dancing, and handing out cookies. Doing whatever it takes to make the video bites nearly impossible to weaponize politically, as the fascists so clearly desire.

And to the person in the inflatable costume that had the inlet of their suit sprayed with pepper spray: I hope you are OK. As much as that must have sucked, and possibly could have caused serious medical repercussions, you embodied the shallow idiocy of their position. In no way could a bumbling inflatable costume be considered a threat, and to assault you was to show the cowardly and loathsome depth of their antisocial motivations.

To the federal fucknugget that used pepper spray on an obviously-harmless person in an inflatable costume: Now we all know why you have no real friends and your life is empty of meaning. You obviously don't belong in Portland.

2025.09.17 Bertrand Russell On Fascism

As mentioned on BoingBoing today:
In 1962, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, invited Nobel-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell to a debate. Mosley aimed to persuade Russell of fascism's merits.

Russell, who was 89 at the time, replied:

Dear Sir Oswald,

Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one's own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.

I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.

I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.

Yours sincerely,

Bertrand Russell

2025.08.15 If Not Stupid, Then Why Stupid-Shaped?

Seriously, there is so much political stupidity going on.

ETA:
Examples? Hell no. It would be like admitting a vampire into your home to post anything like a meaningful set.

If there is permitted to be accurate news and history recorded of this era, simple searches will reveal enough to explain.

2025.06.25 Corporate Culture

Big changes at work. Not going to talk about that overly much - it's too boring to even write out.

BUT. An aspect I find interesting is who is excited about these major changes, and who is worried about them.

Now, obviously, both reactions are simultaneously valid and possible. I feel both myself. But whether the excitement is more important compared to the various individual level of concern does speak to where many of us are. Which, in turn, is strongly indicative of the sense of trust we have with the company - or our sense of trust in ourselves to offset any lack of trust in the company we have.









































































































RESISTANCE STATUS:

  • US citizenship: APPLICATION (still) PENDING
  • local politics: NULL, homeless situation correctly one of the main foci
  • global politics: NULL, wait - Justin is dating Katy? Nice.

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