Main Page: Difference between revisions

From RooKwiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
No edit summary
 
(122 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
__NOTOC__
__NOTOC__
<p align="right"><font size="6">[[Transition|<font face="Consolas, Courier new">claytoncastle.com</font> •  T R A N S I T I O N]]</font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="6">[[Transition|<font face="Consolas, Courier new">claytoncastle.com</font>]]</font></p>
<hr>
<hr>
<hr>
<hr>


=[[2022.05.05 Cinco De Covid]]=
=[[2024.03.17 Mexican Reflections]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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.
A trip to our plant in Saltillo Mexico earlier this month was quite interesting.


While I did work remotely somewhat on Wednesday, I took it easy. Today I'm still without fever, but I am definitely illFortunately, I am fully vaccinated and boosted, so it's not likely to become anything more than annoying flu-like symptoms.   
The first thing to mention is that this was not my first trip to one of our Mexican manufacturing plants.  Last time, the visit to Santiago involved staying in Mexico city - an urban area with the same population as Canada.  That was interesting in its own way.
 
This time involved being in northern Mexico, and it's possible that needing to be escourted most places with a security detail insulated me quite a lot from the granular details of the lives lived there.  Which obviously is an insight of it's own. 
 
The hilarious driving habits of the locals is a delight to witness - from the safety of the back of a van.  Coming from the infuriating obliviousness of drivers of Portland, it was actually a relief to see such vigour and skill.  And the best part was the way in which they we very relaxed about all the interactions that I would have experienced as very intense.
 
But the thing that sticks out most for me, and feels really inspirational, is the camaraderie the workers at the Saltillo plant.  I had to learn a wide variety of individualized handshakes to greet the people I met, and they often laughed and hugged me when I got them wrong.  The ubiquitous friendliness and helpfulness of everyone at the plant is something I've never seen at this kind of scale before.  Makes me wish there was a way to import this, large-scale, into more of the aspects of life.
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2024.02.25 Is That What I Looked Like?]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
University student ID 1993:<br>
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4850_small.png
 
University graduation yearbook 1999:<br>
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4851_small.png
 
New engineer ID 2000:<br>
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4852_small.png
 
Terrified Canadian engineer suddenly employed in the United States 2002:<br>
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4853_small.png
 
Resigned Canadian engineer with a family in the United States 2007:<br>
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4854_small.png
 
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2024.02.15 Awkward Honesty]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Found myself this morning in the awkward position of explaining to a group of parents why I hadn't responded to my daughter's ability to participate.  The crux of my reluctance is that it's on the handover day where I take the kids back to their mom's house, and I don't get to see them again for a week - and any playdates mean curtailing my time with them.  What seems like a no-brainer helicopter parent supported socialization opportunity for the kids to the rest of the parents is a fraught emotional inflection point for me.  Adding to the complication is that I have to drive them across town, not just let them scamper out the door to participate like they do back in the ex's neighbourhood.  And all the while we deal emotionally with "Sunday Energy", there is also weekly chores to negotiate.
 
Meanwhile, I could just imagine one or all of the parents thinking "What's with Emo-Dad™ making such a big fuss over having his kid show up for a play date?  Just say yes or no!  We don't need to hear all about your feeewings, whiner."
 
However it was actually received by most of the parents, the ex did reach out very sympathetically.  It did a lot of credit to how well we've managed to be kind and connected despite the divorce.  Being mindful adults has its benefits.
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2024.02.11 Qualitatively Hating Working In The Office]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
So, having spent a week (well, 4 days) working in the office again, I now have more direct data regarding what it's like.  Which sounds silly after having spent a couple decades having worked in an office setting, but the recent handful of years of mostly working from home has massively transformed my perspective.
 
Firstly, credit where credit is due, when at the office it is much easier to keep the parade of attention mostly work-related. 
 
But, and this is a critical "but", it feels like it leads to a considerably bigger problem.  Because all my in-between filler moments are more filled with work minutae, that means that my brain gets much less capability to recharge in those pauses.  It turns out that spending all those so-called "micro moments" bumping into colleagues, that burns neural resources for an introvert such as myself.
 
The two main results of this are that 1) I'm considerably more exhausted at the end of a work day - not even counting commuting, and 2) I have fewer good/big ideas.
 
The exhaustion part is probably easy to understand.  After an intense meeting, or tough bit of design, at home I can quietly do some dishes or some such, letting my subconscious work on stuff.  At work, I have to either bumble through the campus making up social niceties or fend off trawling coworkers looking for verbal answers.
 
The good/big idea part is actually a discovery that I had during the past week.  See, I would find myself waking up in the middle of the night most nights last week, with an idea about how to solve a problem or something to try at work.  And the previous couple decades came back to me in a flash: that's how work used to haunt me.  But that stopped when I was working from home.  But instead of being haunted by work such that it wakes me up, I'd have a couple big "aha!" moments during the day, most days.
 
Basically, for me, work from home allows me to generate twice as many good/big ideas as being in the office, and in ways that don't fuck with my sleep and stress.
 
Which is an excellent segue into the motivation I have right this moment: I'm absolutely dreading going back in for another week of this shit.  It's hilarious to say, because my job is super fun, my workplace is extremely nice and accommodating full of cool people, and even my commute is a laugh of a bike ride.  Yet here I am, very much dreading it.
 
<hr>
 
I assume that I'll re-acclimate, and the stress will ease back down as I get re-numbed to the overt dominion of the extroverted and the soul-draining non-stop effort of having to pretend to be social.  I'll do cool work that will make it all worthwhile, and loosen up my clenched soul on the privileged experience I had.
 
If this were a reddit post, I'm sure there would be swarms of commenters urging me to take this newfound knowledge and find the bravery to seek another position that would allow the exact thing I like about the pandemic era WFHWhich is when I gesture vaguely to my giant golden handcuffs, the kids about to need cars and then university, and the lovely house I couldn't afford to buy again in this market even if I kept this well-paying job.  And I'm chicken.
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2024.01.15 Snow Driving Observations - part something]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
 
Portland is funky, snow-driving wise.
 
Generally speaking, PDX is mild as hell, rarely getting more than a dusting of snow at most and not enough to worry about.  And the occasional punctuation of stay-around snow isn't in any way particularly much accumulation.  But despite being infrequent and short-lived, it is almost always expert-level snow situations.
 
Taking a step back, my northern peoples have a great deal of opportunity to hone our slidetastic situational control.  Even those Canuckistanni who do not overtly enjoy a good bit of the slidey-slidey get sufficient exposure to know where their limits are and to be sensible.  More than that, there is a good long ramp up and ramp down of the snow-ness, much of it during climate that is cold enough to have the ice and snow be pleasantly predictable.  So when there is a surplus of the slippery substances, or, more poignantly, when it's sometimes in that dangerous extra-slippery state of melty snow on ice, there is a deep well of useful reflexes to draw from.
 
Meanwhile, here in PDX, the locals almost never have to face snow.  And when they do, they are woefully incapable of doing so.  Augmenting this low-skill demographic is the relatively large influx of Californians, all of whom seem to want to pull over and have a good cry when it so much as rains.  Which it does.  Often.  Maybe more on that some other time.  This leads to a relatively high number of vehicles out and about completely without any winter tires.
 
The hilarious twist that PDX plays on the unsuspecting snow-n00bs is that, since it is rarely very far below freezing here, it is very close to the melting point - the slipperiest sort of snow.  Which, more often than not, gets augmented with PDX's special sauce: freezing rain.  So not only is there very little opportunity to practice driving in snow here, the snow goes from nothing straight to expert snow.
 
Resultingly, there is much chaos to be had here.  And regardless of how capable one and their vehicle might be, it is exceedingly perilous to join in the maelstrom when it starts.  But shortly after everyone freaks out and stays the hell away from the snow covered roads, it's basically glorious emptiness and freedom for snow-loving freaks such as myself to get out and have some joy.
 
Plus, in a more mature vein, it is an opportunity to provide transport to those that need help and reap a healthy crop of brownie points.
 
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2024.01.13 Farewell to the Mayor of Kenton]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_3905_small.png
 
It is with deep sorrow that we learned that my favourite cat of all time - Charlie¹ - passed away this week.
 
From the moment he ran up to greet us when we first came to look at this house, we knew he was special.  His legend among the neighbourhood was known by everyone we met; "Oh, yeah - I know Charlie.  I make sure to stop and pet him whenever I come this way."  Our block Whatsapp thread is still pinging with people sharing pictures and stories of him over the years.
 
The peak of his legend might have been his fighting off a coyote, and living with some epic scars.  And his giant murder mittens certainly lent credibility to his prowess.  But it was his calm fearless demeanour that won my heart the most, coupled with his refusal to put up with any shit, desire to lure people into being playfully mauled, and the itty bitty tiny meow that he made out of his lion-sized throat.
 
May your legend in the next world be as epic as in this one.
 
 
 
 
 
¹ He also had many nicknames, including:
* Chonkmeister
* Chuckie
* Chuckles
* Kaiju Kitty
* Chuck Wagon
* Chonk Chonkerson (Man On The Street)
* Chuckzilla
* Chuck Roast
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2023.12.28 Reflection 1: Marthaller's Move To Germany]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
 
Now that Colin and Colette have been gone for a couple weeks, it has finally sunk in that they're not just a few blocks away any more.  Partly because life got weirdly busy such that we didn't hang out constantly any more (and, regrettably, entirely too few bike rides this past year).  But also because Colin reached out on WhatsApp to apologize for their SMS/texting not yet working on their new German phones, and it reached the threshold of being really real.
 
In honour of the fun bikeness of our shared affinity for the Church of Dirt™, I intend to pivot to dragging the kids out regularly to Sandy Ridge and Rocky Point for regular application os gnar.  We'll see how well I do at that.
 
Meanwhile, we have yet to see what for Fifth Position Racing will take, as Colin and I (and whomever else we can lure into participating) set up an online racing league to play with.
 
Luckily, I have some successful history of being able to keep in touch internationally...
 
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2023.12.28 Reflection 2: Swift & Union Closing]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
 
When Amy and I moved to Kenton, we were delighted by the many options for places to eat within walking distance, and we looked forward to sampling them all.  Except we never did, because one of the first places we went to was Swift & Union.
 
The ambiance, upon walking in, was exactly the vibe that we both enjoy.  Open enough to feel like we engaged with the room, but with lovely booths that let us sit side-by-each the way we like (plus room for kids, when they join).  The music playing was pleasantly aimed at Gen-X nostalgia, which works great for us.
 
Even better than the ambiance was the staff.  All of them excellent and friendly, and a couple that we quickly became friends with - such that they would wander over to our table to catch up and chat when we weren't in their section.  They consistently made the experience personal, welcoming, and enjoyable.
 
Plus it should be stated that the food and drink was all fabulous.  Not fleece-your-pockets extravagant gustatory adventures, but extremely yummy and satisfying fare that we often found ourselves craving.  That includes the kids, who can sometimes be difficult to feed.
 
Anecdotally, the owner - Zig - wanted to simplify down to just one restaurant - Tabor Tavern.  We hope that our favourite servers and the awesome cook(s) found great places to jump to instead.  S&U was open for a final week before xmas, which we indulged in twice, but they were unable to complete the week as the staff understandable fled.
 
I guess we'll resume sampling the local alternativesLife goes on.


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.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2022.05.04 May The Fourth Be With You]]=
=[[2023.12.28 Reflection 3: FPS w/ Amy]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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.


Which, I suspect, is when I started making excuses to be critical of my own workSo 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.
I was there, in the beginning, playing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D Wolfenstein 3D] on my lowly x386 rocking a vibrant 256-colour 640x480 RGB display.  But that's about all I can claim, because in those early days I definitely set video games aside to focus on engineering classes instead.  Though many of my peers rocked cooperative/competitive battle like X-tank on UNIX servers, and quickly followed up with the evolving DOOM and Quake games.
 
By the time modern FPS games evolved, I was well outside of the participation sphere - no console games at allThough I did play - and get good at - simulators like X-Wing and Mech Warrior, it was never quite the same.  Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time playing combat-oriented imagination-intensive games, thinking about fighting.  This made me feel like I might be good at FPS, and might be missing out.


The rare exceptions keep me wistfully thinking about it, though.
Skip ahead the rest of the 30-ish years, and I find myself with MMORPG-goddess Amy as a partner.


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 engineerAnd, 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...
I dipped my toes in some games, but have quickly discovered that I abhor grinding.  More than that, I have very little positive feedback playing by myself.  But I have found something that very much is fun - parallel play.
 
We got Amy an X-Box for her birthday this year, and it's been a hoot (cough [[2023.07.30 It's FORZA's Fault, Really|Forza]] /cough)Mostly it's been cooperative puzzle games like Humans Fall Flat, but we just started Tiny Tina's Wonderland.  Holy fun FPS intensity.  It's odd to essentially be Amy's sidekick, since she's decidedly more skilled than I am.  But I clearly have some tactical talent that shines through, and makes it fun.


...that continues to flicker seductively to my career-frustrated moth mind.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2022.04.16 Apathy]]=
=[[2023.12.03 Mustache Day Ish]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4782%20copy.png


So it goes.
It was about the right day, and I had just gotten my dream Ferrari in Forza.  This was the result.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2022.03.13 A Terrifying Absence of Fury]]=
=[[2023.11.26 PPS Teacher Strike]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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?
Three weeks of shenanigans later, and I have two things I take away from it.
 
1. The teacher's should have had a strike sooner.  Even aside from wages that have not kept up with inflation, it appears that teachers have not been heard or appropriately supported for quite a while.  Before the strike it was a general truism that America doesn't value teachers enough, but learning about the specifics of teacher grievances in what should be a city focussed on education to support our various high-tech industries was surprising.
 
2. PPS is kind of shit.  Not that I ever expect a public bureaucracy to be amazeballs, but the disingenuous communications and essentially propoganda-class releases were disappointing.  It takes a certain ilk of horrible to rely on people to be unable to do math in order to lie to everyone about how they're treating the people who teach math.  And to have every single letter to parents repeat "we're so worried about the children", as if the teachers do not, was an insult to anyone capable of spotting empty rhetoric.
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2023.11.20 Welcome Gefferts]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
S recently married the truly lovely John Geffert, making him Simon and Violet's new step-dad.  Plus, his son's William and Miles are now step-siblings to our kids, vastly increasing the potential chaos in all our lives.  Plus, you know, even more kids to take mountain biking.
 
Welcome to the family Gefferts!
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2023.11.04 Back To Office]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
So my office recently announced that we'll be returning to the office.  A fig leaf of "hybrid" is still offered - we can work from home 1 day per week.  Any day we want!
 
The nominal reason is to foster improved collaboration by strengthening our interpersonal culture.  And there is no denying that onboarding new people is very much harder when most of the 60+% of the workforce is remote on any random day.
 
Instead of a point-by-point comparison of methodologies and circumstances that used to work in-person versus those that work remotely, let me just point out the simple fact that nobody has been prevented from coming in to the office.  Some do, but most do not.  We're all very smart adults, and have clear ideas for what works best for us, and have obviously made our choices.  We are not being consulted.
 
So, the question becomes - why do our corporate leaders think they know better than us?
 
==Hypothesis 1: Occam's Razon==
Our executives think they are in their positions because they are smarter and more capable than most others, and therefore their theories about productivity and work/life balance have implicit clout outweighing everyone else.
 
Maybe they're right.  Perhaps we'll find out.
 
==Hypothesis 2: Dinosaurs==
It's how they did it when they were the doers, and they don't like things being different.  It's scary.  Plus all the people who are actively climbing the corporate ladder directly beneath them all agree!
 
Worth noting is that mammals have only been nominally dominant for a few tens of millions of years (ignoring the superior total mass and probable durability of insects), while dinosaurs lumbered along for well over a hundred million years.  Inertia is a motherfucker.
 
==Hypothesis 3: Insecurity==
How can managers manage if they're denied most of the tools they've gotten accustomed to using?  Leadership and inspiration can only work on people they intrinsically understand, and all the slackers will find ways to shirk doing their fair share. 
 
Except, of course, as the brilliant Mark Moyes once said, "I'm perfectly capable of getting nothing done at my desk."  Babysitting is a less effective tool than some might hope.
 
==Hypothesis 4: Piles Of Beans==
There sure is a lot of theoretical value in the fixed assets of these large office buildings.  If they become overtly and obviously a waste of resources, it sure would be a huge loss - on paper.  Watching the city repossess large buildings and turning them into affordable housing and civic spaces must be horrifying to the company accountants.
 
If it costs the thousands of employees an average of 5 hours per week of unpaid commuting time (plus gas and vehicular wear), that's better than the company risking losing the value of its real estate.  Right?
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2023.10.07 Printer Time]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
https://90a1c75758623581b3f8-5c119c3de181c9857fcb2784776b17ef.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/667415_580951_01_front_comping.jpg
 
While I haven't had a regular printer for a while, as actual need to have paper copies of things has gotten very infrequent, in a reciprocal way I've been far too slow to get a 3D printer.  This has now been rectified.
 
Let there be random plastic thingies!
 
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/squishy_turtle_3d.png
 
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4744.png
 
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2023.09.04 Latest Bike Daydreams]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/commencal%20meta%20V4.png
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2023.08.22 ID.4 Impressions So Far]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4681.png
 
The things we like about the car (we're calling CUV's just "cars" now, right?) vastly outnumber the quibbles.  It drives well, carries everyone and the dog as necessary, and has all the options we need.
 
-deep breath-<br>
And I need to accept that there are many things about the Tesla that have me both a) acclimated to a certain way of doing things, and b) spoiled.
 
In no particular order, here are The Quibbles:
 
==No Battery Pre-Conditioning==
This is an idiotic oversight.  The ability for a lithium-ion battery pack to accept charge is directly related to the temperature of the pack.  The VW ID-platform has active battery temperature management, so this is obviously possible.  This makes the difference between <50kW charging and >150kW charging, which is kind of the point of having access to DC fast charging in the first place.
 
==The APP Sucks==
I mean, at least there's an app to verify simple shit like whether the car is locked or what the state of charge is.  But after getting accustomed to the deep and intuitive integration of the Tesla app, this feels cheap and lazy.  Ideally I'd like it to act as the key for the vehicle - in fact that might almost qualify this as a double-quibble.  I don't like having to carry another chonky key fob.  Especially one with a "set off the alarm now" button placed such that I can accidentally activate it by sitting down.


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 everyoneNot 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.
==Everyone On The UX Team Should Be Sat Down And Told To Think About What They Did==
The main inputs to driving the car - steering, braking, accelerator - are generally pretty good <sub>(exceptions listed separately)</sub>.  That probably has more to do with the chassis design team though.  Because everything else is weak-sauce output from a series of committees that clearly hated each other and were playing stupid internal-political games.
* Why the fuck don't the motorized mirrors coordinate with the seat/user memory settings?
* Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to interrupt the already-slow boot sequence of the infotainment to make the driver press "OK" every fucking time?
* Any control that you have to take your eyes off the road to use is totally wasted as a separate button/control.  Sure capacitive touch buttons are neat - on kitchen appliancesBut when I'm fumbling around for a control while I'm driving, I don't want the "looking for the control" to directly translate into "activating every fucking thing I touch".
* Having only two window switches to control both front and rear windows is the result of a deeply stupid person having too much input.  Yeah - cute idea, but just noI fucking hate accidentally bumping the invisible capacitive touch button that changes to controlling the rear.  But even more, I philosophically loath that they took a simple 4-switch control with 100% intuitive interface and made it need a logic board to hilariously discover new ways to go wrong.
* The media buttons on the steering wheel are regular controls turned 90° for no good reason.  Normal controller: UP = increase volume, DOWN = decrease volume, RIGHT = next track, LEFT = go back a track.  But for some fucked up reason, I now get to press UP to go back, DOWN to skip forward, RIGHT to increase volume, and LEFT to decrease volume.  Fuck you, VW UX team.


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.
==Creep Mode: Make. It. Go. Away.==
Or at least optional, yeah?  I get that it makes the operation familiar to low-skill people transitioning from shitty automatic transmissions.  Cool.  But for those of us who preferred manuals, and now delight in the directness and finesse of electric drivetrains, you're just making shit bad with no benefit.


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.
==Brake Hold Won't Let Go==
Yes, I like it when pressing the brake a bit extra when stopped that the vehicle will continue to hold the brake for me.  But in the VW, it won't let go unless I press the accelerator.  This is fine at a stop light or some such.  But when I'm carefully navigating down a slope this is lurch-o-matic.  This is extra exacerbated by the no-option creep mode.  At least the brake hold CAN be turned off by a crude intervention in the infotainment system, but really it should be able to be dismissed with a repeated brake pedal press.
 
==Secret Charger Unlock Method==
It makes sense not to trust the unknown charger connector, and totally avoid any chance of an arc flash by locking the connector in place - even if it indicates that it means to disconnect.  But having the method for releasing the suspicious charger connector be a secret staccato code on the key fob is infuriating when the standard glitch reset sequence for the vast majority of charging networks is "unplug and replug in vehicle".


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.
</font>
</font>
<hr>


=[[2022.03.02 Ukraine]]=
=[[2023.08.01 Kids At Sandy Ridge]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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.
Despite all the drama with fumbling the ability to put the epic bike rack on any functional bike-hauling vehicle, we gave up and just Tetrised the bikes into the back of the Flex to make it happen.


Firstly, it really does seem like Putin has marinated in his crazy long enough to believe his own bullshitFor 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.
A warm but-not-too-warm morning with gorgeous dappled light, Simon and Violet immediately exceeded my expectations by gamely trying to pedal up the climb hillWe kept exclusively to Laura's Line and the section of Lower Hide&Seek from the power lines down to the road.


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.
It was amazeballs.  Sharing the Church of Dirt with them unlocked a spiritual sense of harmony and joy.


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.
Violet had two crashes.  The first right off the bat, and it was hard enough to knock the wind out of her and scrape her up.  But a bandaid later and she was gamely riding through the rollers and berms.  The second was at the very end - at the very same berm.  Except that time she rolled with the wipeout, left a Violet-shaped crater, and laughed like the unstoppable monster she is.
 
The tradition of DQ after riding with Simon has now been extended to Violet as well, and it was good.
 
My only regret is not taking any pictures.  I try to forgive myself by acknowledging that I was very much living in the moment the whole time.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2022.02.05 Disillusionment]]=
=[[2023.07.30 It's FORZA's Fault, Really]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/ID4_moonstone-gray.png


Stubbornly, the plotting mechanisms in my brain keep considering possibilities for "management" to change its collective mindWhich 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 existenceSo I haven't officially banished my quiet stirrings of ambition.
Amy's main gift for her birthday this year was an XBOX, and she didn't want to wait for her actual birthday to start playing with it.  So last week we broke it out after we dropped off the kids with their mom, and proceeded to play a whole bunch of video gamesI've never had any kind of console game system myself, so it has been hilariously intoxicating to play with Amy on a bunch of games in our living room.  A couple are throwbacks to my PC simulation games of yore, a hilariously frustrating puzzle game, and a couple driving gamesThe stand-out driving game we got was Forza 5.


There are counter-arguments, howeverFirstly, I do legitimately love actually doing engineering, especially 3D CAD design - and managers don't get to do thatSecondly, 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).
We started calling playing Forza "drunk driving" both because of how bad at it we are with the basic game controllers, but also because it was funny to take turns playing while also sipping alcoholic beveragesThe game is simply beautiful, with a rather good physics engine, so it's enjoyable to feel immersed in the wildly bad driving experiencePerhaps exactly because of how bad we were at controlling the vehicles meant that we often found ourselves off-road, which in turn lent itself to having better experiences with the off-road-capable vehicles.  The early champion of this realm is the Ford Bronco that you start the game in.


This week, I also had renewed insight to even more problems with my managerial ambitions.
So much fun was had tromping around in this virtual Bronco that we asked ourselves, "what would driving a real Bronco be like?"  So, for shits and giggles, we set out last Friday to the local Ford dealer to take a Bronco out for a turn behind the real wheel.  It did not disappoint - we both liked it a lot.


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 challengingYears of me helpfully suggesting progressive ideas that the company is structurally impaired to consider has me brightly marked as a problemTo change this would require, well, not being me.  Tough one, that.
Except for, you know, reality - the price, the fuel efficiency, and the overall poor ability to meet our second vehicle needsBut while there on the Ford lot, we found ourselves facing the truth that we were sick of dealing with shitty old carsWe have most of what we wanted to have saved up for the ID.Buzz already, so starting to have a payment now could be handled without difficultyPlus, we could trade in the hard-to-sell T4 van for sufficient downpayment on whatever we decided made sense.


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.
After staring into the abyss of Ford offerings, we toddled over to the nearby VW dealer to see about their inventory of ID.4's.  Because they share the basic architecture with the ID.BUZZ that we intend to have, so it could be an opportunity to get familiarized with that.  And it just so happened that they had a lease deal that would carry us nicely until we get project:LEELOO¹.
 
And here we are, with yet another vehicle.
 
Now all we have to do is:
* Sell the stupid Flex.
* Install a 2" hitch to attach the bike rack.
* Get a home charging solution that doesn't suck.²
 
¹ "project:LEELOO" is the provisional ID.BUZZ name - so far<br>
² The car comes with 3 years free charging at Electrify America, so this is actually a somewhat lower-priority need.


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.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2022.01.11 Night Shift]]=
=[[2023.07.15 3-Week Break]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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.
Today kicks off the first day of my 3-week summer break, in which I plan to...


I've worked night shift before, myselfNot 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.
HmYou know, I'm not totally sure what.


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) sleepingDiscussing my overenthusiastic guarding of Amy's sleep sanctorum, I unearthed the memory of my dad working shift work while I was a kidHe worked hard, and it definitely resonated with me as a sensitive little kid to be worried about my dad's wellbeing.
Nominally, I'll figure out a way to strap the monster bike rack to the Rusty Pig and take the kids out for some adventures discovering biking.  And I mean to do a bit of writingAnd we plan to do a tonne of D&D.  Maybe a trip up the mountain with Zora.  Plus wrapping up with Amy's and Violet's birthdays.
 
But, really, those are possible waypoints instead of a packed itinerary.
 
I spent entirely too much time this past week being crushed under work stress, and I definitely don't feel free of its grip yet.  That's probably the main thing I need to figure out - by means of engaging with mindfully existing in a bunch of non-work moments.
 
<hr>
 
UPDATE:<br>
It's worth noting that on the very first weekend of said vacation, I was called by my manager asking me to consult on a testing issueHaving consulted, I'm now struggling with worry about the all-new problem encountered by the project.  Goddamn work stress is persistent.
 
</font>
 
<hr>


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.
=[[2023.06.27 School's Out For Summer]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4484%20copy.png


One of the things I have found myself doing at night, though, is write. So, here we are.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4582%20copy.png
</font>
</font>


=[[2022.01.01 Betty White]]=
<hr>
 
=[[2023.06.18 Anti-Antifa Conundrum]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Betty_White_Show_Cast_1977.JPG
During the legitimately delightful [https://www.deathcabforcutie.com/ Death Cab For Cutie] concert this past week, front man Ben Gibbard mentioned that the place they just came from was Vancouver BC.  While they were leaving the hotel, they mentioned that they going to Portland Oregon.  To which the random person warned, "Be careful, they have Antifa there."


In what was the ultimate act of comic timing, Betty White died at the very end of 2021.
Ben rolled that into a hilarious battle cry, engaging the zeitgeist of the progressive front of the culture war perpetuated by the über-rich and their frightened conservative hordes.  And I'm sufficiently skeptical that I found myself wondering if this was a real encounter or merely a means to an audience-connecting trope.


But there's no denying that exactly that sentiment exists.  "Antifa" has become a sort of "they started it" boogeyman to counterpoint the awful shit skinheads and police do.
Yet the first thing I found myself asking this supposed Vancouverite is, "As opposed to what, exactly?"  Nazis?  Or Nazi sympathizers?  Because if you're not a Nazi, or a Nazi sympathizer, then you're technically anti-Nazi.  Which is anti-fascist.  Which is Antifa.
I'm curious to hear how these people conceptualize our various anti-fascist cultural heroes, like Captain America, Indiana Jones, and most of John Wayne's characters.  Are they booing and hissing when they watch Indy punching every Nazi he sees?  Or are they, as I suspect, grimly clinging to their own personal John Wayne-ness and dream of a glorious previous American Ideal that they do not interrogate in context of a modern reality.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.12.29 Booop]]=
=[[2023.06.17 Where Does The Time Go?]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
I was going to write something here.  I really was.  
Holy tapdancing fuck.  I'm continually left amazed at how the ebb and flow of time management triage tends to weed out things I keep assuming I'll find time for eventually - like running, bike rides, writing, and drawing.


But then I scribbled an over-thought rule idea on the AIF site instead, and apparently that caused my teeny tiny little brain to fail to think of anything worthwhile to put here.  And, hilariously, being as belligerent as I am, I assumed that if I were to just inflict some update writing on myself here it might shake loose some idea - among the many I am pretty sure I had floating around beforehand.
Goddammit.


UmmmmNope.
I know intellectually that it's a matter of <i>making</i> time for these thingsI also know that in order to make it consistent it needs to become habitual.  Now, if only knowing a thing made enough of a difference to make it so.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.12.13 Broken Ribs and New House]]=
=[[2023.05.30 Culture War: Part What?]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Amy and I now reside in our collaborative home, using the combined power of our mortgage budgets to leverage things that we want:
The continual grind of the fear machine, lubricated with falsehoods and fueled by blame, usually has a steady sickening thrum to it.  A cloying call for a country that only ever existed in rosy nostalgia and westerns, and vitriolic over-reaction to anything different or complicated.
* 3+ bedrooms
* 2+ bathrooms
* great kitchen
* modern amenities for the furnace, AC, plumbing, and wiring
* located in Portland proper (biking distance to work/friends, walking distance to park/pub)
* garage


It all sounds fine and good, but it was actually annoyingly stressful in the closing stages.  The plan, as conceived by circumstance, was that we would close on selling Amy's house on November 19<sup>th</sup> (having sold my condo a couple months previously), and use the largish equity from her sale to be a downpayment for the new place on the 22<sup>nd</sup>Stretching out that weekend of theoretical homelessness was that the sellers of our new house asked for an extra week of occupancy, so we rented a place to stay for 11 days until the 29<sup>th</sup>.  Rounding out the machinations was packing up Amy's house for collection on the 28<sup>th</sup> by a moving/storage company, to have it all dropped off at the new house first thing on the 30<sup>th</sup>.
I recently heard Jon Stewart say that Republicans focus on stoking culture wars because they're out of ideas.  They have no solutions, only complaints and attempted blameWhich perhaps only rings true because of the total lack of resonance with me their histrionic message generally is.


You can guess where this is all going, right?
Still, the recent utterances have me chuckling darkly.


Well, no.  Not like that at first.  Because the sellers ammended, last-minute, that they did not actually need the extra week of residency after all, and they would be fine with us taking possession on the closing day.  Before we tried to claw back some of the 2-kilobucks shelled out for the rental place, we checked with the moving company about when they might be able to deliver Amy's stuff - and it turned out that they had no earlier openings, and the original date was what we were stuck with.  So be it, no big deal.
The common refrain is, "People Are Fleeing Democratic Cities".


But then the obvious thing happened.  The lender for the buyers of Amy's place had a bureaucratic hiccup - Bank of America "forgot" to send out the "closing disclosure".  Apparently that takes three days to process, because of course it does.  Except, of course, the 19<sup>th</sup> was a Friday, and all the bankers piss off early on Fridays.  So it had to be sent out the following Monday - our presumptive closing date for the new place.  But, you know: three daysExcept, oopsie, that three days doesn't include the day they send it out, and Thursday and Friday of that week are holidays - so they can't count, obviously.
The stories tend to immediately go on to assert that people are leaving Democrat-run, high-tax, liberal-agenda hubs in big cities in favour of pro-business, conservative regionsAnd I'm sure we could find some individuals with exactly that motivation, but somehow I doubt it is the majority.


So, with scrambling, our arrayed realtors and lenders and title companies arranged for the ominous "double close" on Monday the 29<sup>th</sup>.
No, I'd be willing to wager that the vast majority of such moves are a combination of housing cost and the new-found ability to do many jobs remotely.


Luckily, we had the rental place and movers already set for that duration anyway.  Good luck really.  So, with a break in the weather, I went for a rare-these-days mountain bike ride up at Sandy RidgeAnd managed a particularly silly and unexpected crash wherein I pancaked on my side onto a rock.  Fractured or bruised three ribs at the impact site, and one rib with a pair of bending/greenstick fracturesAnd a mess of pulled muscles, scrapes, and bruises.  Just in time to start moving and unpacking.  Yeah, I'm a genius.  And, yes, I got teased from many vectors about it being an intentionally lazy event.
Ignoring for a moment the amusing aspect of the majority of the housing shitfuckery being due to "pro-business" interests, one has to wonder how much "liberal agenda" these fleeing individuals will actually leave behindBecause the long-held majority of people's votes has been held in check by conservatives by gerrymanderingBut once the liberal agenda is free to exist across the spread of less-urban space, will scare tactics that work on the already-fearful willing-morons of the Repugnican party still hold as much sway.


So the day of the double-close comes, and we putter around trying to be patient while getting dribbles of reassuring information from our realtor (and friend, Brad Wulf).  At some point during the process, we learn that there is a deadline for fund transfers of this type - 17:00 EST, which is only 14:00 here.  And that comes and goes faster than we liked, so we're parked outside of our presumptive new home quietly dreading the prospect of having to find a hotel then begging the moving company not to just dump all the stuff on the lawn in the morning because we don't have access to the house.
As I said: chuckling darkly.
</font>
 
<hr>


Fortunately everything did proceed as planned, and it all worked out.
=[[2023.05.20 Vanbortion]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">


Aside from the part where I spent the first night at our new house on an air mattress on the floor, writhing in occasional agony. But that's probably just karma.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4545.png


We're still setting up the place, but we're getting closeThe kids have already spent a week here, and they love itNot that that is surprising, because they are great and resilient kids, and also Amy's little fan club who joyously want to do everything with herCan't blame them.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4546.png
 
So... AKNOT is whole once again, and runs <i>great</i>.
 
There is, however, one niggling problem.  The excellent mechanics stressed to us once again that it is extremely difficult to get parts for this vehicle.  And with that in consideration, it is both hard to need to rely on AKNOT the way that we need to until we can get the ID.Buzz (whenever Volkswagen actually delivers those here) AND a sickening possible cratering of investment.  As it is, we are already well past the point where we will be able to recoup all of our resources sunk into AKNOT - however awesome it is at this moment.
 
This lead to a brief and intensive review of our needsPlus an uncomfortable reckoning of how much we really want a van - but that all the vans in our price range are either craptacular or not fit for purpose (moving kids and dog)After discovering that some weakly-van-like options are simply too small [AHEM - Honda Element], we stumbled on the hideous functionality that is the Ford Flex.
 
It's sort of a mega-wagon.  Not really a van, because it's not tall enough or utility enough, but also not an SUV, because it has zero swagger and also way to low-slung.  The particular incarnation that we snapped up from what appeared to be a chop shop operation has too many blemishes to mentionBut should work for us for the duration.


I'll save future occasional blog posts to blather about ancillary house thoughts and plans.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.11.26 Slowness]]=
=[[2023.05.06 "It was a funny moment."]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
It's embarrassing to note that I'm just one day short of a year to finally finish the "latest" short story installment of [[The Massetin Vignettes]]:
"It was a funny moment."
<blockquote>
 
<big><b>[[2020.11.27 "Come on guys, it's OK."]]</b></big>
I know that the nanoscopic robots will eventually clean all my fangs completely, but it's easy to get impatient.
</blockquote>


Now, it's probably time to get on with finishing some of the novellas I started writing [checks] 4 - 13 years ago?  Oof.
<pre>...to be composed on a separate page...</pre>
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.10.22 Anti-Social Media]]=
=[[2023.04.16 Why WaitButWhy Guy?]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
https://png.pngitem.com/pimgs/s/22-223174_no-like-update-instagram-hd-png-download.png
Just to be clear, and as apology for my mouthful of alliteration of a title that made me laugh for no reason¹, the "guy" I'm talking about is Tim Urban - he's the fellow who writes the [https://waitbutwhy.com/ Wait But Why] blog.  I love that blog, because Tim has a modality where he gets interested in some random thing and then furiously burrows down to the bottom of that rabbit hole and tells you all about his adventure with bad stick drawings.  It appeals to several facets of my overly-nerdy trivia-addicted likes-to-know-stuff personality.
 
So when he resurfaced recently, saying most of what he had been doing during his reclusion was writing a book, I absolutely knew that I had to read that book.  1) Sounds like an epic rabbit hole.  2) Direct support of a person whose work I appreciate.
 
It's "What's Our Problem?" - with the tag line "the self-help book for societies".  Like, the mother of all rabbit holes.  I girded myself, and dove in.


So, I've just deleted the Instagram app off of my devices. Which is not the same as deleting my account, but puts Instagram in the same realm as my eternally-dormant BookFace account.
Both aspects of the title are... kinda wrong.


Back in the stirring age of web 2.0, I was an early-adopter member of The Facebook when it was first starting to really expandHilarious to me now is that I hated it for snotty aesthetic reasons - I didn't like how it made everyone's content superficially similar.  Looking at my whimsical formatting of the frames-enabled version of claytoncastle.com from that era, I do question my tastes in that regard.
I actually finished reading it a while ago, because I downloaded it the instant it became availableBut I've had to spend a little time working through my disappointment and sadness about the book, and its cascade of introspection about my own assumptions.


But it was the fakey-fakeness of Facebook that irked me most as it grew exponentially, and the fact that I felt required to maintain an account in order to stay in touch with the multitude of not-HTML-capable friends, family, and acquaintances I would otherwise never hear from.
Much of the content includes things that I already saw in nascent form on WaitButWhy, and remain brilliant bits of thought experiment.  And I particularly appreciate the way Tim's way of thinking challenged some of the ways in which I have let myself become lazy with respect to being numb to much of the Republican actions in the culture war / cold civil war.


It was my BiL that clued me into the less-rhetorical space of Instagram, where we could keep in touch via mostly pictures and brief text commentsIt was an amusing way to feel like part of the mountain biking community, as well as another touch point with all my arrayed people with whom other correspondence was extremely unlikelyWhen the RooKwiki 1.0 imploded and with it cratered my ability to casually host images, I started leaning on Instagram for the photographic side of my social media.
BUT (and I actually backed up to capitalize that for effect) it falls down pretty fast and hard in the book about half-way thoughFull respect for Tim, as he even flags this transition point saying that many people will be unhappy (and awkwardly alludes to there being torches and pitchforks about it)For all his forest of references and assurances about open-mindedness, Tim starts oversimplifying, cherry-picking, and false-equivalancizes (new word trademarked by me) his way to suggesting that the problem is wokeness (whatever that is this week) and a powerful cabal he refers to as Social Justice Fundamentalists.


Things have soured since then.  Out in the world, Instagram became part of the Facebook fuckathon, which I hate.  Especially the recent revelations about the probably-intentional harmful risks it runs with manipulation of younger users.  On a personal level, my social media existence became muddied during my divorce, and I feel uncomfortable with the degree that the feed feels like more of the fakey-fakeness I hate about its parent company.
Which is short-hand for "privileged person wants things to go back to how they were".


So.
I simply don't have the energy to take the time to challenge all the ways I think he's wrong.  Aside from proposing that instead of SJF having any significant power that instead some <i>ideas</i> of addressing institutional inequity have become actually fundamentally persuasive because rigorous insight suggest they're uncomfortably true.  And I'm a little pissed at Tim for giving me hope that he would have some good suggestions about it.  But no.  Just fucking painting some whiney shit that agrees with his feelings and no useful ways to address anything.


That leaves me back at this clunky thing, that I keep plugging away atBecause it's the way that I feel most accurately reflectedPlus, RedditObviously.
Then I remembered his posts about Elon Musk.  Oh, man, the embarrassing agony of how much I was sucked into that nepo-1-percenter's atrocious bullshit.  And Tim helped cement that for me by writing an entire fucking serious of fluff pieces about himHow in the everloving fuck did his utter tool-ness and actual technical cluelessness get conveniently missed?  Is it because, oh-I-don't-know, maybe Tim likes to wax extensively about <i>things he wishes were so</i>.
 
 
<b>TL;DR</b> - person I identified with, liked², and respected spent a sabbatical to discover that they're actually many of the things I'm frightened about myself being blind about.  Boo.
 
 
<blockquote><hr></blockquote>
 
¹ <small>Other things that make me laugh much more than they should for no reason include "Joan of Bark" as a name option for our puppyJust to put things in perspective for how utterly about my own amusement everything here is.</small>
 
² <small>That bit being past tense is perhaps a bit sillyI suspect that Tim Urban is still a pretty cool person that I like; I'm just being angsty.</small>


UPDATE: [[2010.02.13 Anti Social Networking | REFERENCE]]
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.10.05 200,000 Dead From Stupidity]]=
=[[2023.04.02 Van Update]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
The US recently exceeded 700,000 dead from COVID-19 directly, and it is estimated that at least 200,000 of those were entirely preventable deaths of people who chose not to get vaccinated.


It is hard work not to just lash out with rejecting hatred at all the anti-intellectualismBut seriously, a big chunk of my soul just groans "good riddance, morons".
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4469%20copy.png
 
If you can see the image above: Glorious, isn't it?
 
Well, no, but it certainly seems that way in regards to its core mission: adventure give-few-fucks van.  The manual transmission driving experience and nicely german steering feel blow every other cheap van we tested completely out of the water.  The chonky tires look badass, even as they give it a bouncier but better-isolated ride.  The epic bike rack speaks directly to the core bike-shuttle function of the machine.  Getting the passenger side mirror replaced also makes piloting it less difficult while looking less sketchy than the glued-together mostly non-functional previous mirror.
 
Zora dog in particular has taken to loving riding in the van, as it generally means some adventure where she gets to be with the kids.  And the kids, who have distinctly giraffe-like aspects, relish the vast passenger volume they get to ride in.
 
Plus, it has to be said: the 5-cylinder motor makes delightful sounds that tickle my nostalgia of my 80's Audi coupé and it's inline-5.
 
BUT - and this is a big but - there are some serious concerns remaining and emerging.  There has long been a metallic jingling sound coming from the RHF quadrant during engine load - first guess is a loose heat shieldNow, however, there is a distinct reduction in power available.  First guess is fouled fuel filter, questionable air filter, and unknown spark plug condition.  And a distinct smell - sometime clutch-like, other times burn oil seeming.
 
Fortunately, we have an appointment at a mechanic for a comprehensive inspection and to perform any work necessary to make it reliable.  And, if they don't blow my van budget, maybe they can help us with nuisance elements, like the unreliable power windows, lame headlights, and the stubborn rearview mirror mount.
 
<big>[[2023.04.02 Van Update | Now with a(multiple) Van Update Update(s)]]</big>
 
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.09.30 German Reflections]]=
=[[2023.03.19 Winter Test in Alaska]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Having had some time to reflect on my time in Deutschland, it appears that my most poignant memories are actually juxtapositions that were only clear once I was back in the US.  The general efficiency of the driving and roads and trains and pedestrian access was appreciated while I was there, but wildly accentuated once back in the chaotic bullshit miasma of American infrastructure.  The no-nonsense methodical way in which everyone wore masks in public places didn't actually stand out much for me while I was there, but again it made for horrified acquaintance with the  distributed idiocy of anti-maskers inflicting themselves on the public spaces here in the US.  There was also an important election that took place while I was there, the dignified lack of drama of which didn't fully sink in until I came back and saw some lingering MAGA hats at the Chicago airport.


As sensible and Clayton-approved as Germany is, I don't see myself going there purely for enjoyment.  While well-run and stable and historically interesting, there's just nothing that pulls my soul either.  Maybe if I had managed to find time to go mountain biking with Nial while I was there that could have been different.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4437%20copy.png
 
What happens in Fairbanks, in March, is generally pretty cold.


Also, there's only so much ground/flattened overcooked meat that one can eat.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.09.26 Germany]]=
=[[2023.03.09 Zora Dog]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Here I am, in Stuttgart, Germany. 


I was going to try to summon some observations, but after writing down some they seemed... boring? Maybe that is a statement unto itselfRegardless, aside from the gruelling work days, I have been quite liking it here.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1342%20copy.png
 
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4403%20copy.png
 
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4452%20copy.png
 
She's a Bernedoodle (half Bernese Mountain Dog and half standard Poodle), known for being calm, smart, and mostly hypo-allergenicAmy loves dogs, and both kids have been wishing for a puppy for quite a long timeAnd Zora is a font of adoration and emotional support, for the whole family.
 
I've long asserted that I prefer most dogs to most humans, but have generally been too selfish with my time to become obligated to take care of a dog.  But after a decade of being a dad, it feels like it might be a moot point.  And holy fucking shit she's adorable.
 
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.09.07 Cascading Similarities]]=
=[[2023.02.27 Tax Return Reflections]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Doing taxes is weird.
Starting from the premise that it's up to individuals to process their own tax calculations and propose how much they think they should have paid in comparison to how much they may have already paid - when then governing bodies generally already know what this should be automatically.  It seems... wasteful.  Why not just have the government do the standard re-alignment they do anyways, and give taxpayers an opportunity to argue with it only if they feel there is a worthwhile discrepancy?


http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1502.png
Then there's the whole parasitic tax-preparation industry that preys upon the vast majority (including me). The fact that it has successfully  lobbied the government to both increase the inscrutability of the tax system and repress the IRS from providing a standardized and free tax entering mechanism is a typically capitalistic kind of awful.


http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1503.png
After completing the wasteful/parasitic/labyrinthine preparation process, then comes the amazingly awkward navigation of how to actually get a refund. I just want it in my bank account. Why isn't that the first option?  Why isn't that an option on the very first page?  Why does it have to be an exercise in futility looking for it, only to realize that the first pages are traps to lure users into another parasitic subscription or fee service.


Look at that.
The simple fact that we can't even avoid making the necessary alignment of taxation with the state non-horrible for most people doesn't build much confidence that we'll be able to accomplish the much harder task to improve the tax code so that the super-rich pay their fair share (again).
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.08.10 Hypertension]]=
=[[2023.02.17 Van Plans]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Couple weeks ago I had my blood pressure taken as a routine facet of going to the dentist: 154/103 mm Hg. For years I've had mildly worrisome elevated blood pressure, 120-130 systolic and 80-90 diastolic. But this is, well, woah.
Update on our crappy old 1993 VW T4 EuroVan with an I5 and a manual transmission...


Amy immediately obtained a blood pressure cuff, to monitor me.  And I need to consider the factors I can control.  Most notably diet and exercise.
Things accomplished on it so far:
* managed to actually pass DEQ, get registered and plated (kind of a long story by itself)
* repaired the rear seat belts to functionality to actually have more than just one passenger
* re-connected the transmission shifter linkage that fell apart/off
* obtained updated wheels + tires


On the diet side, the pandemic has led me to slide into low-energy state of ordering lots of food delivered.  Which is generally the worst possible thing diet-wise for hypertension.  So much salt and sugar.  Amy has redoubled her efforts to make me eat healthy, and I hope to be a bit more sanguine about my capitulations to my cravings.  We'll see.
Things needing to get accomplished:
* re-re-connect the transmission shifter linkage, because the previous fix also broke - temporarily re-attached but need to put a new-new bushing in (correctly), investigate getting a new heat shield so the exhaust doesn't melt the bushing and/or a supplementary restrain feature
* get previously mentioned wheels + tires actually mounted, balanced, and installed
* remove the incorrectly installed review mirror stalk - to install the cool new rearview mirror + camera system
* replace the broken passenger side door mirror (part obtained)
* find out why the power door windows aren't working any more
* find out why water is pooling in the passenger door (possibly connected to the broken door mirror)
* replace the stereo head unit so that we can listen to music without the faceplate randomly falling out
* remove the outboard rear-face seat to facilitate loading large loads / bike / dog
* replace seatbelt for inboard rear-facing seat for bonus seating needs
* get a bike rack - because multiple bikes don't actually fit inside
* replace the "cool" aftermarket LED headlights with ones that actually work in the dark


Exercise is trickyInjuring my achilles tendons from running too much back during the separation was bothersome enough when I was underweight from the "crushing depression diet", but not it is even harder to avoid hurting myselfPlus, it really is hard to find time to get bike rides in when all the worthwhile riding is over an hour away by kei van, and foolish to do alone.
The awkward thing, strategically speaking, is that Amy's lease Jetta is being given back in a couple monthsSo, in order to avoid having to shell out for another vehicle, it would be nice if the crappy old van (CODENAME: AKNOT) was reliable enough for our occasional parallel-commuting needs.  Mostly kid-school deliveries when Amy has to workThe path towards reliability is not meeting our required timeline.


Ensuring daily walks isn't really enough, but I have started doing short runs (3km) every other day.  It feels weird to have such a short distance feel difficult when just a couple years ago running 10km felt like just long enough to work out the angst.  And my achilles recovery with just one day between runs is marginal, but hopefully sustainable.
Either I need to stop being driven to becoming a quivering wreck by work stress so I can make shit happen, or we need to find a mechanic to deal with some of our list.


It seems to be working.  When last we checked, I was down to 145/95, which is very much in the right direction.  More needs to be done, though.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.07.08 Cool Stuff Update]]=
=[[2023.01.30 Victoria Trip]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<blockquote>
 
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”<br>
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4348_beachwife.png
<i>Ferris Bueller ('s Day Off)</i>
 
</blockquote>
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4349_davebonnie.png
Some great moments from the past week-or-so:
 
*A brief moment of air time in the wee van from a surprise yump on the shadow-dappled atrophied road by Mt. St. Helens.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4355_tarantula.png
*Simon's smug joy from getting birthday gifts from family and friends that show how we all know and love him.
 
*Actually catching people in regular cars on twisty roads while driving a 30-kW kei van - and cackling laughter that made Amy worry a bit.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4357_pagliacciswife.png
*Riding bikes with Violet!!! And watching her endlessly circling the campground with joyful grinsI love it so much.
 
*After sleeping in the back of the wee van, waking up to make some coffee with the Aeropress on the Jetboil.  Simplicity is joyful sometimes.
Amazing adventure with Amy, staying at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empress_(hotel) Empress Hotel], and spending most of a week with Dave and BonnieComplete with a hike up Mount Doug and visits to my nominal favourite restaurant in the universe - Pagliacci's.
 
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.06.29 Heat Wave]]=
=[[2023.01.18 Married]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Back when I worked at the pulp mill in Castlegar as a "shift utility", one of the more unpleasant tasks was going up to the top of the power boilers and cleaning the flue grate.  There was a mandated maximum time allowed to do it, because prolonged exposure to the 45°C temperatures was considered dangerous.


This factoid was amusing as fuck to recall this past Monday, as I walked from the TEC building to the parkade at the DTNA campus here in Portland, and there was a howling wind of nominally 44°C air roasting me in my business casuals. My eyes were reduced to narrow springs of tears that barely made it to the curve of my cheekbones before evaporating in the blowtorch-like gale. Honestly, the heat has been otherworldly.
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4475%20copy.png
 
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_4468%20copy.png
 
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_0133_amysketch.png


It is tempting to go searching for all those climate change deniers now.  The same assholes who seemed to think that an unseasonable snowfall contradicted "global warming" should be convinced-as-fuck with massively record-breaking temperatures.  Right?  (No, probably not.  Their narrative is not one made of reason or understanding or objectivity.)
Team ClaAmy™ is now a legally recognized partnership❤️🫀


Note: Tesla's ability remote-operate the climate controls has been absolutely brilliant.  I took to leaving Ghost in "dog mode" to keep the interior suitably pleasant while parked for short spells.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.06.09 A Moment In Time]]=
=[[2023.01.08 Heart Attack Scare]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
We're in the Killingsworth condo.  I'm nominally working, but really just chasing emails until my crushing non-stop run of meetings later on todayAmy is cooking something for lunch, before she heads back to the 'country house' to sleep for her next night shiftSimon is doing schoolwork asynchronouslyViolet is doing a math test.
Last Wednesday (2023.01.04) I was standing at my desk at work when I noticed an un-ignorable ache in the upper-left quadrant of my chestI rolled my shoulders and arms, to see if I could stretch out whatever kind of muscular knot it was, to no effect.  Instead, I started feeling dizzy.
 
Now, I'm a 50-year-old man who takes medication to avoid having my blood pressure cause heart/brain to explode, so this is a constellation of symptoms I'm pre-disposed to be wary of.  So I did what any neurotic out-of-shape health-conscious person would do while in their employer's high-density working lot: I Googled that shit.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Sentient beings of all sorts: the online search results were not reassuring.  <i>Quelle surprise.</i>
 
So I lowered my powered standing desk, plopped myself down on my chair, and started to feel <i>really</i> dizzy - complete with tingling in my hands and fountains of cold sweat.  I turned to my trusty design partner - Meredith - and told her vaguely that I didn't feel well and might need some help.
 
I put my head down in my hands on my desk and proceeded to feel very poorly indeedMeanwhile, Meredith went full rockstar and called 911 to talk with the operator while also coordinating folks in the vicinity to check for possible supplies and facilitate the EMT's showing up.  I feebly sent a barely-coherent text to Amy, and managed to copy/paste her number to my boss to keep her informed.
 
At no point did I pass out, but I definitely was not highly responsive and quite frightened.  The EMT's showed up, and the whirlwind got underway in earnest.  It was weird to be rolling out of the office on a gurney, with people staring.
 
They determined that I was not actively having a heart attack, so there was not a mad rush to the hospitalAn IV was inserted for ease of access to my circulatory system, and an ungainly array of patches had been shaved on my chest to facilitate sticky EKG leads, plus my old friend the pressure cuffOnce at the hospital, in additional to constant electro-potential monitoring, blood oxygen saturation, and regular blood pressure monitoring, I also got a several rounds of blood tests (one lost, just to keep it interesting) and some x-rays.


Violet is good at math, despite her challenges with keeping focusShe's hunched over her computer with intent focus, so unlike her usual modality, while her teacher watches patiently on the screen.  My heart is nearly bursting with pride and adoration at her efforts.  She is an increasingly-gangly elf person that I love more than I can possibly contain.
The sum of the efforts determined reasonably conclusively that I did not have any sort of heart attackAnd, technically, I appear to be in relatively good cardiovascular health - even my pre-hypertension appeared to be under better control that I had thought.


Simon is working through the last shreds of homework, in an effort to nudge his last remaining non-A mark higher.  He's such an easily-frustrated smart ass, and he's exactly like I was.  Like I am, but without decades of coping mechanisms and life lessons layered over top.  Even so, he's a more conscientious and kind person than I started out as.  He's the perfect son for me.
So, what happened?


Amy likes cooking, and she's good at it. But the way in which she naturally coordinated with the kids to arrange to make things they would like to eat - instead of enduring the endless delivery and basic stuff I fed them - is a lovely expression of how much she has become enmeshed with usI also deeply appreciate the way she makes time to spend with us, simply because she likes being with us, even when it would be easier not to during her work weekHopefully I'm as good a parter for her as she is for me.
Well, first and foremost, I had symptoms that one does not fuck around and find out about.
 
But in a more direct manner, there are several related elements that might be sufficient to explain everything.  The chest ache showed to be very proximal to some broken ribs I suffered just over a year ago, so they might have acting up for the first cold snap since they "healed".  The dizziness is very similar to one of the side-effects of the hydrochlorothiazide that I take for high blood pressure - and the night before I had taken a double dose, because I had missed one.  The bonus shaking sweats and apparently lack of circulation might have been a panic attack brought on by my fears, and my generally high baseline of work stress.
 
From here, I need to get on with finding a new Primary Care Physician - so I can do a follow-upThere's going to be some unpleasant amount of fuss going forward at the office.  So it goesIt also seems like a timely prompt to keep my wellness as a priority.


And then there's me.  I find myself happily at the hub of a life I love living.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.05.29 Boop Boop Beep Beep]]=
=[[2023.01.02 Hello 2023]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Finally found time to drive the kei van down to the DEQ to emission testing, as a first step for getting it titled and registered in OregonIt's hilarious how fun it is to drive around on regular surface streets, madly rowing through gears and gingerly turning and braking while every little feature on the road causes it to buck and bounce.  The technician at the testing facility grilled me on all sorts of questions about VANTACULUS, apparently purely out of curiosity, because at the end he seemed to snap out of his childlike reverie and said, "Oh, right, well it checks out just fine - here's your papers."
Reflecting, 2022 was pretty good for meAnd for most of the world, as long as you gloss over Russia's shit-fest invasion of Ukraine, and several awful climate disasters that are a taste of how things are likely to be from now on.


And, indeed, the ridiculous little van was running unusually smoothly, despite yesterday being tormented with a run over to the Rocky Point Trails system.  It droned at its maximum velocity along the highway, but scuttled up the twisty access road like a champ.  After I did an oddly-exhausting solo ride, having missed my riding crew, the van decidedly did not like winding back down the hill.  The weight transfer forward made the puny back tires feel like they were about the swap ends on me around every steep tilted corner (note to self - get better tires).  More worrisome, it chuffed out significant quantities of blue smoke after being coaxed into providing motive effort again.  Most likely, the leaned-over bank of cylinders didn't like the steepness of the descent, combined with the twisty corners, and the compression braking I was asking of it.
Looking ahead to 2023, there are a few things flagged already:
* getting married to Amy
* weakly honeymoon thing meeting up with Dave/Bonnie in Victoria
* driving around in our old 1993 VW T4 van like a boss
* Death Cab For Cutie concert at Edgefield
* Whistler trip with the Bike Crew
* Middle School for Violet
* High School for Simon


The drive to RPT was prefaced by ending my days with the kids, and delivering them to their mom's house.  This was their first significant trip in VANTACULUS, having only been around the block in it before.  Their giggling and continuous babbling of mirth as we wended our way through Portland to get to their mom's house really highlighted the fundamental purpose of VANTACULUS: enjoying silly fun stuff with them.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.05.15 Police - Bad Apples Welcome]]=
=[[2022.12.18 Fredmas Fusion]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
https://cdn.iconscout.com/icon/free/png-128/the-76-282277.png 
Today is the annual remembrance of my Dad's birthday: Fredmas.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/The_Psychopath_Test_%28Jon_Ronson_book%29_cover.jpg


Back in another life, I remember reading Jon Ronson's book, "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychopath_Test The Psychopath Test]" and feeling a creepy sense of too much of it making sense (while also being entertained)The aspect that shook my view on reality the most was the hypothesis about the prevalence of high-functioning psychopaths in the upper echelons of big business, as this seemed entirely too plausible from my vantage in the lower echelons of big business.
It's also the negative 1-month mark for Amy and I getting married.  I think he would have really liked her, and there is some complicated deconstruction to do in my head about what I think he might have thought about getting re-marriedBut maybe I'll save that difficult bit for some other Rant™ and just focus on the happy part about marrying Amy.


The strict definition of psychopaths and sociopaths being highly correlated to impulsiveness that makes criminality extremely likelyHowever, suppose there is a demographic of these low-empathy types who are self-controlled enough to avoid succumbing to overt criminality, but not quite high-functioning enough to succeed in a high-skill arena. Where do these hypothetical entities turn instead to stroke their personal sense of power and dominance?
Except that today I finally found out the technical details of the Helion fusion reactor, and I'm very busy having my mind blownI thought tokamak's were pretty cool, and stellarators were amusing, but this pulse fusion technique is genuinely thrilling.


Imagine that there is a profession where one can be conferred significant authority without having to master any annoyingly difficult cognitive skills.  Plus add a bonus of having the ability to get away with some criminal activity, just in case the urge becomes irresistible.  It would seem that typical police work in the United States is a veritable honey-pot for these hypothetical middle-draft psychopaths.
The main elements that blow my mind (in order of mind-blowing-ness):
# direct output of electrical power - bypassing the need to crudely use heat to run something like a turbine
# simplified fuel - use of relatively-common deuterium and helium instead of ultra-rare tritium (or plutonium, ick)
# massively reduced radioactive byproduct - even compared to tokamaks, and removing the need for beryllium layer
# a demonstration reactor to supply output power in 2024


Find me a hypothesis that better fits with the data, and I'll thank you for helping me struggle against my misanthropy.
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2022.12.12 Managment Theory Desiderata]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
A couple of half-ideas I scribbled down as notes meant for contemplation and possible inclusion in [[CUSP|my as-yet unrealized management theory book]].
 
==profits : bonus==
The tendency to make an association between a business's profits and employee bonuses is entirely understandable.  Both in positive ways and negative ways. The positive association is the idea that when a business has good fortune, that is then trickled down to the employees.  The negative association is that a business keeps all the profits, and the employees do not get to share in that extra success.  Both viewpoints have their arguments, couched in terms of "fairness".
 
They're both wrong.
 
==active neglect==
Ever get the feeling that you've done nothing wrong, and more than a few things right, but that it makes no positive impact?


</font>
</font>
Line 319: Line 700:
<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.05.07 Living In America - Part Huh]]=
=[[2022.11.09 Misunderstanding Millennials]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/Brain-jar.jpg


[ramble=ON]<br>
Recently watched Simon Sinek talking about some generational shifts in the workplace.  The whole reason I watched it is because I'm nominally a fan of his book "Start With Why", particularly with the concept of inspiration over manipulation.  During the talk, he presented a hilariously rose-coloured remembrance of <i>how things were</i>. Where we got our "purpose" from going to church, our "community" from interacting with neighbours, and our "socialization" from [check notes] bowling clubs - and he goes on to lament that these have all faded away such that we're now expecting these things from work.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Wherever_You_Are Welcome to Wherever You Are] was a timely INXS album for me, as it marked my first fully-away-from-home life while going to university.  It's distinctive not-grunge sound is the soundtrack of my memories that I formed discovering Victoria. Whenever I hear those songs I recall the sense of recognition of all the things that were fundamentally different about living in the island mini-metropolis from the remote mountain village I came fromEven long after the new environs became familiar and generally unsurprising, it helped me remember that there are still assumptions lingering in my existence that are not actually aligned with where I was.
 
In the same talk, he also described a sense of loss of trust between employers and employees, bringing up the symbology of the "gold watch".  He mentions it to lament how people could feel certain their loyalty would be rewarded, nominally by getting a valuable watch from their employer at an advanced stage of their career.  Except that, from what I can tell, the gold watch was always a symbol of disappointment - that "I've given my whole career to this company, and all I get at the end is this watch" at retirementBut this may be tangential.
 
Clearly this is an emotional expression by Mr. Sinek, utterly unsupported by the long and complicated history of worker's rights.  But even more interested to me is how it seems to fail to recognize the aspect in which companies actively try to insert themselves into employee's identity, and are perfectly happy (HR statements taken as "just words") to have other aspects of employee lives atrophy in favour of work focus.


I should re-listen to that album, after yesterday's reminder that I'm not in Canada any more.<br>
From there, he seems to conclude (or deduce?) that "millennials" are less capable of handling stress (presumably than gen-X or boomers).
[ramble=OFF]


Just after noon yesterday, I was on a work call in my 4th-floor condo in semi-urban North Portland with my kids doing distance learningA small Black Lives Matter march with about 40 participants made a clatter as they went by on the street belowIt was frankly charming, with drums and singing, and I like that Portland is active in this way.
Maybe this is intentionally done to build sympathy with tropes that his management-fad target demographic tend to cling toBut it seems that an unwillingness to put up with bullshit is not the same as being less capable of handling stressIndeed, the accurate recognition of the importance of dealing with stress and not treating having feelings as taboo seems like one of the triumphant elements of the progress of society as a whole.


Then a commotion happened, and I missed the kernel of the event.
But maybe Mr. Sinek is falling victim to the all-to-common tendency for seasoned adults to have increased rigidity in their thinking, and to start treating anything that is different as being less good than how they were before.


When I looked outside, there was a red minivan in the middle of the crowd.  It was almost stopped when I noticed it, the tires I could see were flat, the drivers window was smashed, and the driver looked to be in distress.  But, honestly, what really caught my attention were the handful of people with what appeared to be AR-15 assault rifles pointed at the van - one obstinately standing in front of it with his rifle trained on the driver.
</font>


Confused yelling ensued, while at least one small person I could see was getting medical aid from somebody with a medical kit on the sidewalk.  Tensions ran high, but nothing more dramatic happened.  People from the march started bringing bottles of water to the driver, who used them to rinse off his face - presumably he got a heft dose of pepper spray in the eyes.  Other marchers started re-directing traffic away from the scene, to alleviate the instant traffic jam.
<hr>


Eventually, the armed marchers slung their rifles, and other people led the van driver to sit at a nearby bus stop to recover.  They brought him more water to rinse his eyes, and I noticed that a few other people were rinsing their eyes as well - suggesting that the cloud of pepper spray had drifted about somewhat.  After a few minutes, the driver got back in his minivan and drove it slowly away on 4 flat tires, and the rest of the march evaporated.
=[[2022.10.22 the marginalian]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Maria Popova has been collecting and curating all kinds of eclectic interests and wisdom she shares on her subscription:<br>
[https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/16?e=4e8ff51e7e The Marginalian]


Some time to process it has let me consider a few things.
This latest edition particularly resonated with me.
</font>


When I saw the rifles, I got off my work call to be able to call 911.  But I paused, considering, "Do I really want to call the police on a bunch of black people?"  It's a horrifying thing that this is a legitimate concern.  It makes me wish there was a non-police "people who can help" emergency number.  I should spin this thought into a separate Rant™.
<hr>


I still have no idea whether this was a deliberate vehicular assault by the late-middle-aged white male in shabby clothes and crappy minivan, or an oblivious driving error while turning through an intersection. However, I'm simultaneously impressed and mortified at how clearly ready to respond to exactly such an assault the mark participants were.  The rifles were over-the-top in my opinion, but it's hard to argue against desire to counter the deadliness of a vehicle driving through a crowd.  But the slashing of the tires, the smashing of the driver's window, and pepper spraying the driver all happened in a way that seems like a prepared reaction.  If the driver merely blundered into that crowd, I confess that getting pepper sprayed and some mild damage to his vehicle seems like not the worst repercussion.  If the driver drove through those people intentionally - fuck that guy; I hope he goes blind.
=[[2022.10.16 Hm.]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
I meant to write something - mostly some added work on a story, instead of making myself read too much more of the molar-gnashing (and award-winning) sci-fi I'm currently struggling through.


Co-morbid with both my reluctance to call the police and my disdain of the weapons present is yet another demonstration of my deeply ingrained privilegeIn that: when I saw people with assault rifles on the street in front of me, I didn't think "DUCK".  I just hung out on my balcony, gawking.  Completely assured that I was not a target, or at risk.  It's probably good that I can exist like this, but maybe it shouldn't be an exceptional thing.
FailJust zombied instead.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.04.20 Slayer Slayed]]=
=[[2022.10.09 Triumphant Return To Game Nights]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_3620.jpeg
Dave and I have had a long-running Game Night, allowing us to keep playing AIF even though we lived in different cities - and then different countries. But last year, after [checks math...] 25-ish years, Dave asked for a break for a while.


Yeah, I sold the Slayer.
Which made sense.  It had been a long time being weird loner nerds playing our ultra-violent RPG, and a long list of various life stuff had accreted over the years for us.  Taking a breath from long-term time commitments is a chance to re-assess what's healthy for ourselves.


Logically, it made a lot of sense - in several ways.   
Except for the obvious aspect that Dave is my best friend from the depths of deep time, and having the ability to semi-regularly hang out with him is kind of emotionally important to meAnd outside of our "game night", there's just not much of that really going on.  We did manage some occasional brief chats in the same time slot as the Game Night, when we were both online, so that's somethingBut not quite the same mojo as actually doing something creative together.
# First of all, the Slayer as an enduro sled has pretty much the same utility envelope as the Commençal META Power.  Except, you know, every so slightly less awesomeSo the Slayer was likely just going to sit in my bike closet being sad and pathetic.
# This also happens to be a magical time for bike value.  I got 50% more for it than I would have guessed in a normal year, and it sold in just one day.  In retrospect, I should have asked for more.
# Plus there is the very real fact that after 4 years of solid use, it would soon be time to dump a bunch of money into the Slayer to keep it up to snuff.


That being said, I was very sad to sell it.  For the usual reasons - that I feel genuine attachment to mechanical things that have helped me, and saved me occasionally, and generally enabled a bunch of great memories.
I managed to drag the kids and Amy up to see the family in Canuckistan this summer, and while there got to visit Dave (and Bonnie) in person.  This gave more opportunity to see how Dave was doing, and to plumb the idea of re-starting Game Night. The hook on the lure was to suggest a couple things:


I fully plan on getting another bike, to round out where my Enduro Monster Truck is less well-suitedProbably to enable bike-commuting, but hopefully also for riding less-technical trailsWe'll see.
1: Try Dungeons & Dragons 5E, so that Dave could sample it firsthand.
 
2: Include more people in the game, to improve upon the endless cycles of 1-player games we had been grinding through for decades.
 
The 5E part wasn't too hard; I had a metric shitte-tonne of unused D&D game ideas too violent to include in the kid games I've been DM-ing.  So I kitchen-sinked those all together to make a chimera horror adventure gestalt.  [insert pantomime of job-done hand clap-wiping motion]
 
The "getting more people to play" aspect was the thing we had classically had stumbled on.  We met, and agreed on a sort of shotgun approach - meaning just ask everyone who we could think of to play with us.  Which, admittedly was a pretty short list.
 
Amy volunteered immediately, so that was a great relief.  Both Dave and I talked about inviting Lou, but both of us independently contemplated it and chickened out, being reluctant to face the rejection directly.  I still mean to ask him at some point, as a matter principleLou is super cool, and even though I know he's simply too busy to play with us (or do much of anything with us), I'd still like for him to know that he's still welcome join in.
 
The main win, though, was getting Ulrich to agree to play with us.  Finally hearing his voice again, after years of purely text correspondence, was pretty great. 
 
We had a session-0, where we finished off the character generation, and had an initial encounterIt was hilarious goodness.  I'm genuinely delighted to have this personally-curated crew of alpha-nerds to play with.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.04.03 Bikes and Vans and Stuff]]=
=[[2022.09.25 Triumphant Return To Whistler]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
As is standard for the past year, I'm not spending much time writing.  Which isn't because there isn't anything happening, but rather because there's too much happening.  Or, really, a combination of a lot of things happening, and my overwhelming state of satisfied happiness.   Which makes for odd and boring blog entries.  
Link might not work for people who are not awesome enough: <br>
[https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNQTtPMUHriRufcCNg0maMrjpP9_cEZZ0FdFk8rn4vOf6BuVxa5eu5YvF6lY3rTcQ?key=Z0R3OWN0NHZkanQ3X3dOYmNNZFNhb3IyemZVbUpR Whistler Photo Dump]


BUT!  There's still a couple things to mention, as a matter of record here.
A long pandemic later, finally managed to make it back to Whistler (and Squamish).


===1: I broke the Kei Van===
Impression #1:<br>
It had problems on a return drive from Sandy Ridge in a downpour, then wouldn't start again after we stopped at the Gnarthaller's.  Subsequent inspection showed it was dangerously low on oil (facepalm), even though the oil light never came on.  Will be working on resurrecting it soon.<br>
Holy fucking fuck coastal BC is gorgeous.
UPDATE: VANTACULUS LIVES!!!  Thanks to help and support from @gnarthaller.


===2: E-Biking is almost too much fun===
Impression #2:<br>
Blasting a biggish lap out at Sandy Ridge yesterday was very soul-nourishingBut even more telling was last week's "easy ride" turning into a 3-hour marathon with some very fast riders wasn't a problem, thanks to the little extra boost.  The twin joys of having fun going uphill plus also not being overtired during descents are really great.
This kind of adventure is only possible by riding on the coat tails of more dedicated and more prepared friendsShout out to @gnarthaller for setting everything up, including arrange for a sweet condo to stay, driving most of us up in his sweet adventure van, and being B-Squad leader.


===3: Vaccination Imminent===
Impression #3:<br>
Have an appointment for my first Pfizer jab in a week.  The future is bright.
Getting old sucks.  I mean, I know I could be in better shape in general, but the difficult realization is that staying in shape went from being effortless in my 20's (when I had time to do it, but didn't really) to being nigh impossible and scary (when I don't really have any spare time, but try hard to work it in systemically).
 
Impression #4:<br>
Mountain biking is very much my adrenal pathway to zen.  Even though, in comparison with everyone I ride with, I'm not very good.  And even though it is a non-stop lesson in humility.  The emotional space the riding creates helps me with pretty much every other facet of my life.  It gives me resilience to face difficulties at work, and patience to enjoy time with my kids instead of murdering them, and insight about how savour my life while I'm in it.
 
Impression #5:<br>
The 20-km black-diamond technical climb-ride up to and back from Comfortably Numb was so gorgeous that even though I couldn't appreciate it at the time because of how hard it kicked my ass, it squats in my memory like a nugget of masochistic joy.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.03.16 Mitsubishi Minicab Kei Van]]=
=[[2022.09.11 Project:DEATHBOX - Das Gehts]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/3A4BC9E0.jpeg
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/vwdeathbox.png
 
UPDATE: there are a few challenges with the yet-to-be-officially-named VW van.
* It did not quiiiiite pass DEQ, so it has a date the The "Fix-Um Haus" to see if we can tweak the tune to reduce the CO2 by 2%.  After which we can properly register, plate, and insure the damn thing.
* Then there is the fact that I need to fix a bunch of seatbelts...
* Also, I'd like to pull out the rear-facing jump seat next to the sliding door - to better facilitate the loading of my giant-ass bike into the insufficiently-folding rear bench seat area.
* Then we get to do fun upgrades like wheel/tires and a bitchin' bike rack.
</font>


BEHOLD!  The (tentatively titled) VANTACULUS Splinter Van!
<hr>


Reactions to this vehicle usually fall into two basic categories: "AWWW!" and "What the hell?"
=[[2022.09.06 Work Observation]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
My work To-Do list involves temporal paradoxes.
</font>


The easiest way to answer the latter is to refer to the former.  But there is a lot more about this odd emergence of reality, and seeing as how this is my medium for documenting all the publicly notable experiences it seems fitting to elaborate about that.
<hr>


Backing things up a bit, there has definitely been a hole in my vehicular capabilities ever since I sold the Tyrannosaurus (1984 Toyota pickup).  This was well-compensated for with the Schleppenwagen (Mercedes Metris van), but nothing since has been as suitable.  For a few years I've made-do with either a roof-rack on the ex's Subarus or disassembling my bike and jamming it in the back of my Tesla.
=[[2022.09.04 VANS VANS VANS VANS]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
So, now that we've sold VANTACULUS (the Wee Van), we've been contemplating what we should be getting for Operation DEATH BOX.


Much of my bike-hauling needs have been actually satisfied of late with my bike-valet and riding buddy, Friar Gnarthaller and his various bike-shuttling vehiclesBut it is left to me to limp along begging for help when taking Simon for a ride, and annoying whenever I want to go for a simple ride by myself.
===Ford Econoline E350===
The big chungus option, assuming one can find an acual passenger versionThe work van version is much more plentiful option, but even though I could technically bolt in seats for the children, it would absolutely suck for them for road trips.  While the full size van would rock the utility function in perpetuity, the thirsty V8 (and occasionally, V10) would mean some serious struggling for the short term need for commuting.  They look like bricks, but not in a good way.


So I've been contemplating a van for a while now.  Why a van?  Firstly, because having had a couple pickups, I recognize that the "haul dirt" function is incredibly rare for me.  And secondly, having tasted the sweet nectar of full van-hood, I know the joy of having my stuff locked away by default, and protected from elements.
STATUS: Still technically in contention.


Also, specifically, I've been looking for a vehicle I didn't have to care too much aboutOne of the great freedoms that the Tyrannosaurus provided was not worrying about muchA dent?  Don't careDirty?  Don't care.  Something broken?  If it doesn't stop if from working, don't care.  Like that.
===Honda Oddessey===
In all honesty, this was my frontrunner when starting the search.  Japanese reliability, plus Honda driving dynamics, and I think they look rather smart.  Then we went to look at one, and things went wrongIt was discovered that the Oddessey has "touchy" power sliding side doors, which would definitely go wrong for my little idiotsThen we found that the second row seats can't really fold out of the way enough to fit the mountain bikesIn fact, there is some significant doubt about 3 mountain bikes fitting at all.


The prime target has been used work vans.  Sure, I'd eventually have to add seats if I wanted more than one passenger, but whatever.  The temptation of used minivans was ascendent for a while too - because of the ability to also haul larger groups of people by virtue of stow-and-go seating (in addition to the primary bike-hauling purpose).  And also somewhat greater reliability of Japanese builds.
STATUS: Not currently being considered, and somewhat bitter about it.


Then I and my array of van-enabling friends noticed kei vansThey are hilarious!  Oh, but they're way too expensive for my "not caring" budget.
===Toyota Sienna===
The more-reliable near-era Japanese option.  I've superficially been not looking for these because A) I think they're ugly, and B) the ex-step-MIL drove one and it scarred me foreverDimensionally, this van should be approximately the same interior space as the Oddessey, so there is doubt about its ability to accomplish the bike-hauling mission.


Until this "cosmetically challenged" Mitsubishi Minicab popped up online at The Import Guys near Bellingham Washington.  And the rest was a PayPal purchase sight-unseen, a train (and bus) ride to Bellingham, and finally nerve-wracking hip-flexor-straining 95 km/h 6-hour scream down the I5.
STATUS: Technically still being considered, but possibly as a last option.


So, here we areReady to rockAnd ride.<br>
===Dodge/Chrysler Vanageddon===
And, yes, the kids lost their damn minds when they saw it.
I knowI KNOWShitty Chrysler product is like deciding to buy some lucky mechanic a new boat, and to abstain from joy while doing it.


Was it a wise purchase? No.<br>
BUT, here me out.  These horror-filled boxes of poorly-considered cheap plastic have considerably more room inside, thanks to the Stow-and-Go™ capabilities.  Plus, because they are generally considered to be shittier, it is possible to get a much newer specimen, which would allow some increased modern amenities - like back up camera and bluetooth. And while I can't stop seeing the design-by-committee, Amy likes how they look.
Is it likely to be a memorable experience? Absolutely, yes.
 
STATUS: Probably, unfortunately, the frontrunner.
 
===Toyota Previa===
These are all older, and due to their charm, much more expensive for what they technically are.  However, they are bubble-era Japanese builds, which is famously high quality.  They would be fun(ner) to drive, thanks to the rear wheel drive. And the funky way the rear seats fold up and the second row swivel to face the rear might - just might - provide enough room to haul all the bikes and kids.
 
STATUS: Hopeful saviour from Chryslery Doom.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.03.05 E-Bike Babbling]]=
=[[2022.08.27 Oh, Yeah - Biking Is Awesome]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_3481.jpeg
Haven't been biking enough this year because of stupid reasons - mostly just insufficient free time and too many obligations. But managed to go up to Sandy Ridge today with the Friar and the Send Bro. It was so fucking good.  I'm slow, and I'm weak, but thanks to the magic of the e-bike was able to not kill myself on the climbs and volunteer us for a second excellent lap.


So, way back before the pandemic, I rode some e-bikes.  I've been curious about electric motor assisted mountain bikes for a whileThat interest, to be clear, is because I spend most of my time riding with people who are both more skilled than I am and in better physical condition.  There had been a running joke that I was "allowed" to get an e-bike when I turned 50 - or if I had some permanent ride-impairing injury.
Which reminds me - I still need to reserve a DH bike for Whistler in a couple weeksYikes - I'm so not ready for that.
</font>


The concept of it being allowable itself come from some stigma that e-bikes have in the mountain biking community.  And I myself had some doubts about whether I should give up the level of effort typically required, for fitness sake.  The way in which I too-often was over-tired grinding up the hill so that I was unable to ride down technical trails cleanly, at least not without an extended period of gasping and draped limply against a tree.  So, the allure, while obvious, has for a while been greater for me than many of my decades-younger-than-I riding crew.
<hr>


The first test ride was an eye-opening revelation full of giggling, and deeply planted seeds of desire.
=[[2022.08.08 Wee Vanless]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
Sold the kei-class Mitsubishi Minicab Bravo today. 
 
It's possible that it is actually a victim of its own success.  The nominal purpose of the wee van was to haul mountain bikes, and if getting to ride in the wee van meant riding mountain bikes, both of my kids wanted in on the action.  Unfortunately, the wee van only has room for 2 people + 2 bikes.  So the wee van just isn't big enough to carry us all.


A second test ride was a more focussed investigation of capabilities, and a goddamn handful of nails in the coffin of my reluctance.
Plus there is the small difficulty with travelling at freeway speeds.  And a total lack of safety equipment.  And an inability to start in cold weather.  And a lack of basic creature comforts.


Part of the confluence of capability and desire is my riding style, which I sometimes refer to as "aggressively mediocre" and "old man fast"My riding lacks much finesse, so I have gradually leaned towards the full-enduro end of the bike spectrum in order to get enough plushness and stability to accommodate my need for speed and inability to avoid rocks.  So not only does the thrust assist help my increasingly feeble ability to climb, but the extra heft of e-bikes doesn't significantly impair any light poppy skillful line choices.
Anyway, there needs to be a replacement crappy van to suit the increased crew + cargo requirementsThe hunt begins now for Project: DEATH BOX.
</font>


As a tangent - I have a wee rant about the Specialized Level SL.  It's a low-power small-battery e-bike that is an attempt to be as much like an acoustic trail bike as possible.  It's awful.  If you really want to have a light, playful bike to float down trails... yeah, no.  It's still has a motor and batteries.  But that motor and battery are incapable of creating the same quality of giggles, and of annoying less quantity. 
<hr>


Bada-bing bada-boom - I became the proud owner of the Commencal Meta Power pictured aboveMore, and more specific, riding impressions to comeHopefully soonish.
=[[2022.07.30 München VS Portland]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
I really like Portland.  Lots of fun people, great food, and ready access to outdoor fun.  But there are definitely two things that Munich Germany does so well that it makes me wish there was some way to import to where I live.
 
First: the subway systemIt's goddamn magical, how well-integrated it is and magnificently run.  Unfortunately, to have such a thing in Portland would involve an order of magnitude more investment than what we already struggle with to make our half-assed MAX system run.  But I really do think that if we had something as fundamentally wonderful as das Münchner U-Bahn-System, we Portlanders would find the value in it.
 
Second: German drivers in general.  Aggressive but capable.  More than a few assholes, to be sure, but at least they're gone fastMy very first driving experience back in Portland was an enraging reminder of how fucking unskilled and oblivious Portland drivers are.  Not really anything to be done easily about that either.
</font>
</font>


<hr>
<hr>


=[[2021.01.27 Clearly Not Doing This Right]]=
=[[2022.07.17 Joys Of Home Ownership]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
<font face="consolas, courier new">
The whole point of being all reclusive for the pandemic is to have to find things to do while stuck at homeWhich in my case should have involved a fuck tonne of writing and drawing.
Amy and I love our house, because of how perfectly it fits us and the kids, with a great walkable neighborhood, and a huge list of facets that make it lovely.  Except, as every homeowner knows, houses are not static entities - they're a constant grind of repairs and improvements fighting against the endless tide of entropy.  And when we bought The Battery (nickname brought to you by a dubious concatenation of initials) there was one big upgrade we intended to do: solar panels.
 
It took a little while to arrange, but we settled on the Tesla solar system with a powerwall battery backup for the house (and a grateful nod to the federal 10k$ tax rebate to make it happen).  Significant delays were incurred as we waited for planning and approvals, but finally we had the system installed!  Except, not yet commissioned because it needs final inspection for powering up by PGE (our local power utility).  Annoyingly, PGE never got around to upgrading our service meter to allow for 2-way power delivery, but the resourceful installers at Tesla installed a parallel meter system that should work.  However, this required completely re-wiring our breaker box - and it got pretty cramped.  Still, everything worked just fine - or so it seemed.
 
A couple days later, apparently some yahoo crashed into a power pole a couple blocks away.  This knocked power out for the neighbourhood, but also sent a power bump at the same timeThe powerwall tried to cover for the lost power, but encountered problems.  The problem became clear when the main power came back on later that day - three of our circuit breakers were unable to be reset.  Along with it we were down the section of the house that powered the internet modem, our furnace controller, and dishwasher.
 
Some frantic calls to Tesla later, we were told they would get to us as soon as possible - after the weekend.  So we limped through a warm weekend without AC, washing dishes by hand, and running an extension cord to power the modem.  Monday came, and they verified that the breakers themselves needed replacement.  But they could not get parts until the next day - but they could re-purpose one of the working breakers to run whichever circuit was needed to make the HVAC work again.  So by trial and error it was determined that it was... none of them.  Something else was wrong with the HVAC, and the dishwasher.
 
After the technicians left, we did some frantic research on what could be amiss.  Everything we could find was fine - breaker on, reset switch reset, circuit board fuse was fine.  So thought we had deduced that we had fried our smart thermostat controller.  I rolled to the only store locally claiming to have the same model, so that I could just plug-and-play a replacement, and they didn't have one.  They did have an upgraded version, though that required re-wiring the controls.  Screw it - whatever.  Bought it, installed it.  Still didn't work.


NOPE.
We hoped that it was a combination of a fried control unit AND an unpowered circuit.  Those hopes ended when the Tesla technicians showed up bright and early and replaced power to the whole house.  Still no joy for the HVAC, or the dishwasher.  They were not really permitted to do anything beyond the power distribution system, but did us the favour of testing the high-voltage fuses for the AC - which turned out to be blown.


My life is pretty full, though, with working from home and having the homeschooling kids during most of the weekdays.  Any time not spent productively being an engineer or parent I while away being a boyfriend.  And I cherish this time, even though there's not much to mark it by.
So we went to an electrical supply store to purchase some replacement shotgun-shell-sized fuses.  And the HVAC still didn't work.  So we were left with having to call HVAC technicians, and the earliest available appointment was two weeks out.


Life is good.
-sigh-
 
Luckily, Pyramid Heating & Cooling called a couple days later to say that they had a cancellation, and they could come immediately.  Well, not immediately - because it was the afternoon and since our furnace is in the attic it would be horrific.  But they did swap us with another customer the very next morning.
 
In the meantime, we got to work on the dishwasher, with the working assumption that it had a fuse of some kind that was also borked.  So we disconnected it and pulled it out to find that it has no such protection feature.  Time for a new dishwasher.  Which was fetched in the uber-charming wee van, to the delight of the Home Despot workers who helped us get it.  Which in itself is a minor miracle, because it turns out that Home Depot doesn't stock appliances - except that happened to have accidentally been shipped the exact one we wanted.  Which was fun.  Brought it home, installed it, and it works great.
 
Pyramid technician shows up and listens to our tale of woe.  He said, "I have an idea".  A few minutes later, "YEP - your transformer got burned out."  Replaced it handily, and our HVAC comes to life and was working great.  The feeling of relief was a welcome change.
 
...
 
Which lasted for a few days.  Then yesterday we noted that the AC was not actually able to cool the house.  We futzed with sensors and settings, but the awkward truth is that it is running the AC and the blower fan and we're getting an insufficiently-cool draft.
 
Time for another call to Pyramid.  When they open on Monday.  GAH.
</font>
 
<hr>
 
=[[2022.07.10 Missing My Little Vampire Slayers]]=
<font face="consolas, courier new">
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.
 
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.
 
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. 
 
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.
 
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.
 
It really puts the foolish work anxiety in to context.
</font>
</font>


Line 663: Line 1,136:
<hr>
<hr>
<font face="consolas,courier new">
<font face="consolas,courier new">
The world suffers a burden of people who believe more than they seek to actually know or understand.
That sure was a lot of scrolling you did without prompting.  Perhaps you have read some of my other throw-away bits hidden down here, or perhaps you are just naturally curious.  But I hope you feel, as I do, that the immersion of the moment is the key part of the experience.  The existence of the chain of thought: "I wonder what's down here" - searching for signs of what this scrolling expanse is yielding - and then "OH, that's all, I guess." 
 
But, really, that's all most places and moments are.  Look around, literally and figuratively, and sense wherever you are.
</font>
</font>

Latest revision as of 05:36, 18 March 2024

claytoncastle.com



2024.03.17 Mexican Reflections

A trip to our plant in Saltillo Mexico earlier this month was quite interesting.

The first thing to mention is that this was not my first trip to one of our Mexican manufacturing plants. Last time, the visit to Santiago involved staying in Mexico city - an urban area with the same population as Canada. That was interesting in its own way.

This time involved being in northern Mexico, and it's possible that needing to be escourted most places with a security detail insulated me quite a lot from the granular details of the lives lived there. Which obviously is an insight of it's own.

The hilarious driving habits of the locals is a delight to witness - from the safety of the back of a van. Coming from the infuriating obliviousness of drivers of Portland, it was actually a relief to see such vigour and skill. And the best part was the way in which they we very relaxed about all the interactions that I would have experienced as very intense.

But the thing that sticks out most for me, and feels really inspirational, is the camaraderie the workers at the Saltillo plant. I had to learn a wide variety of individualized handshakes to greet the people I met, and they often laughed and hugged me when I got them wrong. The ubiquitous friendliness and helpfulness of everyone at the plant is something I've never seen at this kind of scale before. Makes me wish there was a way to import this, large-scale, into more of the aspects of life.


2024.02.25 Is That What I Looked Like?

University student ID 1993:
IMG_4850_small.png

University graduation yearbook 1999:
IMG_4851_small.png

New engineer ID 2000:
IMG_4852_small.png

Terrified Canadian engineer suddenly employed in the United States 2002:
IMG_4853_small.png

Resigned Canadian engineer with a family in the United States 2007:
IMG_4854_small.png


2024.02.15 Awkward Honesty

Found myself this morning in the awkward position of explaining to a group of parents why I hadn't responded to my daughter's ability to participate. The crux of my reluctance is that it's on the handover day where I take the kids back to their mom's house, and I don't get to see them again for a week - and any playdates mean curtailing my time with them. What seems like a no-brainer helicopter parent supported socialization opportunity for the kids to the rest of the parents is a fraught emotional inflection point for me. Adding to the complication is that I have to drive them across town, not just let them scamper out the door to participate like they do back in the ex's neighbourhood. And all the while we deal emotionally with "Sunday Energy", there is also weekly chores to negotiate.

Meanwhile, I could just imagine one or all of the parents thinking "What's with Emo-Dad™ making such a big fuss over having his kid show up for a play date? Just say yes or no! We don't need to hear all about your feeewings, whiner."

However it was actually received by most of the parents, the ex did reach out very sympathetically. It did a lot of credit to how well we've managed to be kind and connected despite the divorce. Being mindful adults has its benefits.


2024.02.11 Qualitatively Hating Working In The Office

So, having spent a week (well, 4 days) working in the office again, I now have more direct data regarding what it's like. Which sounds silly after having spent a couple decades having worked in an office setting, but the recent handful of years of mostly working from home has massively transformed my perspective.

Firstly, credit where credit is due, when at the office it is much easier to keep the parade of attention mostly work-related.

But, and this is a critical "but", it feels like it leads to a considerably bigger problem. Because all my in-between filler moments are more filled with work minutae, that means that my brain gets much less capability to recharge in those pauses. It turns out that spending all those so-called "micro moments" bumping into colleagues, that burns neural resources for an introvert such as myself.

The two main results of this are that 1) I'm considerably more exhausted at the end of a work day - not even counting commuting, and 2) I have fewer good/big ideas.

The exhaustion part is probably easy to understand. After an intense meeting, or tough bit of design, at home I can quietly do some dishes or some such, letting my subconscious work on stuff. At work, I have to either bumble through the campus making up social niceties or fend off trawling coworkers looking for verbal answers.

The good/big idea part is actually a discovery that I had during the past week. See, I would find myself waking up in the middle of the night most nights last week, with an idea about how to solve a problem or something to try at work. And the previous couple decades came back to me in a flash: that's how work used to haunt me. But that stopped when I was working from home. But instead of being haunted by work such that it wakes me up, I'd have a couple big "aha!" moments during the day, most days.

Basically, for me, work from home allows me to generate twice as many good/big ideas as being in the office, and in ways that don't fuck with my sleep and stress.

Which is an excellent segue into the motivation I have right this moment: I'm absolutely dreading going back in for another week of this shit. It's hilarious to say, because my job is super fun, my workplace is extremely nice and accommodating full of cool people, and even my commute is a laugh of a bike ride. Yet here I am, very much dreading it.


I assume that I'll re-acclimate, and the stress will ease back down as I get re-numbed to the overt dominion of the extroverted and the soul-draining non-stop effort of having to pretend to be social. I'll do cool work that will make it all worthwhile, and loosen up my clenched soul on the privileged experience I had.

If this were a reddit post, I'm sure there would be swarms of commenters urging me to take this newfound knowledge and find the bravery to seek another position that would allow the exact thing I like about the pandemic era WFH. Which is when I gesture vaguely to my giant golden handcuffs, the kids about to need cars and then university, and the lovely house I couldn't afford to buy again in this market even if I kept this well-paying job. And I'm chicken.


2024.01.15 Snow Driving Observations - part something

Portland is funky, snow-driving wise.

Generally speaking, PDX is mild as hell, rarely getting more than a dusting of snow at most and not enough to worry about. And the occasional punctuation of stay-around snow isn't in any way particularly much accumulation. But despite being infrequent and short-lived, it is almost always expert-level snow situations.

Taking a step back, my northern peoples have a great deal of opportunity to hone our slidetastic situational control. Even those Canuckistanni who do not overtly enjoy a good bit of the slidey-slidey get sufficient exposure to know where their limits are and to be sensible. More than that, there is a good long ramp up and ramp down of the snow-ness, much of it during climate that is cold enough to have the ice and snow be pleasantly predictable. So when there is a surplus of the slippery substances, or, more poignantly, when it's sometimes in that dangerous extra-slippery state of melty snow on ice, there is a deep well of useful reflexes to draw from.

Meanwhile, here in PDX, the locals almost never have to face snow. And when they do, they are woefully incapable of doing so. Augmenting this low-skill demographic is the relatively large influx of Californians, all of whom seem to want to pull over and have a good cry when it so much as rains. Which it does. Often. Maybe more on that some other time. This leads to a relatively high number of vehicles out and about completely without any winter tires.

The hilarious twist that PDX plays on the unsuspecting snow-n00bs is that, since it is rarely very far below freezing here, it is very close to the melting point - the slipperiest sort of snow. Which, more often than not, gets augmented with PDX's special sauce: freezing rain. So not only is there very little opportunity to practice driving in snow here, the snow goes from nothing straight to expert snow.

Resultingly, there is much chaos to be had here. And regardless of how capable one and their vehicle might be, it is exceedingly perilous to join in the maelstrom when it starts. But shortly after everyone freaks out and stays the hell away from the snow covered roads, it's basically glorious emptiness and freedom for snow-loving freaks such as myself to get out and have some joy.

Plus, in a more mature vein, it is an opportunity to provide transport to those that need help and reap a healthy crop of brownie points.


2024.01.13 Farewell to the Mayor of Kenton

IMG_3905_small.png

It is with deep sorrow that we learned that my favourite cat of all time - Charlie¹ - passed away this week.

From the moment he ran up to greet us when we first came to look at this house, we knew he was special. His legend among the neighbourhood was known by everyone we met; "Oh, yeah - I know Charlie. I make sure to stop and pet him whenever I come this way." Our block Whatsapp thread is still pinging with people sharing pictures and stories of him over the years.

The peak of his legend might have been his fighting off a coyote, and living with some epic scars. And his giant murder mittens certainly lent credibility to his prowess. But it was his calm fearless demeanour that won my heart the most, coupled with his refusal to put up with any shit, desire to lure people into being playfully mauled, and the itty bitty tiny meow that he made out of his lion-sized throat.

May your legend in the next world be as epic as in this one.



¹ He also had many nicknames, including:

  • Chonkmeister
  • Chuckie
  • Chuckles
  • Kaiju Kitty
  • Chuck Wagon
  • Chonk Chonkerson (Man On The Street)
  • Chuckzilla
  • Chuck Roast


2023.12.28 Reflection 1: Marthaller's Move To Germany

Now that Colin and Colette have been gone for a couple weeks, it has finally sunk in that they're not just a few blocks away any more. Partly because life got weirdly busy such that we didn't hang out constantly any more (and, regrettably, entirely too few bike rides this past year). But also because Colin reached out on WhatsApp to apologize for their SMS/texting not yet working on their new German phones, and it reached the threshold of being really real.

In honour of the fun bikeness of our shared affinity for the Church of Dirt™, I intend to pivot to dragging the kids out regularly to Sandy Ridge and Rocky Point for regular application os gnar. We'll see how well I do at that.

Meanwhile, we have yet to see what for Fifth Position Racing will take, as Colin and I (and whomever else we can lure into participating) set up an online racing league to play with.

Luckily, I have some successful history of being able to keep in touch internationally...


2023.12.28 Reflection 2: Swift & Union Closing

When Amy and I moved to Kenton, we were delighted by the many options for places to eat within walking distance, and we looked forward to sampling them all. Except we never did, because one of the first places we went to was Swift & Union.

The ambiance, upon walking in, was exactly the vibe that we both enjoy. Open enough to feel like we engaged with the room, but with lovely booths that let us sit side-by-each the way we like (plus room for kids, when they join). The music playing was pleasantly aimed at Gen-X nostalgia, which works great for us.

Even better than the ambiance was the staff. All of them excellent and friendly, and a couple that we quickly became friends with - such that they would wander over to our table to catch up and chat when we weren't in their section. They consistently made the experience personal, welcoming, and enjoyable.

Plus it should be stated that the food and drink was all fabulous. Not fleece-your-pockets extravagant gustatory adventures, but extremely yummy and satisfying fare that we often found ourselves craving. That includes the kids, who can sometimes be difficult to feed.

Anecdotally, the owner - Zig - wanted to simplify down to just one restaurant - Tabor Tavern. We hope that our favourite servers and the awesome cook(s) found great places to jump to instead. S&U was open for a final week before xmas, which we indulged in twice, but they were unable to complete the week as the staff understandable fled.

I guess we'll resume sampling the local alternatives. Life goes on.


2023.12.28 Reflection 3: FPS w/ Amy

I was there, in the beginning, playing Wolfenstein 3D on my lowly x386 rocking a vibrant 256-colour 640x480 RGB display. But that's about all I can claim, because in those early days I definitely set video games aside to focus on engineering classes instead. Though many of my peers rocked cooperative/competitive battle like X-tank on UNIX servers, and quickly followed up with the evolving DOOM and Quake games.

By the time modern FPS games evolved, I was well outside of the participation sphere - no console games at all. Though I did play - and get good at - simulators like X-Wing and Mech Warrior, it was never quite the same. Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time playing combat-oriented imagination-intensive games, thinking about fighting. This made me feel like I might be good at FPS, and might be missing out.

Skip ahead the rest of the 30-ish years, and I find myself with MMORPG-goddess Amy as a partner.

I dipped my toes in some games, but have quickly discovered that I abhor grinding. More than that, I have very little positive feedback playing by myself. But I have found something that very much is fun - parallel play.

We got Amy an X-Box for her birthday this year, and it's been a hoot (cough Forza /cough). Mostly it's been cooperative puzzle games like Humans Fall Flat, but we just started Tiny Tina's Wonderland. Holy fun FPS intensity. It's odd to essentially be Amy's sidekick, since she's decidedly more skilled than I am. But I clearly have some tactical talent that shines through, and makes it fun.


2023.12.03 Mustache Day Ish

IMG_4782%20copy.png

It was about the right day, and I had just gotten my dream Ferrari in Forza. This was the result.


2023.11.26 PPS Teacher Strike

Three weeks of shenanigans later, and I have two things I take away from it.

1. The teacher's should have had a strike sooner. Even aside from wages that have not kept up with inflation, it appears that teachers have not been heard or appropriately supported for quite a while. Before the strike it was a general truism that America doesn't value teachers enough, but learning about the specifics of teacher grievances in what should be a city focussed on education to support our various high-tech industries was surprising.

2. PPS is kind of shit. Not that I ever expect a public bureaucracy to be amazeballs, but the disingenuous communications and essentially propoganda-class releases were disappointing. It takes a certain ilk of horrible to rely on people to be unable to do math in order to lie to everyone about how they're treating the people who teach math. And to have every single letter to parents repeat "we're so worried about the children", as if the teachers do not, was an insult to anyone capable of spotting empty rhetoric.


2023.11.20 Welcome Gefferts

S recently married the truly lovely John Geffert, making him Simon and Violet's new step-dad. Plus, his son's William and Miles are now step-siblings to our kids, vastly increasing the potential chaos in all our lives. Plus, you know, even more kids to take mountain biking.

Welcome to the family Gefferts!


2023.11.04 Back To Office

So my office recently announced that we'll be returning to the office. A fig leaf of "hybrid" is still offered - we can work from home 1 day per week. Any day we want!

The nominal reason is to foster improved collaboration by strengthening our interpersonal culture. And there is no denying that onboarding new people is very much harder when most of the 60+% of the workforce is remote on any random day.

Instead of a point-by-point comparison of methodologies and circumstances that used to work in-person versus those that work remotely, let me just point out the simple fact that nobody has been prevented from coming in to the office. Some do, but most do not. We're all very smart adults, and have clear ideas for what works best for us, and have obviously made our choices. We are not being consulted.

So, the question becomes - why do our corporate leaders think they know better than us?

Hypothesis 1: Occam's Razon

Our executives think they are in their positions because they are smarter and more capable than most others, and therefore their theories about productivity and work/life balance have implicit clout outweighing everyone else.

Maybe they're right. Perhaps we'll find out.

Hypothesis 2: Dinosaurs

It's how they did it when they were the doers, and they don't like things being different. It's scary. Plus all the people who are actively climbing the corporate ladder directly beneath them all agree!

Worth noting is that mammals have only been nominally dominant for a few tens of millions of years (ignoring the superior total mass and probable durability of insects), while dinosaurs lumbered along for well over a hundred million years. Inertia is a motherfucker.

Hypothesis 3: Insecurity

How can managers manage if they're denied most of the tools they've gotten accustomed to using? Leadership and inspiration can only work on people they intrinsically understand, and all the slackers will find ways to shirk doing their fair share.

Except, of course, as the brilliant Mark Moyes once said, "I'm perfectly capable of getting nothing done at my desk." Babysitting is a less effective tool than some might hope.

Hypothesis 4: Piles Of Beans

There sure is a lot of theoretical value in the fixed assets of these large office buildings. If they become overtly and obviously a waste of resources, it sure would be a huge loss - on paper. Watching the city repossess large buildings and turning them into affordable housing and civic spaces must be horrifying to the company accountants.

If it costs the thousands of employees an average of 5 hours per week of unpaid commuting time (plus gas and vehicular wear), that's better than the company risking losing the value of its real estate. Right?


2023.10.07 Printer Time

667415_580951_01_front_comping.jpg

While I haven't had a regular printer for a while, as actual need to have paper copies of things has gotten very infrequent, in a reciprocal way I've been far too slow to get a 3D printer. This has now been rectified.

Let there be random plastic thingies!

squishy_turtle_3d.png

IMG_4744.png


2023.09.04 Latest Bike Daydreams

commencal%20meta%20V4.png


2023.08.22 ID.4 Impressions So Far

IMG_4681.png

The things we like about the car (we're calling CUV's just "cars" now, right?) vastly outnumber the quibbles. It drives well, carries everyone and the dog as necessary, and has all the options we need.

-deep breath-
And I need to accept that there are many things about the Tesla that have me both a) acclimated to a certain way of doing things, and b) spoiled.

In no particular order, here are The Quibbles:

No Battery Pre-Conditioning

This is an idiotic oversight. The ability for a lithium-ion battery pack to accept charge is directly related to the temperature of the pack. The VW ID-platform has active battery temperature management, so this is obviously possible. This makes the difference between <50kW charging and >150kW charging, which is kind of the point of having access to DC fast charging in the first place.

The APP Sucks

I mean, at least there's an app to verify simple shit like whether the car is locked or what the state of charge is. But after getting accustomed to the deep and intuitive integration of the Tesla app, this feels cheap and lazy. Ideally I'd like it to act as the key for the vehicle - in fact that might almost qualify this as a double-quibble. I don't like having to carry another chonky key fob. Especially one with a "set off the alarm now" button placed such that I can accidentally activate it by sitting down.

Everyone On The UX Team Should Be Sat Down And Told To Think About What They Did

The main inputs to driving the car - steering, braking, accelerator - are generally pretty good (exceptions listed separately). That probably has more to do with the chassis design team though. Because everything else is weak-sauce output from a series of committees that clearly hated each other and were playing stupid internal-political games.

  • Why the fuck don't the motorized mirrors coordinate with the seat/user memory settings?
  • Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to interrupt the already-slow boot sequence of the infotainment to make the driver press "OK" every fucking time?
  • Any control that you have to take your eyes off the road to use is totally wasted as a separate button/control. Sure capacitive touch buttons are neat - on kitchen appliances. But when I'm fumbling around for a control while I'm driving, I don't want the "looking for the control" to directly translate into "activating every fucking thing I touch".
  • Having only two window switches to control both front and rear windows is the result of a deeply stupid person having too much input. Yeah - cute idea, but just no. I fucking hate accidentally bumping the invisible capacitive touch button that changes to controlling the rear. But even more, I philosophically loath that they took a simple 4-switch control with 100% intuitive interface and made it need a logic board to hilariously discover new ways to go wrong.
  • The media buttons on the steering wheel are regular controls turned 90° for no good reason. Normal controller: UP = increase volume, DOWN = decrease volume, RIGHT = next track, LEFT = go back a track. But for some fucked up reason, I now get to press UP to go back, DOWN to skip forward, RIGHT to increase volume, and LEFT to decrease volume. Fuck you, VW UX team.

Creep Mode: Make. It. Go. Away.

Or at least optional, yeah? I get that it makes the operation familiar to low-skill people transitioning from shitty automatic transmissions. Cool. But for those of us who preferred manuals, and now delight in the directness and finesse of electric drivetrains, you're just making shit bad with no benefit.

Brake Hold Won't Let Go

Yes, I like it when pressing the brake a bit extra when stopped that the vehicle will continue to hold the brake for me. But in the VW, it won't let go unless I press the accelerator. This is fine at a stop light or some such. But when I'm carefully navigating down a slope this is lurch-o-matic. This is extra exacerbated by the no-option creep mode. At least the brake hold CAN be turned off by a crude intervention in the infotainment system, but really it should be able to be dismissed with a repeated brake pedal press.

Secret Charger Unlock Method

It makes sense not to trust the unknown charger connector, and totally avoid any chance of an arc flash by locking the connector in place - even if it indicates that it means to disconnect. But having the method for releasing the suspicious charger connector be a secret staccato code on the key fob is infuriating when the standard glitch reset sequence for the vast majority of charging networks is "unplug and replug in vehicle".


2023.08.01 Kids At Sandy Ridge

Despite all the drama with fumbling the ability to put the epic bike rack on any functional bike-hauling vehicle, we gave up and just Tetrised the bikes into the back of the Flex to make it happen.

A warm but-not-too-warm morning with gorgeous dappled light, Simon and Violet immediately exceeded my expectations by gamely trying to pedal up the climb hill. We kept exclusively to Laura's Line and the section of Lower Hide&Seek from the power lines down to the road.

It was amazeballs. Sharing the Church of Dirt with them unlocked a spiritual sense of harmony and joy.

Violet had two crashes. The first right off the bat, and it was hard enough to knock the wind out of her and scrape her up. But a bandaid later and she was gamely riding through the rollers and berms. The second was at the very end - at the very same berm. Except that time she rolled with the wipeout, left a Violet-shaped crater, and laughed like the unstoppable monster she is.

The tradition of DQ after riding with Simon has now been extended to Violet as well, and it was good.

My only regret is not taking any pictures. I try to forgive myself by acknowledging that I was very much living in the moment the whole time.


2023.07.30 It's FORZA's Fault, Really

ID4_moonstone-gray.png

Amy's main gift for her birthday this year was an XBOX, and she didn't want to wait for her actual birthday to start playing with it. So last week we broke it out after we dropped off the kids with their mom, and proceeded to play a whole bunch of video games. I've never had any kind of console game system myself, so it has been hilariously intoxicating to play with Amy on a bunch of games in our living room. A couple are throwbacks to my PC simulation games of yore, a hilariously frustrating puzzle game, and a couple driving games. The stand-out driving game we got was Forza 5.

We started calling playing Forza "drunk driving" both because of how bad at it we are with the basic game controllers, but also because it was funny to take turns playing while also sipping alcoholic beverages. The game is simply beautiful, with a rather good physics engine, so it's enjoyable to feel immersed in the wildly bad driving experience. Perhaps exactly because of how bad we were at controlling the vehicles meant that we often found ourselves off-road, which in turn lent itself to having better experiences with the off-road-capable vehicles. The early champion of this realm is the Ford Bronco that you start the game in.

So much fun was had tromping around in this virtual Bronco that we asked ourselves, "what would driving a real Bronco be like?" So, for shits and giggles, we set out last Friday to the local Ford dealer to take a Bronco out for a turn behind the real wheel. It did not disappoint - we both liked it a lot.

Except for, you know, reality - the price, the fuel efficiency, and the overall poor ability to meet our second vehicle needs. But while there on the Ford lot, we found ourselves facing the truth that we were sick of dealing with shitty old cars. We have most of what we wanted to have saved up for the ID.Buzz already, so starting to have a payment now could be handled without difficulty. Plus, we could trade in the hard-to-sell T4 van for sufficient downpayment on whatever we decided made sense.

After staring into the abyss of Ford offerings, we toddled over to the nearby VW dealer to see about their inventory of ID.4's. Because they share the basic architecture with the ID.BUZZ that we intend to have, so it could be an opportunity to get familiarized with that. And it just so happened that they had a lease deal that would carry us nicely until we get project:LEELOO¹.

And here we are, with yet another vehicle.

Now all we have to do is:

  • Sell the stupid Flex.
  • Install a 2" hitch to attach the bike rack.
  • Get a home charging solution that doesn't suck.²

¹ "project:LEELOO" is the provisional ID.BUZZ name - so far
² The car comes with 3 years free charging at Electrify America, so this is actually a somewhat lower-priority need.


2023.07.15 3-Week Break

Today kicks off the first day of my 3-week summer break, in which I plan to...

Hm. You know, I'm not totally sure what.

Nominally, I'll figure out a way to strap the monster bike rack to the Rusty Pig and take the kids out for some adventures discovering biking. And I mean to do a bit of writing. And we plan to do a tonne of D&D. Maybe a trip up the mountain with Zora. Plus wrapping up with Amy's and Violet's birthdays.

But, really, those are possible waypoints instead of a packed itinerary.

I spent entirely too much time this past week being crushed under work stress, and I definitely don't feel free of its grip yet. That's probably the main thing I need to figure out - by means of engaging with mindfully existing in a bunch of non-work moments.


UPDATE:
It's worth noting that on the very first weekend of said vacation, I was called by my manager asking me to consult on a testing issue. Having consulted, I'm now struggling with worry about the all-new problem encountered by the project. Goddamn work stress is persistent.


2023.06.27 School's Out For Summer

IMG_4484%20copy.png

IMG_4582%20copy.png


2023.06.18 Anti-Antifa Conundrum

During the legitimately delightful Death Cab For Cutie concert this past week, front man Ben Gibbard mentioned that the place they just came from was Vancouver BC. While they were leaving the hotel, they mentioned that they going to Portland Oregon. To which the random person warned, "Be careful, they have Antifa there."

Ben rolled that into a hilarious battle cry, engaging the zeitgeist of the progressive front of the culture war perpetuated by the über-rich and their frightened conservative hordes. And I'm sufficiently skeptical that I found myself wondering if this was a real encounter or merely a means to an audience-connecting trope.

But there's no denying that exactly that sentiment exists. "Antifa" has become a sort of "they started it" boogeyman to counterpoint the awful shit skinheads and police do.

Yet the first thing I found myself asking this supposed Vancouverite is, "As opposed to what, exactly?" Nazis? Or Nazi sympathizers? Because if you're not a Nazi, or a Nazi sympathizer, then you're technically anti-Nazi. Which is anti-fascist. Which is Antifa.

I'm curious to hear how these people conceptualize our various anti-fascist cultural heroes, like Captain America, Indiana Jones, and most of John Wayne's characters. Are they booing and hissing when they watch Indy punching every Nazi he sees? Or are they, as I suspect, grimly clinging to their own personal John Wayne-ness and dream of a glorious previous American Ideal that they do not interrogate in context of a modern reality.


2023.06.17 Where Does The Time Go?

Holy tapdancing fuck. I'm continually left amazed at how the ebb and flow of time management triage tends to weed out things I keep assuming I'll find time for eventually - like running, bike rides, writing, and drawing.

Goddammit.

I know intellectually that it's a matter of making time for these things. I also know that in order to make it consistent it needs to become habitual. Now, if only knowing a thing made enough of a difference to make it so.


2023.05.30 Culture War: Part What?

The continual grind of the fear machine, lubricated with falsehoods and fueled by blame, usually has a steady sickening thrum to it. A cloying call for a country that only ever existed in rosy nostalgia and westerns, and vitriolic over-reaction to anything different or complicated.

I recently heard Jon Stewart say that Republicans focus on stoking culture wars because they're out of ideas. They have no solutions, only complaints and attempted blame. Which perhaps only rings true because of the total lack of resonance with me their histrionic message generally is.

Still, the recent utterances have me chuckling darkly.

The common refrain is, "People Are Fleeing Democratic Cities".

The stories tend to immediately go on to assert that people are leaving Democrat-run, high-tax, liberal-agenda hubs in big cities in favour of pro-business, conservative regions. And I'm sure we could find some individuals with exactly that motivation, but somehow I doubt it is the majority.

No, I'd be willing to wager that the vast majority of such moves are a combination of housing cost and the new-found ability to do many jobs remotely.

Ignoring for a moment the amusing aspect of the majority of the housing shitfuckery being due to "pro-business" interests, one has to wonder how much "liberal agenda" these fleeing individuals will actually leave behind. Because the long-held majority of people's votes has been held in check by conservatives by gerrymandering. But once the liberal agenda is free to exist across the spread of less-urban space, will scare tactics that work on the already-fearful willing-morons of the Repugnican party still hold as much sway.

As I said: chuckling darkly.


2023.05.20 Vanbortion

IMG_4545.png

IMG_4546.png

So... AKNOT is whole once again, and runs great.

There is, however, one niggling problem. The excellent mechanics stressed to us once again that it is extremely difficult to get parts for this vehicle. And with that in consideration, it is both hard to need to rely on AKNOT the way that we need to until we can get the ID.Buzz (whenever Volkswagen actually delivers those here) AND a sickening possible cratering of investment. As it is, we are already well past the point where we will be able to recoup all of our resources sunk into AKNOT - however awesome it is at this moment.

This lead to a brief and intensive review of our needs. Plus an uncomfortable reckoning of how much we really want a van - but that all the vans in our price range are either craptacular or not fit for purpose (moving kids and dog). After discovering that some weakly-van-like options are simply too small [AHEM - Honda Element], we stumbled on the hideous functionality that is the Ford Flex.

It's sort of a mega-wagon. Not really a van, because it's not tall enough or utility enough, but also not an SUV, because it has zero swagger and also way to low-slung. The particular incarnation that we snapped up from what appeared to be a chop shop operation has too many blemishes to mention. But should work for us for the duration.


2023.05.06 "It was a funny moment."

"It was a funny moment."

I know that the nanoscopic robots will eventually clean all my fangs completely, but it's easy to get impatient.

...to be composed on a separate page...


2023.04.16 Why WaitButWhy Guy?

Just to be clear, and as apology for my mouthful of alliteration of a title that made me laugh for no reason¹, the "guy" I'm talking about is Tim Urban - he's the fellow who writes the Wait But Why blog. I love that blog, because Tim has a modality where he gets interested in some random thing and then furiously burrows down to the bottom of that rabbit hole and tells you all about his adventure with bad stick drawings. It appeals to several facets of my overly-nerdy trivia-addicted likes-to-know-stuff personality.

So when he resurfaced recently, saying most of what he had been doing during his reclusion was writing a book, I absolutely knew that I had to read that book. 1) Sounds like an epic rabbit hole. 2) Direct support of a person whose work I appreciate.

It's "What's Our Problem?" - with the tag line "the self-help book for societies". Like, the mother of all rabbit holes. I girded myself, and dove in.

Both aspects of the title are... kinda wrong.

I actually finished reading it a while ago, because I downloaded it the instant it became available. But I've had to spend a little time working through my disappointment and sadness about the book, and its cascade of introspection about my own assumptions.

Much of the content includes things that I already saw in nascent form on WaitButWhy, and remain brilliant bits of thought experiment. And I particularly appreciate the way Tim's way of thinking challenged some of the ways in which I have let myself become lazy with respect to being numb to much of the Republican actions in the culture war / cold civil war.

BUT (and I actually backed up to capitalize that for effect) it falls down pretty fast and hard in the book about half-way though. Full respect for Tim, as he even flags this transition point saying that many people will be unhappy (and awkwardly alludes to there being torches and pitchforks about it). For all his forest of references and assurances about open-mindedness, Tim starts oversimplifying, cherry-picking, and false-equivalancizes (new word trademarked by me) his way to suggesting that the problem is wokeness (whatever that is this week) and a powerful cabal he refers to as Social Justice Fundamentalists.

Which is short-hand for "privileged person wants things to go back to how they were".

I simply don't have the energy to take the time to challenge all the ways I think he's wrong. Aside from proposing that instead of SJF having any significant power that instead some ideas of addressing institutional inequity have become actually fundamentally persuasive because rigorous insight suggest they're uncomfortably true. And I'm a little pissed at Tim for giving me hope that he would have some good suggestions about it. But no. Just fucking painting some whiney shit that agrees with his feelings and no useful ways to address anything.

Then I remembered his posts about Elon Musk. Oh, man, the embarrassing agony of how much I was sucked into that nepo-1-percenter's atrocious bullshit. And Tim helped cement that for me by writing an entire fucking serious of fluff pieces about him. How in the everloving fuck did his utter tool-ness and actual technical cluelessness get conveniently missed? Is it because, oh-I-don't-know, maybe Tim likes to wax extensively about things he wishes were so.


TL;DR - person I identified with, liked², and respected spent a sabbatical to discover that they're actually many of the things I'm frightened about myself being blind about. Boo.



¹ Other things that make me laugh much more than they should for no reason include "Joan of Bark" as a name option for our puppy. Just to put things in perspective for how utterly about my own amusement everything here is.

² That bit being past tense is perhaps a bit silly. I suspect that Tim Urban is still a pretty cool person that I like; I'm just being angsty.


2023.04.02 Van Update

IMG_4469%20copy.png

If you can see the image above: Glorious, isn't it?

Well, no, but it certainly seems that way in regards to its core mission: adventure give-few-fucks van. The manual transmission driving experience and nicely german steering feel blow every other cheap van we tested completely out of the water. The chonky tires look badass, even as they give it a bouncier but better-isolated ride. The epic bike rack speaks directly to the core bike-shuttle function of the machine. Getting the passenger side mirror replaced also makes piloting it less difficult while looking less sketchy than the glued-together mostly non-functional previous mirror.

Zora dog in particular has taken to loving riding in the van, as it generally means some adventure where she gets to be with the kids. And the kids, who have distinctly giraffe-like aspects, relish the vast passenger volume they get to ride in.

Plus, it has to be said: the 5-cylinder motor makes delightful sounds that tickle my nostalgia of my 80's Audi coupé and it's inline-5.

BUT - and this is a big but - there are some serious concerns remaining and emerging. There has long been a metallic jingling sound coming from the RHF quadrant during engine load - first guess is a loose heat shield. Now, however, there is a distinct reduction in power available. First guess is fouled fuel filter, questionable air filter, and unknown spark plug condition. And a distinct smell - sometime clutch-like, other times burn oil seeming.

Fortunately, we have an appointment at a mechanic for a comprehensive inspection and to perform any work necessary to make it reliable. And, if they don't blow my van budget, maybe they can help us with nuisance elements, like the unreliable power windows, lame headlights, and the stubborn rearview mirror mount.

Now with a(multiple) Van Update Update(s)


2023.03.19 Winter Test in Alaska

IMG_4437%20copy.png

What happens in Fairbanks, in March, is generally pretty cold.


2023.03.09 Zora Dog

IMG_1342%20copy.png

IMG_4403%20copy.png

IMG_4452%20copy.png

She's a Bernedoodle (half Bernese Mountain Dog and half standard Poodle), known for being calm, smart, and mostly hypo-allergenic. Amy loves dogs, and both kids have been wishing for a puppy for quite a long time. And Zora is a font of adoration and emotional support, for the whole family.

I've long asserted that I prefer most dogs to most humans, but have generally been too selfish with my time to become obligated to take care of a dog. But after a decade of being a dad, it feels like it might be a moot point. And holy fucking shit she's adorable.


2023.02.27 Tax Return Reflections

Doing taxes is weird.

Starting from the premise that it's up to individuals to process their own tax calculations and propose how much they think they should have paid in comparison to how much they may have already paid - when then governing bodies generally already know what this should be automatically. It seems... wasteful. Why not just have the government do the standard re-alignment they do anyways, and give taxpayers an opportunity to argue with it only if they feel there is a worthwhile discrepancy?

Then there's the whole parasitic tax-preparation industry that preys upon the vast majority (including me). The fact that it has successfully lobbied the government to both increase the inscrutability of the tax system and repress the IRS from providing a standardized and free tax entering mechanism is a typically capitalistic kind of awful.

After completing the wasteful/parasitic/labyrinthine preparation process, then comes the amazingly awkward navigation of how to actually get a refund. I just want it in my bank account. Why isn't that the first option? Why isn't that an option on the very first page? Why does it have to be an exercise in futility looking for it, only to realize that the first pages are traps to lure users into another parasitic subscription or fee service.

The simple fact that we can't even avoid making the necessary alignment of taxation with the state non-horrible for most people doesn't build much confidence that we'll be able to accomplish the much harder task to improve the tax code so that the super-rich pay their fair share (again).


2023.02.17 Van Plans

Update on our crappy old 1993 VW T4 EuroVan with an I5 and a manual transmission...

Things accomplished on it so far:

  • managed to actually pass DEQ, get registered and plated (kind of a long story by itself)
  • repaired the rear seat belts to functionality to actually have more than just one passenger
  • re-connected the transmission shifter linkage that fell apart/off
  • obtained updated wheels + tires

Things needing to get accomplished:

  • re-re-connect the transmission shifter linkage, because the previous fix also broke - temporarily re-attached but need to put a new-new bushing in (correctly), investigate getting a new heat shield so the exhaust doesn't melt the bushing and/or a supplementary restrain feature
  • get previously mentioned wheels + tires actually mounted, balanced, and installed
  • remove the incorrectly installed review mirror stalk - to install the cool new rearview mirror + camera system
  • replace the broken passenger side door mirror (part obtained)
  • find out why the power door windows aren't working any more
  • find out why water is pooling in the passenger door (possibly connected to the broken door mirror)
  • replace the stereo head unit so that we can listen to music without the faceplate randomly falling out
  • remove the outboard rear-face seat to facilitate loading large loads / bike / dog
  • replace seatbelt for inboard rear-facing seat for bonus seating needs
  • get a bike rack - because multiple bikes don't actually fit inside
  • replace the "cool" aftermarket LED headlights with ones that actually work in the dark

The awkward thing, strategically speaking, is that Amy's lease Jetta is being given back in a couple months. So, in order to avoid having to shell out for another vehicle, it would be nice if the crappy old van (CODENAME: AKNOT) was reliable enough for our occasional parallel-commuting needs. Mostly kid-school deliveries when Amy has to work. The path towards reliability is not meeting our required timeline.

Either I need to stop being driven to becoming a quivering wreck by work stress so I can make shit happen, or we need to find a mechanic to deal with some of our list.


2023.01.30 Victoria Trip

IMG_4348_beachwife.png

IMG_4349_davebonnie.png

IMG_4355_tarantula.png

IMG_4357_pagliacciswife.png

Amazing adventure with Amy, staying at the Empress Hotel, and spending most of a week with Dave and Bonnie. Complete with a hike up Mount Doug and visits to my nominal favourite restaurant in the universe - Pagliacci's.


2023.01.18 Married

IMG_4475%20copy.png

IMG_4468%20copy.png

IMG_0133_amysketch.png

Team ClaAmy™ is now a legally recognized partnership. ❤️🫀


2023.01.08 Heart Attack Scare

Last Wednesday (2023.01.04) I was standing at my desk at work when I noticed an un-ignorable ache in the upper-left quadrant of my chest. I rolled my shoulders and arms, to see if I could stretch out whatever kind of muscular knot it was, to no effect. Instead, I started feeling dizzy.

Now, I'm a 50-year-old man who takes medication to avoid having my blood pressure cause heart/brain to explode, so this is a constellation of symptoms I'm pre-disposed to be wary of. So I did what any neurotic out-of-shape health-conscious person would do while in their employer's high-density working lot: I Googled that shit.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Sentient beings of all sorts: the online search results were not reassuring. Quelle surprise.

So I lowered my powered standing desk, plopped myself down on my chair, and started to feel really dizzy - complete with tingling in my hands and fountains of cold sweat. I turned to my trusty design partner - Meredith - and told her vaguely that I didn't feel well and might need some help.

I put my head down in my hands on my desk and proceeded to feel very poorly indeed. Meanwhile, Meredith went full rockstar and called 911 to talk with the operator while also coordinating folks in the vicinity to check for possible supplies and facilitate the EMT's showing up. I feebly sent a barely-coherent text to Amy, and managed to copy/paste her number to my boss to keep her informed.

At no point did I pass out, but I definitely was not highly responsive and quite frightened. The EMT's showed up, and the whirlwind got underway in earnest. It was weird to be rolling out of the office on a gurney, with people staring.

They determined that I was not actively having a heart attack, so there was not a mad rush to the hospital. An IV was inserted for ease of access to my circulatory system, and an ungainly array of patches had been shaved on my chest to facilitate sticky EKG leads, plus my old friend the pressure cuff. Once at the hospital, in additional to constant electro-potential monitoring, blood oxygen saturation, and regular blood pressure monitoring, I also got a several rounds of blood tests (one lost, just to keep it interesting) and some x-rays.

The sum of the efforts determined reasonably conclusively that I did not have any sort of heart attack. And, technically, I appear to be in relatively good cardiovascular health - even my pre-hypertension appeared to be under better control that I had thought.

So, what happened?

Well, first and foremost, I had symptoms that one does not fuck around and find out about.

But in a more direct manner, there are several related elements that might be sufficient to explain everything. The chest ache showed to be very proximal to some broken ribs I suffered just over a year ago, so they might have acting up for the first cold snap since they "healed". The dizziness is very similar to one of the side-effects of the hydrochlorothiazide that I take for high blood pressure - and the night before I had taken a double dose, because I had missed one. The bonus shaking sweats and apparently lack of circulation might have been a panic attack brought on by my fears, and my generally high baseline of work stress.

From here, I need to get on with finding a new Primary Care Physician - so I can do a follow-up. There's going to be some unpleasant amount of fuss going forward at the office. So it goes. It also seems like a timely prompt to keep my wellness as a priority.


2023.01.02 Hello 2023

Reflecting, 2022 was pretty good for me. And for most of the world, as long as you gloss over Russia's shit-fest invasion of Ukraine, and several awful climate disasters that are a taste of how things are likely to be from now on.

Looking ahead to 2023, there are a few things flagged already:

  • getting married to Amy
  • weakly honeymoon thing meeting up with Dave/Bonnie in Victoria
  • driving around in our old 1993 VW T4 van like a boss
  • Death Cab For Cutie concert at Edgefield
  • Whistler trip with the Bike Crew
  • Middle School for Violet
  • High School for Simon


2022.12.18 Fredmas Fusion

Today is the annual remembrance of my Dad's birthday: Fredmas.

It's also the negative 1-month mark for Amy and I getting married. I think he would have really liked her, and there is some complicated deconstruction to do in my head about what I think he might have thought about getting re-married. But maybe I'll save that difficult bit for some other Rant™ and just focus on the happy part about marrying Amy.

Except that today I finally found out the technical details of the Helion fusion reactor, and I'm very busy having my mind blown. I thought tokamak's were pretty cool, and stellarators were amusing, but this pulse fusion technique is genuinely thrilling.

The main elements that blow my mind (in order of mind-blowing-ness):

  1. direct output of electrical power - bypassing the need to crudely use heat to run something like a turbine
  2. simplified fuel - use of relatively-common deuterium and helium instead of ultra-rare tritium (or plutonium, ick)
  3. massively reduced radioactive byproduct - even compared to tokamaks, and removing the need for beryllium layer
  4. a demonstration reactor to supply output power in 2024


2022.12.12 Managment Theory Desiderata

A couple of half-ideas I scribbled down as notes meant for contemplation and possible inclusion in my as-yet unrealized management theory book.

profits : bonus

The tendency to make an association between a business's profits and employee bonuses is entirely understandable. Both in positive ways and negative ways. The positive association is the idea that when a business has good fortune, that is then trickled down to the employees. The negative association is that a business keeps all the profits, and the employees do not get to share in that extra success. Both viewpoints have their arguments, couched in terms of "fairness".

They're both wrong.

active neglect

Ever get the feeling that you've done nothing wrong, and more than a few things right, but that it makes no positive impact?


2022.11.09 Misunderstanding Millennials

Recently watched Simon Sinek talking about some generational shifts in the workplace. The whole reason I watched it is because I'm nominally a fan of his book "Start With Why", particularly with the concept of inspiration over manipulation. During the talk, he presented a hilariously rose-coloured remembrance of how things were. Where we got our "purpose" from going to church, our "community" from interacting with neighbours, and our "socialization" from [check notes] bowling clubs - and he goes on to lament that these have all faded away such that we're now expecting these things from work.

In the same talk, he also described a sense of loss of trust between employers and employees, bringing up the symbology of the "gold watch". He mentions it to lament how people could feel certain their loyalty would be rewarded, nominally by getting a valuable watch from their employer at an advanced stage of their career. Except that, from what I can tell, the gold watch was always a symbol of disappointment - that "I've given my whole career to this company, and all I get at the end is this watch" at retirement. But this may be tangential.

Clearly this is an emotional expression by Mr. Sinek, utterly unsupported by the long and complicated history of worker's rights. But even more interested to me is how it seems to fail to recognize the aspect in which companies actively try to insert themselves into employee's identity, and are perfectly happy (HR statements taken as "just words") to have other aspects of employee lives atrophy in favour of work focus.

From there, he seems to conclude (or deduce?) that "millennials" are less capable of handling stress (presumably than gen-X or boomers).

Maybe this is intentionally done to build sympathy with tropes that his management-fad target demographic tend to cling to. But it seems that an unwillingness to put up with bullshit is not the same as being less capable of handling stress. Indeed, the accurate recognition of the importance of dealing with stress and not treating having feelings as taboo seems like one of the triumphant elements of the progress of society as a whole.

But maybe Mr. Sinek is falling victim to the all-to-common tendency for seasoned adults to have increased rigidity in their thinking, and to start treating anything that is different as being less good than how they were before.


2022.10.22 the marginalian

Maria Popova has been collecting and curating all kinds of eclectic interests and wisdom she shares on her subscription:
The Marginalian

This latest edition particularly resonated with me.


2022.10.16 Hm.

I meant to write something - mostly some added work on a story, instead of making myself read too much more of the molar-gnashing (and award-winning) sci-fi I'm currently struggling through.

Fail. Just zombied instead.


2022.10.09 Triumphant Return To Game Nights

Dave and I have had a long-running Game Night, allowing us to keep playing AIF even though we lived in different cities - and then different countries. But last year, after [checks math...] 25-ish years, Dave asked for a break for a while.

Which made sense. It had been a long time being weird loner nerds playing our ultra-violent RPG, and a long list of various life stuff had accreted over the years for us. Taking a breath from long-term time commitments is a chance to re-assess what's healthy for ourselves.

Except for the obvious aspect that Dave is my best friend from the depths of deep time, and having the ability to semi-regularly hang out with him is kind of emotionally important to me. And outside of our "game night", there's just not much of that really going on. We did manage some occasional brief chats in the same time slot as the Game Night, when we were both online, so that's something. But not quite the same mojo as actually doing something creative together.

I managed to drag the kids and Amy up to see the family in Canuckistan this summer, and while there got to visit Dave (and Bonnie) in person. This gave more opportunity to see how Dave was doing, and to plumb the idea of re-starting Game Night. The hook on the lure was to suggest a couple things:

1: Try Dungeons & Dragons 5E, so that Dave could sample it firsthand.

2: Include more people in the game, to improve upon the endless cycles of 1-player games we had been grinding through for decades.

The 5E part wasn't too hard; I had a metric shitte-tonne of unused D&D game ideas too violent to include in the kid games I've been DM-ing. So I kitchen-sinked those all together to make a chimera horror adventure gestalt. [insert pantomime of job-done hand clap-wiping motion]

The "getting more people to play" aspect was the thing we had classically had stumbled on. We met, and agreed on a sort of shotgun approach - meaning just ask everyone who we could think of to play with us. Which, admittedly was a pretty short list.

Amy volunteered immediately, so that was a great relief. Both Dave and I talked about inviting Lou, but both of us independently contemplated it and chickened out, being reluctant to face the rejection directly. I still mean to ask him at some point, as a matter principle. Lou is super cool, and even though I know he's simply too busy to play with us (or do much of anything with us), I'd still like for him to know that he's still welcome join in.

The main win, though, was getting Ulrich to agree to play with us. Finally hearing his voice again, after years of purely text correspondence, was pretty great.

We had a session-0, where we finished off the character generation, and had an initial encounter. It was hilarious goodness. I'm genuinely delighted to have this personally-curated crew of alpha-nerds to play with.


2022.09.25 Triumphant Return To Whistler

Link might not work for people who are not awesome enough:
Whistler Photo Dump

A long pandemic later, finally managed to make it back to Whistler (and Squamish).

Impression #1:
Holy fucking fuck coastal BC is gorgeous.

Impression #2:
This kind of adventure is only possible by riding on the coat tails of more dedicated and more prepared friends. Shout out to @gnarthaller for setting everything up, including arrange for a sweet condo to stay, driving most of us up in his sweet adventure van, and being B-Squad leader.

Impression #3:
Getting old sucks. I mean, I know I could be in better shape in general, but the difficult realization is that staying in shape went from being effortless in my 20's (when I had time to do it, but didn't really) to being nigh impossible and scary (when I don't really have any spare time, but try hard to work it in systemically).

Impression #4:
Mountain biking is very much my adrenal pathway to zen. Even though, in comparison with everyone I ride with, I'm not very good. And even though it is a non-stop lesson in humility. The emotional space the riding creates helps me with pretty much every other facet of my life. It gives me resilience to face difficulties at work, and patience to enjoy time with my kids instead of murdering them, and insight about how savour my life while I'm in it.

Impression #5:
The 20-km black-diamond technical climb-ride up to and back from Comfortably Numb was so gorgeous that even though I couldn't appreciate it at the time because of how hard it kicked my ass, it squats in my memory like a nugget of masochistic joy.


2022.09.11 Project:DEATHBOX - Das Gehts

vwdeathbox.png

UPDATE: there are a few challenges with the yet-to-be-officially-named VW van.

  • It did not quiiiiite pass DEQ, so it has a date the The "Fix-Um Haus" to see if we can tweak the tune to reduce the CO2 by 2%. After which we can properly register, plate, and insure the damn thing.
  • Then there is the fact that I need to fix a bunch of seatbelts...
  • Also, I'd like to pull out the rear-facing jump seat next to the sliding door - to better facilitate the loading of my giant-ass bike into the insufficiently-folding rear bench seat area.
  • Then we get to do fun upgrades like wheel/tires and a bitchin' bike rack.


2022.09.06 Work Observation

My work To-Do list involves temporal paradoxes.


2022.09.04 VANS VANS VANS VANS

So, now that we've sold VANTACULUS (the Wee Van), we've been contemplating what we should be getting for Operation DEATH BOX.

Ford Econoline E350

The big chungus option, assuming one can find an acual passenger version. The work van version is much more plentiful option, but even though I could technically bolt in seats for the children, it would absolutely suck for them for road trips. While the full size van would rock the utility function in perpetuity, the thirsty V8 (and occasionally, V10) would mean some serious struggling for the short term need for commuting. They look like bricks, but not in a good way.

STATUS: Still technically in contention.

Honda Oddessey

In all honesty, this was my frontrunner when starting the search. Japanese reliability, plus Honda driving dynamics, and I think they look rather smart. Then we went to look at one, and things went wrong. It was discovered that the Oddessey has "touchy" power sliding side doors, which would definitely go wrong for my little idiots. Then we found that the second row seats can't really fold out of the way enough to fit the mountain bikes. In fact, there is some significant doubt about 3 mountain bikes fitting at all.

STATUS: Not currently being considered, and somewhat bitter about it.

Toyota Sienna

The more-reliable near-era Japanese option. I've superficially been not looking for these because A) I think they're ugly, and B) the ex-step-MIL drove one and it scarred me forever. Dimensionally, this van should be approximately the same interior space as the Oddessey, so there is doubt about its ability to accomplish the bike-hauling mission.

STATUS: Technically still being considered, but possibly as a last option.

Dodge/Chrysler Vanageddon

I know. I KNOW. Shitty Chrysler product is like deciding to buy some lucky mechanic a new boat, and to abstain from joy while doing it.

BUT, here me out. These horror-filled boxes of poorly-considered cheap plastic have considerably more room inside, thanks to the Stow-and-Go™ capabilities. Plus, because they are generally considered to be shittier, it is possible to get a much newer specimen, which would allow some increased modern amenities - like back up camera and bluetooth. And while I can't stop seeing the design-by-committee, Amy likes how they look.

STATUS: Probably, unfortunately, the frontrunner.

Toyota Previa

These are all older, and due to their charm, much more expensive for what they technically are. However, they are bubble-era Japanese builds, which is famously high quality. They would be fun(ner) to drive, thanks to the rear wheel drive. And the funky way the rear seats fold up and the second row swivel to face the rear might - just might - provide enough room to haul all the bikes and kids.

STATUS: Hopeful saviour from Chryslery Doom.


2022.08.27 Oh, Yeah - Biking Is Awesome

Haven't been biking enough this year because of stupid reasons - mostly just insufficient free time and too many obligations. But managed to go up to Sandy Ridge today with the Friar and the Send Bro. It was so fucking good. I'm slow, and I'm weak, but thanks to the magic of the e-bike was able to not kill myself on the climbs and volunteer us for a second excellent lap.

Which reminds me - I still need to reserve a DH bike for Whistler in a couple weeks. Yikes - I'm so not ready for that.


2022.08.08 Wee Vanless

Sold the kei-class Mitsubishi Minicab Bravo today.

It's possible that it is actually a victim of its own success. The nominal purpose of the wee van was to haul mountain bikes, and if getting to ride in the wee van meant riding mountain bikes, both of my kids wanted in on the action. Unfortunately, the wee van only has room for 2 people + 2 bikes. So the wee van just isn't big enough to carry us all.

Plus there is the small difficulty with travelling at freeway speeds. And a total lack of safety equipment. And an inability to start in cold weather. And a lack of basic creature comforts.

Anyway, there needs to be a replacement crappy van to suit the increased crew + cargo requirements. The hunt begins now for Project: DEATH BOX.


2022.07.30 München VS Portland

I really like Portland. Lots of fun people, great food, and ready access to outdoor fun. But there are definitely two things that Munich Germany does so well that it makes me wish there was some way to import to where I live.

First: the subway system. It's goddamn magical, how well-integrated it is and magnificently run. Unfortunately, to have such a thing in Portland would involve an order of magnitude more investment than what we already struggle with to make our half-assed MAX system run. But I really do think that if we had something as fundamentally wonderful as das Münchner U-Bahn-System, we Portlanders would find the value in it.

Second: German drivers in general. Aggressive but capable. More than a few assholes, to be sure, but at least they're gone fast. My very first driving experience back in Portland was an enraging reminder of how fucking unskilled and oblivious Portland drivers are. Not really anything to be done easily about that either.


2022.07.17 Joys Of Home Ownership

Amy and I love our house, because of how perfectly it fits us and the kids, with a great walkable neighborhood, and a huge list of facets that make it lovely. Except, as every homeowner knows, houses are not static entities - they're a constant grind of repairs and improvements fighting against the endless tide of entropy. And when we bought The Battery (nickname brought to you by a dubious concatenation of initials) there was one big upgrade we intended to do: solar panels.

It took a little while to arrange, but we settled on the Tesla solar system with a powerwall battery backup for the house (and a grateful nod to the federal 10k$ tax rebate to make it happen). Significant delays were incurred as we waited for planning and approvals, but finally we had the system installed! Except, not yet commissioned because it needs final inspection for powering up by PGE (our local power utility). Annoyingly, PGE never got around to upgrading our service meter to allow for 2-way power delivery, but the resourceful installers at Tesla installed a parallel meter system that should work. However, this required completely re-wiring our breaker box - and it got pretty cramped. Still, everything worked just fine - or so it seemed.

A couple days later, apparently some yahoo crashed into a power pole a couple blocks away. This knocked power out for the neighbourhood, but also sent a power bump at the same time. The powerwall tried to cover for the lost power, but encountered problems. The problem became clear when the main power came back on later that day - three of our circuit breakers were unable to be reset. Along with it we were down the section of the house that powered the internet modem, our furnace controller, and dishwasher.

Some frantic calls to Tesla later, we were told they would get to us as soon as possible - after the weekend. So we limped through a warm weekend without AC, washing dishes by hand, and running an extension cord to power the modem. Monday came, and they verified that the breakers themselves needed replacement. But they could not get parts until the next day - but they could re-purpose one of the working breakers to run whichever circuit was needed to make the HVAC work again. So by trial and error it was determined that it was... none of them. Something else was wrong with the HVAC, and the dishwasher.

After the technicians left, we did some frantic research on what could be amiss. Everything we could find was fine - breaker on, reset switch reset, circuit board fuse was fine. So thought we had deduced that we had fried our smart thermostat controller. I rolled to the only store locally claiming to have the same model, so that I could just plug-and-play a replacement, and they didn't have one. They did have an upgraded version, though that required re-wiring the controls. Screw it - whatever. Bought it, installed it. Still didn't work.

We hoped that it was a combination of a fried control unit AND an unpowered circuit. Those hopes ended when the Tesla technicians showed up bright and early and replaced power to the whole house. Still no joy for the HVAC, or the dishwasher. They were not really permitted to do anything beyond the power distribution system, but did us the favour of testing the high-voltage fuses for the AC - which turned out to be blown.

So we went to an electrical supply store to purchase some replacement shotgun-shell-sized fuses. And the HVAC still didn't work. So we were left with having to call HVAC technicians, and the earliest available appointment was two weeks out.

-sigh-

Luckily, Pyramid Heating & Cooling called a couple days later to say that they had a cancellation, and they could come immediately. Well, not immediately - because it was the afternoon and since our furnace is in the attic it would be horrific. But they did swap us with another customer the very next morning.

In the meantime, we got to work on the dishwasher, with the working assumption that it had a fuse of some kind that was also borked. So we disconnected it and pulled it out to find that it has no such protection feature. Time for a new dishwasher. Which was fetched in the uber-charming wee van, to the delight of the Home Despot workers who helped us get it. Which in itself is a minor miracle, because it turns out that Home Depot doesn't stock appliances - except that happened to have accidentally been shipped the exact one we wanted. Which was fun. Brought it home, installed it, and it works great.

Pyramid technician shows up and listens to our tale of woe. He said, "I have an idea". A few minutes later, "YEP - your transformer got burned out." Replaced it handily, and our HVAC comes to life and was working great. The feeling of relief was a welcome change.

...

Which lasted for a few days. Then yesterday we noted that the AC was not actually able to cool the house. We futzed with sensors and settings, but the awkward truth is that it is running the AC and the blower fan and we're getting an insufficiently-cool draft.

Time for another call to Pyramid. When they open on Monday. GAH.


2022.07.10 Missing My Little Vampire Slayers

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It really puts the foolish work anxiety in to context.












































































































That sure was a lot of scrolling you did without prompting. Perhaps you have read some of my other throw-away bits hidden down here, or perhaps you are just naturally curious. But I hope you feel, as I do, that the immersion of the moment is the key part of the experience. The existence of the chain of thought: "I wonder what's down here" - searching for signs of what this scrolling expanse is yielding - and then "OH, that's all, I guess."

But, really, that's all most places and moments are. Look around, literally and figuratively, and sense wherever you are.