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2025.01.04 Rebel Iconography Lead Candidate

Because apparently just a plain single star is too "Texas" or "Russia".

2024.12.31 VELMA

Dealership called us back again and took off the entire 10k$ market adjustment. So, OK then.

2024.12.29 Wrap-Up Free Write

A causual review of my update frequency would suggest that perhaps my heart isn't really in talking about what is going on in my world. And that's probably fair, and politically adjacent. Nevertheless, there have also been things to mention that either got edited out of existence or failed to make the jump to web publication due to other distractions.

With that generalized arm-waving excuse, here are wisps of thoughts that I have been having but not bothering to dredge enough words for.

Way back in 2004 (ish), the very first version of The Feeling Machine had the Acolyte sections carefully refer to the character as "they/them". This was long before the current uncoiling of pronouns, and it was an attempt at injecting a futuristic sense of otherness to one facet of the society so the degree of change could be felt. Obviously, I didn't really predict that it would become a focus of society a scant two decades later. As I re-read it for editing, it felt quite stilted. But what really made me change it was reading Anne Leckie's "Ancillary Justice" in 2013 where everyone was referred to as "she/her" and it felt so much better done than I had managed.

So it goes. But, just wanted to describe somehow that I've been wrangling with the complexity of gender identity in culture for a while on my own, and am not just a bandwagon-jumping progressive supporter.

Amy and I actually had signed for getting an ID.Buzz - First edition, AWD, in the "energetic orange" that we like. This was after bouncing from dealership to dealership where they've all been sold out. We had even managed to swallow the bullshit "market adjustment" of 10k$ over MSRP. But then things fell apart.

First was discovering that all the wrangling and deal-making we had done with the sales department didn't actually mean anything. We had settled on a price/payment, based on flexing multiple variables the way we could, then they came back with the "real numbers from VW". Totally irrespective of any of the numbers we had negotiated. -sigh- Fine.

Then was hours spent by the "papers guy" trying to get us to put less money down. Why? Because arm-waving about how money works for you - failing to grasp how we very much understood that our money-earning-money potential was almost certainly going to be less than the rate we we paying for financing the rest. Then he repeatedly tried to sell us maintenance plans for things we neither wanted (coverage for things we didn't care about) or needed (a service contract for maintenance - on an EV).

Finally, they unleashed one final gotcha - another 10k$ for the lease transferral. Normally not a thing if you move directly to another, bigger lease deal. But, because the market value of our current ID.4 is sucking balls, they don't want to eat that difference in depreciation.

So we noped out of that deal. Got a message from the owner of the dealership to apologize and offered 5k$ off the deal, but fuck those guys. We'll wait a bit and try to get one later in 2025 from Herzog-Meier, who had the only non-bullshit sales team and only 5k$ of market ankle-grabbing.

Should I get another tattoo? I've got my aging maple leaf on my left shoulder, and I'm thinking I should get something to match it on my right shoulder after I get my US citizenship - assuming I can get my US citizenship before it becomes trumpistan. Maybe a star?

★

Teaching Simon to drive taps into an incredibly deep well of mana. It makes me laugh at how perfunctory my own driving training actually was. I mean, dad did teach me some cool things, but the core fundamentals of driving were mostly intuited by virtue of my machine empathy rather than explained usefully. Contemplating it, assuming that my memory isn't totally foreshortened with respect to my dad's direct input, I wonder if it was based on my dad having a lot of faith in my ability to "get it", or if he didn't actually know any of the fundamentals himself.

Totally aside from that, sitting with Simon as we train his extending proprioception to feel what the car and drivetrain are doing, I can feel the literal years I've spent being one with a vehicle being recognized and acknowledged inside myself.

2024.11.29 Planning For The Future

Facing the reality of the rising fascist state of the US is grim.

The petty combative side of me wants to goad all the conservatives - show us, motherfuckers. Make it fucking great. No excuses - you have the presidency, the House and the Senate, and an ideologically groomed Supreme Court - all 3 facets of government. Let's all learn a fucking hard lesson together.

Except the wiser side of me knows that isn't how fascists work. They've whipped up the obviously stupid majority into a hatred and fear soup of misdirection. So when the clearly incompetent president-elect makes broadly distracting histrionic actions - while he strokes his own ego, lines his pockets, and is used as a vehicle to accomplish Project 2025's dystopian goals - causes the country to objectively do worse for the working class, there will be fresh excuses. Fresh and refreshed people to arbitrarily blame.

People to punish. And the moron masses will go along with it.

No, the future plans need to be more concrete than hopelessly wishing for people to be... well, smarter would help, but mostly less fearfully selfish or hatefully small-minded.

Concrete plans include:

finally get my American citizenship
become more active in local politics
become more vocal in meaningful ways about national and global politics

Basically: time to join the Rebel Alliance against the fucking Empire

2024.11.15 Kakistocracy

I've never felt worse about learning a new word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy

2024.11.06 Whaaaalp

Fuck.

2024.10.05 Trumping Thought: Candidate Of The Hatefully Stupid

A nihilistic commentary I've seen a few times describes the evolution of the Republican party as naturally leveraging hatred and fear, and fostering that by undermining reason.

So that when Trump snuck up behind the Grand Old Party, in a way that they openly mocked and disregarded, they were woefully unprepared for just how successful they had been at stoking the fires of fear and hatred. Moreover, they did not really believe how hungry stupid and uneducated people were for somebody they could feel represented by.

Tangent: the Tea Party movement should have been a warning sign. Alas.

The highly polarized political situation in the US is capable of turning anyone into an emotion-motivated supporter of the party they identify with. But, with candor, this excuse only covers so much.

After all this time, including all Trump's rollicking efforts at unabashed self-aggrandizing striving for dictatorship, and listening to the words the candidates actually say, a few things are clear.

Trump voters are fear-driven, or willing to be complicit in letting fear drive the electorate.
Trump voters are hate-filled, or perfectly fine with hate being instilled as a functional law of the land.
Trump voters are stupid, including both those incapable of understanding how bad Trump's ideas are, and those foolish enough to think that those bad ideas will work out well for them.

2024.09.16 Oldness Echo

Had a pretty good birthday - complete with chocolate cheesecake, playing D&D with Amy, Dave, and Bonnie, playing AIF with Amy and the kids. Life is good, and all that.

But embedded in all that was also a poignant little vignette of passed-on Castle-ing. Because Simon and I had on Friday a wee confrontation, where he wasn't in a headspace to hear some parenting that was based on what I felt like was an important bit of philosophy relevant to our lives. He had been ill, so the resistance and defensiveness was understandable and I was able to back off and give hime some processing time.

Until a couple days later, when we were sitting quietly on a couch together and I could carefully bring it back up. Because the distinction of responsibility and being responsible from things such as blame or fault is worth having a shared understanding of. Simon is extremely canny regarding rules and arguing technical compliance with such, but that is perpendicular to a practical wielding of responsibility. We talked about how being responsible is both separate from blame, but also can include being willing to take blame for things outside our control. And we talked about how being responsible is a greater application of making things within our control the best that they can be, or at least recovering from inevitable problems as they occur the best that we can.

Once he actually believed I really didn't blame him for anything, which was slow due to his suspicions about blame-related strategy concepts, I feel like he started to internalize much of it. Maybe. Probably in a manner very similar to how my dad also tried to infuse me with a sense of ever-expanding generalized responsibility. To be a responsible hiker. To be a responsible skier. To be a responsible driver. To be a responsible member of society.

But, really, it's not one of those things you can just tell somebody. A person needs concrete examples to witness in order to understand how they can embody it themselves.

2024.09.07 2000 km Later

Only about 1700 km were spent in two 10-hour-long drives from PDX to deepest darkest Canuckistan, but a few hundred km were also burned up acting as chauffeur to my EV-doubting family to and from various funeral related events.

So many bugs. Ghost is filthy enough that I think I'll take him through an automated car wash before I do a regular wash with hose and bucket and shop vac.

And I sure am not constitutionally resilient for such marathon drives any more. I feel very used up, and have been doing a lot of sleeping since getting back.

Ultimately, it was very worthwhile to make it to Grandpa K's funeral. It meant a lot to several family members to have me there. And it felt important to me to honour him properly as well, to feel like his significance in my life was appropriately prioritized.

However I can't deny that it was also a difficult social-emotional energy drain to see my family. I don't mesh with them well - both in terms of me understanding them, and them understanding me. As I told Amy, I managed to resist beating them with their own banjos.

It was good to see Dave and Bonnie, though. And to hang out with their 12th-grader Evan, whom has been too reclusive his whole life for me to have a conversation with before.

And, fuck, those twisty lonely mountain roads are just sublime driving. BC is just such a beautiful place, and the mountains echo in my soul. Along with my dad, and my Grandma and Grandpa Kosiancic.

2024.09.02 Angst About Going To Grandpa K's Funeral

I got called last Wednesday by mom - basically only ever happens when death is involved. Which would be extremely creepy, and possibly an explanation for why I ended up married to a vampire, but it's really more of an expression of my mom's particular ilk of mental illness. Is it mental illness, though, if she's happy and always functioned this way?

Anyway. It was to tell me that my Grandpa Kosiancic's interment at the Nelson cemetery would be this Wednesday.

It's a 10-hour drive, nominally with charge stops, or a ridiculous overpriced and even longer set of plane tickets. More complicated, though, was that I would be travelling while Amy is working. So the original scheme was to reduce the time Zora would be left alone at home by leaving around midnight on Tuesday, such that I had a couple hours flex time to get to the cemetery. This was an all-too-common a plan for my 10-hour drives to-and-from university, but that was when I was in my 20's and... well, stupid. Now I'm a weak old(ish) man, and I'm pretty sure I'd have to sleep somewhere after 02:00, which opens up for all kinds of things to go wrong.

Plus, and this is a typical problem for me - I have worries about my projects at work. I've already been gone 6 weeks this summer, and shit is going sideways in a couple different dimensions. It makes very little logical sense to be all wound up on behalf of a multi-billion-dollar international corporation, but maybe that's the humanizing work I do to earn my (mildly) vaunted pay.

Lastly, there's the equipment worry of a long-range trip into darkest Canuckistan with an electric car. Which is mildly hilarious considering the rock-solid dependability of Ghost compared to the rickety steeds I used to flog for endless road trips through the expansive wildernesses of BC. But with age comes cowardice - or, it's euphemistic equivalent, wisdom.

2024.08.24 Summer Event Horizon

It's been a busy-lazy summer, full of bike rides, RPG's, reading books, eating good food, house and yard projects. Somehow in between weeks of kid time and all their associated lounging play, I've also been scrambling with odd weeks of working while truck projects get complicated.

But this next week the kids go back to school. Hopefully the kids and I will sneak in another mostly-quiet bike ride up at Sandy Ridge before they do, and then Amy and I have final yard project plans for while they're at school. And then, after that, we shift into the work/school/home rhythm. And a new beat to that will be Amy shifting to days instead of working nights, which will make things interesting in a new way.

I still haven't gotten very far in preparing Simon for driving practice. I suppose that will be easier once he's, you know, legally allowed to operate a motor vehicle in public. Which theoretically he will be shortly. -gulp-

2024.07.27 Soundtrack of My Grief Processing

My Pet Coelacanth - deadmau5

2024.07.23 Goodbye Grandpa K

Grandpa Kosiancic was a stubborn mean little old gnome of a man, full of laughter and caring, and my idol in most things mechanical.

When my mom called this evening, I had guessed that he had died before she said anything. She's a hermit, and she only calls me in emergencies. Or, rather, in the wake of emergencies that I should know about after they've happened.

Grandpa K was really old, mid-90's, and had only just last year decided to stop taking care of the hobby farm lot and old homestead by himself on top of the mountain overlooking Nelson BC - and checked himself into a care facility, after re-homing his dog. Having been an unstoppable dynamo his entire life, this transition says to me that he was acknowledging that he didn't have much more wear and tear possible to endure.

It's not really possible to unpack in a blog all the ways that my personal conceptions of self-worth and intrinsic value have spawned from my life of observations of my Grandpa K. But I will assert that he was an incarnation of what good can come of a life of hard work and caring for others.

Perhaps one of my most viscerally proud things was being able to visit Grandpa K, and have him delight in the bright, inquisitive, and joyful great-grandchildren I'm at least partially responsible for.

Thank you for being my Grandpa.

2024.06.15 Eternal Summer

By dint of luck and effort, I've got every week I spend with the kids this summer as vacation. Six weeks of... stuff.

Hopefully lots of bike riding (and remembering to take pictures).
Maybe some adventure trips.
A few birthdays, with accompanying celebrations and Amy-cakes.

But most importantly, a bunch of memories to savour.

2024.06.11 Simon's Grade-9 English Final Creative Writing Assignment

A flash of lightning and the crack of thunder, a spark alights. The fire burns ever higher, towering above the body of a behemoth creature. The titan collapses, its legs burning away beneath it. The beast’s body slowly blackens and chars, thick scales peeling away to reveal ever more burnt flesh. The plateau that covers its back sloughs off, with trees and homes crumbling as they hit the ground. They become nothing but fuel for the fire.

…

I watch Xolanotl, my home, until there is nothing left to see but smoldering rubble. I see others turn to start gathering food and make shelter. I breathe deeply, the acrid smoke stinging my nose, and turn to help. Most of us had been off scouting; trying to find a safe route for the Xolanotl. A few dozen people have been pulled from the wreckage, but most won’t survive much longer, not without proper medical equipment. There is no conversation over the meager meal we manage to scrounge up. There is no one to talk to I suppose, seeing as most of our friends and families are buried somewhere in the wreckage. I could have stopped this. If I had paid better attention,maybe, everyone would be alive. That night I lay awake, watching the stars drift on by. I decide that the only thing I can do is to leave this forsaken place.

The next day is almost harder than the first. This is no bad dream. Our whole lives, our plans, our dreams, our pasts are burned away in the fire. I take all that I own, and say my goodbyes, few as they are. I finally set off, placing my father’s knife on my belt, one last reminder of this place. I climb over burnt logs and blackened undergrowth. I wish I could have helped; the signs were all there, the dry brush, the brewing storm. I should have known. But we had seen many storms in the past, not one had caused such a disaster.

I eventually find a small cave, sheltered from the elements. I set up camp inside because night is beginning to fall, and the surface world at night has no mercy for anything unlucky enough to be caught in the shadows. The shadows grow, and night falls slowly over the forest. I fall into a fitful sleep.

I groggily wake up the next day, the sun is already high in the sky; my body is not yet used to the routines of travel. The going is easier now, as the trees slowly open up into an expansive grassland. Only a few trees dot the horizon far in the distance. Far in the distance I hear a strange sound, a bellow from some beast of plains. With nothing better to do, and hardly any reason to live, I head to investigate the noise. I duck below the tall grasses, and slowly stalk towards the bellowing. The creature’s cries soften, and become all but inaudible against the sound of the wind.

I crest the top of a hill, seeing a slumped and bloodied shape which lays at its base unmoving. I scan the grasses for any sign of what did this, but whatever it is has left, or is too well hidden for me to find. Ignoring my better senses, I approach the creature. Its four wide eyes watch me fearfully, and it calls out weakly. As I study the creature, I realize it looks eerily familiar, this is a juvenile xolanotl, not even old enough to have found itself a shell.

I couldn’t save my home, but this time I can do something. I immediately start staunching the bleeding with bits of cloth and gauze. The xolanotl stopped making noise quickly after it realized I was there to help. As I wrapped the final slashes on its side, the xolanotl tried to slowly stand. It pulled six shaky legs underneath it, and slowly pushed off the ground. It looked down at me expectantly, before turning and limping a short distance. It looked back at me impatiently. Doesit really want me to follow it? Where is it taking me? I suppose I don’t exactly have any better place to be than wherever it is going, so I quickly catch up.

We walk for hours, the afternoon sun slowly setting, and the creatures of the night undoubtedly stirring. The xolanotl only rarely looked back to see if I was still following, all the while maintaining its slow, but relentless pace. Grasses cut at my legs, but I can hardly bother to notice. My whole body aches from the endless walking, but still, late into the evening, we press on. I hope we soon reach our destination, not just for my sake, but if we are caught out here in the open, we might as well set the table for whatever finds us.

I sigh in relief as we come to a small crater punched in the side of a hill. What look like abandoned nests fill the crater, and trees fill the nesting site. The xolanotl curls up amongst the densest of the trees, while I take food out of my pack and sit down next to it to eat. We soon fall asleep, exhausted from our ordeals.

But sleep is not long for us tonight; I jolt awake with the sound of rustling in the branches above. The moon hovers high above, a sliver hanging in the sky framed by growing storm clouds. I pull my knife from its sheath and strike a torch. I jostle my new friend awake, and it slowly rises, tired and wounded. The sounds in the branches above grow louder, and a large shape flits through the treetops. The torchlight glints off the intricate obsidian knife, but just out of the torch’s glow the creature circles us.

The monster Lunges from the darkness, six spidery legs thrown back, and a sharp maw open wide. I dip to the right just in time, and thrust my knife at its throat. The blade just glances off of thick scales harmlessly. It turns to face me. It shrieks in frustration, opening its bifurcated jaw, wide enough to fit me whole before turning to my injured companion and preparing to lunge forward. I jump at it, swinging my torch wildly.

As I brandish my torch, our assailant flinches and retreats. It shakes its head violently, unused to the bright light. I, more confident, charge the beast, torch held aloft. I stab at the creature, dodging to its side, and aiming for what I hope is the softer underside. I find my mark, and the beast howls in pain. It thrashes about, and its tail lands squarely in my chest, knocking the wind out of me. I nearly collapse, but I find my footing just in time for it to send another blow my way. This time, it throws the torch from my hand. The torch hits the soaked ground, and sputters weakly as the fire dies, cloaking us once again in darkness. I trip and fall on the shadowed ground. The monster, faintly illuminated by the night sky, prepares to dive forward.

A flash of light, and a booming sound, louder than any I have heard before, pierces the night. Lightning strikes the ground, brighter than the sun in midday, louder than the calls of even the greatest beasts.

The monster stumbles back, eyes milky and blind. It collapses on the ground, confused and senseless. It tries to stand, shaken but not yet defeated, but my friend is done with this. It stands to its full height, and stomps down on our stunned attacker, crushing it instantly.

The sun is just rising as I finish patching my wounds. And so we head out, to see what comes next.

Far off in the distance, the trumpeting sounds of many xolanotl calling out to each other reverberate across the plains.

2024.06.02 How You Spend Your Days Is How You Spend Your Life

After a week of lingering nostalgia, Amy shook me out of my incipient body dysmorphia by chortling about how I'm much better looking now. As much as I remember how it felt to be whippet-thin and with boundless endurance, I probably don't remember well how nervous I was all the time nor how fragile my ego was. Plus Amy has similar pictures of her elfin bearing, but she is wildly more attractive now with her full shape and mature demeanour.

Also heard from friends living in Germany, and how they're struggling with the transition there. I'm sure that overall it's a worthwhile adventure, but there's no denying that the enormity of the change is challenging. I miss hanging out with them.

But the most amusing meta moment this week was a person on Craigslist asking for a window of time to inspect the bike I'm selling, and I had to honestly tell them that there was only the most narrow windows of time available in my life.

Life is good. Busy, but good.

2024.05.27 Hello From The 90's

In the midst of pulling the kids bikes out of storage to prep them for test rides I also pulled out my dad's old Forest Service backpack, in which I appear to have stashed a bunch of old photos. Man, there went a whole day full of sweet and sad reminiscences.

2024.05.04 Awkward Moments Plumb Local Socialization

I had to pause before opening up my ship to this port, so I could collect myself. To hold onto all the things I've learned about myself, and consciously recognize the truth of them. Because this is a hard place to be: the place I'm originally from. And they think they know me here. It's awfully easy to become what other people tell you that you are, and it very rarely serves you well.

Grey light from overcast skies bundled between rocky peaks flooded my hatch, and my hand reflexively went to drag my helmet over my head so I could see better - but I stopped. To stride out of my ship with my helm already in place sends a message, and if I had any hope of making this go well I needed to appear relaxed. So instead I shrugged on a cloak to obscure my habitual gear, and met the tech ambling towards my still-pinging ship.

"Cargo or repairs?"

I give them a terse shake of my head. "Nothing right now. Maybe later." They give me a squint, to wonder wordlessly about why I'm even here then. "I pre-paid the landing fee and parking for a day on my way in. But..." I dip my chin and make sure to catch their eye. "Try to keep folks from getting to near to her. The security system is a little aggressive."

The tech gave a glance at the well-patched hull, and gave me a shrug. A worried little part of me thought there was a good chance I'd be scraping a charred limb of theirs off of the hull later on, and hoo-boy that would definitely make future visits home even more awkward.

Wending my way past other parked ships, I eventually made it through the personnel gate. It stood open, as it does generally - other than in times of trouble. Apparently I couldn't help but make an amused face at the backwater half-assery of the security measures as I walked through, because one of the guards sitting in the guard station yelled down. "Something funny, stupid face?"

Stupid face? I have a feeling I know that guy. Probably doesn't recognize me, though. Not yet, anyway.

"Nope." I keep walking, and head toward the public transit station.

No crowds here. Which makes sense, this is hardly a busy port of call. And this is the end of the line for the train, so it's completely empty when it glides into station. The meta-ads for taxis suddenly drop their prices before the train stops, as a last-ditch plea for my credits. But if I wanted to glide into town in a hopper directly to where I was going, I would have just taken my own out of the hold.

The train glides to a stop at the next branch - which connects to the industrial district. District is a bit of a laugh - it's a section of valley out of sight of the main town habitants, where the large ugly machines of industry can efficiently turn materials and effort into credits and means to do more things. And most of both of those are generally heading off-world. Or, at least, out of town.

Onto the train, fresh off of shifts of grimy toil, several burly people trundle wearily. I don't stare, but I watch them, doing that thing I can't stop myself from doing every time I'm here: asking myself, "Do I know them?".

Perhaps because of my watching them, however low-key I think I'm being, or perhaps just because I'm an oddity on this train, they watch me back. I imagine them thinking to themselves, "Do I know that person?" I'm not broadcasting any contact details, and neither are they, and it's likely that nobody actually recognizes anybody right then. I knew that I wasn't sure about who any of them were, though vaguely familiar aspects suggested that I would if I knew more - but I wouldn't have made any fuss even if I did actually recognize anybody here. Unlike the folk in this town, who in my experience unfailingly make a fuss over discovering someone.

Of course, several of them get the standard far-away expression of someone concentrating on media or comms. Which, in my standard paranoia, translates into at least one of them sending an image of me to someone else asking, "Do we know this person?" So it goes.

It continues in the same rambling manner on a click-through...

2024.04.20 Dragon Toasters - Horizon

"What happened to David?"

Curious. Dave peered carefully around his cover, and witnessed a familiar predator-machine standing defiantly on another squarish boulder. "Einstein?"

"How do you know name? Did Boss tell you?"

This was... unexpected. The simulant appeared to have forged a genuine connection, if this construct was indeed willing to risk itself to inquire about the simulant's fate. Dave had dismissively assumed that much of the sense of relationship it had inferred was projection based on how simulants are driven to fit in behaviourally with real humans. Well shit.

Dave shifted the plasma blade to the least-threatening posture he could manage, low and pointing behind him, without actually extinguishing it and sheathing it. He wanted to give this pack of predatory constructs the best possibility of being peaceful, but he also didn't want to risk getting overwhelmed if they all rushed him. Still, he did step out from behind his cover. "I'm sorry, kiddo. David didn't make it out of that crypt. But he did share his databases with me, so at least his memories and ideas live on with us two."

"You chased Boss down hole. You kill Boss and steal Boss brains?

Dave noted subtle signs of movement. Probably flanking. This discourse might be making things worse for everyone. But Dave couldn't shake the sense of value and specialness that this construct had a friendship-like bond with the simulant.

"I wasn't myself when I chased David, and I was so confused that I didn't even find the hole he jumped into until after he woke up an ancient monster. And David gave me his databases as his own idea and motivation."

Einstein's antennae shifted and writhed with some complicated internal process. Its broad multifaceted camera arrays betrayed no expressions, but then it cocked its head in a pantomime of inquisitive intent. "Feel like you are bad and terrible, and lying."

"Well, I can be pretty terrible, and it would be wrong to pretend that I am not what I am. But, let me say this: I can tell you what happened to the original David."

It looked like Einstein was reacting to that statement when a trio of sudden motions lit up Dave's threat-sense. Dave sprung to adjacent cover in the blink of an eye, pivoting behind the plasma blade as he snapped its containment field wide such that a pair of static-pulses caromed off to sizzle against rock. At the cover he came face to face with an off-balance predator machine. As Dave's free hand snagged a grip on the thorax and he heaved the beastie in the approximate direction of the crypt shaft, it appeared comically surprised. Perhaps wasp-headed werewolf satyrs are unaccustomed to being physically assaulted by things they might have assumed were prey.

An angry static crackled in the lower EM spectrum as coded comms betrayed various predator machine's locations. The kids were arguing. Probably not a fair fight, considering that Einstein has access to several human's lifetime's worth of dirty rhetorical tricks.

"You stop fighting, and we not hurt you. And you tell us what happened to Human David."

A familiar sense of amused cynicism surprised Dave. "Oh, kiddo - I'm already not fighting." Dave paused to consult a highly-annotated but outdated map. "I understand that your pack has probably got both logistic reasons and philosophical reasons to try to dispatch me. Instead of trying to dissuade you with threats and intimidation, let me suggest that there is a trove of treasure down that shaft exceeding what my small chassis represents. And your pack will need your David-memories to be able to use it."

Soft rustling sounds of movement, far more subtle than machines of that size have any right to manage, told Dave that they were adjusting their distribution. Perhaps to have line-of-sight for more discreet discussion. "Is Boss down there?"

"Yeah, Einstein. He's down there. I suggest leaving him down there - it's a tomb worthy of him." With reluctance, and in spite of his keen cynicism, Dave extinguished to plasma blade. "He saved me, you know. Twice." Leaving the cover of a block of stone, Dave walked casually away from the region of the shaft - and towards the cliff.

The insults of static pulses in the back didn't come. Dave felt pleased about this, and relieved that he didn't have to decide what to do about it if they had. Would he have had to do anything? Probably not. But he also knew it would have been hard to not run back and cull at least some of them. "I'm going to go and try to get a look at a giant tank ant for myself. If you get an urge to hear a story about what happened the original David, come find me."

With that, Dave casually stepped off the cliff and dropped from sight.

2024.04.15 A Specific Walk

I walked into a meeting room last week, and was met with an uproar from the array of faces on the screen as well as in the room. "I knew it was Clayton! I could tell from his walk."

Obviously, the frosted glass in the front of the room by the door showed a silhouette of my approach, but not enough to make out my face. With my standard smug dad-grin, I sat down without saying anything. And the meeting began, so I forgot about the comment in the flow of engineering development work.

Afterwards, though, it came back to me, and my mind turned over what exactly that might have meant. I think I remember in the moment feeling bemused, because I do tend to carry myself with a conscious effort about my bearing. But, really, that's more about posture, as I'm in a lifelong war against gravity conspiring against my also being slightly taller than everything is ideally suited for - so it takes effort not to slouch.

But was there... is there something more to be read in my walk?

Maybe a haughty imperviousness for being an "old timer" and secure in my reputation's stature in the engineering building?

Maybe a lanky impatient stride that I ride officiously from one arbitrary place to another in my recent re-confinement for "return to office"?

Or maybe they see a shadow of the wary but determined kid I used to be, who learned to navigate on foot while being stalked by malicious peers eager for a fight. And being always ready for that fight. And knowing that I'll never win that fight, but damned if I wasn't going to make them regret it as much as possible.

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:

University graduation yearbook 1999:

New engineer ID 2000:

Terrified Canadian engineer suddenly employed in the United States 2002:

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

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

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

RESISTANCE STATUS:

US citizenship: GATHERING DOCUMENTS
local politics: NULL, WITH FOREBODING
global politics: NULL, BRAINSTORMING

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