Apple finally announced an update to my favorite laptop that includes 2 physical ports. They are unfortunately both on the same side (fraking 3.5mm analog audio on the other) but it’s still most of the improvement I was looking for. That and more pixels. All the pixels. All in 13.3″. I’ve been a lot happier with my current machine since I replaced the bottom half of it (new bottom case, battery, keyboard, trackpad), but I still think it’s time for a new one. It certainly will be before the next hardware update so I might as well have one now and give this one away before it’s ancient. Talked to Ben…

A hard day for Shanda, at least at times. She wanted my help but I was out until almost 9 PM and by then she was angry enough to make it a moot point – we never really recovered. So another day that ends with avoidance-denial-anger-unload-sleep. And another night when staying up until 5 AM after that feels like a good idea. Robots went okay today. We’re still at 0% functioning auto code and BC is still trying to make the whole thing drop into place fully formed. I pushed past him on some testing and framework changes today so maybe that will help over the rest of the week.…

Here is the public version of the homework I assigned all of you — relief from societal expectations of familial interactions, in forms from commiseration and acknowledgment to scheming and puppy GIFs: https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/9lneeb/ It’s the sort of thing I think makes RBN so valuable, and I’m glad that you participated in a similar thing. I don’t do most holidays, or at least haven’t ever participated outside of a family context I hated1It’s not Christmas until somebody cries. This is both the tagline to my Christmas action movie and historically true in my experience.. These days that doesn’t feel like such a burden, but it did sometimes in the past. Particularly…

I left hypervigilant off of yesterday’s list because it’s a whole separate category. It’s why I have 40 man days of emergency supplies and why I’m measuring Rev’s water consumption so I can have 40 man + 20 dog days of emergency supplies. It’s why I wear clothes as armor and carry a knife and am ready to flee the country same-day without returning home to pack. It’s why I owned a minivan, and why I am always prepared to use 10 distinct forms of locally accessible transportation. It’s why I maintain a foreign mailing address and bank account and why I am so compelled to obtain additional citizenship. It’s…

Got a second set of robot work done between meetings this week, which is pretty good for me. Usually if I don’t get the work done on the same day as a meeting — maybe later that night if I’m motivated — I have trouble picking it up again until hours before the next meeting. Usually the work is easy enough that it isn’t a problem, but it’s still nice to have things squared away. Helps me feel productive in a week when I don’t always feel like I can achieve lunch. My light day job workload this week has been very useful for catching up on bits of my…

Woke up today pretty convinced that everything was terrible. I don’t have any evidence to support that other than moderate physical discomfort, but my dread is difficult to ignore. It’s not work. Work is legit slow this week and everyone there is happy with me, more or less. It’s not robots, which is finally moving toward a driving bot at about the same pace as any other year. Dog classes are done, there’s no D&D this weekend, the dog and dishes are clean. I’ve even had multiple tacos this week and talked with several people that were not part of my last week, and both of those seem good in…

I pieced together today a thing I’ve been chewing on for a while – that the only thing I have valued in clothes is their suitability as armor, both social and physical. It’s part of the reason I need 4 layers and have a default set of equipment that can protect me in situations from urban to wilderness against foes from governments to temperatures. But probably I don’t need armor for daily life, or at least not armor for all situations. I could likely walk the dog without fearing I might need to flee the country and sleep rough a couple of nights on the way. I went to the…

Today was the science center halloween party, and I dressed for the occasion for the first time in years [fig 1§]. The costume was a big hit and provided a great personal space buffer. Next time needs sound effects, and maybe some more internal straps for easier wrangling. It was also Halloween nails day [fig 2,3]. The blood stencils came out real good, and several others were pretty good. Even the web came out okay, and I thought that would be scrap. The part of Mr. Robot (USA Networks) that appeals to me is the way it understands the violence that’s omnipresent in our world but that we are asked…

There haven’t been any. For reasons good and bad. Like today when I planned to write on the bus but instead had to stand for 115 of the 130 blocks to robots. And now it feels a big task to go again despite doing more than a few of these. So I’ll work back into it. Today I went to work with no short term deadlines and managed to leave with none. I went to robots and accomplished real work, got T to commit something (anything), and kept kicking at BC to keep him toward functional output even while he doesn’t grok the whole shebang. Things are on the upswing…

Last dog class. Rev won the laying around not doing anything award. He didn’t do as well at the beginning of class with Shanda but she doesn’t have my special skills for staring at toddlers and making them be quiet and still (lest the warden notices us). So he’s now certified to hump dogs under 75 pounds and dogs 75-150 pounds if they carry less than 11 passengers. And I get my Wednesday nights back. Put the SSH bug* into review today. It took forever to figure out what it was doing but only like an hour to fix. I don’t know if it’s the same fix we’ll see upstream…