Back to GGC today. Some improvements from yesterday – better lunch for sure, with bloody meats and sugary drinking – but still plenty of challenge. I got to say hi to @RandomTuesday, who I have watched make a schmancy She-Ra costume on Twitch, and talk about her build for a second. Like everyone else they are disappointed in themselves for not being more done, but I though it was real good. I also found lots of good stuff and a few ideas as I wandered around the booths. Sat in a panel where rich white people who seemed unfamiliar with public schools talked about how Hogwarts had bad instruction practices,…

Did GeekGirlCon today. Lots of fun costumes and makeup, though the feels made it hard for Shanda to hold still and watch. Lots of earrings for sale too, and we did better with those. Some will certainly feature here eventually. Also found some interesting things to share. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing though. While the overall stress level was kept pretty tolerable the togetherness rating was pretty low. Which is what you’d expect because there was a pretty high level of unattached anxiety that kept getting stapled to whatever activity was next on the itinerary. That did eventually get better, after the panels, but togetherness was still iffy. So good…

Robots today. Stubbed in some code to make DriveTo work with the internal PID. Who knows how that will make this thing drive, but we should at least be able to check. That whole system needs a rewrite, now that we’ve got a different class of base hardware, but this should work for now. I think the new config system will lend itself to new sensor loops, when we get there. Yelled an art heist at DerbyK, who teased a call but didn’t connect. Did only minor day job today, which was fine. Heard that S is officially retiring at the end of the year, which I hope will be…

Did HA4H today. I started out thinking I’d do day job while it happened, but I ended up disfracted with art planning, which I suppose is the point. We talked about what makes food New York-food, including the possible influence of water and microorganisms. Vi proposed that no true Scotsman judges a pizza by its toppings. BPS retorted that they can have whatever toppings they want because they are old. I silently judge them both because my pizza snobbery and WI origins let me know that cheese defines a pizza. We talked about saying no. We talked about nesting with plants and with dogs. I ranted about names and the…

I know that I can, with research and practice, induce a wide range of feelings into people who will hear me. I am confident in my proficiency, and expect that with time I can work at the words and deeds to find the ones you need. It’s why I write to you specifically, and not just to the void. Because I think I can sometimes hijack your brain and induce specific feels. Sometimes this feels like a resounding relief to you. You feel seen and connected and in control. Sometimes you feel loved when I name a feeling you don’t have the words for. Sometimes this feels like an attack…

Chatted with @Yana about sadness and adoption and the perception of time. Maybe too much for day 2, but it’s the day I was having. Chatted with J about movies and names and capstones and hospitals and wrangling parents. And about a slightly different take on time. I was thinking about time yesterday, in a number of contexts, and I guess it showed. Got a message from M about sleep and the reason you’ll need it. Missed my usual call – maybe Wednesday – but it was good to get midnight chats from unexpected places, and better still to hear about movies. I’m going to have to watch a few…

Worked with Shanda today on the value of endings. It’s a raw topic but worth the pain. It can be easy to imagine that what you want is for nothing to change, to complete, to be lost. But you want change, because anything else is hopeless. And so you want things to be done, and to be lost. Not because you no longer care but because you want to see it become something different and maybe better. Talked with @Yana about the scale of art and Canada and children and college. They said they think of us as pen pals. When I was young none of my pen pals ever…

Got lots of chores done today. Laundry and dishes and trash and floors and kitchen power and encoder images and cutting metal and hanging wood. Advanced the plot on a day job project in a way that will save me a lot of release hassle in the future. Didn’t get to the disk enclosure today but I think it counts for art time tomorrow. @Yana responded to my art heist, and I think might do it. They had eyelash feels almost out loud, and told me about how they avoid thinking about makeup. So I’m trying to heist another way into the topic, to get past that brain block. They…

Had trouble sleeping last night – work up real early and had trouble getting back to sleep. Eventually ended up in bed until after 3 PM. I’m gonna make sleep schedule a priority this weekend, so next week is easier to manage. I’m feeling okay now, though I didn’t get any time to work on release processes before robots. Talked to C this morning, about the game and calendars. Talked at DerbyK about not sleeping and narc heists. I can never tell if my social heists are a good plan or terrifying at 6 AM, but I’ve taken to sharing them anyway. I shared one with @Vi yesterday that makes…

Thought more about joy today, and how I imagine it as something I can’t share. About how almost all people are sad in response to me sharing things that I liked and feel good about, because the context of much of my experience is boundless sorrow. You being sad at my joy is hard enough, but not infrequently you’re overwhelmed as well, and thereby lose the ability to smell my feelings at all. This makes it difficult for me to believe that I can share joy with humans, because in practice I often cannot. It happens regardless of how I feel or communicate. I know, I’ve checked a lot of…