Sunday started with exactly the sort of free-floating resentment I was worried about. Where my existence is perceived as a burden even when it has no impact. It thankfully did not last days like it has in the past, but it made getting to robots tricky. Robots itself went well. We won all but one of our qualification matches and played in finals, but did not advance. It’s very good – we beat hundreds of teams – and we are finally building robots that can survive a day of without breaking. The team is always exited to imagine going to Worlds, but I’m pretty ambivalent. I would like them to…

Got things done today, but not SRs. Did media work and banking and updated the dragon and researched crowd data. Built a balloon staff to work around restrictions on floating and flying devices 1Though I expect there might be a petty tyrant to fight with about it at the door because I am still using a mylar balloon. I think I’ve got a plan for that eventuality.. I convinced J to come, which should be good. They do better when I request urgent action than when I try to make plans, so I waited until today to make it go. It’s risky of course, because the deadline itself can seem…

Went all week with only 2 SRs. Then I got 7 linux kernel cases in Friday afternoon. So I’ve got a ton of SRs again. I think I can kill a bunch of them as irrelevant to us, but it’s not the best Friday, and will mean I have to find some time tomorrow if I want to keep my Monday plans. I could use a down day but I suspect that will be hard to get until Cassie leaves, so getting day job done to let me skip next week is an okay plan B. Did robots, though quite late because of the SRs. Took took apart things and…

Cassie is here today, and through the weekend. Such things are always stressful for Shanda. I think you’re doing okay with it, in relative terms, but it’s still a lot, and you were already at a lot. Be sure you keep working on things that will help you actually cope, and not just things that will distract you without helping you find calm. Day job went better Wednesday. Got through half my SRs, killed a new one same day, finished all my deadline work, helped with some out of band process, started the tracking framework that I need for the last few SRs. Did less good on Thursday but we’re…

Today feels hard. Like I don’t deserve clothes or warmth hard. Having more than one tier of clothes helped though, as I was able to put on an emergency shirt before wading through all of the feels. The feels part is important but being physically well and able to do daily tasks is more urgent, so having an alternative instead of just a barrier is nice. Dog appears to be slightly injured, limping a bit on the front left. I first noticed late Friday and it was worse Sunday; today is the first time the vet it open since then. I don’t think it’s a big problem – when he’s…

Did robots. Had good ideas for new systems, but not for this week. Only made okay progress on motion tuning. I have ideas for that though – maybe T would write a wizard to guide tuning in the future. It could be tied into the ServoNG global debug system for live tuning. And it could help them imagine there’s a real procedure. I’ve been terrible about day job this week. I half advanced like 2 SRs, and did that silly interview, and nothing else. I’m okay with that, but I am annoyed to still own December SRs. Got to help DerbyK today, which I always like. It was a stressful…

It snowed here this week. Even stuck around overnight and on the streets, which only happens a day or two a year, on average. They didn’t switch to snow routes on most routes, but they did add chains to all bus drive tires, which is a pain. Loaded 65′ articulated bus going 45 MPH with chains is pretty bad on the list of physical vehicle comfort even for public transportation. Then the bus threw a chain, just past the Aurora bridge, and we had to wait for the transfer to the next one. It’s a trunk line so it runs every few minutes, but it’s also busy so we can’t…

I’m trying to avoid the thing where I don’t feel done and don’t send what I’ve written, so I’m just sending this and I’ll write a new one tonight with the other bits. When I’m at the hospital, particularly after the treatment I sought is complete, I feel like someone will use my disability as an excuse to deny my agency. I am already being detained, and they insist that I satisfy them to be released. They don’t have the support of state violence by default but they can declare an emergency in which they do, and under which they can compel more “help” for potentially days at least and…

Got up early for an interview where accents and cell phones conspired to ensure I couldn’t understand most of the answers the candidate gave. Not that it matters anyway, since our processes for hiring are discriminatory nonsense 1This isn’t unique to F5; it happens most places. Even if we were doing something to help compensate for biases we can’t seem to get our head around what we want. We turned down a candidate because they didn’t want to move to Seattle and now we’re interviewing someone who would work from the Hyderabad office. Apparently so … Continue reading. But I got up and did it and then napped for a couple…

Robots interleauge last Saturday. We placed 5th and played into finals, where we lost to a robot that’s almost identical to our design. We scored well enough overall to advance to the state competition in a couple of weeks. I’m glad the team did well, but I’m also ready to be done with deadline robots (and car rentals and driving and spending my Saturdays in a middle school gym) for a while too. I want to work on some things that will take more than a day, and those have to wait until we can tolerate downtime. Or until we decide we can have two robots again, a thing we’ve…