Haptic Hasenpfeffer

Turns out Apple didn’t update my favorite laptop. I was prepared to buy one it until I noticed the updated machine was the Air. Which is similar but 2mm taller, 25mm wider and has a fan. So it’s not quite notebook-sized and not quite silent. I may still get it – I’m not convinced they’re going to make a new MacBook – but I’m less interested than I was.

It’s also hard for me to spend money on myself, even when it’s for a tool I use for hours every week and need for my day job. It’s less money than I’ve given away this quarter but it still feels intolerably indulgent in a way other things don’t. I suspect that has more to do with the way I valued computers in childhood than the money, but I have picked apart all the feelings yet.

Last robot meeting before the first competition. My goals today are to make sure teleop works, that we can an auto that can at least get off the hook, and that drivers have played 3 complete matches including setup and auto before they leave. That and to leave myself by like 8. These qualifying competitions are only half a day long but it’s still a day where I may be constantly in demand for hours at a time, surrounded by 100 nervous people leaking emotions at me. Plus S’s and SJ’s anxiety playing off each other. But Shanda is going to help, and I’ve got some time off late next week.

Got too many SRs at the end of the week; I’m going to carry a couple of minor and one major one into next week. I suspect Portsmash is going to take weeks to resolve, but the work shouldn’t be constant. It would be super handy if Intel would publish real info about it, but they never did for Spectre so they probably won’t for this either. Luckily we mostly don’t sell multi-tenant systems so side channels attacks are not a bug concerning, but I still have to do all the research.

Started a new safety project after shopping it around to Dave and DerbyK for some help with the details. Didn’t know what I was doing at first but I think I’ve got a solid plan now and I’ve already started work on it. It’s sometimes hard to work on projects that don’t have very visible results, but safety is very important to me and I want to share it where I can. I hope eventually to get some feedback to make future versions better but if it were easy to get people to talk about I wouldn’t need to do it in the first place.

Talked with DerbyK about your own project, and some of the ways we both interacted with its origins. I’m so proud of your for doing it, and for sharing it. I hope it makes you just as happy, and continues to you her find and share your own sort of safety.

Did get the robot bits going. Mostly uncalibrated so it’s fragile, but still working. It’s also in full manual mode and #NoLimits when under human control, which is dangerous and slow, but it’s what could be done at a reasonable hour. And the team was mostly uninterested in staying very late anyway, even with free food.

Progress again with Shanda not hating her emotions, and finding ways to share them. But I’m not up for the analysis tonight. I must to bed, before I’m up late enough to make tomorrow rough. I’d really like to get home with enough energy to still do things with Shanda, and awake enough to get stoned and then sober again before sleep tomorrow¹Which is somewhat more complicated than usual as I’ve only had weed one day in the past few weeks, so my tolerance will be near 0..

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.