Lots of people aren’t comfortable with their eyelash feels and only a few risk acknowledging them 1Sometimes people ask technical questions when they want to talk about their eyelash feelings. But they can’t talk about feels because they’re also feeling anxious, so instead of talking about art you can only communicate in the form of an itinerary, or maybe a story about a financial transaction.. I watched a couple hundred individual people pretend to ignore me over the course of a few hours. I watched the very young not pretend 2The very young interact about art feels, they just don’t do words – they do eyebrows. And sometimes they do…

Long day at robots, didn’t get home until about 11. Still had to do dragon work afterwards, both fabrication and design. Got everything satisfactorily complete at home and at school, but I won’t get as much sleep as I hoped. Should be done by 5 tomorrow – FTC’s one-day competitions are nice – so I can have an early night. Might be a challenge to get going in the morning though, so today you’ll have to make do with pictures. ZiB

Did lots of day job today. Got my old SRs squared away, did the major release notes, clicked through a mandatory information security training slide show for more than an hour. Compliance training designed to allow the corporation to pass liability to low-level employees when something inevitably goes wrong (or is discovered, having been wrong since inception). It’s better than the ones about sexual harassment but still laughably useless and sometimes even clearly wrong. It spent a lot of time labeling people who notice wrongdoing as “disgruntled employees” – like Boomer parents who shout “respect your elders” if you ever respond to their ongoing mistreatment and disrespect. But it’s done…

Did medium work today. Got deadline junk done. Pushed back the inevitable. But only put in short spurts of time. Had a difficult therapy session, where I couldn’t expect to be understood because my therapist was overwhelmed. I often say things that are too much for people. This includes therapists. This is the state I have never recovered from. But today I tried a different thing – I stopped playing dumb – so maybe it will have a different outcome. Or at least I won’t continue to put up with it like I have before. Planned a call but had a late day and unexpected and good interaction about L…

It sucks when someone believes there’s a serious problem in your life and doesn’t respect you enough to acknowledge it. Or is too afraid of how hard it might be to offer even recognition, let alone help. It’s too much for them so you’re on your own. And if it keeps up they often start to judge you for it – you just deserve mistreatment if you keep getting it. They have to hate you, to justify how bad they’d feel if they didn’t. Oppression requires denial. I am feeling extra fed up with capitalism today. Well-meaning people so often celebrate the opportunity to participate in the worst parts of…

Exhausted today. Skipped most of the day job and slept late and was still too tired for robots. Went anyway though, since we’re competing this weekend. In many ways our robots looks good – it’s packed very small and cleanly – but it’s still a ways from working. Cleaned up the software framework a bit to get it ready for the usual last-moment coding. We’ll see what comes together on Friday. Had sort of a rough night with Dog. I couldn’t make him stop barking at me after I ate. We went walking and had food toys and offered attention but he wasn’t having any of it. I was going…

Slept in today, after Shanda left for her date. Dog was still feeling like he needed to be close so he came and laid next to me at the top of the bed after Shanda left. When he got restless we went to the yard fora while so he could browse the available grasses and chase a frizbee for exactly one throw 1Dog can’t be bothered to chase things very often. When he get worked up and is trapped inside he will chase a toy for maybe 6 rounds, but often even you throw to him and he catches what you tossed he doesn’t care and just drops it. Outside…

Went to a Halloween party at the science center. It wasn’t the best day out we’ve had recently. Prep was fine. Relaxed even, considering the circumstances. But there was panic after we got there and basically until supper was done. We settled out eventually though, and it was a nice enough time. The bartender was high AF – slow and loopy and too friendly – which was entertaining but took forever. He served 4 drinks, including 2 waters, over the course of about 6 minutes. Shanda wore a costume – the last time she had one was Codex from “Do You Want to Date My Avatar”, (i.e. years ago) and…

I know what it’s like to see a broken thing and love it and dream of the life where it is made whole. It’s a noble instinct and one you should frequently indulge. You’re great at healing and you should share when you can. But only if you remember that you can’t save anything. It’s easy to become entwined with a thing you know could be better, if only it had the chance and the right motivation. To imagine that if you do just the right thing – take charge of the right parts, lay out a path toward improvement, become responsible for the bits it can’t do alone, relieve…

Slept until almost 2 today. I had intended to get up and start my day with some power supply soldering, maybe hit my noon meeting, but that wasn’t to be. I’m glad to get some more sleep because the illness-related exhaustion is still high, and because the coughing was a significant disruption last night. But it would be nice to get back to normal human hours again. Woke up sad and anxious. Lots of small reasons for both. Missing Story came out of therapy yesterday, and is a big part of the sad. I’m trying to change my belief that being connected to young me is a bad idea. The…