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…

Things were more talky today. Which is better than less. Maybe even useful talking; I think closer to where we need to be. It’s hard to tell on the scale of half a day, but it’s at least calmer, and there’s more attention to things that feel like they matter. Maybe tomorrow we’ll keep moving in the same direction. Maybe tomorrow we can start The First Law together so I can share my fantasy-setting Mr. Robot and its deconstructed PoV characters. Accomplished enough day job today to (mostly) not fall behind, but that’s about it. I really need to take a look at the SSH bug tonight; I should have…

Three robot meetings in four days is too many; its hard to care about going today. Friday went okay – got the external camera working in code other than capturing to disk, and dealt with all the new null config errors. Saturday we got some maintenance done in terms of hardware changes and the like, but not much else. Today maybe I can get them to actually start the auto routines* instead of continuing to wait for some future configuration of the bot. I still need to get the targets aligned in the field model but it’s not a thing we should wait on – fine alignment is step 27…

This thing where Shanda can’t pay attention to anything else – even for a few minutes – when B is upset and available can’t be regular life. Where all plans all become “I’m going to sit next to B and think of nothing more than 2 minutes in the future” but she pretends that there’s no impact to anything else in her life. It particularly can’t be what happens when Shanda is only just piecing together her own self regulation. It’s perhaps better than last time but it’s still me trying to keep her life going sort of against her will. I’m so helpless to do anything about it while…

I’m having mixed feelings about paying for another month of Melissa’s medical insurance. She’s technically still employed and insured by her job from 2016. They haven’t assigned her any duties. They likely never will, given the circumstances of her departure, so if she pays $100/month to cover her share of the insurance cost she gets decent, cheap coverage, potentially for a long time. When she was getting LTD they took the premium out of that, but she screwed that LTD by taking other full-time work. She’s still covered but now has to pay in that $100 and hasn’t been doing so. I wish she would keep that insurance current because…

So costumes and favorites are related. Because it was safer to never like anything, and because I did not have reliable access to clothes that fit or that weren’t ragged let alone that I liked, I have primarily selected clothing on the basis of suitability to a purpose – does it technically achieve its intended function. This allowed me to be genuinely happy with lost and found winter clothes, and to value clothing as communication – i.e. as costumes. Once I stopped play acting family with Mother I made changes to my life to minimize the ability of other people to demand costumes of me. I now feel free to…