Sunday, 2020-11-01 Stanley Park Again Got up a bit early with daylight savings, fetched Liz some breakfast, and made myself some oatmeal and coffee. After we'd both eaten we went to Stanley Park for a walk and headed a bit up the west side of the park. It was lovely to take off our masks and breathe in the fresh air a little, and Flurry had a great time sniffing around (as usual). I finished The Armored Saint a few days ago and picked up the second book in that series. I liked it quite a bit more than I thought I would and I'm hyped to read the rest of trilogy now. I'm a little bit surprised (and conflicted) that the author seems to be a dude, since I've mostly been trying to read more female authors, but... the book's good so I can't complain that much :P % Tuesday, 2020-10-27 Up Early ~0620: I moved my wakeup time earlier in the day so I'd have a chance to eat breakfast and exist for a bit before I have to do anything else. It's nice so far, all one times I've done it :) Today: * Giving a talk at work * Getting passport photos taken * Maybe hacking? I did start reading The Armored Saint last night though :) ~2100: I had a really great work day today, even though I did not get my passport photo taken. My talk went really well and I got a lot of positive feedback on it, including my manager talking with me about giving it in a bigger venue. I had a couple of meetings in which I felt like I was contributing super effectively. Best of all, one of my mentees and I had a very emotional conversation where she told me how much my support has meant to her and how I've always believed in her and a bunch of things like that, which I managed to avoid crying during, but only barely. Aaaaaah. % Monday, 2020-10-26 ...? ~0800: Checklist success for the morning, so that's something. My mornings now go like this on workdays: 1. Execute personal checklist 2. Execute work checklist 3. Start doing actual work and on Saturdays (housework days): 1. Execute personal checklist 2. Execute housework checklist which is a very comforting routine. ~2100: So tired. I've been out of spoons for what feels like weeks now. I need some kind of rest that I can't figure out how to even describe, let alone get... % Sunday, 2020-10-25 Start A New Timezone ~0900: Ughhhhhhh. I got not enough sleep and the sleep I did get wasn't too good. On the upside, M and I did manage to defeat Will Shortz again despite both being like :zzz:, and I don't have any real plans today other than doing some shopping and tabletopping with my brother. Today: * Groceries & home supplies * Tabletop * Eve newsletter * More Destiny 2 grind maybe? ~2230: Well, op success on three of those. I got groceries, I did the newsletter, and I had a great time tabletopping. My new character, Lee, is a dryad-like creature that absorbs nutrients from soil. Here's the sketch I have of her backstory so far: Lee was born as part of a small, unnamed tribe (a clade) of Ildari, which is what other races call her species; they don't have a name for themselves. Her clade, like most of their clades, is centered around a specific ancient tree, which is their "heart-tree", and which they venerate as a manifestation of the divine. As is customary, she was sent on her first "pilgrimage" at age 15, which involved her living alone in the woods near where she grew up for a period of two hundred sunrises while visiting certain prescribed places and walking certain set routes. This experience made her a hardy traveller and more comfortable being on her own than she otherwise might have been. After this coming-of-age, she was considered a young adult among her people and taught to craft things of wood, both through traditional carpentry (though with a strong emphasis on never wasting wood) and through woodtending (cultivating trees/plants to grow into specific shapes). About a year after that began, she had a terrible falling-out with her clade when she found a pile of bones in old armor and accidentally resurrected them with a spell; this would start her friendship with Graeme, but also cut her off from her birth family and clade. Cast out, she wandered, sometimes with Graeme and sometimes alone, and spent some time working as a farm laborer to try to regain her sense of connection with things that grow. She succeeded, after a fashion, and decided that even without her clade she would undertake the Pilgrimage: a trip visiting each of the Great Woods throughout the world. I'm pretty darn excited to play her :) % Saturday, 2020-10-24 Selfless Savior ~0930: I took yesterday off and spent basically the entire day playing either Eve or Destiny 2, since it was raining and only a couple of degrees above freezing for the entire day. Weirdly enough, I feel pretty darn good about it - maybe the fact that I was deliberately trying to rejuvenate myself by doing Fun Stuff made it feel okay. I'm trying not to hold myself to "if I'm not working I have to be writing/hacking/..." type expectations since I think they inhibit actual relaxation. ~1400: Excellent dog walk around Stanley Park - we made it to within a few hundred meters of Prospect Point, but I was running short on time before my Eve fleet so we had to turn back just before it. Also a pretty fun Eve fleet, since we got to blob around in Merlins and kill people :) I checked my reading list in too, at /d/reading-list.txt. ~2245: Great evening too. We drove over to see some friends of ours, had some delicious vegetarian chili, and played a quick one-shot D&D 5E adventure set in Humblewood, which is a setting with a bunch of different creature-races; I was playing a raccoon fighter. I haven't really played premade characters before so it was fun to branch out a bit from my usual style. Tomorrow we have our first Five Torches Deep session too, so I better go bone up on the rules a bit :) % Thursday, 2020-10-22 Expectation Gap ~1050: Having a fun work day, although it started very slowly. Delicious Timmy's for breakfast... ~2100: Against the odds, a solid day. I woke up tired on ~6h of broken sleep, but I still managed to string together a bunch of work tasks. My manager asked me to fill out this rubric describing my own promo readiness (called an "expectation gap" since you write down where the gaps are between you and the promo expectation), which involved a lot of reflection about what I do and don't do at work, which in turn led to a lot of thinking about aspects of my job I like and dislike. I realized that I'm not that happy being a tech lead, although I am pretty good at it and feel like I'm valuable to the team. The feeling of being part of something and working in a group is something that I've found matters a lot to me. Other than that I was just drained all day. I ran a pretty fun Eve fleet but my heart was not really in it. I know that what I *need* to do about sleep is put my laptop away, but I just end up not doing so. Ugh. I have a really good Angband run going though! Level 22 or so I think, and I found some adamantine plate mail way out of depth, so I have a LOT of armor. I've nearly died a couple of times but gotten out each time, so now I'm trying to make sure I have enough resources before I go back in. Oh, and I picked up Duolingo to try to improve my French vocabulary :) % Wednesday, 2020-10-21 Untitled ~0745: Vancouver at 6am is like New York at 4am: cold, desolate, everything's closed, and everyone's asleep. Flurry and I ran into some raccoons on our morning walk, just vibing on the sidewalk. Wow. I feel like an RPG character with one almost-empty bar reading like "1/73" and blinking red, and half my abilities don't work, but I have no idea what the bar is or how to refill it. Ugh. ~2045: Well, we found a place with amazing Dun Dun Noodles, so that's good. On top of that Flurry and I had a great walk around Stanley park and dodged the raccoon family that lives there successfully. I spent a lot of the evening absorbed in Destiny 2 - I made a new Hunter and did the New Light stuff again, which was pretty great. I also picked up Duolingo for French :) % Tuesday, 2020-10-20 Title TBD ~0730: Adding some mixed berries to my granola + yogurt + maple syrup breakfast made it even better. Score :) I'm getting into the groove of that + instant coffee for breakfast most days, although learning to make better coffee is definitely on my to-do list. Also I stepped on and broke the buckle on my belt during the night, so that sucks. An important lesson there about not leaving things on the floor. :( ~2100: Another good day. Pretty solid workday, and I got to introvert with some Destiny 2 this evening. I tried out a very simple salad at lunch time: spring mix, roasted pumpkin seeds for a bit of crunch, and sesame-ginger dressing. Verdict was extremely positive, both for me and Liz, so I think we'll keep that in our repertoire. That plus the improved breakfast has me feeling pretty good about my ability to feed myself. We got some kind of vegetable pizza with pesto on it for dinner, which was really good as well, so a pretty great food day. I need to get some immigration paperwork in order (sigh) and Liz and I need to start hunting for a longer lease. This place is pretty comfortable which makes it difficult to contemplate moving out, but, oh well :(. Apparently the rental market here is very very renter-friendly right now because none of the usual demand is there from people coming on working holidays, and AirBnBs are dead too, so there's a ton of excess housing. Tomorrow: another workday, and I should get some dental floss, and... who knows? Maybe I should try to set more of a deliberate intention about this. What *do* I want to do tomorrow? * Have all three meals homemade * Get in a longer Flurb walk, to Stanley Park * Do some writing! Good luck, tomorrow-me. % Monday, 2020-10-19 Back Into Destiny 2 ~0730: I got up on time and I've been single-tasking all morning, which feels great. Flurry and I took a random route around the neighborhood (as is the style) and I went without music, just enjoying the ambience of existing. ~2130: Another excellent day. Good exploratory morning walk with dog, and I managed to execute my new morning routine faithfully. I'll try to keep it up until it becomes habit since I'm very happy with how it made my morning feel, and I felt like it led into a very good work day. Other than work, grocery shopping, and the stuff on my checklists today was defined by spending time gaming with Ellie, which is always great fun. We tried (and were sorely disappointed by) Genshin Impact's coop, since you really can't *do* much of the game in a party - basically only domains, which we're both at too low an adventure level for. :( After that we went back to Destiny 2, an old standby of ours, and had a great time working through some of the Season of Arrivals stuff that we hadn't yet touched. I really like Eris Morn and I need to go read about her lore but I don't want to get spoilered for where the rest of this quest chain goes. I also picked up the upcoming Beyond Light expansion since I think it's a pretty safe bet that we'll still be playing D2. % Sunday, 2020-10-18 Lazy Sunday ~2100: An excellent day. M and I ripped through the crossword this morning and finished it in a bit under 35 minutes, and I was up a bit early for it so I managed to make myself breakfast (daiya yogurt & granola, toast with earth balance, instant coffee) beforehand as well. After that I did the usual morning coffee run and sat down to write the SOUND newsletter for the week. That being done I decided to spend a bit more outside time, so I took Flurry on a 45-minute walk past Davie street to see what the western edge of the West End is like. Surprise: it's nice! There's yet another park over there, plus all the shopping stuff along that strip. By the time we got back both of us were well and truly exercised, but I immediately turned around and headed out to get food for her, pies for me and Liz, and some diet cokes. I did a bit of mining in Eve, played a bit of Genshin Impact, and we had our final session of the LotR One Ring RPG with my brother and his friends. Overall I quite like the system and the combat has a really good "feel" but our characters were definitely getting a bit overpowered. I really like my character though and I had a great time playing her. After tabletop I got to a bit of hacking, and grabbed a copy of LambdaMOO to fiddle with. I checked the last official version (1.8.1) into git, then started hacking at it to simplify the code a bit. It's very much a best-of-the-80s codebase, like Angband used to be and still somewhat is. There are a LOT of the crufty "this was needed on OSF/1 2.0" type hacks everywhere. The original code is partly from PARC and partly from AT&T, so the style is... let's say inconsistent. Anyway, it's exactly the kind of hoary old code I kinda like working on, so perhaps this can be a fun new project. I spent part of the evening ripping out the incredibly ancient configure script and some of the most obsolete compatibility layers in the code. Fun fact: it had a bunch of logic to handle systems without stdio.h :) Otherwise... what else is there to say? I've been slowly gathering material for my quotes file, and Liz is here with Flurry, so that's a huge positive factor in my life. Oh, and a little bit ago I wrote a wiki in C, so that was neat. I need to redo it in Python since I quite liked the feel of it but C is obviously not a good language for writing a web service in. lambdamoo: https://git.sr.ht/~elly/lambdamoo quotes file: https://elly.town/d/quotes.txt wiki: https://elly.town/p/small/wiki.c % Monday, 2020-09-21 Stanley Park & Outlining Yesterday I spent a big chunk of the day (like 3 hours) exploring Stanley Park, which is I guess Vancouver's main park; certainly it has miles and miles of trails, some of which are quiet enough that I felt safe unmasking for a bit to breathe in some fresh air. I made my way up to Prospect Point, looking out over the entrance to the harbor, then walked back along the beaches on the west coast. The weather was incredible and it felt amazing to be back outside and in nature (after a fashion) for a while. I also started outlining for a longer-form story I want to write. I first started using a regular cryptee doc for it, which is pretty darn good, but I ended up wanting to have a more structured understanding of what I had and hadn't written yet, so I fired up TiddlyWiki to see if that was a good fit. It is, mostly, but it just isn't *quite* there for me. I might try writing a wiki as a CGI program or something to see how that feels, or perhaps writing a really simple local app for it. I have the nexus of an idea for it, but am not quite sure what form factor is best for what I want to do. Web means dealing (somehow) with authentication and stuff, but opens up sharing and reusability. How hard could writing a wiki be, anyway? The original one was like zero lines of Perl. I wonder how hard FastCGI is... Apart from *that*, not a whole lot else to say. I miss Liz. % Saturday, 2020-09-19 MeeT Breakfast: lemon poppyseed muffin, coffee Lunch: MeeT burger from MeeT, some artisan fake-Coke they had ~1700 Housework day went by quickly - it only took me about an hour to get the entire apartment done, which is a major positive change from the old place! After that I had my usual Saturday Eve fleet, then went out for a midafternoon meal with some friends at a place called MeeT (http://www.meetonmain.com/) which turned out to be amazing. I'm still very satisfyingly full a couple of hours after we ate. I will want to eat dinner at some point but I might just leave it late and have some leftover vindaloo from last night. Oh, and I ordered a standing desk :) Now: who knows what? I basically have the evening to myself. % Friday, 2020-09-18 Stanley Park! Breakfast: mango passionfruit coconut yogurt + granola, instant coffee, mango Lunch: PB&J Dinner: lamb vindaloo, naan, rice, some kind of dough thing that was good ~2100 Had a pretty darn good work day today. Met (over VC) with a noogler I've been helping get used to working on Chrome, got some good hacking done, added some tests to code that was badly needing it - all the hallmarks of a good workday. I ended a bit early, got on the phone with Ellie, and wandered over to Stanley Park, where I encountered some ducks and a gorgeous lake. It's still a bit smoky over here, so my photos didn't turn out particularly well. Tomorrow's housework day, and I'm developing a housework checklist for the new place: * Wipe kitchen surfaces & sink * Clean bathroom sinks * Wash the bedsheets * Clean the windows * Clean the shower * ...? Other stuff I want to do tomorrow: * Write a blog post * Get ve into a useable state * Run my needlejack fleet * Go out for late lunch! And now: bed :) % Thursday, 2020-09-17 Freedom!! Breakfast: greek yogurt + raspberries + granola + maple syrup & instant coffee Lunch: some vegan cheese (from "The Cultured Nut", lol) on ersatz Ritz, a pretty good granola bar Dinner: a steak & mushroom pie and a mini-lamington from an Australian pie place :D Whew! I'm free - technically I was free yesterday and celebrated with breakfast at Cora, but today I was not only free to go outside but had taken the day off work. I had breakfast at home and used up the last of the greek yogurt & raspberries, so tomorrow will be something else probably. After that I went for a wander north, partly to scout the area towards Stanley Park but partly to print a hard copy of our lease. I also managed to pick up a Compass card and make an appointment with a bank to get an account going, so I came home already feeling pretty accomplished. For lunch I improvised - I'd been really curious to try the vegan cheese (verdict: good, but not cheese). After that, I went to fight tne main boss of the day: getting a Canadian phone. That turned out to be a lengthy task, since I wanted a Pixel 4a, which is not in Canada yet, but I only found that out by asking like eight different stores. I also could not lay hands on a 3, 3a, or 4 without a contract. It was all pretty annoying. I really don't get why cell companies sell things like this: * $649 for the phone and $75/mo for the service, or * $0 for the phone and $85/mo for the service, 2 year contract like... okay. 85 * 24 = 2040. 75 * 24 + 649 = 2449. I do not understand why, if the phone is $650 currently, they would be willing to part with it for $240 spread out over 2 years. Obviously, they did not decide to sell a phone for $400 cheaper out of the goodness of their hearts, so they must be making extra somewhere on this deal, given the stridency with which their salespeople were pushing it. Anyway, I bailed on that one, because of the Big Companies Are Not Just Giving You Free Stuff principle, and found someone who would sell me a phone for a reasonable price on the spot and a decent cell plan also for a reasonable (prepaid) price. I like knowing where the other party in a transaction is making the money. A friend puzzled it out for my after some discussion: the 649+75 plan is a bait, to make the 0+85 plan look good by comparison. In fact, the 85 plan (or the 75 plan) is probably worth 30-40 a month at some other carrier, so the real comparison is: * $649 for the phone and $30/mo for the service, or * $0 for the phone and $85/mo for the service at which point locking you into option 2 for a couple of years is pretty darn lucrative for them. Anyway, enough about cell plans. I also found an Aussie pie shop near home :) It was extremely strong and I look forward to visiting it regularly. % Sunday, 2020-09-13 Isolation, Day Twelve Breakfast: greek yogurt + raspberries + granola + maple syrup & instant coffee ~0730: Crosswerb with M, then VC with my parents. Excellent morning so far :). I got wrapped up doing some tech writing yesterday and forgot to keep my actual journal, but that's alright - this is definitely a best-effort kind of situation anyway and much more of a theme than a goal. Yesterday's tech writing was about Lamport signatures & Merkle trees. I'm still not super happy with my explanation of the latter - I think I really needed a diagram, but making ASCII art by hand kinda sucks. Maybe I need an ASCII art image editor... I did start thinking about a text editor too. One of the problems I've run into on my previous attempts at making editors is that I end up with weird data- consistency bugs, or editing operations that don't behave quite the way I expect. This time I decided to think about it first and foremost by designing a rigorous calculus of text editing, and explicitly including a notion of where the cursor is into that calculus, to avoid problems where (eg) deleting a line moves the cursor to a strange place within the remaining text stream. I don't know if this will pan out, and C is a wretched language for expressing formal-ish stuff in, but it's fun and intellectually interesting. Maybe I'll blog about it once I get it fleshed out :) To do today: * Quarantine report * Flesh out this text editing calculus * Send out the weekly Sound newsletter * Experiment with TiddlyWiki * Do tabletop with Ants % Friday, 2020-09-11 Isolation, Day Ten ~2100: Cold, the air and water flowing Hard, the land we call our home Push to keep the dark from coming Feel the weight of what we owe This, the song of sons and daughters, Hide the heart of who we are Making peace to build our future, strong, united, working 'till we fall. Great work day today, and date night with Ellie in the evening. I was able to come back to and pick up some tasks I'd been neglecting for a long time and feel like I was making actual headway on them, so very much yay for that. I knocked out some unit tests for code I don't know well today too, which I really enjoy doing. A while ago I saw the C2 article for WikiGnome, which starts with: A WikiGnome works behind the scenes to tie up little loose ends, adding ISBNs of books that people mention, tracking down the authorship of "someone once said" quotes, correcting BrokenLinks, fixing BrokenWhitespace, answering AnswerMes, tirelessly replacing ChatMode with content, fixing misspellings, and, when appropriate, making ordinary words into WordsSmashedTogetherLikeSo. Sometimes I'm just in that mindset, so I go, find some area of the codebase that can use a little love, and just start improving it. It's a mode of work that I'm extremely comfortable in, and something I used to do a lot for fun as a student - a lot of my Angband contributions were of that type, for example. I keep thinking about TiddlyWiki and the "interactive nonlinear notebook" concept. It seems like it might be a great fit for me but I just can't find a model of it that seems to really... click. I'm not sure if I need a web-based one with a server, so I can take advantage of web navigation, or if I need a local app of some kind - maybe even something with an "object space" a la MOOs? I wonder what it would be like to try to use a MOO as a way to store knowledge. I have Joe Armstrong's "The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science" on as my background noise (sorta) right now. I might try to make a project of going through all the things he's mentioned and reading, understanding, and writing about them from my own perspective / as they relate to my own existence. I can't tell if that's useful or monumentally self-centered :) % Thursday, 2020-09-10 Isolation, Day Nine ~1700: Breakfast: Cora, yogurt & granola & fruit bowl + coffee Lunch: Trish Juice, veggie wrap & kale juice (mmm) Dinner: made myself pasta with vodka sauce & finished the kale juice Well and truly past the halfway mark of quarantine now. Figured out how to use the washer & dryer, which feels good; now navigating the electric stove for the first time, since my grocery delivery finally arrived. This place is festooned with sprinklers and smoke alarms and such so I'm being extra-careful to not create any smoke if at all possible. I still need to take trash out tonight and probably dilate again, but those can wait until after dinner (and after the dryer is done). It's sort of a weird feeling to settle back into "adulting" here - to need to spend energy & time on housework again, making myself food, and so on. I had been basically just holding off on all of those things, either because I was newly here (not much to clean after a week of one person!) or because I was missing key tools/supplies/etc. Today I'm running laundry, I need to take trash out after the dryer finishes, and... etc etc. It definitely makes it feel more home-y to start doing those things here. Electric stoves suck, though. I miss our gas range already after making one (1) thing on this one. I kinda get why they have one but still. I did write another blog post just now while waiting for the water to get hot, about the "broadcast buffer" thing I was struggling with a bit while writing a little toy IPC service. It always feels good to do some writing, technical or not :) ~2000: Did a bunch of Eve PvE with Liz. It wasn't much ISK but it was fun so overall a win. The best time to fight entropy is right when you first see it appear, because it's weakest when it's alone. It's easier to put a single thing back in its place than to pick up everything off a messy floor, and a messy floor invites things to be dropped on it while a clean one doesn't. I know this is true for me and I suspect it's true for most people. I've been trying to be really diligent about that here, using the move as a chance to reset my habits a little bit. So far so good. The real test will be whether I can keep them going in winter when it's cold and dark. % Wednesday, 2020-09-09 Isolation, Day Eight Breakfast: Prado Cafe, croissant + coffee Lunch: The Chopped Leaf, spicy chicken sandwich (again) Dinner: Daikichi Sushi Shop, various sushi & some gyoza The halfway mark! ~1145: Actually doing quite well, honestly. I'm excited to get to go outside again, but my mental health is really pretty okay. Liz left NY today, so that was a bunch of sad partings for that household. ~2100: Good times this evening thinking, doing a bit of hacking, and gaming with my brother and some of his friends. I miss my family but I am doing okay as a (temporary) singleton. Lots of talk at work about my feelings about moving, and other people staring at the same things that motivated us to leave in the first place - i.e., feeling unsafe, permanently exhausted & anxious, like there's no hope for the country. I can't wait to be able to go outside but even without that, I already feel better here. For whatever reason I'm thinking about twizmer, who was a... I almost wrote friend but I don't think that's right. He was a guy in some of my social circles at university, and we were on good terms, but we never really spent 1:1 time together or did any of the things I usually think of as Friend Stuff, except for the one summer when he and I were together in Santa Barbara - I was an intern there and he had just started full time after graduating. He died a few months after that summer, alone in his one bedroom apartment in Santa Barbara. Thinking about that gets me melancholy sometimes, especially when I'm on my own - obviously I don't feel in any specific danger here, but there is a definite sense of risk in aloneness that I can't really shake. His livejournal is still up, and presumably will be until LJ bites the dust. Sometimes I go reread it, because as I said, same social circles, so a lot of it is actually my college years kinda frozen in amber, seen through the lens of someone who'll never re-examine it. I know the people being written about, and the events, but the people I know as they are now and the events are pretty fuzzy and have the golden glow of the happy past over them, while to twizmer's LJ they are fresh and everyone is, well, as they were more than a decade ago. It's like a trip back through time. RIP Twizmer. % Tuesday, 2020-09-08 Isolation, Day Seven Breakfast: Cora, fruit salad & toast, creme anglaise on the side (mmm...) Lunch: leftover lamb vindaloo from last night Dinner: Burgoo, clam chowder & biscuits, salad Second real work day since I got here. Not a bad day - dominated by Perf Stuff, but still feeling productive. I wish my work ergonomics were better. [I got distracted and stopped writing here, dunno why.] % Monday, 2020-09-07 Isolation, Day Six Breakfast: Tim Horton's, sausage & egg biscuit and large coffee, donut for after Dinner: Kinara Indian Cuisine, lamb vindaloo with naan & rice, diet coke Today: * Done: Do quarantine reporting * Done: Receive more Amazon packages * Done: Assemble my desktop, hopefully * Done: Read more of this system design paper - on my laptop I guess, since my kindle can't really render it that well :\ * Done: Do some Eve logistics * Done: Run my needlejack fleet tonight at 2359 * Done: Play some more LIMBO * Do a TAOCP exercise! * Done: Write a blog post :) ~0730: This place is so lovely in the morning - I just get up, open all the windows, and breathe in the fresh morning air. It gets great sunlight, too. ~2130: A very full day. I got everything except my TAOCP exercise done. I spent a chunk of the morning writing a blog post ("Boring Protocols", ) and drafts of two others - one a summary of part of "Hints and Principles" and one a design sketch for a content-addressed store. A bit after lunchtime (which I forgot to eat, oops) my monitor arrived so I got my desktop out of its box and got to reassembling it, which marked my first time using thermal paste in anger, and also my first time attaching a CPU heat sink. After I had it assembled I found out that I didn't have a power strip, so I moved my desk & chair and everything else into my bedroom, producing something that is at least a little bit comfortable. It's waaay easier to play Eve on my real desktop, too. Ellie VCed in to help me with the assembly remotely, which was great since otherwise I would have just been like :???:. I also got a bunch of Disgaea 5 in during the middle of the day - still really liking the grind in that game. I'm hyped up to unlock the item world. I did one or two puzzles of LIMBO as well, but it's slow going since they are pretty difficult :) Ran an Eve fleet this evening, which was great - 33 kills, 3 losses: . After that, I went and bought the new ships for this weekend's Syndicate Patrol fleet. Also, I'm very glad my newsletter was well-received. I already have a couple of things to put into next week's edition! I'm getting to write a lot recently, which I just enjoy doing so much. Back to work tomorrow, finally! I'm eager to get back to it, feeling very recharged, energetic, and overall well-balanced mentally right now. Once I'm able to get some outside time and walk around / explore the neighborhood / get more fresh air and sunlight I think things will be really quite good for me. % Sunday, 2020-09-06 Isolation, Day Five ~1030: Crosswords with M this morning went well - around 58 minutes for the Sunday :). A bunch of cleaning supplies arrived too, which really helps with feeling agency about my space - like, I can wipe down the kitchen table now, and that sort of thing. My desktop is still sitting in its box awaiting a monitor, but once I have that going I'll be able to game properly as well. This place is feeling more and more like home, although I miss the rest of my family really really badly. Liz & Flurry will be here soon at least. Today: * Done: Quarantine report * Done: Mail out Sound newsletter * Done: Receive more packages * Done: Play some Switch * Done: Tabletop with my brother :) * Done: Build a third comp for Syndicate Patrol Third comp thoughts... I want it to be not too expensive so I can give it away. I want it to be pretty maneuverable so we can cover a lot of ground. I want it to have decent killing power if we catch something. Breakfast: Cora Breakfast & Lunch, plain oatmeal & coffee Lunch: Smak, salad (whatever they gave me, since they were out of my order) & "Zevia Cola" (?) Dinner: Fatburger, baby fatburger & diet coke I think I have my third comp and I think people are gonna be pretty hype for it :) Tabletop is a good time today... Heva did very well in an archery contest. I'm feeling a real urge to write again. % Saturday, 2020-09-05 Isolation, Day Four ~0900: Slept in a bit this morning, by which I mean that I woke up at 0500 and then forced myself back to sleep, so I got 8 hours of sleep last night and feel great. Stuff to do today: * Done: Receive more packages * Done: Split Sound's code of conduct out from the white paper - SOUND PR #5 :) * Done: Hack some more on emkay * Done: Read more of the system design paper * Done: Fire up my Switch? * Done: Lead Syndicate Patrol! * Done: Self-report symptoms (fortunately none) It feels like Sunday but is actually logical Saturday #2, with Saturday #3 tomorrow, then finally Sunday. Wild. The days are all blurring together a bit. Breakfast: Prado Cafe, Veggie breakfast sandwich & coffee Lunch: Nothing, oops Dinner: "Burgoo", cubano sandwich & salad, biscuits ~2200: First actual Good Day since I've gotten here. Fun on my Syndicate Patrol fleet today, then I watched the LCS Semifinals and played a bit of LIMBO on my Switch. After that I installed Disgaea 5, which is grindy as heck but very diverting, so I played a bunch of that in the lead up to dinner. After dinner I did a bit more of that, then we hassled some other locals in Eve until bedtime. Also did a *lot* of writing today, too - all on Eve stuff pretty much. Didn't do too much work on Emkay, just wrote down some higher-level commentary. % Friday, 2020-09-04 Isolation, Day Three ~0800: We have today as a corp holiday, so here's my to-do list: * Polish up umk & finish out the various XXXs * Done: Act on cala's feedback on my github PRs * Finish the system design paper I got * Hopefully receive a bunch of stuff from Amazon and other sources * Done: Check in with the quarantine people We'll see how it goes! ~0945: Well, I got a lot of the Amazon stuff, and now have a fully made bed for Liz when she arrives. Also, I got her NAFTA visa package from the lawyers :) so that is sorted too. I ceremonially made my first cup of tea in the new place - the first "food" I've been able to make here without ordering it from someone else, using the shiny new water heater & mugs Natalie (bless her) ordered for me from Amazon Canada. Later today I hope to get a bunch of flatware, plates, and a paring knife, which I plan to immediately abuse to break down all the boxes I've received so far. I really wish I had some surface cleaner... my Walmart grocery order seems to have fallen into an abyss. :( The main things I'll be missing at that point will be my desktop, monitor, and real keyboard - I'm especially missing having more screen space. Playing Eve on a struggling old 13" Macbook just isn't that good. My morale is considerably better than it was yesterday afternoon. As the stuff arrives the sense of helpless isolation lessens and this place starts to feel a bit more like home. Since quite a bit of the stuff we've gotten is either kinda low-quality (because it was bought expediently rather than with consideration) or just not really to my taste, I think we'll ask the leasing agency whether they want us to leave any of it here - I think it would really improve the experience for the next person if they arrived to a full set of plates and cutlery, at least. If not we'll just try to find somewhere to donate it, or maybe craigslist it or something. The rest of the day is going to involve a bunch of computering probably, and maybe some reading on my Kindle. I have to remember to take regular stretch breaks. I'm going to try to use the usually useless "hourly beep" mode on my watch to remind me. Also, a note about this file: the single '%' separator is a bit hard to see, so I'm going to instead use a blank line, then a '%', then a blank line. Oh, also also, I got my Amazon account back, so now I can order Whatever! :) ~1900: Well, I don't even care about my Walmart order any more. My "urgent box" from home, containing stuff that couldn't go on a plane but that I needed fast, arrived via DHL today, and then a bit after that a friend dropped off my Ikea order, which contained flatware, plates, mugs, and so on. Finally! I have at least the rudiments of a functional kitchen, although key stuff is still missing / to be ordered. This place is starting to feel a bit more like home, despite how much I miss Liz, Ellie, Natalie, and Flurry. Ah well, soon. I've been hacking for a lot of today on a thing I've named "emkay", which is a very opinionated build system. You can read about it here: https://git.sr.ht/~elly/emkay It's nowhere close to done, but as a sketch I think it shows what I'm trying to do. My goal is that, for projects with the structure I usually use, it should need little to no configuration - maybe just CFLAGS/LDFLAGS, that sort of thing. Breakfast: Cora Breakfast & Lunch again, this time the yogurt & granola bowl Lunch: leftover Indian food (from Indian Delicacy) Dinner: The Chopped Leaf, spicy chicken sandwich % Thursday, 2020-09-03 Isolation, Day Two Breakfast: "Cora Breakfast & Lunch", oatmeal (with english cream :o) & coffee Lunch: "Burgoo", cubano sandwich & salad Dinner: "Indian Delicacy", lamb vindaloo Trying out a different delivery place for each meal, since I still don't have the stuff needed to make myself food. I'm kind of tired of delivery food already. At least I'm slowly building up a stash of plastic cutlery. My attempts to get anyone to deliver me any of the stuff in quantity have persistently failed :(. Restlessness is definitely setting in - I often have the windows open and I can smell the fresh air from outside and see a bit of our new street, and I very much want to go explore the neighborhood & city. 13 more days. % Wednesday, 2020-09-02 Vancouver I made it to Vancouver today. Liz and I have been working for months on emigrating to escape the current US political climate and today we took a major step. Specifically, today I flew from New York to Seattle then Seattle to Vancouver and at the border I applied for (and got) a NAFTA work visa. In a couple of weeks Liz will follow with Flurry and we'll be reunited in the temporary place we're renting. Day started at 0430 New York time and as I'm sitting here writing this it's 2300 there, so I've been up for close to 20 hours now. I flew out of JFK on Alaska and had a 2-hour layover in the SeaTac Alaska lounge (utilitarian, but they gave me a life-sustaining chicken salad, so what can I really complain about?). JFK was totally deserted - like, I was the only person at the TSA checkpoint - but SeaTac was bustling, almost like it was a normal day. Long lines for shops, open restauants, the whole deal. It was pretty disorienting coming from NYC, which is only very tentatively starting to reopen now. The flight from SeaTac to Vancouver (YVR) was like, 20-25 minutes - not even enough time to actually get to FL300, so we made the flight "at" FL160 instead, although we started descent about two minutes after we reached cruise, so. Vancouver airport was more like JFK, with a massive and almost entirely empty concourse and lots of roped-off areas. Canadian immigration took me maybe 20 minutes to issue a NAFTA visa and then I was through, a Canadian temporary resident. The place we're renting is a short-term lease, which turned out to mean that it was furnished (yay!) but also lacking a lot of things you might expect out of a furnished place, like... linens, or dishes, or flatware. When I tried to order that stuff from amazon.ca (important note: amazon.com will ship to Canada, but it's International so it takes forever and costs a lot. You have to use amazon.ca to get stuff shipped from inside Canada), Amazon bounced my card and then my account. :( I ended up working myself into a bit of a panic about it by speculating about whether I'd have soap or towels to shower with tomorrow, but a local friend of mine did me a massive solid and went and bought enough supplies to sustain life, so that crisis was headed off. I got some Five Guys for a stress-eat dinner. Important discovery: the burger does not come with anything by default. I was like "add mayo", foolishly skipping over the lettuce & tomato section, and I ended up with exactly what I ordered: a burger with two patties, two slices of cheese, and some mayo. It wasn't *bad* but it was definitely not what I really wanted. Lesson learned! The weather here is actually mild enough that I might just leave the windows open for now. It's supposed to get down to 58F / 14C tonight, then back up to 75F / 22C tomorrow, both of which are totally livable temperatures. I don't have a blanket for the bed currently so I might get a little cold - we'll see. Not much for it anyway.