mdlbear | Done last week (20160705Tu

Almost no writing this week, even counting LJ posts; I have, however, been spending time catching up with home software/ops-related tasks, so I'm going to count that as writing time, if not word count. A little more productive at work than two weeks ago, although I wasted a lot of time getting back to where I had been before a rebase.

Apart from that, though, things are going better at work than I expected them to. I'm getting things done at home, too -- notably, working with Glenn to bring Naomi's enormous new chair downstairs. Tight fit, but we did it. (It's either a huge chair or a smallish loveseat. Either way, it's gorgeous but at 32" just barely fit through the doors.)

Went out for sushi with Colleen, Rabbit, and Chaos, in honor of Chaos's 31st birthday. I'm too young to have a daughter in her thirties, right? Oh. Right.

The high point of the week, though, was going to the West Seattle Summerfest yesterday with Colleen and Naomi. Glenn on the way there, though he left early. Rather than try to load everyone into the van, hassle with parking, and load and unload the scooter, I simply made sure both scooters' batteries were charged, and we st/rolled. Fun.

There was a tiny house on display, from Seattle Tiny Homes -- the bathroom was awesome, with a walk-in tub, washer, and wall-mounted dryer. All in about 5x8 feet. We'll definitely be working with those people. Also with the solar power people. And in the more immediate future, Naomi found a builder that we might use for the basement water-damage repair.

We also bought some fun art prints. And Naomi insisted that I buy a hat, which she said fits me the way my leather jacket does; I can't say she's wrong about that. It's the 8-section style in tweed, but every section is a subtly different color and weave. Kind of awesome, actually.

I told N on the way back that it was the most fun I'd had in a long time; she said that was good, but it's unfortunate that I haven't been having more fun lately. Not sure what to do about that. I procrastinate, so I have a strong tendency to prioritize the more important things I'm not doing over the fun things I'm not doing. And figuring out what "fun" means is another problem -- I also have a tendency to dread doing things, especially new things, but to enjoy them after I get pushed into doing them. I think yesterday's expedition might have been an exception.

Westercon was not an exception -- I hadn't really expected to go, and expected it to be stressful. I enjoyed giving my concert, but hadn't expected to be doing that, either -- I only found out about it after I'd committed to going.

Notes & links:

0705Tu
* up 6:35; W=200.2; laundry,
: Coffee grinder appears to have died. :P
& at work, demonstrated xmonad to Matt L
: 7:25pm - Ticia being adorable in her box.
& long-awaited re-org in Config/dotfiles -- change names from .* to _* for visibility.

0706We
& awake 3:30ish
* Up 4:40; ; laundry
* Tried plugging in the Samsung monitor, which I had disassembled a couple of weeks
ago. It appears to be working now, though that could just be a matter of ambient
light. In any case, it's a good monitor when it's working, so I'll take it.
* Writing: 290 words in done/westercon post.
* 11am - Colleen - Harborview - Afzali
* Brought down N's enormous chair. I determined that it wouldn't fit through the back
gate, so G and I rolled it around half the block on the RockNRoller. It worked better
than we had any right to expect. (As it turned out I had mis-measured it, up the back
rather than vertically, but it was tight regardless. An actual 36" would have been
next to impossible.) Took about an hour. Fun!
: Another cool thing about xmonad -- if your external monitor is switched over to
another machine, it's still fully usable.
* out for sushi with Chaos - -Blue C- _SushiLand_; Kat, Cat, me, and Alex
I'm too young to have a daughter over 30. Aren't I? Frozen yougurt afterwards.
% my back hurts.
% 9ish starting to get drifty.
* reduce Kat's allowance to 50/week
* pay amex, mortgage(s)

0707Th
* up 6:17; W=198.2; laundry, dishes
* verify that idle/daily pushed Private. -> yes, according to the log
@ Project Zero: How to Compromise the Enterprise Endpoint
Got Semantec or Norton? Get rid of it. Now. (Or patch it ASAP, and hope there
aren't a whole slew of similar exploits that haven't been found yet. Good luck.)
: Protests downtown over police shootings; check tomorrow to see if routes are ok.
* experimented with flac. Could probably save about 60G in users/record (about 25%;
a lot of the rest is Audacity projects and video, which are harder to compress)
One is really tempted to use git with a smudge filter, but really the biggest gain
would be from simply dropping .wav and switching all the workflows over to flac.
Two lines, one time, and I get back 60GB. What's not to like?
git+flac would be good for the Audacity projects, which total 58G; putting them on a
branch would archive them without leaving them around.

0708Fr
* up 6:17; W=200.6; dishes,... laundry
* things are somewhat less dire at work. Though that could change--I'm going oncall
next week. Meanwhile I can relax some. My job appears to be reasonably secure if I
can keep up my present pace until the end of the year without burning out completely.
: Naturally, the first full day of my first primary oncall is Prime Day.
* writing: 80 words in my gratitude post. (after subtracting the number of lines, since
there's roughly one tag per line in a post consisting almost entirely of a list.)
% 10ish sleepy.

0709Sa
* Up 6am; W=200.6; laundry, shower, ... dishes
@ Swap Two Variables Without Using a Temp Variable (With Math!) - Chris Taylor
Generalizes the xor trick using any group operation. Found via a dive on
Zippers as Derivatives of types, which in turn came from XMonad.Core
& fixed makefiles and scripts in Config.
* West Seattle SummerFest with Colleen and Naomi. Fun! They insisted that I buy a hat.
It's one of the segmented "driver's cap" style, in tweed, but the segments are all
(somewhat subtly) colored. Also some great prints, some pickles, and N got a dress.
Lots of good contacts for home repair, solar, and tiny houses. The tiny house had an
*awesome* bathroom -- walk-in tub, washer, and wall-mounted dryer.
% I am, however, kind of wiped out. Walking at a slow pace for two or three hours.
! Happy? I described it to N as the most fun I've had in a long time, so I guess so.
* Beef stroganoff for dinner. Forgot the egg noodles, so it's just fettuccini.
% Too much standing. My lower back is mildly outraged. Didn't think to get my
slippers-with-superfeet-insoles until about the middle, but I'm glad I did.
% 9:15 getting drifty