Hippo, birdies, two ewes...

... to nightface!!! Have a great one!!

Done yesterday (20091124 Tu)

( raw notes )

A moderately productive day, mostly thanks to a meeting at work where a coworker who's moving to another group went over the software he's leaving us, in detail. It's all in well-documented Python, which will give me an opportunity to get more familiar with the language.

And a good insight, though I'm not entirely sure where it leads yet: I avoid different categories of things for different underlying reasons. I avoid financial stuff because it makes me uncomfortable to think about. I avoid social encounters because I'm uncomfortable when I don't know what to do or say. That's also part of why I don't learn languages. Some other things I just avoid because they're less fun or less interesting than, e.g., LJ.

So there's a clear distinction between things that make me uncomfortable (with at least two subcategories), and things that I just would rather not do. They'll probably have to be worked on in different ways. I'm not sure which will be harder: accepting a certain level of discomfort as I work my way up to the really scary stuff, or adjusting my priorities and managing my time so the disagreeable stuff gets done alongside the fun stuff. Donwannagrowup!

A fair number of links (see above in the raw notes); the most thought-provoking was this article in the New York Times about oxytocin:

In their new study, Dr. Rodrigues and Laura R. Saslow and Dacher Keltner of the University of California, Berkeley, looked at how two variants in the genetic code for the receptor might influence a person's capacity for empathy, as measured by a standard empathy questionnaire ("I really get involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel") and a behavioral task called "Reading the Mind in the Eyes." In it, participants looked at 36 black-and-white photographs of people's eyes and were asked to choose the word that best described each subject’s mood. Uneasy, defiant, contemplative, playful? In a related measure of oxytocin’s presumed calming effects, subjects were also tested for how strongly they reacted to the stress of hearing a series of loud noises.

Hmmm...

Thankful Wednesday

Normally I'd be posting a Wishful Wednesday about now, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I'll be on the road most of the day, and I'm unlikely to find the time or energy to post. And I have a lot to be thankful for.

• First and always, Colleen: my lover, partner, dear friend, and wife of nearly 34 years (our anniversary party will be January 2nd; you're invited). (The rest of the items below are in no particular order.)
• Colleen's slow, unsteady, but definite and pretty amazing recovery.
• Her scooter, Rosebud. She learned to stand up in it yesterday, which gives her an extra couple of inches of reach in addition to being convenient and stable.
• My own health, which while not fantastic is good enough to keep me as functional as I need to be. My own gradual recovery from a lifetime of disthymia.
• My job -- great people to work with, interesting work, very understanding management, and good health insurance. Wow, am I grateful for health insurance this year.
• Our kids, who are growing up to be Good People in spite of all the mistakes we undoubtedly made in raising them.
• Our friends, hers, mine, and ours. Especially my sister-of-choice Naomi, my sister-out-law-of-choice Callie, and my sister-of-choice-in-law Marty. (Working out the details of the nomenclature is left as an exercise for the reader.) But also extending to all of you. I'm glad you're out there, even if all you do is leave me an encouraging comment now and then, or write the occasional post that lifts my spirits or makes me think.
• Music, especially when shared with friends.
• The filk community, which is mostly who I share music with.
• Powell's
• Safeway.com, which allows Colleen to do most of the grocery shopping all by herself.
• Backups. Not only mine, but the ones made at the Stanford AI Lab more than three decades ago, lovingly restored by BGB and on the web at SAILdart with all of my files not only from that era, but from my years at Carleton, copied from the original Hollerith cards in an honest-to-Turing monoliths-under-glass real computer center. With less compute power than my cell phone.
• Moore's Law.
• Good Drugs.
• Reconnecting with myself.