Sam's L33t Journal

Julie was in NYC this weekend for a bike ride event with her dad and Kristin and Emilia. I had a beautiful weekend at home with Erica. I belatedly realized that it was the weekend of Somerville Open Studios, and we wound up exploring several art galleries tucked into the Milk Row neighborhood on our way back from climbing on Saturday. On Sunday, we went to see the open house at the Friend Museum (i.e the home of Martha Friend; the exterior alone is a notable Somerville landmark). We caught a few more gallery and outdoor showings on our way back. Other highlights of our weekend included the art of Lexi Havlin, Kelly Ann Clark McCormack, and Akira Fujita. The scale of the event is really impressive, with over 120 places in the city participating.

The city is so beautiful in the spring. The moment that stands out most in my memory was standing under some overhanging wisteria that a whole crew of carpenter bees was busily foraging with an audible buzz.

There was some scattered rain this weekend, but the bits between were beautiful. We mostly managed to avoid getting caught out in it.

We did a lot of art activities at home, too: The big project was egg-decorating, from the Easter basket Mary got for Erica. Erica made a cord bracelet, and built some Lego.

After finishing Death's Door, I've started playing Spiritfarer . Which I guess takes a completely different take (in terms of game mechanics and whole general vibe) on exactly the same topic.

Some of my extended team was in town this week, so there were some team social things. Went to Flight Club in the Seaport, a darts place with bowling-alley-style computerized scoring. I'm probably better at darts than bowling, but pretty terrible at both. Still was fun, the food was quite good there, too.

The weather has been a little more overcast and foggy and cool, but reasonably nice.

This weekend, I did a bit of cooking on Saturday afternoon. Made homemade refried beans and seasoned beef and tortillas for tacos. The tortillas turned out as good as I wanted this time, I got the consistency right and prepared the pan right and didn't forget to add a little salt.

We decided to have a family movie outing, so we went to see Paddington in Peru at the Assembly AMC this afternoon. And we watched the previous installment in the series at home yesterday, which I paid half attention to while I cooked. Those movies are not at the top of my recommendation list, but they're okay.

This week we had all sorts of weather.

On an extremely foggy Tuesday, I took Erica and her friend George to a robotics night at the Somerville High School. Despite the fog, it was a pretty nice day, and the holiday lights in the neighborhood are really beautiful.

On Wednesday, there was pouring rain. One of the Big Dig tunnels flooded in downtown Boston, which was a bit of a mess.

This weekend, Julie and I took Erica to the Saturday matinee of The Nutcracker by the Boston Ballet. Was even better than I expected, and I expected it would be very good. The Ballet also has a pretty large children's ensemble, which they put to funny and adorable use in the performance.

Winter break fast approaches. Hard to believe the year is almost over.

It was a warm day today, but windy, and it seems all the trees in Cambridge that were late to the party decided to shed all their leaves at once. Pretty, but seemed like enough sharp, swirling edges to be downright perilous.

I had a dentist appointment today, which went all right.

I have so many things to ramp up on at work. Emscripten is confusing. WebGPU is fun but graphics programming is always confusing. Another of my more senior teammates is leaving the team, moving on to another thing at Google that's a great fit for him, but I'll miss working with him. So much churn this year.

Other links:

My brother now has an Etsy store for his wildlife photography.

Bop Spotter (h/t SMTM)

Cargo airships might be a big deal soon. Nifty if it pans out.

As the election approaches, I continue to be filled with dread. The rhetoric from Trump and co is so much worse than it was in 2016. Which would've been kind of hard to imagine in 2016, but the "moderate Republicans" Trump felt he had to appeal to somewhat in 2016 are nonexistent now, at least as far as he's concerned.

The flood damage from the last hurricane was severe, the next hurricane looks terrifying. And it seems like the GOP will lie about and outright sabotage the federal response to any disaster because they believe an effective response would be to Harris's political advantage.

On the world stage, the now-year-long war between Israel and Hamas threatens to widen into a wider regional war. This reflection by Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov has been on my metaphorical desk for some time. I think it's insightful, though I don't have insight to add. I also want to share Scott Aaronson's post here and second his call for nations offering refugee status to those who seek to leave the conflict zone. (But I'm pretty much always in favor of more acceptance of refugees who seek to live their lives in peace.)

I really don't want another Trump Presidency. I really don't want to have to explain any of this.

Last weekend was warm, but by mid-week trick-or-treating it was getting chilly, to the point that I was getting out my winter jacket and putting on the longjohns (winter coziness tech that's a go-to for me from like November to May). But then this weekend was pretty warm again.

Saturday, I took Erica climbing while Julie went for a bike ride. Played some Mario Wonder in the morning. In the evening, went on a date with Julie to Oak Bistro in Inman while Erica spent some time with Mary at home.

Today, Julie took Erica to see the Frozen stage play, while I had a quiet day.

I tried to write a post for my essay blog, but things didn't really come together. But have some interesting links that have been rattling around my head for a few days:

• An interesting review of the book Going Infinite, about about-to-be-jailed fraudster SBF
• "The Talk: a brief explanation of sexual dimorphism", about why all complex organisms spend so much effort to pass on only half of their genes, which goes beyond the first-take explanation about the downsides of cloning

Summer isn't done with us yet.

I've got this Nest thermostat, and if you're not familiar with that sort of "smart" thermostat, it does two things re AC in the summer:

1. Try to learn what temperature you like it.

2. Set it to much warmer than that temperature to save you money.

The feature that sets it warmer when you're actually not in the house is fine, but the "rush hour" feature that sets it a little warmer at "peak" times (i.e. when you, too, most want your air well conditioned) is a bit more aggravating. This year especially. It seems to me like in past years it would set things a few degrees higher, but when my schedule says 73 and the thermostat is like "how about 79?" that seems a bit much.

Actually, there are a lot of ways I wish Nest was a bit smarter. There's no way for it to look at my calendar and pre-cool/warm the house when I get back from a vacation. Or even have me tell it when I'm getting back manually and have it take that into account. It doesn't adjust the schedule to my preferences that well. It supports multiple temperature sensors, but only supports looking at one at a time and only can switch between on a fixed schedule. It can't do anything based on the difference in temperatures (in particular, I'd like it to run the fan if only some of the sensors are as cool as I want). The fan can be run automatically if it wouldn't otherwise be on, but only on a fixed schedule.

All right, enough rambling on that topic. Summer is coming to an end one way or another. My mom brought Erica back to town, had a wonderful time doing stuff together, she got to go to school dropoff for Erica's first day of second grade. Then she got COVID after returning home. At least she's feeling better after a prompt course of Paxlovid. We haven't gotten sick yet, but school year's started and stuff is going around.

Had a good long weekend with some extra climbing and a trip to the Science Museum. Also took Erica to the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum (touristy, but educational, hadn't been in ages). Erica -acted very closed-off and shy, but then said she enjoyed it.

This week, some of the computer systems are down at kid's school after some sort of security issue (a ransomware attack, maybe, they haven't been real forthcoming with the details).

I had one of Erica's friends over on Tuesday and Erica's at his house today. Nice to have a break, but sometimes I get stressed out when I have a break. So much to do, so little time. (And yet I manage to get to some things, like hammering some words onto the virtual page here. It's good.)

I'm enjoying the new Magic set, though I feel like I haven't figured out a deck to do well in new Standard. Want to play some limited of the new set, haven't had the time.

Also been really enjoying the Netflix One Piece. I'm not real familiar with the anime or manga, but people more familiar seem to think it's a good adaptation in addition to being generally good. Amazing how well you can do with that sort of thing when the people doing the adapting clearly like the source material and understand why it's good.

I was up a bit late with Erica last night after Julie ducked out for early bed, and Erica was very upset about something about a game; big feelings about little problems. But eventually she helped me finish cooking a batch of beans (which I enjoy because I'm finally figuring out how to get those really good in the Instant Pot). I appreciate her help on that, she's the #1 fan of beans in this household, so I really want to be able to make them up to her standards. We had some good conversation about all sorts of things, including how to describe different kinds of spices and computer security.

Too much going on, here and around. So multipost time:

The Biden docs - So it turns out that Biden and everyone left classified docs everywhere in the course of their work? It definitely seems that several things are broken with how this sort of stuff is managed, but it's super-aggravating that's going to be the basis for equivocation between Biden (and Pence, and whoever) misplacing a few confidential things in the course of their work and Trump (who AFAICT did not work) just walking out the doors with boxes and boxes of the stuff because he thinks he's still President, and then trying like seventeen contradictory coverups when people noticed he was just waving the docs around to whoever. At the very least.

Been meaning to say something on the topic for ages and failing. Why does the situation have to be so dumb?!

The SOTU - Seems it went well for the Democrats, when it garners feedback like this and this. Even Trump had some positive words. (What happened, he watch the speech alone? Get Trump into a one-on-one with Biden and Trump will wind up liking the guy. Temporarily, anyways. He's malleable.)

Google's AI push - Gonna be "fun" with the "Google goes all-in on something" push, hope it goes better than last time. So far this hard steering (maximum chaos layoffs, product launches timed by external factors) does not seem to have helped the company in investors' eyes. The most amusing framework (though not exactly totally accurate, it over-implies the market does things for reasons) is that the James Webb Space Telescope managed to cost Google more than NASA.

On more prosaic work notes, the new desk space is working out pretty well. Same building, higher floor, but just across a connector from one of the new building's new cafeterias.

Weathering the weather whatever the weather - For February, this weather is wild, and that first letter is upside-down. Might make it through the whole winter without a significant snow-day, we'll see.

Tunic - I started playing a new game, an old-school Zelda meets Dark Souls number and it is glorious. It's fun and beautiful and charming. The aforementioned mashup of elements aside, a key feature of this game is that it captures one of the interesting aspects of exploration in old-school gaming by putting much of the interface in mysterious runes, not really explaining how things work in the game's normal flow, and giving you a beautiful but partially-complete manual, written in an unknown language with a few familiar words, with penciled-in margin notes. Some real nostalgia there, I suppose (it's potent anemoia in my case), for those who had some experience playing import-only games from a nation with a long tradition of video gaming innovation and also throwing in a few English words for spice.

The further twist is that the pages of this manual are a collectible item in the game. Don't ask too much about how that works diagetically, I don't know that there's a coherent explanation for that at all, but it's really effective in making knowledge about how the game works (whether figured out through collection and interpretation or unguided exploration) a well-won prize, while still handing out key bits of knowledge that end up being as much "the thing that unlocks the next area" as the in-game items.

Magic - New set's out, as the ancient evil that wants to compleately perfect Magic's multiverse by turning everyone into Geiger-esque cyborg monstrosities has broken the shell of the world (of Mirroden) and launched their omninvasion, with the heroes' plan to stop that definitely not going as planned. The set's pretty fun so far, at least there's some new stuff to shake up Standard. I played two rounds of sealed today, cratered 1-3 in the first but went 7-1 in the second (limited matches in Magic: Arena go to the first of seven wins or three losses). That second match had it all: Managing to overcome an opponent who played two copies of The Eternal Wanderer (wish my sealed pools were like that, that's for sure), braining an opponent with that third ability on The Filigree Sylex, and combining Paladin of Predation and Sylvok Battle-Chair to defeat my last opponent two ways simultaneously.

Temps in the 80s yesterday and in the 90s today, before descending to something more normal in the coming week. It's not even June yet.

Yesterday, Julie was able to arrange for a vaccine booster for kid, and we dealt with various errands in the morning. In the afternoon, we regrouped in Arlington for an Ingress Anomaly, the latest in their series of in-game events. Wasn't much of a game, since our blue-team opponents didn't show! Which is odd, it's not like Boston Resistance has been dormant lately, they've shown up for smaller events and for the previous round of this series. Was still fun to wander around Arlington Center with our teammates. I went to Abbot's Frozen Custard, which was great. On the way home, we stopped in Davis Square for dinner. Patios were packed, but we found a spot at Out of the Blue, which I've been meaning to try for ages. Had a fantastic time.

Today, there was one of the Fancy Dress Teas in the Park organized by my friend Sarah, this time in a park near the Mystic River in Everett, and I took Eris to that. Was great to meet Sarah's baby, a fellow Sam (named, it turns out, at least in part after Diskworld's Vimes). Was great to see people in general, well worth braving the heat.

Julie made a great dinner, a root vegetable larb with some of the selections from this week's vegetable box.

One of the big bits of local news for this week was the MBTA's announcement of their bus network redesign plan. It reminds me rather a lot of a similar recent redesign in Cleveland, improving frequency of service and overall network connectivity in exchange for a bit more space between routes. For my neighborhood in Union Square (always a transit hub, now more so with the new green line connection), the redesign seems like it will improve connectivity to almost everywhere I go. The exceptions are that the connection out to Arlington is a little less direct, and direct options for my commute to Kendall are pruned (but those were already less frequent and weekday-only, and the indirect options are improved enough that overall convenience might be about the same).

Yesterday it snowed a whole lot. Waded to the park with Eris yesterday, then spent some time today digging out our door/garage. Our condo pays for snow removal, but like last time our snow removal service (functional last year) had big problems.

The COVID wave here seems to be waning.

It really frustrates me to see the lack of unity on pandemic mitigation. Like I read Angie Schmitt's stuff on Twitter, she's a person who writes a lot about pedestrian safety, really gets how bad health outcomes that are caused by doing things "the normal way" just get swept under the rug. But she's become a person whose number-one priority is having hard precomitments about when we can just stop trying re pandemic mitigation. Like I get it, I'm very glad schools are open here. "Schools closed, bars open" is insane, children shouldn't (and can't) do pandemic mitigation alone, it's terribly unfair just to cease the inexpensive public gatherings. But I'm glad that the kids are expected to try to help with pandemic mitigation here along with everyone, it seems like the right thing to do given that the pandemic is still ongoing and the long-term effects of COVID, even on kids specifically, are still unknown. It seems insane to me the degree to which people play up the mental-health impact of things as relatively innocuous as masking, while downplaying the mental-health impact of the pandemic itself. And the fact is, children's mental health wasn't all sunshine and roses pre-pandemic. Just insisting everything is normal now isn't a quick fix.