Sam's L33t Journal

This Saturday was Somerville city-wide music festival, Porchfest. I didn't wander far for it this year, but the part that was in my neighborhood was a ton of fun, especially since the bit of rain from the early afternoon had cleared and the weather was lovely. The city's adjustments to the event from last year (mostly steering it away from a few major roads, in exchange clearing more traffic from side streets) seemed like they worked well. Some people were upset that it wasn't postponed to the Sunday rain day, but I understand the city's decision. It's an outdoor event, so participants should be prepared to contend with some weather, and while Sunday's weather was better, there was other stuff going on and some people would be inconvenienced either way.

It's pretty amazing to see an event where hundreds of bands perform and there are thousands of people out in the streets, kids were selling lemonade in Prospect Hill Park and Wade's BBQ wheeled their trailer smokehouse out back of Sanborn Court. There was a bit of amusement in the local blog-o-sphere when some article included Union Square in a list of "coolest neighborhoods in the world" late last year. Like I'm a big Somerville booster for sure, but never mind the world, is Union even in the top 38 coolest neighborhoods in Boston? But on days like that, maybe I can believe it.

Sunday was Mother's Day, so family time. Erica was definitely very much involved in the planning. We had a nice light brunch, went to the aquarium and spent some time downtown, and had a nice dinner out at Gufo. Still miss Loyal Nine, but it's beautiful.

It's a beautiful time of year. There's a lot going on around Kendall as well. The groundskeepers at a lot of the buildings (probably all Boston Properties people, given the area) were laying down fresh mulch and it smelled unbelievably nice this time (cedar wood, maybe?). There's a ton of construction going on at the new Life Sciences Center. And the Volpe Center demolition has started in earnest. Basically the whole lot has been cleared aside from the main tower. I thought they hadn't started on the tower yet, but they've clearly started on the interior, the top few floors are missing their windows and look totally stripped inside, aside from the structural elements. Actually taking the structure down is sure to be a dramatic project.

This week is Erica's school break, and I took Erica to Cleveland to visit my parents while Julie gets a focus week back at home. Had the Monday holiday off, but the rest of the week was "working from elsewhere" for me.

Last Sunday, our travel day, was very snowy overnight and rain and heavy clouds all day in Boston. Bad weather in Cleveland, too. As a result, our 10AM flight became a 4PM flight. Erica had bought a matching sweater-and-sweatpants set with her allowance at Target on Sunday which she wanted especially for the trip, she definitely got the most use out of her airport loungewear. Still, overall it was a reasonably pleasant travel day. And it was in a way lucky that we had to wear boots in the morning to wade to our airport ride, and thus had to have our boots and couldn't neglect to pack them. It's been snowy all week here, so we've been wading through snow all week.

There was another brief delay in our flight as the plane had to do an abrupt go-around before landing on the second attempt. It was a pretty dramatic maneuver, and someone a few rows back form us was overcome by motion sickness and lost their lunch. But of course it could've been worse.

On Monday, we got to catch up with Dan and Anne and Isaac and baby Naomi, who has doubled in size since I last saw her and become extremely engaged and vocal. I also got to catch up with Markos Monday evening, played a bit of kitchen table Magic. Took me back, though I kept embarrassingly misreading the cards.

On Tuesday evening, we went to a concert at CIM featuring Olga and Daniel Kaler with Michelle Bushkova. Was really great. Had to duck out at intermission because of kid bedtime (but had thought that might be the case).

On Wednesday evening, we saw a "Picasso and Paper" special exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

On Thursday evening, we went out to dinner at Tita Flora's, a Filipino restaurant which was really good.

Friday evening, had a nice Shabbat dinner at home and my Uncle Jonathan came over.

And of course Erica has been up to all sorts of activities with my parents during my workdays.

For lunch, I made excursions to a bunch of places nearby, mostly on Larchmere. I did get to Michael's Diner in Shaker Square, which I love (it's a wonderful, classic train-station diner). But Shaker Square does seem, as always, a bit cursed. A new cafe will be opening in the again-vacant cafe spot soon, at least. Brandon Chrostowski's restaurants Edwins Restaurant and Edwins Too closed on Monday, relocating to the former Nighttown jazz club space. Didn't get to go there again, but fancy for a random weekday, but at least I did get to go a few times. Lovely memories. I'm sure they will make the most of the Nighttown space, too, it's a great space. I did go to the other Edwins restaurant in the area, their bakery and deli venture, which as far as I know is staying put. Had an excellent pastrami on rye. The restaurants are all run by Chrostowski's nonprofit, which has a mission of helping former prisoners with reentry support and job training in the hospitality industry.

Hopefully tomorrow's return trip will go smoothly. Weather will be better this time at least.

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.

Went home with Julie and Erica for Thanksgiving. Quick trip this time, but was great to see the family. Melissa's family was in town, too.

This year I am thankful that of all the terrors at humanity's doorstep, some of them have been put off so far, and some could continue to.

Best reading from this weekend is Noah Smith's post No, You Are Not on Indigenous Land, a really cogent takedown of (including nominally-"decolonial") ethnonatialism.

The latest political news is Joe Biden's blanket pardon of his son, Hunter Biden. It is sad that we have come to this, and despicable that Biden is reneging on his promises. Unlike Charles Kushner, the father of Trump's son-in-law who he pardoned for witness tampering and then nominated for an ambassadorship, Hunter Biden surely wouldn't have been prosecuted but for his association with the President in question. But say, maybe Biden should just go ahead and pardon the January 6 criminals himself at this point. Surely they are more worthy: After all, not only their prosecutions but also their crimes would not have happened but for Trump.

Long weekend this weekend. With Julie busy with startup life, I was on parenting duty all three days.

Saturday, I took Erica to her swim lesson, then convinced her to go to cafe meetup with Ingress teammates with the prospect of frozen custard at Abbot's after, only to realize after that it was closed for the season. What sort of Boston ice cream place closes for the winter?! We tried to go climbing later in the afternoon only to find that was also closed for a competition. So we went to Hub Comics for a bit and then home.

Sunday, I did go climbing with Erica, and also ice skating at Veteran's Rink. So I was pretty sore after.

Today, Erica visited a friend in the morning while I did my usual workout, and then we went to the science museum. After, we took a walk across North Bank Bridge and the Gridley Locks to have a snack at Night Shift. Beautiful day, the fall continues to be unusually warm.

The Halloween events continue. Friday, there was the Character Day parade at Erica's school (a K-3 event, so her last time participating). This evening, Julie took Erica to a haunted house at Harvard, which apparently Erica found more than a bit scary.

This afternoon, we all went to see The Wild Robot, which was pretty fun.

Work has been pretty busy, as my team has been ramping up on phase two of a big project. Speaking of which (belatedly, I missed mentioning this here earlier), the end of the first phase of that means a good chunk of our work has been publicly released, it's out in alpha on Android Jetpack (announcement blog post), the cross-platform C++ core is on GitHub here. I'm doing a lot more web graphics studying at work, spent some of my time last week on the WebGPU codelab here, which was pretty interesting, it's a powerful API.

Had a few quiet weeks while Erica was on her Cleveland trip. I got in a slightly belated anniversary celebration with Julie, we went to the 11th annual Julia Child dinner at Puritan & Company, which was a phenomenal meal.

After that, had a long weekend in Cleveland before the school year commenced. Went to the One World Day festival at the cultural gardens, took Erica to the Museum of Illusions (one of those "Instagram museums") at my mom's suggestion, had some good food, including at Michael's Diner (train station diner in the middle of Shaker Square and the last one standing among long-lived Shaker Square places that I have a great deal of nostalgia for) and the West Side Market Cafe (the Lake Erie Walleye sandwich was really quite good).

Erica was pretty excited about the return to school, though there are the usual ups and downs of the class shuffle. She's in the same class as George this year, though some of her other close friends aren't in the same class this time around.

Then after the short school week, we had another extra long weekend. I took Erica to the ICA Watershed yesterday to see Hew Locke's sculpture installation, "The Procession". Really cool exhibit, Julie had taken the chance to see it while I was away in Cleveland with Erica and arranged for me and Erica to see it after we got back. I also did some cooking yesterday, the veggie box this week was full of hot peppers and I got a bad case of pepper hands (note to self: don't skip the gloves next time). Today, I took Erica climbing. This evening we're going to dinner at Oleana to celebrate the start of the school year.

Two weeks ago, my parents were in town along with Melissa and Simon, and boy was I ever excited about Erica getting some time with her little cousin and Simon getting the chance to visit Boston. He's two-and-a-half so I don't expect he'll remember it per se, but he's old enough for the visit to make an impression. (And Simon has really learned so much, even just in the last few months. He's often quiet but surprisingly articulate when he wants to speak up, he seems to think carefully about what he wants to say.)

It was a good occasion to do some touristy things with the family. They arrived on Tuesday evening and we had a nice dinner out at Josephine. On Wednesday, we went to the aquarium, then took the ferry to Charlestown and saw the USS Constitution Museum. On Thursday, we went to the Institute for Contemporary Art and the Children's Museum, having ice cream pastry at Taiyaki NYC and stopping by Martin's Park before dinner. On Friday, we went to Petsi Pies for breakfast, then to the Franklin Park Zoo. Lots of great food and great times.

Then we all went to Sandy Island Camp for a week. The trip up went unusually quickly, and the week had pretty good weather (got caught out in the rain one evening, but the weather was good most days and the nights were generally not too hot). As usual, I read a lot of books:

Unsong by Scott Alexander - By the author of the extremely clever and insightful blogs Slate Star Codex and (its successor Substack) Astral Codex Ten, originally released as serial web fiction here (though the compiled book is a bit different on account of an editing pass and some mild rewrites). The protagonist, an aspiring Kabbalist (turned data-mining sweatshop worker after running afoul of intellectual property law) makes an unexpected discovery which sets off an apocalypse. If you like other absurdist speculative fiction by writers like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, this might be up your alley.

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis - Tells the story of IEX, a new (founded 2012) stock exchange that sought to thwart various forms of front running done by high-frequency traders. Pretty interesting.

The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow - Second in a series of detective novels about a forensic accountant, told in reverse chronological order. I'm enjoying this series.

Indespensible by Gautam Mukunda - The author is an acquaintance, so I took a bit too long to finally get around to reading his book. The book presents some very interesting case studies of various stand-out leaders (for good or ill) and their more typical counterparts. The biographical case studies are pretty interesting, but the model of "filtered" versus "unfiltered" leaders that ties things together seemed less well-constructed. In part because it needs to generalize from very few examples, but in part because there seems to be some back-construction of whether a leader is "filtered" or "unfiltered" (the latter being either an outsider or an insider who was somehow rejected by the system); in the case of leaders who basically forged their insider credentials, the classification depends on whether the deception was uncovered.

Translation State by Anne Leckie - In the same setting as Ancillary Justice. If that trilogy was hard military science fiction (i.e. mostly politics and tea: SPACE politics and SPACE tea), this one is hard diplomatic science fiction in the same setting. Happy to have more of that.

The Pains by John Sundman - This novella is a bit of an AU 1984. Had some interesting bits, though I liked some of Sundman's other books more.

The Penelopead by Margaret Atwood - Atwood's take on Penelope's side of the events of The Odyssey, with the twelve hanged maids as a haunting Greek chorus. Told with Atwood's particular dark humor regarding a certain sort of historical / mythopoetic perspective.

There's been a cold going around, and the whole family has been under the weather this week.

I guess I can say that Julie's out at Jura (as of some time ago, the cause of all the chaos the last many weeks at this point), so she's looking for the next thing. That's about all I can say about it.

I can now say that I have had the opportunity to successfully defend myself (and my condo association) in court. I sure hope my work on that project is done now.

Next week, Julie is going to a BiotechBikers event in Girona, Spain. Seems like it will be quite a fun cycling trip.

Erica has become quite a skilled Ticket to Ride player, though she's still quite put out when I win.

I went out with Julie last night to Gufo, an Italian restaurant which has opened up in the old Loyal Nine space on Cambridge Street. Still sad that Loyal Nine is no longer with us, they were one of the town's greatest dining experiences all the way through the pandemic and only declined after. But I'm glad such a great space isn't staying vacant. The new place seems to have done some substantial renovations (extending the bar, adding a full-sized pizza oven to the cafe space, upgrading the covered porch (a thrown-together plywood-construction COVID era addition) with sturdier materials). Was really beautiful and the food was fantastic.

New Year's this year was pretty good. We got into town in time to have dinner at The Independent, which will always be a bit of a special place for me. The bar's a neighborhood fixture, and it's where Erica had her first meal out, in a sense, it was where we went for lunch on our way back from the hospital when she was a newborn. It's definitely a place with those cozy vibes, so very nice for returning from a trip.

New Year's Day I'd made actual, "we're not arriving on a plane today" plans. We had brunch at Puritan and Co., featuring possibly the best pancakes I've ever eaten. Ultra fluffy, with a sweet blueberry sauce and a salty whipped ricotta topping (which was a little unusual but worked brilliantly in the combination).

The following day was Erica's birthday, and I took the day off to hang out with Erica. We went to the Mapparium, which was on the list of Boston landmarks I'd had yet to visit. It's an unusual and beautiful structure, a room in the form of a giant stained-glass globe, it sits within the Mary Baker Eddy Library, which is a very beautiful building with some very unusual historical roots. After that, we wandered around the Prudential Center and Copley Place for a while before coming home for a sushi dinner at Ebi.

The half-week at work went very well. Pretty productive.

Julie is off at a conference next week, and move her flight early to avoid this weekend's bad weather. So I'm on solo parenting already. I made avocado toast for breakfast, Erica's been watching some "A For Adley" this morning and then I'm taking her to the Children's Museum after lunch.