Archive: January, 2025

I've been making the unfortunate joke for some time that social media is not very social these days. It's all the algorithm and engagement, with ads, and not very much in the way of food porn, cats, kids and vacation selfies from your friends. In fact, many of your friends have probably bailed completely, and I'm sure their mental health is better for it. But the biggest thing that I've noticed lately is that the bullshit isn't even that hard to spot anymore. Let's break down the screenshot below.

It's no secret that Elon Musk appears to have gone batshit crazy, what with the Trump servicing and apparent Nazi salutes. But for whatever reason, there are people willing to make excuses for poor behavior, and are even compelled to try and boost the image of people like this. That's a special kind of asshole, if they have that kind of time on their hands. Generative AI means that you don't even need Photoshop skills anymore.

But start with the Facebook page itself. No one really knows who "Entrepreneur Mindset" actually is, but if research into other nonsense is indicative of anything, it's probably either a foreign influence campaign or domestic opportunists hired to make a buck. That already probably doesn't matter to the 139 people who share this, or the thousands that posted hearts and praise in the comments. Of course, who even knows it they're real either.

But the photo itself is so obviously nonsense. Did Musk wear two different things at this Starbucks? Do you honestly even think he's been in a Starbucks? Did the woman take off her tie, and since when do baristas wear ties? She doesn't even have the same earrings or hair line in the photos. And why would she be buying a gift for his daughter? Anyone with even the slightest bit of critical thinking knows this is fake.

But that's the problem. Critical thinking is effectively dead in America. Expertise isn't cool, it's the elite cabal. The only thing that matters is absurd tribalism and loyalty to your team. I'm pretty sure the clinical term is "cult."

And remember, Facebook has decided to stop fact checking, because 'Merica or whatever stupid shit Zuck thinks he's qualified to have an opinion on.

There are a lot of eyes on Tesla and their earnings report tomorrow, because they already released their delivery numbers, and they're essentially flat over the previous year. Despite the gloom you read about in the press, EV sales haven't flat-lined or reversed. Recent data says sales were up 15% last quarter over last year, and 7% for the year, making 8% of new sales electric. Tesla is still selling more than anyone else, but according to that article, they sold fewer this year. If the market is up 7% and you sell less, that's not a good look. So what's the problem with Tesla?

A lot of eyes are on Elon Musk, obviously, because he's gone from Tony Stark to Lex Luthor, and we all know the DC Universe sucks. It's upsetting to see an industrious, genius immigrant literally invent new markets, then lose his shit and do one stupid thing after another, and align himself with felons and fascists. I'm sure that's not helping Tesla, especially with his focus split all over the place, because his strong association with the brand isn't great when his brand is batshit. To me, it's not logical to "boycott" Tesla because of Musk, when 120,000 other people work for the company. I'm sure most of those people are just making a living. I think there are two other things going on.

The first is that there are simply more choices than there were a year ago. EV's are finally out of niche status, especially for people who generally don't buy used cars. The Hyundai group has said flat out that they're not selling at a loss, that this isn't some experiment or gradual ramp (I'm looking at you, GM). And while the Korean brands are positioned to occupy the low end, the Germans are making some beautiful cars at the high end. And in China, apparently Tesla has fallen out of favor and has insane competition with BYD. For years, Tesla was the only viable game in town. Those days are long gone.

My problem is more about the quality issues. Don't get me wrong, we've had four of these cars and, mechanically and from a safety standpoint, these cars have been flawless. Even the Model 3 that eventually got creamed by a Disney maintenance guy was in great shape after six years, with very little battery degradation, still-new brakes, just cabin filter replacements and a new set of shoes. But the fit and finish has been suboptimal. The Model S was OK, but given the cost and the slower rate of production, I think it was easier to get it right. The now-totaled Model 3 had a weirdly aligned trunk and sloppy panel alignment overall. My 3-year-old Model Y was atrocious from the start. I drove it home with a rattle that I still can't find, and it has since developed at least two more. The front quarter panel, the first thing I'd see entering the garage, has a crease that continues to the door, and they weren't even close to lining up (I had them fix that). Panel alignment is beyond sloppy on that one. Diana's Y, going on a year, has been much better, with no rattles, and you have to look a little harder for panel stuff. But with 1 in 10 cars in our area Teslas, I see the poorly aligned trunks everywhere.

Maybe the quality issues aren't that big of a deal, given the mechanical soundness, but you don't have to accept that. Even the lower end Hyundais appear perfect when you look close. And also, everyone else isn't doing stupid control things like ditching the stalks on the steering column and using shitty capacitive buttons for turn signals. No one wants that.

The bottom line is that they went from making electric space cars that seemed like a miracle of engineering and science, to boring products that are sloppily assembled. What a bummer.

I wasn't sure if "neuroawareness" is a thing, and it seems like it's a company with a dead trademark, but it's also a dumb name I'm giving to the self-awareness that one may develop when diagnosed with not neurotypical things like ADHD and ASD. Made up word or not, mine has been developing a lot over the last few years, and that's good and bad.

On the plus side, if you know things, you can act on those things. A year ago I wrote about how noisy it can be in my brain. That was hardly an epiphany, but it's funny how some things seem obvious once you see them. I suppose if we were any good at seeing ourselves, therapists wouldn't get any work. But that's one of many examples where I understand more about how my brain works and how to work with it. Yeah, I realize that sounds like some kind of mind-fuck, as it can get into questions about what consciousness itself is. I try not to go there, usually by reminding myself of the science. It's all about dopamine and my brain cells partying together. I don't take anything for ADHD, so my cells are kind of like "squirrel!" and "let's ride bikes!" most of the time. Bupropion is said to have some minor impact, as it's a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, but I don't think it does much. This winter I wondered if it was even heading off depression.

Unfortunately, knowing isn't always half the battle, G.I. Joe. While I understand how the hellawhack shiznit that happens inside my brizzle works, it's hard for me to logically accept that I can't just will myself to have better concentration. This is part of the thing that I've been trying to unlearn since I was diagnosed. My difficulty in school and college was not me being lazy. I just couldn't reliably plug in when I had to. But I'm surprised at how many daily mundane things I can't easily finish, let alone big things like editing my documentary. This is particularly evident when I sit down at my desk in the morning, and somehow within the first minute I'm bouncing around between work email, personal email, checking bank balances, scanning news headlines, etc. Or when I make grilled cheese for Simon, I burn it, a lot, because I can't stay on watching the stove. Instead I'm trying to optimize by washing a dish, pouring a drink, whatever, when I start to smell burning.

Still, I'd rather know and understand than not know. As I said earlier, it does allow me a little grace to overlook self-directed frustration. Sometimes, not often, I do catch myself on the path of bouncing between things, and can correct for it. I can only imagine how many other people might be better off if they were diagnosed.

I'm at the point in life where I've decided that I don't need to hide my attributes that some may consider weird. It's exhausting.

Because the only protein I really eat is chicken and turkey, no red meat in 20 years. Sometimes programming is fun. I wear shorts when it's cold. I have a lighting truss in my office and I'm learning to program light shows. I could eat Chipotle every day (brown rice, chicken, hot salsa, cheese). I'm not very nostalgic about the music I liked in high school. I hate the texture of my own body hair. I've had a pierced nipple for 20 years (the other one migrated out). When I can't sleep, I hold my breath and try to contract every muscle in my body at the same time. I think Sara Bareilles has an attractive nose. I'm triggered by people who don't understand basic civics. I don't own a suit. I've hit 100% achievements on at least eight Xbox games.

But there are a lot of ways that I'm not weird.

I generally care about the welfare of others. Children shouldn't be hungry because they lost the birth lottery. The scientific method isn't that complicated. Things that make me uncomfortable aren't any less real. I don't care what religion people follow, as long as they don't use it to harm others. I think we have a long way to go to correct racism. I know that, objectively, immigration boosts GDP and the economy. I understand basic economics, like supply and demand and how commodities are priced. I think government should stay out of healthcare decisions, even if it pays for the healthcare. Trans people are real humans, and deserve the same dignity as everyone else. People can decide for themselves (and their own children) what kind of art is appropriate for them to consume. People who plead guilty to violent crime should not be pardoned. Voting should always be easy. I believe critical thinking makes it obvious that scientists and experts are better qualified to assess their areas than I am.

Weird can be fine. It's the "normal" that is broken.

Let me start by saying that the following is all my opinion. I don't speak for my employer. That said, I do sit on the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) council at the company. It's also not the first company I've worked at that has a DEI program. In the last year, you'd think those letters translated to KKK or something equally horrible. I'm here to tell you that, as you might expect, the vitriol is nonsense and not rooted in any reality.

The origins of DEI are part of a larger movement for companies to consider their ESG (environmental, social and governance) practices. ESG is actually rooted in investing, and the desire to invest in responsible and ethical companies. For that reason, many companies issue ESG reports that cover a broad spectrum of internal practices, policies and aspirations. It's the closest thing I can think of to morality checking capitalism.

In practice, DEI is not a rebranding of affirmative action. The intent is not to meet hiring quotas, it's to make sure that there are not systematic ways in which discrimination occurs. That's probably the biggest misconception. It doesn't facilitate discrimination, it prevents it. And honestly, it's the kind of thing that was going on before it had a name anyway. For at least a decade, I've worked for companies that actively train people to be aware of unconscious bias, which means actually hiring and treating people on the merits of their ability, which is exactly what the critics call for. Your diversity is artificially limited if the bias creeps into the way you operate.

But there are other bits to it as well. The equity part is largely about making sure that bias and other factors don't cause a disparity in pay across gender, race, age, etc. That's not even a political intent, because companies that let that slide have a tendency to get sued (just ask Apple, among others). HR departments everywhere audit salaries and overall compensation and make sure that there aren't disparities along demographic lines. Again, this was happening before DEI became a thing.

The inclusion bit is just about being good human beings. Tech companies in particular went through a pretty rough patch, where "tech bro" culture systematically pushed out women from the industry. Uber under prior leadership is one of the more widely publicized stories in this area. These days it focuses on making sure that various groups who are marginalized outside of work are a part of the conversation at work. This covers all kinds of areas, including gender, race, sexuality, accessibility, etc. My personal angle on this is to recognize folks who are not neurotypical, as they may not "fit in" necessarily, but it doesn't preclude them from being significant contributors.

So yeah, there's a lot of noise on this subject, and unfortunately it's the stereotypical grievance politics not rooted in experience, just feelings.

I remember when Facebook opened beyond colleges vividly. I signed up the first day. I had a few friends who were in college, and a number of my former volleyball kids were also in college, so it was useful the first day. Then a few friends from my college days trickled in, as did a few coworkers. When I moved to Seattle in 2009, it became essential, and frankly easy to not completely lose contact with folks back in Cleveland. After that it was folks from Seattle and Cleveland when I moved to Orlando. Gen-X'ers for the most part seemed to enjoy the utility of it all. Obviously, things changed.

A lot of focus is put on the performative nature as a usage pattern for many folks, generally but not always sub-Gen-X people. The harm that usage and consumption may cause, especially among younger people, has become well studied. But things got extra weird when these public companies running the networks started chasing endless growth through constant engagement. That's the algorithms. They learn what you like, and show you more of that. This means that you see more ads, so they can make more money, but it also has the nasty side effect of radicalizing people. For others, they get so stuck in their bubble that it appeals to their worst tendencies. Tech-skeptic Boomers got in and frankly made it worse.

In 2020, amidst an election and a pandemic, the networks at least seemed to acknowledge their role in spreading disinformation, and the feds gave ample evidence that their algorithms were further being manipulated by foreign actors. This year, however, they pretty much said fuck it, picked sides, and here we are. That changes the math quite a bit. The negatives that I mentioned were already there, but once you throw mistrust on top, it starts to feel pretty bad. The only upside, ironic as it might be, is that it can still be a tool for organizing against all of the nonsense.

So if you crave the 2010 utility of Facebook, but already find less use for it given that you don't really see much of what your friends are doing, or the friends bailed, then what? The problem is that these networks are only useful if it's where your people are. With Facebook no longer pretending to care about "bad" content, a lot of folks are moving to Bluesky, which is definitely having a moment. It's a lot more mature than I thought in terms of product development, but it does lack the privacy control that made Facebook useful. When I say privacy, I mean controlling which humans see your stuff, since you can lock down your FB profile so that literally no one can see what you post. (The algorithms make privacy otherwise nonexistent.) Bluesky is intended to be public, which I'm not crazy about. I'm OK showing some of the things, and I do that on Instagram, but a lot of stuff is not for public consumption, it's friends only.

Where does that leave things? Not in a great spot. I could retreat completely to my personal blog, but all of the cross-pinging and conversation that happened on blogs in the old days doesn't work anymore. That's a bummer, too, because it was truly social and there were no walled gardens.

Have I prototyped a social app? Of course I have. I got as far as being able to post photos and text, and compose a feed that is the classic, chronological, friends-only thing. If I were writing high level requirements, that's what I'd want. No algorithms, no ads. It couldn't possibly be free, or at least, not forever, but who knows if anyone would pay for that sort of thing. Oh, it would also be a web app, so no more downloads and platform-specific implementations. And I think I would probably want to implement a Facebook import function, while you can still get all of the data.

I'd use it, but I don't know if invited friends would. I suppose if I'm that disenchanted with the established networks, and don't see friend stuff anyway, maybe it wouldn't even matter.

In the last year or two, I've found myself feeling disappointment about disappointing people. Again, I understand I'm not puppies and rainbows to everyone, and that's fine. But whether it's professional leaders, relatives or public figures, it doesn't feel great when the people that you want to look up to, to be heroes in some capacity, let you down. So it shouldn't be surprising that when I find the opposite, I want to celebrate it.

Almost five years ago, we hosted a former server from the cruise line for a little less than 48 hours as she transitioned through Orlando to visit a friend in Columbia. It kind of happened by accident, when she told us about the then forthcoming end of her contract, and we invited her to stay with us for what amounted to an extended layover. She was no less delightful outside of work, and we periodically checked in during the pandemic (she was in the UK), and have been doing so ever since as she's moved around through Europe and Canada. Her next move was to eventually work in Sweden, but she stayed with us for a week before returning to Europe.

Kairi is originally from Estonia, and as an EU citizen can move around there as much as she likes. She also has residency status in Canada and the UK. She can pack up her life into three (very heavy) bags. In the last five years, she's seen even more, and quite honestly I kind of live vicariously through her and her travels. This sort of thing appears to force all of the perspective you think that it would, and I respect and value her opinions in a way that is different from others. She has more data, so to speak.

More importantly though, Kairi is a kind, empathetic and warm person who is easy to be around. She is charming, funny and authentic. We could talk to her for hours, and she's every bit as interested in you as you are in her. There's nothing transactional about her friendship. We consider her chosen family. Plus she's a cat person, so how can you not adore a person like that? If I could pick a favorite quality though, it's her ability to be optimistic and see the best in people. As an example, she pointed out that on paper, as a non-American, it wouldn't be unreasonable to write off our entire country as pretty terrible, given the outwardly hateful politics. But she's met too many Americans who are not that, and will also say that you can find similar sentiment in most nations, even if they're not as vocal about it. Humans of all kind looking out for each other is more the rule than the exception. I love that.

I've spent a lot of time in the last year trying to understand what fills my social cup, so to speak. Unsurprisingly, I find little value in settings with many people having trivial conversations (though I do still like to throw a party, now and then). Having deeper, more meaningful connections with people like Kairi, however, fills my soul. There are a small number of people in my life that have no specific expectations of me, and I don't have any expectations of them. And yet, despite this, there's a dynamic free of judgment, score keeping or status. Sometimes it's a person exactly my age in the same profession, sometimes it's a colleague that freely shares experiences, sometimes it's an Estonian in her late 20's that I have almost nothing specific in common with. Don't write off younger people, because they will surprise you.

Last night we dropped her off at Terminal C, in the cold, where she waved us off until we were out of sight. I'm sad to see our friend go, but even if it wasn't her intention, she gave me clarity about what's important. That's pretty great. Those are the people that I want in my life.

OK, so I'm exaggerating, because corporate travel has already been back for awhile, but it just seems really back because I did two trips three months apart. Last (last) year I went for the first time in August, then last year I met my team in real life in October. This time it was to get all of the leaders from all areas together, some 300+ people converging in Denver. It was cool to meet some of the execs in real life.

It got me to thinking, as a remote worker, we went quite a long time with this not being a normal thing. I don't have any strong opinions about what the right amount of in-person stuff is, but it's nice to have it at all. I strongly believe in the efficiency, productivity and flexibility of remote work, but it's also different to have conversations with folks face to face. I think it helps ground people a bit and makes those professional relationships more real.

As I said before, there is definitely a cognitive cost for me, since these things usually involve all-day interaction. It's a lot of time to be plugged in, for 12 hours at a time, several days in a row. It's also hard to make it work when you have a kid and a full-time working partner. Hopefully these are more limited to being six months apart.

I never really understood what "sensory challenges" were despite having them many times in my life. It wasn't until Simon that I could see what it was, as sometimes certain amounts and kinds of sounds would cause him to cover his ears. In more extreme instances, he would basically melt into a puddle on the floor covering his ears, and boy would that trigger some Papa Bear instincts in me.

After my own ASD diagnosis, I would eventually come to recall instances where I felt the same. In adulthood I have largely developed coping mechanisms to roll with it. As is the case with Simon, I can't easily predict what might be difficult, and even the same circumstances on two different days could yield different results. But now I've had two episodes of being sonically overwhelmed, and I'm angry about the way I feel. I feel like I'm less, and I shouldn't.

I don't know what the experience is like for others, but the best way that I can describe it is that it's the auditory version of being in a room with a bunch of asynchronous strobe lights that never stop flashing. It's like someone stabbing your brain, which is too abstract, but I don't know how else to describe it. Maybe for a neurotypical person it would be like standing in a fire station where the truck is blaring its siren.

My previous situation was only a month ago, on our last cruise. Aboard the Wish, one of the dinner nights is in a Frozen themed restaurant with live music. I've generally enjoyed it, but this time we were very close to the stage, and the lighting was also in my eye line. Despite wearing noise-cancelling ear buds, I found it overwhelming, and I just kind of shut down. Diana saw that I was struggling, and encouraged me to leave.

Then tonight I was out for dinner with an arranged group of people that I don't typically work with. The restaurant was extra noisy, an old building with no soft surfaces on the interior. On top of that, they had loud music, which might be fine if it was music I knew and I wasn't trying to hear people talking at the table. (Also, they didn't have the one dish on the menu that I would eat, and the waiter was kind of a dick about it.) I found myself involuntarily holding my ear, and I stepped out to reset for a minute. I was back in for about five minutes before I just couldn't take it anymore. I apologized for bailing, and I bailed.

I felt embarrassed, inferior and high maintenance, even though I logically know that this was a reaction to the way that my brain processes stimuli. I can't explain why even the night before, I had no issue in a noisy bowling alley/bar/arcade. Maybe it's lighting, sound frequencies... I don't know. My emotional response is that I don't want to be limited in any way, and this felt like a limitation that I should be equipped to handle.

If there is a positive, it's that I recognize the situation. Even four years ago, I would only know that I had an overwhelming desire to run, and I would chalk it up to other feelings of discomfort, like social things, and attribute that to personality instead of something truly physiological. Even being able to give myself that grace, it still doesn't feel good.

Today was designated as a national day of mourning for former president Jimmy Carter. He's the earliest president that I can remember. Nixon was in office when I was born, and Ford was in until I was 3, but the first guy that I can remember seeing on TV was Carter. It's astonishing to see that he lived to be 100, and while history hasn't been all that kind to his presidency, he lived an extraordinary life of public service.

Obviously I was too young to have any sense of Carter's politics or his time in the White House, but I actually did learn a little bit about him in high school civics class. It was a rare education win in a system that rarely gets beyond World War I for history. There really weren't a lot of levers for him to pull to deal with inflation and gas shortages, and I'm sure the Iran hostage thing and the Soviets invading Afghanistan were the last nail in the coffin as far as his reelection goes. It's kind of a shame, because when I see his speeches at the time, he was practical about the times. Americans clearly were not interested in conserving energy or temporarily limiting consumption of everything at the time. Some things never change.

But I don't think you can overstate the importance of the Camp David Accords. We're nearing a half-century of peace between Israel and Egypt, a rare bright spot in Middle East peace, and the biggest win of any president since. He was the only president in my lifetime that was as committed to peace, and aspirational about it in a way that frankly no world leaders are. Any sentiment like that today would be dismissed as weak, and that's unfortunate.

Carter's record on the environment was historic, establishing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He established the Department of Education. He was the first president to start moving toward employment equality for what we now refer to as LGBTQ folks. He tried to make universal healthcare happen. He always saw potential in the good that government could do, before Reagan did his best to sow mistrust in it.

A lot of his legacy is in his post-presidency life, including diplomacy that was sometimes unwelcome by sitting presidents, especially Clinton. He wrote a ton of books. What always stood out to me is that well into his 80's, and to a lesser degree his 90's, was his commitment to Habitat For Humanity. There are a lot of non-profits that do good work, but few have the dramatic, local impact that Habitat has. He lifted a hammer for as long as his body would allow him to.

More than anything though, what I find remarkable is that his whole life was dedicated to public service. Whether he was after world peace or building a house for someone in his community, he was intent on leaving the world a better place than it was when he entered it. I can't say that I'm even remotely that way, and I certainly can't say it about many politicians. Regardless of policy positions, it's that character, dignity and integrity that we should demand from elected people. This is especially true when it comes to the White House. My visit there last year was somewhat transformative for me, because it really made real the seriousness and importance of the office. I hope that we eventually get back to valuing that seriousness for the highest office in the land.

It's funny how talking things through with a therapist can lead to realizations that were totally obvious, but not obvious enough to spot. We were talking about what it means to be content, in the broad sense of life. It comes up a lot at the intersection of our social interaction, work and identity. Like anyone, I suppose, I want to be content more of the time.

She pointed out that the things that make me feel content are not a mystery. I actually know what they are in great detail. It's just that they are not necessarily things that are easy to come by. Like if your world was riding a bike, you would just get on your bike because it's always available. This isn't bad, necessarily, because if we could really choose what lights us up, we'd all pick the easiest and most common things.

My things are not common. Socially, I enjoy meeting people from other countries and appreciating how they look at things differently. That's not easy to find, especially when you work from home. I like to travel, whether it's to familiar places or new places. Both, however, are limited by having a child of school age. I like being near the ocean, it's where I'm most relaxed. I'd do this more if it were a little closer and I had a place to crash. Cruising certainly helps with that, too. There are a bunch of other things that fill my cup, and I won't bore you with the list, but most are things that just aren't easy to come by, normally.

You have to layer in all of the baggage that comes with societal and cultural constructs that are arbitrary, mythical or otherwise ridiculous. Americans in particular have all of these dumb ideas about hard work, achievement and winning that are not very conducive to living a balanced and content life. And with (anti-)social media, we have an entire category of people who want to show you how awesome they are for the stuff they do, and they just willed it into existence. Yeah, I'm looking at you fitness people. You don't get a high-five because you do something that you like, and other people are not less because they don't share that desire.

Being able to do more of the things that feed my soul is something that is coming more into focus for the long-term. I am excited for that. It does suck that we're wired to fear things by default, for self-preservation. That's why we can't just fart rainbows and unicorns all day. We're basically animals.

For the most part, people talk about weather as a means to strike up conversation. I don't think anyone really cares about the substance of those exchanges, but weather is typically a shared experience. For me though, weather deeply affects me. I didn't move to the Orlando area for theme parks, I moved because I finally appreciated how much Midwest winter messed with me.

I've told the story before, but the short version is that Seattle, despite its winter drizzle, actually has slightly less rain, and less precipitation overall, than Cleveland. And even in winter, there are periodic breaks in the clouds and the sun isn't that unusual, which is also not like Cleveland. Add to the fact that I worked and lived in different elevations, and it was just enough to vary between the two locations. So moving back to Cleveland, in October no less, made me appreciate just how much the weather affected me negatively. And certainly the time change does not help.

We're going through a cold spell here right now, and today we're going from 78 to an overnight low of 38. That's a 40 degree swing! But overall, I've been so lethargic and tired and not particularly engaged. I feel like I did back in the day during those Ohio winters. I don't like it. I hate that it's not something that I can control, that it's apparently chemistry. And mind you, I'm already taking bupropion, the drug often prescribed for seasonal affective disorder. I imagine I'd feel even worse without it.

Fortunately, these cold streaks are short lived. Last year we had overly hot streaks, so yay for climate change or whatever. I just want my disposition to be as sunny as the sky again.

My brother-in-law and his family visited this year for Christmas, which was fantastic. Knowing my enthusiasm for mixology, he brought me a clear ice contraption that makes perfectly clear cubes. They don't make your old fashioned any colder, but they sure look cool. It's an insulated thing that makes "throw away" cubes at the bottom, and clear cubes in the top inside of a rubberized (silicone, I assume) compartment. The insulation is open on the bottom. Because of the way it freezes, it pushes the rubberized part, with a cover, up, but it means the rubber bits are touching all sides of the cube.

Naturally, I wondered what the physics were here. Unfortunately, the Internets are mostly wrong, as most people insist that this somehow forces the "impurities" out of the water. This is one of a hundred myths perpetuated by bartenders who don't really get into physics and chemistry. In fact, a bartender recently insisted that carbonation causes alcohol to be absorbed faster into your bloodstream. (There have been small studies, and while there is possible correlation for a subset of drinkers, there is not causation because the studies do not control for sweetness or rate of consumption. You can infer why that makes me skeptical of causation.) Anyway, a significant portion of "impurities" are already gone from my water, because it's filtered where it enters the house. If it was more "pure," logically my regular ice cubes would be clearer. They are not.

Getting deeper into it, these insulated gadgets cause the water to freeze more slowly, and if I'm reading it right, that means the gases inside of the water are forced in one direction away from your "perfect" cubes. That makes more sense to me. If there were significant impurities in the water, I think it would be cloudy as a liquid as well.

This isn't the only neat trick though. On our last cruise, they had drinks on the menu that included spherical ice, hollow in the center, with a hole, that they would put part of your drink in. Then you got to break it with a little hammer. Neat. The spheres are made by using round silicone molds. After a certain amount of time, when only the outside is frozen, they peel open the mold, run those very same hammers under hot water, and push a hole into the sphere, allowing the unfrozen water to pour out. Then they go back into the freezer.

So yeah, craft ice is a thing.

I think that there was a time when I found "home" to be a place of comfort, a place to retreat to. A place where you could find hygge and it was all good. Weirdly, I recall feeling like this the first time in my college dorm room junior year. It was uniquely my space even if I didn't really own it. I felt it now and then in my first house, too. Once it was obvious that I was getting divorced, and especially after moving cross-country, the feeling was far more elusive. I remember it briefly in winter in Snoqualmie, and a little bit once we moved into our current place, but that's kind of it.

It's hard for me to even think about what home means anymore. I mean, sure, it's the place you live most of the time, but if I had to change it tomorrow, I can't say that I'd be particularly nostalgic about it. I don't know if it's because I also work in the same place or what, but it kind of bothers me. I mentioned at the end of my annual retrospective that sometimes I feel like I need to escape, but where do I escape to? For the most part, getting away for me means traveling where I can turn off my brain.

When my brother-in-law's family was here last week, we compared stories about our houses, built by the same builder 2,500 miles apart, and the things that have not aged well. While they're not likely to have the HVAC challenges in the Pacific Northwest, they've had other issues like the worst possible carpet ever. The crap that Pulte used has matted, bunched up, wrinkled and looks like a dozen people have lived here for 30 years. There's nothing cozy feeling about it. We have a chair that for some reason has been destroyed by one of the current cats, which is weird because I've never had a cat that messed up furniture. The cheap cabinets are showing wear after only seven years. We still hate our bathroom that we're not going to renovate.

I realize that my first mistake is measuring home comfort by way of how nice things are. Home is at its best when my little family unit is here, but with staggered work schedules and school (and my kid being a teenager), that's not always possible. I remember when I was truly living alone for two years that sometimes I had to go out of my way to feel comfortable. It generally involved the fireplace, blankets and movies or video games, but as much as I got used to flying solo, I was never in any hurry to get home.

If you ask me where I feel most content, it's usually near the ocean. I still can't shake the feeling of the Vrbo we rented about four years ago, in Melbourne Beach. But I also felt it in some of the ports we visited in Europe. I always feel it aboard the ships. I haven't figured out how to feel that in the place with my name on the title.

Regardless, I guess we have to replace the stupid carpet.

My ADHD has gotten the better of me as I've tried to dive into learning Vectorworks, the CAD program used by pros for lighting design. Sure, there was the chaos of December, but also I tend to push toward practical and applied learning, struggling with the abstract. For that reason, I thought, I want to use my own lights in the software. Unfortunately, the profiles that I have for the lights crashed Vectorworks. I have an open ticket with them, and that sure is disappointing for expensive software.

Still, the nagging problem is that, instead of approaching this systematically a component at a time, I've been looking at the world as a big ecosystem. One of the things that makes all of this stuff interoperable are a couple of standards called GDTF (General Device Type Format) and MVR (My Virtual Rig). The idea is that you can create the profiles, the technical description for how a light fixture works, and use them in all the software. Then you can combine those with stuff like trusses and stages and 3D people, and import the whole lot into grandMA3 or ETC Eos (the two biggest players) and it all just works. This even includes all of the addressing of the fixtures, so there's no manual patching to do when hooking up the real rig. You just have to make sure that the fixtures you hang are set to the ride addresses. For my purposes, it also means imagining a big virtual rig, and being able to control it from the console. In other words, I don't need to actually be at an EDM event to mess with a huge show.

The biggest problem is that my cheap(ish) lights are more targeted for DJ's and small clubs, where they'll probably run off of sound or some other kind of automated thing. What I'm trying to design for is shows running on the fancy consoles. There was a profile for my first two lights that kind of worked from the GDTF share, though it's four years old and kind of janky. The pan ranges were wrong, some of the functions were grouped together in goofy ways, there were quirks. Then the four lights I bought after that were a new iteration, and their pan center changed, along with the order of the colors in the color wheel. So I adapted the janky profile to those.

Tonight I spent a couple of hours refining the profiles, a lot, so they would work as expected. Fixing the pan range (-180 to 360 degrees on the old ones, -270 to 270 on the new) made the most immediate difference, because now what the lights did in the real world matched what they did in the visualizers on screen. I also adjusted the beam tilt -5 degrees, because when they're centered, the beam does not go straight down. Then I reorganized the color wheels and strobe groupings, and finally, I arrived at a profile that worked the same in both MA3 and Eos. And I could import them into Vectorworks and it didn't break!

It could be argued that this was a waste of time, but there were some other benefits. It forced me to better understand the Eos product a bit, which I'm still pretty weak on. This is what's in Simon's school, and even the venues at DPC (which I don't think I could touch anyway, because unions). It also reinforces the way that MA3 "thinks" about manipulating the data that defines state for the lights. This, by extension, makes me think about how I would write my own control software, if for some reason I though that was a good idea. And for the record, I do think I could write something useful, as long as I don't have to get into the geometry of pointing lights at specific points in 3D space. I still find both MA3 and Eos super weird in their UI approaches.

Also, it's cold outside, and the lights warm up my office.