Archive: January, 2025

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.