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Posts published in “Real Life”

It’s what happens when we’re not working or playing or thinking or doing. That thing we do that doesn’t fit into all the other categories.

Sometimes we call it living.

[twenty twenty-four day one five six]: ugh and not so ugh

Published June 4, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

So the broken door lock was indeed not a problem either power tool girl or I could have easily handled - it took the locksmith almost forty five minutes to lever, chisel and snip the latch assembly out of the door, using quite a bit of specialized equipment -air pumps and such - to try to create space before finally giving up and applying judicious elbow grease, a wrench and a hammer. When he finally got it out, pieces abruptly tumbled out in a tiny little rain of already-broken parts from deep within the latch assembly.

But the repair itself was cheap, and the same guy offered a great rate to re-key our other locks as well. So we now have easy access to my office again, and a plan for fixing some of the dead old locks around this rambling home. One ugh problem may just have made another ugh problem go away - which suggests that when you're facing a lot of problems, you should just dig in and try to fix them, one by one, until hopefully all those problems go away, leaving you with new problems for a new day.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Downtown Greenville's Falls Park, which is a beautiful place for a walk. Since, in the intervening hour since my last post, I haven't fixed the backend of the blog. Another ugh ...

Blogging every day: Today's exercise was thirty push ups, and probably a walk later, maybe or maybe not at Falls Park. Yesterday's exercise, which I didn't blog, was sixty pushups and an excursion in the attic. Yesterday's read was Neal Asher's PRADOR MOON, which I quite liked; today will be packing for the Nebulas. Yesterday's editing was Dakota Frost #4, SPECTRAL IRON; probably also that today. Drawing is up to one five five, so I need to work in a drawing today, ideally two so I don't have to worry about it while traveling.

[twenty twenty-four day one five five]: late post for you

Published June 4, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0
Snow in South Carolina

Last night was date night, but we also had to climb up into the attic to see what's up with this "leaky" roof. But it's bone dry up there, despite the recent rains, and even though it looks like there might be some damage, it doesn't seem like it can be causing what we're seeing with the drywall damage in the ceiling.

SO: The good news is, we likely don't need to get the whole roof replaced.

BUT: The bad news is, we don't know what's going on, and now need to seek new causes.

It's really easy to catastrophize: we were worried that we'd find a nest of mold up there and need to replace the whole roof. That isn't the problem, so that bullet is dodged. But now we've got a deeper mystery: we have what looks like water damage in an area that is - apparently - dry, with no explanation. And that's the thing about science: one thing can look like another, and causes can be hidden - so you need to take out the time to collect the observations and do the experiments and carefully check your work.

Especially if it can cost you a whole roof.

-the Centaur

Pictured: One from the archives - snow, likely from two years ago, as that frost killed most of that vine.

[twenty twenty-four day one five one]: traveling to con carolinas

Published May 29, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Long day packing, driving, arriving, and taking care of stuff, so, no real post for you, will post my schedule tomorrow.

Also, uploading images are still borken, so please enjoy the following blast from the past (my steampunk bookshelf from my old library) while I work on replacing my hosting provider (since there seems no way to increase storage as a stopgap).

Blogging every day.

-the Centaur

P.S. Posting "drawing every day" is on hiatus until I fix the images, but by my count I'm up to day one five two (one day ahead of today). I'll keep noting that as a postscript on the blogging every day posts.

P.P.S. Apparently I was real clever and posted my blogging for Wednesday late, late Tuesday night (in the Wednesday AM) so technically this is the Thursday post, but, whatevz.

[twenty twenty-four day one four nine]: master of all he surveys, redux

Published May 28, 2024 by centaur
centaur 1

Our big butch cat - Loki is 16+ pounds of fur and muscle, with relatively little flab - is actually a little scaredy guy. I mean, I might be a scaredy guy too if the situation was reversed: I'm approximately 6 times taller and 11 times heaver than Loki, and I'd be freaked to live in a world where 35-foot-tall, one-ton creatures felt like picking me up at random times for no discernible reason.

But he's scared of other things too, like his shadow. And I think that happened because once, when he tried to go outside, a baby rat snake was coiling by the door. He ran to the nearby French doors to be let out, but the rat snake had also fled - to the same doors! And then, both of them again fled to the next door down. He was pretty freaked, and a little more cautious going over thresholds since then. Not this guy, though:

Regardless, Loki frequently gets animated, starts looking outside or in the yard to see what's going on, and stares at it for a long time, before settling down and chilling out. Even when something is really there, though, it doesn't mean that the cause is always actionable. Sometimes things are just passing through, and worrying about them or doing something about them can only lead to more disruption.

I'm not saying to ignore real problems, of course; seeing the fox requires different reactions than the deer.

But how often do we stress out about things which will ultimately pass us by?

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, the snek, and the deer. Fox was not available for comment.

[drawing every day 2024 post one four five]: no rendering for you

Published May 24, 2024 by centaur
centaur 1

No rendering for you - I got the line drawing finished just before my late-night walk with my wife, and was about 50-50 on whether I would shade this when I got back - but it was raining, and we did a short walk, and, to our surprise, after our short little walk, the fridge in the kitchen was leaking.

So! Instead of rendering this, I helped my wife move all our food out of the dying fridge and into alternate refrigeration - fortunately we had enough room to save everything except for some freezer-burned home-made ice cream that really wasn't ever good enough to eat anyway.

Drawing every day; adulting as best as we can.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Another study from Goldman.

[twenty twenty-four day one four five]: so convenient

Published May 24, 2024 by centaur
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It's good to be home, but Loki sure doesn't make it convenient. Cat, I have work to do.

Still, I guess you're going to do you.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, in my lap as I type this (likely because, right now, I'm not letting him sit on my recently-filled-in whiteboard desk) and Loki, eating with his feet in his food bowl, because ... ?????

[twenty twenty-four day one four oh]: this chair is mine now

Published May 19, 2024 by centaur
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Brief placeholder I'm scheduling for tomorrow, in case we get caught up with Silicon Valley Open Studios stuff. But what it strikes me is how animals behave differently when we're not around. Case in point, Loki is pictured here, sitting in my rocking chair - which he rarely does if I'm present, either sitting on my lap, or sitting on the table. But never in the other rocking chair. I wonder why that is.

Or maybe it's Heisenberg's Cat Principle: if you observe a cat, you have disturbed it.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, on MY rocking chair, disputing that "MY" part.

[twenty twenty-four day one three zero]: and then he rested

Published May 9, 2024 by centaur
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It's been a long day dealing with a whole sequence of guff, so here I present to you Loki, taking a nap after his hard work on reconciling large language models with classical symbolic artificial intelligence.

-the Centaur

P.S. The Kickstarter is almost there! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thinkinginkpress/the-neurodiversiverse-alien-encounters-a-sci-fi-anthology ... 94%, with ~3 days to go! Like, back and share!

[twenty twenty-four day one one one]: cheers from clockwork

Published April 20, 2024 by centaur
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Friday was slow, but Saturday was a pretty damn good day at Clockwork Alchemy. I have wordcount on Camp Nano and a late night event to attend, so I'll give a fuller update tomorrow.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the "Louie", a very nice variant of an Old Fashioned unique to the San Mateo Marriott "Craft / Code" bar, which is going out of business next week as the hotel is closing.

[twenty twenty-four day one oh five]: going back to victoriana

Published April 14, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Hey folks! I've got just a quick post for you now, because I need to go heads down on Jeremiah Willstone #2, CITADEL OF GLASS, for Camp Nanowrimo. Prepping to be Guest of Honor at Clockwork Alchemy next week - and creating the Kickstarter campaign for The Neurodiversiverse, which we want to go live before CA - has put me behind on my word count for the month ... so I need to make a few changes.

In "normal" circumstances, I have a pretty simple day: take care of food, cats and laundry, work for several hours on the project of the day, and then break - on Mondays and Wednesdays, a late break for dinner where I catch up on reading, on Tuesdays and and some Thursdays, an early dinner break before writing group and the church board meeting, and on Fridays and Saturdays, an early break for coffee and drawing / writing before a late dinner and more reading (with date nites with my wife thrown in). This structure makes sure I'm both making progress on life and work projects during the day, and creative projects at night.

But you can't do that during Camp Nanowrimo or regular National Novel Writing Month - at least, not if you get behind, because if you do, you will fall farther and farther behind. Writing in Nanowrimo actually makes it easier to write more in Nanowrimo - generally, you can raise more questions for yourself than you can answer in a writing session, creating the fuel for future sessions. But once behind, that can jam up - stuck in "writer's block" where you haven't raised enough interesting questions for creative mind to answer, or not thought through the answers enough when you get to the point of writing the outcome of a confrontation.

When I'm behind on Nano, I have to drop my normal "read and eat" strategy in favor of "crack open the laptop at every available opportunity". And I won't limit myself to "write and eat" during meals and "laptop in the coffeehouse" sessions: at the very end of the day I'll set up the laptop in the kitchen , sitting down to bang out the day's wordcount before I let myself crash for the night, where both I and the laptop recharge.

"Autistic inertia" is the way many autistic people describe their inability to start or stop tasks, and some feel it is one of the most disabling aspects of autism. I don't have a formal diagnosis of autism, but informal tests put me on the spectrum - and being aware of your own neurodivergence and the experiences that other people have with the same neurodivergence can help you find strategies that work for you to cope.

For me, I can work on tasks for hours and hours on end - but if I don't have a long enough block to do a task, I tend not to start a task. Now that I understand that I may be struggling with autistic inertia, that helps me understand what may be going on. The feeling that I won't be able to get anything done if I don't have time to get everything done is just that, a feeling. In reality, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step towards it ... and the journey towards 50,000 words in a month begins with one word on the page.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Normally, there should be an open book or sketchbook next to those delicious fish tacos.

DON'T FORGET: Please sign up for our Kickstarter at neurodiversiverse.com - my understanding is that the more people who sign up to be notified when it goes live, the better the campaign will go on launch day! And if you're in the Bay Area, please come see me at Clockwork Alchemy where I'm the Author GOH!

[twenty twenty-four day one-oh-four]: he’s doing it again

Published April 13, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Okay, it wasn't a fluke: Loki sought me out, meowed for attention, climbed up into my lap ... then moved to the nearby table and deliberately turned his back to me.

Now, it is true that he wanted more scritches, but just a little, and it was just as clear that he wanted his large primate to be near enough to protect him, but without a lot of interaction.

He is a weird little cat. He often meows that he wants something, but can't seem to walk in the direction of what he wants, and you need to trial-guess it by walking in several different directions until he follows.

He clearly wants something though ... he just can't make it clear.

What, you expected my behavior to make sense?

-the Centaur

Pictured: that guy, yes, that guy, rocking the golden hour.

[twenty twenty-four day one oh two]: sit close enough to ignore

Published April 11, 2024 by centaur
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Loki has asked me to pass on this public service announcement for cat partners everywhere: "Please, sit close enough that we may ignore you. We can't very well ignore you if you aren't there, now can we?" I suppose this is a security blanket thing, though later in the day he changed tactics on maintaining proximity of his human and went for "doing cute things, please pay attention to me."

I picked him up recently for one of the back-stretches he enjoys, and I swear he yawned when he did it.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, trying to ignore me, but from a comfortably close distance, then attracting attention.

[twenty twenty-four post one hundred and one]: failed to terminate program, force quit?

Published April 10, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

So I saw two make turkeys posturing outside, and carefully stepped to the French doors to take a picture. But what I assume was the female they had been courting had been on the other side of those doors, and decided to book it. Yet, even though their audience was gone, the two males didn't stop posturing.

I feel this make some subtle point about continuing the fight after the prize is gone, but it eludes me.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four post ninety-nine]: that’s not a moon, that’s a gas station

Published April 8, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Buc-ee's (hyphenated like Spider-Man) is the largest gas station I've ever seen, outside and in:

Which is apropos, I guess, because the largest gas-station in the world is a Buc-ee's. Actually, reading the article, it appears that several of the largest are all Buc-ee's.

When stopping, my buddy commented "it was a gas station as if done by Pixar." After seeing it, I said "It's like Pixar had done a theme park for their movie entitled 'Murica'."

His response? "They already did that movie. It's called WALL-E."

Truly this is a disturbing timeline.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day ninety-seven]: internal screaming

Published April 6, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

There's a lot to do on that boat. And, despite expectations, it looks worse once transferred, because while I had crossed off some items, the act of writing them down reminded me of more things to do ...

Clockwork Alchemy is just a notch over two weeks away (actually, a notch less, by the time this scheduled post goes up) and may I say AAAAAAH!

But we'll get there.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day ninety-three]: family

Published April 2, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

So today, I found out that Uncle Paul back there is the same age my dad would have been, were he living - forty years older than me. But Dad died almost twenty-five years ago, and Uncle Paul looks younger than my dad did when he died. Which is amazing, because Uncle Paul is about to turn ninety-five. And he's still clear, active, getting around - and even driving. As my Uncle Bill put it once as we were leaving a Thanksgiving dinner, "Wait up. You're ninety, and I'm seventy, and I can't keep up with you? This is bullshit."

Here's to family.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Me and Uncle Paul at Easter lunch.

[twenty twenty-four day ninety]: how tribbles are made

Published March 30, 2024 by centaur
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So! You take one of those double-row brushes (see detail below) ...

... and apply it to one of these fuzzy creatures in shedding season (see detail below) ...

... and, violin, you get a tribble:

As far as I can tell, these artisan, hand-crafted tribbles are, unlike Dr. McCoy's version, not born pregnant.

If only most problems we face in this world could be solved as easily as "stop feeding the invasive species without natural predators." And, in fact, like not feeding the trolls, many of them can.

However, cat fuzz is not one of those problems. For decades, I put up with my pets getting horrible tangles and mats during shedding season, great lumpy wads which had to be cut or picked off - almost like tribbles.

But, when my wife and I got those double-pronged brushes and began brushing the cat every day, the mats went away. Though we do have now a tribble proliferation problem, we don't have unhappy cats.

Solving some problems requires disengaging the behavior that creates it (like passing on chips, margaritas and dessert for your problem waistline); others require active maintenance to prevent them from happening (like brushing for the problem of keeping your teeth).

What problem are you facing that would go away if you stop feeding it - or start brushing it?

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day eighty-nine]: thank you, loki …

Published March 29, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

... your contributions to my productivity are invaluable.

I do not know how I could remember to get everything done without you.

-the Centaur

Pictured: my whiteboard desk, after Loki sat on it; and while I didn't catch him in the act this time, I have caught him doing it previously, and there we are.