It's a scary word and a scary time. But when I go outside, I hear my neighbors still being my neighbors. Kids are playing, albeit separately. People are still people. We can survive this if we work together, separately.
I guess that's what things like this are good for: We can all work together on an online machine, without sharing germs.
Stay safe townies. Love you all.
I don't mean on this site, I mean in my life. We were rolling along well until Christmas, and really, honestly, had a very nice Christmas.
And everything blew up right before New Year's Day.
So I haven't been here much. I haven't been much of anywhere. I've been too exhausted, hiding from the next catastrophe, worried that something else whas going to go wrong and I was going to be that much deeper in the hole.
But now life is re-stabilizing. A little. And I'm back. A little.
Thanks for leaving this space open for me. I needed that.
I really love the winter holidays. There's a lot that is wrong right now, both in the world and in my personal world, but this is a good time to look back on what is right, what is good, and what really matters. I'll get back to job searching, I'll get back to all the things I'm trying to do that change the world for the better, but first I'm going to take some time and quietly enjoy my life with my loved ones.
Happy holidays to everyone!
But I think I'm okay? Like, I've been steeling myself against this moment long enough that I'm mostly okay. The sheer relief of having an answer seems to be almost more than the disappointment of not getting the job. I really liked that company and I was really hoping to work for them, but for now I think I'm okay.
We'll see how I feel when it's night and I'm alone. But for now, I think I'm okay.
Two weeks is kind of a long time to make people wait. I know it doesn't feel like that when you're the one doing the hiring. I also don't feel like any of the hiring teams I've been on have made people wait that long.
I'm still just guessing this means "nope" but I really want to leave my current job so I'm hoping that sooner or later I'll be given that chance.
We'll see.
I'm not a huge fan of camping, but I can handle it when the occasion demands it. Still waiting on a phone call telling me the fate of the job interviews. I'm basically just telling myself it's a "no" because otherwise I'll go insane wondering. Best to process the sadness at not getting it now so I can get on with other feelings later.
Anyway. Overnighter, here I come.
More interviews happened with the company that I hope will be my next employer. Said interviews happened on a Friday morning. Which means I've been waiting all weekend for a response that obviously wasn't going to come on a weekend, and I'll probably be waiting for a few more days. My nerves can't really take this, and I'm certain that my family isn't fond of this process either. I'm trying to be patient and happy and whatnot, but it's not easy.
Anyway. NaNoWriMo is happening, which always makes me happy.
At roughly 3Hz. I keep swinging back and forth between "I got this" and "I'm never going to get this" when thinking about new jobs for which I have applied.
And right now all I can do is march through time at one second per boring second, getting to the next event in this weird process.
One to go. I don't love the interviewing process, but it's nice that it's moving along fairly quickly this time around.
I keep thinking about how employment works in the current western world. I'm not sure this is the most effective way to do things, but I sure can't think of a better one. Or rather, I can think of many, but they all slide off the rails if you imagine normal people administering them. The line between utopia and dystopia is intent.
I'm interviewing for a new job today. This is the only public space on which I feel safe saying this, because I'm 99% sure nobody I know in real life even knows what tilde.town is.
I'm very nervous about this interview because I really want this job. I've been thinking about what to say and how to say it for days and days now.
The good news is that I have a friend who already works at the new firm, so I've got someone talking me up over there.
Anyway, we'll see how it goes. The worst part is always the waiting.
Tilde.town is a celebration of "retro" technology, while also being the best implementation of a lot of the best of today. We are here because we like computers that are a little bit hard to use, a little bit finicky. We like making the computer work according to our desires, instead of getting used to defaults set by someone else.
I think part of the retro love is that we never really took full advantage of the server/client model. We can do so much more with even a simple Linux box than was ever possible in the days of mainframes and greenscreens.
I've long posited that an art form that is ever valid is always valid; ASCII art is still a legitimate art form, just like pixel art and the ilk. Technology can and should always move forward, but that doesn't mean we should abandon everything that isn't cutting edge.
The graffiti document is brilliant. Absolutely amazing. Somehow anonymous but also warm and close.
I'm playing with 🐟 (fish) as my shell on tilde.town. I've been a zsh fan for years now, but it's fun to see what else people are doing out there.
The botany program here on tilde.town is wonderful. It's a nice, simple little program, all ASCII based, and somehow feels like a community building tool. Many thanks to tilde and whoever built it.
Just starting with 3D printing, and it's surprisingly difficult! Except, it's not really all that surprising. This is a new technology, and even as it's moving into home-user-friendly territory, it's still very young.
And I kind of like that!
It's reminiscient of the days when you had to build your own computer from scratch, and had all kinds of weird problems and DIP switches and terminating SCSI chains and whatnot. Desktops are very simple and straightforward now. Which is good, but it takes some of the pioneering spirit out of it.
And I also like that 3D printers are in a very low-profit zone. People are doing this because they're having fun. I like that spirit, and I like figuring things out.
So, we will see how long it takes me to get good at this, if ever. For now I really enjoy it.
Walking into work from the train this morning, it was just cold enough to be a little uncomfortable. Not terrible. The sort of cold where it's nice to stop into a small bakery and get a blueberry muffin for breakfast, one that's still warm and fluffy from the oven.
It's never fun, is it? But it's worth doing. This job is getting old, and I'm starting to realize that there's not a lot left for me to do here.
But also, it's trivial, isn't it? Work is important to a degree. But what's more important is people. Spending time with people around you who matter. I keep trying/meaning to get more involved in this community, I just need to carve out the time, prove that I'm serious about wanting to be part of it.
This is one of those days. The days where just being awake feels like too much work.
Let's face it, Autumn is the best season. Survivable temperatures in regular clothing, shading off into just cool enough to warrant a jacket. Also I love jackets.
I'm trying to get myself to where I can spend more time in this platform in places other than botany and feels. I love the idea of this place, I just need to get better at engaging with it.
I just ordered the first They Might Be Giants album on vinyl, solely for display purposes. (It came with a FLAC download, so it's not like I really need the vinyl to listen to it). I realize it's silly and pretentious, but this is an album that really resonates with me. It's crazy that it came out thirty years ago, but that's what time does etc. etc. Not a big deal.
So of course I listened to it again, and discovered that, for me at least, the album still mostly holds up. She's An Angel is still a very good and interesting track. I love the Rabid Child and Number Three as much as I always have.
I'm not sure if the album would hold up for someone coming to it fresh in 2019. Songs like 32 Footsteps can seem pretty...dumb. With lyrics like:
Bing bang bingalong, cing cang cingalong, ding dang dingalong day Fing fang fingalong, Ging gang gingalong, hing hang hingalong hay Jing jang jingalong, king kang kingalong, ling lang lingalong lay Ming mang mingalong, ning nang ningalong, ping pang pingalong pay
Might put some people off of the track. But the fun of vinyl is big cover art and, in this case, a weirdly pink disc. It may just be old guy nostalgia bait, but whatever. I'm excited.
For the most part I'm trying desperately to ignore U.S. Politics for the next few months. Not because I'm uninterested, but because I'm almost entirely powerless to change them right now. I'm very interested in the outcomes, but other than adding my voice to the many other people out there who need this to change, what can I really do?
Today's my 18th wedding anniversary. I'd like to spend some time getting my tilde.town setup more...setup, but also I'm gonna spend some time with my wife instead.
I'm brand new to this system, but I love the idea of intentional communities.
And I'm also a big fan of Linuxy stuff.
I've made quite a bit of progress setting up my tilde.town account to be like all my other computers. My .vimrc and .zshrc files are all set up, mosh is working, now I just need to get my .tmux_conf set up for this server instead of my local boxen. Then I'll probably start actually exploring the social side of this intentional community. Imagine that!
I wish I was surprised that RMS is the way he is, but I'm not. We've let software developers get away with being misogynists for far too long, to all of our detriment. I hope we can all reflect on what happened here and do what we can to make the world of software development a more inclusive world.
I've been writing in Markdown and Multi-Markdown for ages now. I really love the freedom of doing everything from the keyboard. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be on tilde.town, and I promise I'll start writing more meaningful things sooner or later.