cellio | Entries tagged with me

I don't write as much as I used to, and not as much personal stuff as I used to, and maybe 2025 will be the year I improve that. The Internet of today is not the Internet of yore, but the "small social" web is still worth investing in -- not the big corporate algorithm-driven sites, but real human beings interacting with each other on platforms like Dreamwidth. Hence this not-very-organized "state of me" post.

This summer, after ten years in what had once been a good role (before corporate changes, manager changes, and many departures), I left a company that had gone bad in many ways. Spouse had gotten laid off shortly before that and the tech job market is rough even without age discrimination, and I'd been hoping we'd retire in a year or so, and in the end we looked at finances and decided we could just do this now. So I am now happily retired, and it's great! There was an initial period of recovery and decompression, of course -- the job had gotten quite stressful. But it's remarkably free-ing now!

We try to take daily walks -- less so now in winter, but the summer and fall were great and we take the good days when we can. We've made several visits to a small museum that we can walk to and have seen some neat stuff that we'd never sought out before. We've explored more of the hiking trails in a nearby park, too.

I have more time to spend on Codidact, and have been learning more about Ruby (and Rails) so I can contribute to the code. I've been fixing (smaller, easier) bugs for a while, and a few months ago I implemented a small feature for the first time. We're still a very small team (open-source, contributors welcome!), and it feels good to be able to contribute in this way.

I'm still leading the community team there, and we're all trying to help our communities grow and thrive -- and form, for proposed new communities. Some of our communities are still struggling with critical mass, but others are doing well and we're turning up in search results more. I (we) need to find ways to help our communities more -- an area of continued growth and learning for me.

We're playing more board games, both two-player games (every Shabbat and sometimes other times) and with friends. We have a foursome that plays every few weeks, and we've had extra days with one or the other of them, and with another friend whose work schedule sometimes means free weekdays, and less regularly with other friends. Before the pandemic we used to host "game days" with a dozen or so people and a few tables with different concurrent games, and we just had the first one of those in several years. I hope we'll have several of those in 2025.

We went to the Origins game convention in Columbus this year, which I'd been to before, and we also went to GenCon in Indianapolis for what was my first time (spouse's second). GenCon usually overlaps Pennsic, but we had other reasons to deprioritize Pennsic, so we went anyway. We played a lot of games at both, some very good and some less so. At these conventions we try to play games that are new to us; it's a good way to try out games before buying, and I consider even a game we didn't like to be a useful learning experience.

GenCon is...a lot. It's a six-hour drive in July/August (and that's how we discovered the car's air conditioner needs some love before next time). It's a huge convention, pretty overwhelming for this introvert even with a very supportive spouse, so this will probably be a once-every-couple-years thing, not an every-year thing like Origins.

My interest in Pennsic has been declining for years, though I continued to go for my friends and for family harmony, and then the campground owners did something kinda crappy to us. Our choir performs at Pennsic, so this year we day-tripped after getting back from GenCon. We went for the performance day, of course, and had intended to go a couple other days, but we ended up not doing that. I don't know what our future plans are; I couldn't help but notice that the audience only barely outnumbered the choir this year, and a part of me wonders if it's worth it to spend that much money to go to Pennsic just to perform for half an hour for a small audience. I love our choir, but maybe the other few performances we do during the year will be enough?

A couple months ago some choir members started (or resurrected, I guess) an SCA instrumental group (practicing after the choir in the same place). Having never learned as a child, nor earlier in the SCA, I'm now learning to play the recorder. I'm having fun, even if I'm not very good yet.

There have been sad passings in my family and my circle of friends in the past year. I still think of my father often and miss him. I also miss a local friend who died suddenly this summer, and we are still in shloshim, the 30-day mourning period, for another friend (not local).

I am mostly in decent health, though I'm definitely noticing that the warranty on certain body parts expired some time ago. What I thought was a pulled muscle or tendon or ligament or something (anatomy was never my strong suit) in my knee turned out to be arthritis, and wait aren't I too young for arthritis? Guess not. It's mild and I'm learning to adjust for it, but it came as something of a surprise.

To the best of my knowledge our household has dodged Covid so far. Of course if either of us ever had an asymptomatic case at a time when we didn't have to test for other reasons, we'd never know. So there's always the threat of surprise Long Covid. But so far, so good.

Being retired means buying health insurance directly. It feels like the government marketplace is designed to make you get an insurance agent. It was hard to navigate, but I got help and assuming the autopayment happens tonight, I'll be all set.

Being retired gives us the flexibility to travel without worrying about having the vacation days. In September an Internet friend from overseas visited the US and we met up in DC for a few days. (Sorry, DC friends, but we were winging it.) I had this low-level worry about "what if my spouse and my Internet friend don't hit it off?", but I needn't have worried. We had a good time visiting a garden in Silver Spring (where we were all staying) and museums, monuments, and kosher restaurants in DC. (My phone said we walked eight miles that day, not counting time inside museums which the maps app didn't track.) We've been to the Air & Space museum before (more than once), but there's always something new to learn and this time we had an excellent docent for a guided tour.

In November, having voted early, we went to Toronto for a few days to visit family. We saw some shows and visited my mother-in-law's new apartment, along with visiting lots of other people. We spent several hours at the Art Gallery of Ontario and didn't see it all. We didn't make it to the ROM this time.

Earlier in the year, we went with friends from my minyan to see the solar eclipse, which was very neat. We were on a small island in Lake Erie (that's when I learned there were resort islands in Lake Erie), and that "360-degree sunset" effect was particularly pretty over water. No, I didn't take lots of pictures -- I was there to experience it, not document it, and it wasn't long enough to really do both.

I haven't seen an aurora yet. Maybe in 2025?

Somebody on Twitter asked:

What did you learn in 2020 (besides how to make bread)?

I responded there:

To grow food in pots.

To cut men's hair.

To cook more new things.

That my cat loves me being home all the time.

More about community-building.

How to set up a nonprofit foundation.

To cut people w/no morals or human decency out of my life.

And yes, sourdough.

I was up against a character limit there, but I'm not here.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, when staying at home was just starting to happen, I remember somebody asking: what will you do with this gift of time? I've had that in mind for most of the year. I miss seeing my coworkers, but I gained close to an hour back each work day in not commuting, and I gained a lot of flexibility. My team tries to work mostly normal hours for the sake of collaboration, but everybody recognizes that people have other demands on their attention too. The parents trying to work while their kids are at home attending school via Zoom gave me the opportunity to attend that mid-day (virtual) class or non-work meeting, and the flexibility to tend to things around the house while working. As one small example, sourdough -- it's a two-day process that doesn't require a lot of attention at any one time, but requires availability that wouldn't have been possible were I going to the office every day. Before this year, bread came from a store/bakery or out of a bread machine, only.

Both of us working from home is sometimes frustrating when one or the other of us has meetings, but we're also spending more time together throughout the day and that's very nice. We eat lunch together, every day, in addition to dinner. Sure, this means I'm not making things that I like but he doesn't (that I would have normally made for lunches at the office), but on the other hand, because I'm not limited to things that pack well, we're eating better, I think. Not always healthy, but less crap, more stuff made from scratch. I even grew some of it, which was new to me.

I only cut his hair the once. He held off for a long time back in the spring, thinking it would be possible to see a barber soon, but soon kept moving. He did a lot of it himself; I did the parts he couldn't see or reach. Men's hair technology sure is different from women's.

At the beginning of the year the evil deeds from people who should know better at Stack Exchange were still doing a lot of damage. It wasn't just what they did to me; they did some other nasty, bone-headed things early in 2020 and then throughout the year. A couple of the employees they drove out shared some things publicly after. (Pro tip: don't fire someone who knows about your dirty laundry without securing an NDA.) The folks there are majorly screwed up, and a couple of people I once thought decent folks in bad situations have shown themselves to be lacking in ethics and human decency. I'm well to be rid of their lies and malice.

Frustrating as it was to lose some good communities there, I've spent this year working to build the next generation at Codidact, and I'm very happy with where we are. We're building an open-source platform for Q&A and so much more, learning from those who have come before and building things that serve communities better. While our all-volunteer team is small and that limits us sometimes, we're flexible and responsive and working with our communities, and that shows. We have about a dozen communities up and running on our network now (including Judaism, yay! with some folks from Mi Yodeya), with more to come. Some of them are doing some novel things that weren't possible Somewhere Else. I'm the Community Lead, and while I had a fair bit of experience as a moderator on communities with varying characteristics, this role has allowed me to stretch and learn even more. It turns out this role makes me the most logical person to do "product management" and bug/feature prioritization and a fair bit of QA, too. Cool!

I'm now a board member; The Codidact Foundation was incorporated in November as a non-profit (I just got the confirmation letter from Companies House this week) and we'll now seek charity status. As soon as we can get a bank in pandemic times to let us open an account we'll be able to take donations and presumably get ourselves some better servers. This is all very exciting for me, and it's neat to be working with a worldwide team with quite a mix of backgrounds. Our major contributors include students and software developers and an ambulance dispatcher and a soldier and an accountant, among others.

Don't get me wrong; 2020 has been terrible in many ways. People close to me have died and I couldn't even be with or hug people, just be on Zoom. Friends and one family member are dealing with health challenges. The pandemic has greatly impeded my congregation (and so many others!). Nearly a year of not being able to socialize, go to restaurants, take in entertainment, hold conventions, attend Shabbat services, or do "normal life things" is wearing. Knowing that it's going to be at least many more months is sobering. (I'm going to call it now: I think Pennsic will be either cancelled again or severely hobbled and small.)

I'm glad to have the kind of job I can do from home; many people don't. And something I left off of that list on Twitter: I've learned how to work from home pretty effectively. I'd like some more human contact in three dimensions, but when (let's say "when", not "if") the pandemic is finally under some degree of control, I'll be able to get that from places other than work. I've learned more solidly that I could handle working for a company that's all-remote -- I suspected as much when I applied for such a position a few years back, but now I've seen it. And my employer has learned that remote works too; finally most of our engineering positions are now listed as "anywhere" instead of just the two cities in which we have engineering teams.

On the larger scale, 2020 has been a year of plague and violence and tyranny and unrest and hate and division. In the much smaller scale here at Chez Cellio, there has been good along with the bad, and I'm thankful for them.

As you probably know, I've been heavily involved in Codidact for the last year. (Co-didact: learning together.) We're building an open-source platform that supports Q&A and other types of knowledge-sharing, and hosting a network of communities where the members of the communities, not corporate shareholders, make the decisions that affect them. We're in the process of incorporating as a non-profit organization; there are no shareholders. We have small, growing communities for topics ranging from software development to Judaism to cooking to -- new this week and off to an active start -- code golf, competitive programming. I'm excited to be helping to lead this project, specifically as the community lead.

CMX, an organization for community-building and community management, just opened voting for its annual awards, and I'm delighted that both Codidact and I, personally, have been nominated. Codidact is nominated as a community in the "product and ideation" category, and I am nominated as an individual in the non-profit category. (I hope those links work for other people; they require a login and I don't want to create a second account to test, which might look suspicious.)

You have to create an account on their site in order to see all the nominees and to vote. I understand requiring it to vote, but I'm surprised the nominees are behind that wall. For what it's worth, I've had an account there for a couple months (created one to attend a virtual conference they held), and it hasn't been spammy.

There are a dozen and a half categories and a lot of interesting-looking nominees, so I'll need some time to review before casting all of my votes. Fortunately, voting is open for about a month.

I don't know what CMX's reach is, but I'm hoping these nominations will bring Codidact some more participants and maybe even some developers. I think we're doing some great stuff with a tiny team. There is always more I want to do; it is the nature of things.

I haven't been posting regularly. Oops.

I've been baking bread about once a week. This past week I finally scored some rye flour (that was not exorbitantly priced), so I made a rye sourdough for the first time. I think I prefer less molasses than this recipe called for, so I'll adjust that next time or try a different recipe. The bread is tasty, aside from the molasses overwhelming the caraway. Most "rye bread" recipes I've seen use rye for only one third of the flour, which sent me searching for "all rye" rye bread, which apparently works and tastes good but might not rise as much? I'll probably try it at some point, especially since I had to buy four (small) bags of rye flour to get it.

Dani and I play board games every Shabbat now, and occasionally we have two other friends (who are also careful, and I guess this is a "pod"?) over to play. We play Pandemic in every session because, well, pandemic. Yesterday we pulled out Kings and Things, a game we all had vague memories of, and by the end had concluded that while it's appealing it's also kind of tedious and maybe sort of a shorter Titan, a game I like in principle but dislike actually playing. Ok, now we've refreshed our memories...

A friend has a game called McMulti, which is an economic game (oil/gas theme)... in German. There are lots of places where text matters, so when we've played we've used cheat sheets since none of us read German. We recently became aware of an English-language derivative, called Crude, and got it recently. They've changed some of the mechanics and made one really annoying change to how the board is laid out, but other changes are positive and the game's a little faster. I like it, but am tempted to figure out how to print my own board. The game is really strongly designed for four players, but there are rules for a two-player version, which Dani and I have played once, which seen to work ok.

Codidact, the project that consumes most of my spare time, is in the process of incorporating as a non-profit. We've got our lawyer on our Discord server and having conversations about incorporation documents via Google Docs comments. It looks like we will be able to clear an important hurdle soon. Neat!

On the project front, I'm not writing code -- I keep feeling like I should learn Ruby and the dev environment so I can help, then concluding that I probably won't be helping because I'd be taking time and attention from the developers who are actually being productive. But I've taken over bug-wrangling -- some analysis and testing, clarifying vague reports, and, especially, triaging. I was surprised to find that GitHub counts filing issues as contributions. I think that's new?

We just had our first birthday, counting from when the project founder set up a Discord server to talk about maybe building an alternative to Somewhere Else. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us, both technical and community development, but I'm pleased with where we are.

I've been reading a lot of fiction, a mix of short stories, novellas, and novels, many through the BookFunnel network (and also StoryBundle). I'm "meeting" a lot of authors I didn't previously know. I should really write a separate post about that.

For our 20th anniversary tonight, we got take-out from a nice restaurant. Fortunately we have an ample supply of wine at home, having placed the Pesach wine order before the pandemic changed our seder plans.

It's not how we would have envisioned celebrating a few months ago, but at least we were able to do something to make this night different from other nights. (Often it falls during Pesach, when going out to eat isn't feasible, and we have to defer. This year we just missed Pesach but we'd have to defer to, like, July or something, so...)

Relatedly, happy birthday alaricmacconnal. :-) (At our wedding reception somebody reminded us that it was his birthday, so we sang "happy birthday" to him around the wedding cake.)

Somebody asked a question on Writers about batch-converting document reference numbers (like ISBNs but for papers, not just books) to full citations, which sounded like a "simple matter of ~~programming~~ web services", so I did a little poking around. I have a (single) peer-reviewed publication, so I looked up its reference number (DOI) to test with.

That's how I found out that I have two publications. Er, what? Apparently that paper ended up in a book several years later, and apparently the process of doing that calls for neither permission from nor notification to authors. Or at least second-string authors; maybe the lead author was involved. (I wouldn't know; I haven't interacted with him in ages.) It's a paper in computational linguistics; I was just the (main) programmer, not the linguist or the PhD.

Bicyclists oft complain about drivers, and I understand the perspective: if there is an accident involving a car and a bike, you know that the damage will not be distributed evenly. Locally there has been some effort for the last few years to create more bike lanes and educate drivers, and we have a law about passing distance. This makes sense. Bike lanes make things safer for all of us, and some drivers (a minority in my experience) don't understand what to do with bikes on the road.

But. I am finding it very hard to remain sympathetic when the very same people who complain about dangers from cars are themselves dangers to pedestrians. Cyclists, you have to rein in your own -- the blatant disregard for traffic laws is bad enough when you just do it to drivers, but it's inexcusable when you're running down people who have no defense against you.

Friday night while walking home from services I was crossing Forbes at a marked crosswalk. This crosswalk is marked not only with painted lines, and not only with one of those signboards in the middle of the road, but also with flashing yellow lights on either side. It's the most visible crosswalk in the neighborhood. Nonetheless I always stop and look at oncoming drivers to try to confirm that they see me and are slowing down.

Friday night I looked both ways as usual and then started to cross. A bicycle whizzed in front of me at high speed (much faster than the last car to pass), its rider cursing at the "f---ing b----" in his way. I stopped and turned to stare, looking in vain for anything I could use to identify him. That's when two more whizzed by me, also cursing. One of them grazed me (I'm not sure with what, but no blood). All of them continued on, spewing vulgarities.

They had no headlights, by the way, and all were wearing dark clothes. Not that it was, legally, my job to see them -- just self-defense, which I attempted. I, on the other hand, was in a marked crosswalk wearing brightly-colored clothes.

This infuriates me. Not only did they blatantly ignore traffic laws, not only did they nearly mow me down, not only did they not even stop, but they acted like I was the problem. I think drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians all need to learn to share the roads, but some need to learn way more badly than others. These cyclists clearly thought they shouldn't have to care about anybody else.

Just the previous day I'd been nearly run down by two (more-slowly-moving, but still) cyclists on the sidewalk. That happens to me a couple times a month on average, not counting children -- I just mean adult cyclists here. Sidewalks are for pedestrians; we shouldn't have to be constantly on the lookout for speeding traffic hazards of the wheeled variety.

I am going to write a letter to my City Council representative (can't hurt, could possibly help), but I'd like to go beyond complaining. What concrete suggestions can I make, as our city expends effort (and money) altering public roads to work better with cyclists? What has actually worked in other cities to get everybody on board with sharing the road, and what has been done to hold cyclists accountable for following the rules of the road (and sidewalk)?

They are unregistered, so there are no license plates to spot; they are unlicensed, so their privilege to use the roads can't be taken away; they are almost never seen in the act by police officers, because that would require quite a bit of luck; they can easily leave the scene of any problem, so if the police are not already there they will get away with whatever they were doing. Does anybody require licenses or registration? What else can be done?

I'm not trying to persecute cyclists. I recognize that not all cyclists are like those ones on Friday. But I am trying to find a way to get them all to play by the rules -- and maybe even to recognize that when they do to pedestrians what they accuse drivers of doing to them, they do not help their cause.

Any ideas? Short of wearing armor when walking, and maybe carrying a range weapon, I mean? (If only I'd had a paintball gun and good aim... if I could have tagged 'em I could have called the police. But that's just not going to work.)

What concrete suggestions can I take to my local government?

I haven't really prepared a "year in review" post, but here are some random notes and thoughts.

On the job front there have been ups and downs but the year ended on an up. After thrashing about earlier in the year, being moved from one short-term or ill-defined task to another while people juggled charge codes and contracts, I finally got to settle into something (a) interesting and (b) that takes advantage of my particular specialty, and I rocked. I got a new manager mid-year (my first remote one, too; he's in AZ), which always carries some uncertainty, but he and I really click. He specifically appreciates what I do and wants to help me find more opportunities to do it. Excellent!

The cats have settled in well. I was only without cats for about 4.5 months, but they felt really empty. I mean, Dani's and my relationship is strong (no worries there!), but there was still something missing. That Erik, Embla, and Baldur all died within a span of 10 months (and the last on the day I returned from a frustrating trip to Israel) may have had something to do with that.

I continue to really enjoy my job as a moderator on Mi Yodeya, and last winter I was also appointed as a moderator on Writers (both Stack Exchange sites). On both sites I get to work with great teams on interesting content. I'm still trying to figure out how to increase the tech-writing content on Writers. I need to ask and perhaps self-answer some questions to nudge things along, I suspect.

2013 was a terrible year on another Stack Exchange site. What was supposed to be an academic-style biblical-studies site turned into a cesspool of Christian dogma. I know it's possible for people of different religions to have civilized, respectful discussions about the bible (and other religious matters); I've seen it. (I have thoughts on what makes it work when it works, but I'll save that for another time.) This site was supposed to be non-religious (though obviously most of its members are religious), like a secular university. But it didn't work out that way, and the evangelical moderators (there's no diversity on that team) either can't see or don't care about the damage being done. Everything I did to try to help get things back on course was thrown in my face -- with personal attacks, offensive (usually anti-Jewish) posts, and assorted misrepresentation. So I'm done with that; I have better things to do with my energy. There are a few good people there who are trying to turn some things around; I wish them much luck, but personally, I'm done.

I've had ups and downs religiously and congregationally. My rabbi is fantastic and I like my congregation, but there have been changes in how we approach services, and too many weeks I just don't go on Friday night because they're doing something kid-oriented or entitled (sisterhood service, Reform-style bar mitzvah, etc), and that's frustrating. The Shabbat morning minyan continues to be excellent and the spiritual high point of my week, so that's all good. I'm just trying to figure out Friday nights, and some of it is bound up in questions about whether the Reform movement is right for me at all (except I have this fantastic rabbi and he's worth staying for). It's just that sometimes, being rather more observant than those around me and caring about the halachic and other details that most shrug off, I feel like a mutant.

This year was the last Darkover Con, so On the Mark re-assembled to do a concert. That was fun, and it was nice to see friends I haven't seen in a while at the con.

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I've got right now. Happy 2014 all!

Some time ago a friend asked me when my birthday is because he had the "perfect" gift for me. (We don't normally send gifts to each other, but this was an exception.) I'd forgotten all about that until a package arrived recently.

It contained a very nice, hefty flashlight with a good solid grip. That was a little puzzling, but there was more amidst the packing peanuts. The package also contained a copy of the book Defensive Tactics with Flashlights, apparently written for police officers. This looks like a fascinating read (I'm not very far through it yet), and it tickles that "hand-weapon" interest that goes back to my SCA fighting days. As a pedestrian I've sometimes found myself contemplating the defensive properties of umbrellas, too. (And, I learned from Google, "flashlight tactics" is apparently a thing. I had no idea.)

Then I turned the flashlight on and was surprised by a blue beam. A very powerful blue beam (LED). Looking more closely: ultra-blue. That is, it's a "black light". Why is that interesting? Because I see into the UV spectrum, so that light does more for me than for others.

I'm impressed by my friend's ability to combine odd bits of trivia about me in this way. Nifty!

LifeHacker is doing a series on how I work and one of my coworkers brought the concept to our wiki late last week. This is approximately what I posted. (I hadn't yet seen the LifeHacker posts, so the style doesn't exactly match.)

( Read more... )

More from that parlor game: Comment to this post and say you want a set, and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

alaricmacconnal gave me: Pittsburgh, writing, your favorite song, chicken, D&D, knowledge, and al-Andaluz.

( Read more... )

Most recently from

jducoeur. To play along, make a post with the following statements in order of when they occurred in your life (feel free to add/remove/edit as appropriate). Just the first occurrences of each, and only ones you were old enough at the time that you remember it.
( Read more... )

I've owed these answers for, um, a while. Sorry about that!

( Read more... )

I've been seeing this a lot in the last couple days, so what the heck:
( where was I when...? )

The interview meme is going around again, and in starting to respond to my questions from

hrj I stumbled upon a way-overdue set from

ichur72. Oops! And, ironically, there's some overlap. :-)

( hrj's questions )

( ichur72's questions )

The conventions ("rules" is such a strong word :-) ):

Leave a comment asking for questions.
I'll respond by asking you five questions to satisfy my curiosity.
Update your journal with the answers to your questions.
Include this explanation and offer to ask other people questions.

Fair warning: you might not get your questions from me until after Pennsic, so turn on that notification email or check back here.

On Sunday I helped a friend paint her house. (Well, priming, actually -- painting commenced today.) Painting isn't hard; why is my body complaining about it? It's as if some key joints woke up and said "hey, we're in our 40s -- the warranty has to have expired by now!". Sheesh.

I've had a loaner cat for a few days, while a friend was out of town dealing with family stuff. The visitor is a very easy-going cat; two of my cats need to learn to chill. :-) But, he's gone home now and all is well. (When I wasn't home I kept him in one room lest there be trouble otherwise, and this had the effect of turning him into something of a puppy-dog when I let him out. Very friendly cat...)

Someone named Darter, who does a lot of photography in the SCA, posted his Pennsic pictures recently. Hey, I recognize that singer. (Seriously, I'm always pleasantly surprised when I see a reasonable picture of myself, because I can't do decent posed pics no matter how important it is, and I'm rarely the subject of candids.)

Speaking of Pennsic, I had to call a number of trailer-repair places before I found someone who would talk to me about the damaged axle on the Pennsic house. About a week and a half ago I talked to someone who promised to go take a look soon. I sure hope he got up there this weekend. (How did I find repair places? After several false starts trying the referral path, I started working my way through the listings here.)

Thursday I got a phone call from the "retention manager" at the Trib, who assured me that they are trying to solve my delivery problem. In the last few days I haven't missed a paper, which is good; I do wonder how long it will last. We've done this before. Well, she asked me to call her Tuesday with an update, so I can ask her about the long-term fix then. This is, by the way, the first time someone has called who has left a return number, so that's progress.

I'm home from the National Chavurah Committee gathering (which I've come to think of informally as "JewCon"). As you might have guessed, I didn't write entries while there, so you get a dump in arbitrary order now. :-)

(Also, I won't be able to catch up on LJ. If I haven't already commented on something you wanted me to see, please ping me? Thanks.)

( Read more... )

When considering law and policy, the dominant factor should be what is just. When interacting with people, compassion should also be an important factor. The relative priorities of justice and compassion go a long way toward defining a political or philosophical position.

All that said, when discussing law and policy with people, things get complicated. I sometimes fail to give appropriate weight to compassion when expressing myself, even while holding a justice-dominant opinion. This is something I would like to improve in myself.

Questions from Zahava over on Blogger.

( Read more... )

Apropos of nothing: today was my 2500th day with my current employer. Wow. Well, what else are wiki calculator plug-ins for? :-)

( Read more... )

If you want a set of questions, leave a comment asking for some. (It may take me a few days to respond.)

The interview "meme" returns. Here are my answers to five questions from

loosecanon.

( Read more... )

If you want to participate, post a comment asking to be interviewed and I'll ask you questions, which you'll then answer in your own journal.

I generally only do the memes that tell people something about me or that can spark discussion. I got this one from

indigodove. I've removed questions for which I knew my answers would be boring or pointless. ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Monica

status and stuff

2020

some news

odds and ends

milestone

the things you learn...

cycling hazards

excerpts from 2013

nifty gift

how I work

"7 things" #3

meme: order of events

interviewed by metahacker

census meme

interviewed by hrj and (oops) <user site="livejournal.com" user

short takes

NHC round-up (part 1)

interviewed by rani23

interviewed by ariannawyn

discourse

interviewed by Zahava

interviewed by multislackerkim

interviewed by loosecanon

a survey meme

random bits

Expand Cut Tags

Syndicate