I wanted a cheap, super-portable, lightweight Linux computer good enough for occasionally working at home. Something that would also be small enough to open easily in the most cramped of airline seats.

Many people have found that adding some extra storage to a Chromebook and installing a full Linux distribution it is a good way to get that cheap Linux "light development" machine. And GalliumOS is the flavor of Linux tailor-made for that.

So I tried installing GalliumOS Linux on the Samsung Chromebook 3.

TL;DR: this was not a good idea. There is a major issue that wasn't mentioned on the wiki page. It wasn't very well known or consistently diagnosed until I started beating the drum and other users came out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, still not fixed.

I'm not angry about this. GalliumOS is a volunteer project, the issue is tricky, and nobody owes me an open source rose garden. If I wanted a sure thing, I should not have bought a new model. Linux tends to run best on slightly older computers people have simply had more time with.

So this time around, I posted to the GalliumOS Reddit and asked for personal accounts of 100% happy GalliumOS experiences. And lo, there were many. But the machine that really sounded spiffy was the Dell Chromebook 7310. It is strongly recommended by "Mr. Chromebook," the guy who writes custom firmware to let you boot these machines directly to Linux, without weird startup prompts and a risk of a family member quite inadvertently reverting the whole thing to ChromeOS... arhgh!

Only thing is: it's not available new anymore. And because it's as nice as it is - for instance, you can upgrade the SSD, and it contains a proper SSD, not soldered-in eMMC storage - and is available with several different processors and an excellent screen, it costs a little more.

I decided to leverage the first to address the second. In other words, I bought a used unit on eBay, with an i3 processor. And I am super-very happy with it.

So far everything just works. And it's fast - the experience so far feels zippier than my i7 Mac at work, because GalliumOS deliberately goes light on flashy stuff that slows computers down... but also because an i3 is still a whole lot better than a Celeron. Don't get a Celeron. Just don't.

At 13" it's a little bigger than I initially wanted. But I work from home far more often than I fly. 

Here, I hope, endeth the saga. Except for the bit where I'll be flipping the two (!) Samsung Chromebooks I bought, in my zeal to prove it was a real issue and not just the hack job I did removing the write-protect screw from the first one. Sigh. I think I might donate them to a school. On the whole, I'd prefer getting back 100% of the karma over getting back 30% of the money.

This post is a combination of three updates, one written on the 13th, the other two days later, and one written just now.

May 13

I’ve been hyper because I have no sense of a proper level of service from the Realtor. I feel like she’s been slow. A couple properties I said I was interested in have gone off the market. Our first showings are Tuesday; my first contact with her was last Tuesday. Is this typical? Is it Toronto? Is she just terrible? Well, I told her there’s one place I’m keenly interested in, and it will be accepting offers Tuesday; the day I expect we will see it. If we lose a chance to bid on it because the Realto has been sluggish I will be Very Angry (tm). 

I feel like this is a stupid amount of money to pay for a post box. On the other hand, there is no place on earth quite like Church/Wellesley in Toronto. So maybe it’s worth it. And tbh it does represent Our life savings. I should not be embarrassed about (just barely) being able to afford a downtown condo at 50 years old. We’re blue collar people, though, doing white collar work. The poor don’t rub off so easily. 

Still the voice shouts about a mobile home somewhere semi remote, and a quiet, simple life. I think perhaps I’ve had that, though, and it wasn’t very fulfilling. Time to try living large and social. Doing and being. Plenty of time to be laid back when you’re six feet underground. 

I’d really rather not have to extensively renovate a vintage unit, but if I have to to get into a good building at a price we can afford, I will. I am guessing no one runs up 4x8 sheets of drywall on the elevators though. 

Today was walking with my sweetheart, just a stroll to Parkdale, coffee at Abbott, then home via the waterfront. A little sun touched but it was a lovely day.

May 15

Monday morning my irritation with our "realtor" was at the breaking point, so I sent an email to a local-ish broker named Trish who I found on the gayrealtynetwork.com site (yes this is a real thing that exists). The message said, "hey, this is the service we are getting, is this what we should expect or is there something we're missing out on?"

Five minutes later, I got a response saying like, "no, that's bullshit, what's your phone number, I'll call you." So I replied and she called straight away, obviously giving breakfast to a small child in the background, and clarified that the Toronto market requires a much higher level of service, and for whatever reason, we weren't getting it, and -- if we'd like, she could shuffle her appointments around to take us to look at properties that very morning.

So I said yes. And she made it happen; within three hours she drove us out, and we went and looked at our two top picks. She was really good, giving her professional opinion about suitability, giving us insider info about the buildings, things we weren't looking at, things we should look for, etc. Like: what's the vibe you get from the security/concierge in a condo? You want someone professional, yet friendly. Not someone rude or icy, not someone just marking time.

You also want a building that's had, or having, major maintenance items (roofs, chillers etc) handled out of the regular budget. You want a board that's willing to undertake significant upgrades to lighting or windows, if the cost/benefit is there. You can't be afraid to pay for things if they're worthwhile. A condo building needs to be managed proactively. You want one with mostly owners, not absentee landlords. She also buttonholed a resident in the elevator, asked him how long he'd lived there: 20+ years. Did he like it? He sure as hell did. Because people who live in a building will either love it and they want to talk about it, or they hate it and they want to talk about it.  

A good broker will also give you solid advice about what you should offer for a place, factoring in other units in the building, what kind of discount you should expect for a unit based on the renovations it's had compared to others, compared to similar units in other buildings, etc. She gave us a very clear idea that the unit was well priced -- that the asking price was reasonable. 

So the only thing remained was to decide if we wanted to put an offer in, and we did, this morning. She made sure to reach out to the listing agent and build up a rapport, to make sure that she could feel out what the sellers wanted: max dollars, quick close, what. We learned that they were not even living in Toronto any more, and likely wanting to just shed the property ASAP. Which, we're fine with -- we don't have anything to sell, we did that last year.

We decided to go in at about 1% over asking -- remembering that the asking price was very reasonable -- if there was a chance of competing offers, but by the deadline of 7pm no one else had registered so we went in right on what they were hoping to get, very happy to pay that amount of money for that amount of condo.

And at about 9pm or so, they accepted and countersigned our offer! So, assuming no fuckups with the close, on June 4th, we'll own a little slice of Toronto near the corner of Jarvis & Wellesley, exactly where we want to be. Basically, ground zero in Toronto's pride neighbourhood.

The 36 hours of the title of this post was how long it took from talking to Trish on Monday to having an accepted offer. Which is only slightly more time than it took our first "realtor" to respond to our initial contact email with an incorrectly gendered reply. We asked Trish if that was her fastest deal and she said, no, 4 hours. 

To be fair -- I've been doing research on real estate in Toronto for well over a year. Learning where we want to live, what good buildings are, how much space we'll need, what we might have to renovate, it's been hundreds of hours of research. From viewing our first units to nailing the deal down in 36 hours is kind of an orgasmic frenzy, but that in no way discounts the tremendous amount of foreplay it took to get to that point.

I don't expect any further drama with the transaction, other than handing over $$$ at some point, and promises to regularly hand over more $, but that's just the usual house buying shit. 

I always kind of viewed the apartment as living only "kind of" in Toronto? It's always been removed from the places where things happen. On a subway line, but not really near anything. And certainly not permanent. Not holding us here, not being roots. Well, now we've got roots. I think we're here to stay. 

And you can bet we've been over that dozens of times before signing papers: do you want to live here? Is this the place for us? We could buy a remote cottage, we could buy something in St John's, we could live quietly, go into semi-retirement. But that's didn't feel like living. We've been living quiet hermity lives for decades. 

I think while we can, with the time we have left on this planet, we should shine brightly in a big city, where we don't have to pretend to be people we are not, just so we don't get glared at by judgy conservatives. It will be so much healthier.

May 22

We've got a lender; we'll be paying an effective 10.5% APR (including all fees, mind) to borrow what remains after our down payment -- for just one year. It's kind of usurious, but on the other hand, we still have no income. One way or another, though in a year we'll be able to secure a real mortage from a real bank. Condo fees and taxes in, it's a little like paying a 50% larger rental payment for the next year to live where we want to live, in space we can control.

We judge the extra 50% worth it in order to get what we want, where we want, before real estate does anything stupid in this area. And if, next year, we have to take money out of the RRSP (a tax-deferred investment like a 401K) in order to have enough equity to qualify for a bank mortgage, we'll do it.

Old ladies have ways of doing things that seem silly or dated or whatever... but ya know what? These old-lady ways WORK. 

Like, I have this great sweater-dress that I wear with tights or leggings, but I'm always yanking on it because sweater + leggings = sticking to each other.  What's a girl to do?  Wear a (half)slip. 

Slips?! But those are for old ladies!

Yeah, but ya know what? Old ladies aren't pulling on their damn dresses all day... because the slip just fucking works. 

I jumped on Amazon to buy two half-slips (insert joke here about why didn't I just buy one whole one instead-- herpaderp), one black and one cream-colored... and instead I discovered a magical thing called "pettipants," which is a floofy slip but with leg-holes so your thighs don't touch. And I wore it under my sweater-dress and over my leggings for Mothers Day and sweetwoundedjesus it was magical. I was comfy, the dress looked great, and I didn't have my hand up my arse tugging and unsticking myself all day.  

Old ladies. They get it.

Some Other Old Lady Stuff that I'm Using and It's Working Great:

1) Washing my hair once per week, if that... otherwise I just slap conditioner on it and rinse it out. (Some days I just chuck on a shower cap and don't wet my hair at all. They're really onto something with the not-daily-hairdo. Boom. Done.

2) Cleaning my house with stuff like a vinegar solution, borax, baking soda, etc.  It's cheap, it works like a mofo. Boom. Handled.

​​​​​​3) Oil of Olay. I'm talkin' the OG OoO... the shit just works. Smells like Nana. Boom. Addressed.

4) Cold cream to get your makeup off... even impossible stuff like waterproof mascara and that liquid lipstick. Boom. Fixed. 

​​​​​​​5) Those pillows that go between your knees when you sleep. HOLY CRAP, what a godsend! Without it, my hip is screeeeeaming in the morning. With it, happy times.  Boom. Finito.

6) Bathtub handles. OK, I don't have a bathtub/shower handle in my bathroom (yet), but whenever I stay in a hotel with one I'm much happier. Should probably get one.

7) Toppik for thinning hair. No, it's not the scalp spraypaint of the Ron Popeil days... these are little fibers that you sprinkle on and they really fill in the slightly sparse spots. They're not gonna make a totally bald person look like Fabio, but it is amaaaaazing. Really works. For men and women. Boom. Fixx0r3d.

So, there you have it.

Any other old-people hacks that work for you?

Have finally given up on waiting/helping to fix Linux on the Samsung Chromebook 3 (which, to be fair, was never sold as a machine for Linux, so no blame). Plus it's very underpowered with that Celeron. I just can't get behind waiting to see what I'm typing in Facebook and Google Docs. I'm going to flip them on eBay... yes, I had two. I had initially accepted blame for somehow messing up the first. Uh-uh. It's a compatibility issue.

So I splurged just a little on a used Dell Chromebook 7310 with an i3 processor (specifically). Oh man, is this an improvement. And the screen is IPS, which is nerdese for "really nice."

I've been using it for like 15 minutes, but so far I'd recommend finding a Dell 7310 on eBay rather than buying an underpowered new Chromebook.

Plus, it'll take a replacement SSD drive (m.2, 44mm size). So I have a much phatter one on the way. I'll be waiting until that arrives to rebuild it on GalliumOS, the Linux distribution for Chromebooks.

How did I choose this machine? The custom firmware to run Linux tidily on a Chromebook is made by a guy called mrchromebox. He has this machine, and he likes it. 😂

Still... it's bigger. 13" screen, not 11". The joke will be on me if the next time I fly out to visit my son in Vancouver, I can't open my laptop in Basic Economy.

Guess what my original motivation was to get a separate home machine...

Google did recently acknowledge there will be official support for Linux apps on Chromebooks, which is cool. But it doesn't sound like something every Chromebook will support, just as the "Android apps on your Chromebook convertible tablet" thing isn't for every Chromebook model. My goal has always been Real Linux On A Good Cheap Laptop.

Found one of these in the outgoing thrift pile and said whoa there, that's an optical zoom. Sure it's not a great camera, but nobody in the house has anything with an optical zoom, much less 27X. This thing's a keeper.

And it has a cute little USB cable tucked into its wrist strap. Score!

Except, when you plug it into your Linux box, Mac or Chromebook, it displays a message inviting you to install Windows-only software. Uh, thanks.

So what to do? I did some spelunking. Here's how to make it work.

It will show up like a thumbdrive would (it took a minute to show up on mine). Then you want to browse into it and go to:

PRIVATE -> AVCHD -> BDMV -> STREAM

There you will see filenames like 00000.mts. I'd never heard of an mts file either, but it's the same format used for Blu-Ray.

On a Chromebook you probably can't play it directly, but you can upload it to google photos via the website, and google photos knows what to do. Victory!

This works on Linux too, but a Linux machine can also play them with VLC Player or convert them to MP4 format with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg whatever.mts whatever.mp4

Or something to that effect. For me, playable video on Google Photos was sufficient proof of concept.

Speaking of Chromebooks, I have at last given up on the Samsung Chromebook 3 as a workable Linux machine. Nothing wrong with them running the OS they are made to run, I just haven't been able to beg, buy, borrow or absorb the skills to figure out why the keyboard starts duplicating keystrokes and the trackpad freezes after a while on Linux. So instead I've purchased a Dell Chromebook 7310... the model recommended by "mrchromebox," who writes the custom firmware for booting directly to Linux without a fuss on these. And I bought it with an i3 processor, not a Celeron, because come on, sometimes I have to get work done. Looks like I can also upgrade the SSD on that model.

I'll be flipping the two Samsungs on eBay. Yes, I had bought a second to see if I was responsible for the problems with the first. Since I have to disclose that the cases were opened, I might do better to donate them to a school. That way I get both karma and a tax writeoff. But it sounds like those writeoffs will be less important under the Trump tax code. I hate that this might influence my life choices in any way.

Despite opening all hailing frequencies, still no responses on the job front. Discouraging intensifies. However.

It is possible that we could, if we wanted to play a fairly risky game, get a mortgage on a place to live, despite having no verifiable income, if we put down enough money. Basically enough money to make a bank say they literally give no fucks whether we make any payments at all, because if we default, they'll have the property AND a huge pile of cash. 

We are leaning towards doing this, if the numbers work out. The problem we want to solve is this big pile of liquid cash we have from the sale of the house in Kitchener last year. If it just sits there, it will just decrease in value due to inflation and being eaten up by rent and living expenses. That's dumb. So.

Our lease on the apt is up in three months; which is money we have to pay. If we can get keys for property before then, we can transition to a new domicile at our own pace, renovating as needed, and pay maybe one additional month-to-month rent payment.

The concern is what would the monthly carrying cost look like for the apartment we have vs a condo we buy: condos have taxes, fees, and then there's the mortgage payment. If we can get the monthly carrying cost of a place we OWN down to the vague neighbourhood of what we're paying now to RENT, then not only is it a good investment, it doesn't really change our financial equation that much.

Back of notebook calculations suggest that it might work -- not getting an outrageous place that's more than we need or want -- but one that has good location, community and amenities. I mean for example right now we're paying $2K in rent. If we can arrange it so we're paying $2.5K in mtg/taxes/fees for a place we own, that seems like a good thing. 

It's got our liquid funds working, in the form of a solid base of equity that will only appreciate, it solves the problem we have now of being on the fringe of the city rather than being downtown where we want to be (where we need to be), and it gives us the confidence and comfort of being able to change things to suit our needs, rather than just living in a white box. (Also one of the condos we're looking at has a wood shop, how cool is that.)

The RISK is that now much of our nest egg would be tied up in real estate (albeit appreciating). What if a good job is not forthcoming? As long as we don't touch the retirement savings (RRSP) in order to buy, then we'd still have the RRSP available to help carry for at least a handful of years, if necessary. During which time we both would obviously be looking for alternate work. I expect we could make enough money to make ends meet even if both of us decided the best thing would be to pull shots of expresso. Also in the distant future there's a pension, and another pension, which would more than cover carrying costs if things dragged out that far. So I don't think, worst case, we'd be homeless. If ultimately we came close to running out of cash, we could put the condo on the market and very likely get all the initial investment back, plus appreciation. 

So it seems like it's a good idea.

But it's also a COMMITMENT. It's committing to staying in TO, not bailing out to some small town or city somewhere, buying a small place, and retiring. It's a commitment to trying to stay in the workforce, one way or another, until the condo is paid off. It's intentionally setting down roots, even though there's nothing holding us here. It's saying "you know what, this is the place we want to be, that we have always wanted to be, and even though there's a small chance we're fucking ourselves, it's worth the risk."

I'll be talking to a mortgage broker on Monday, I guess, to see what our buying power is. And I've been haunting the real estate sites. I don't know what employment will be like in 3-6 months, but, banks permitting, it seems like maybe our housing situation will be resolved by then.

At least that's the current thought process. 

I've been thinking about anxiety and depression and the unfortunate way that they've affected my life, and how, even though everybody bloody has them, apparently no organization is set up to deal with it. However, as I am a) aware that there are others who have dealt with that at much greater length lately (see also Wil Wheaton), and b) that it's kind of dull, I am therefore going to c) talk about Avengers: Infinity War. Be warned, for them as care, here there be spoilers, although I do not intend to sum up the plot nor give any background beyond that which is necessary for a reasonably coherent paragraph or two. Will this be particularly insightful? Will reading this improve your viewing experience? Will you pay three installments of $19.95 each for this amazing TV offer? 

Enh, probably not. 

So. Here we've got a big ol' massive event with oodles and boodles of characters, a special effects budget bigger than some cheaper military hardware, and Tobias Funke in a supporting role. Seriously. He's in there. I saw this thing. I had a good time with it. I'd recommend that people see it. 

And yet, the complaints of several people I've heard, I agree with. They're totally valid.

You have to have seen a bunch of previous movies to get this. There's no way around it - you have to have seen Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Iron Man: Civil War (little joke there), Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thor: Ragnarok at a minimum to know what the hell to make of this thing. Add Iron Man III, Captain America: Winter Soldier and Thor if you want to be thorough. So that's kind of putting up a barrier to newcomers to the series, although based on the box office, that's not doing too much harm right now. 

What it is doing is making this, literally, an event. Not a movie. You can go back and watch, say, Empire Strikes Back, and at least to a certain extent, you can enjoy it, even without watching A New Hope. The cast is small, you can deduce a lot of the backstory just by watching things happen, it makes a certain amount of sense. 

This, on the other hand - I am, like, totally not sure that this will be watchable in five years' time. (Did the accent come through there?) Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark will still be a classic character, sure (although let's face it, two of the three Iron Man movies were ... not great) but will people remember Doctor Strange and Civil War and whatnot enough to get the plot? 

Plus, as an added bonus to my skepticism, I remember what happened with Watchmen. Watchmen was a twelve month comic book limited series to begin with - which is important to remember these days because you can't go into a bookstore without tripping over the Watchmen book and the Absolute Watchmen deluxe book and the Watchmen box set complete with Rorschach mask and the Amazing Garden Weasel. 

I didn't have many people to talk comics with back then, but amongst those I could, we talked Watchmen for hours, every issue. We examined every page for clues: I remember I was convinced - as I'm sure I was meant to be - that Hooded Justice had thrown the Comedian out the window, due to the similarity of hand positions between one frame of the Comedian as a young man being beaten up and another frame of the elder Comedian getting beaten up, just prior to the aforementioned being-thrown-out-the-window. That was so much a part of the Watchmen experience that rereading it today feels like a pale, wan, boring imitation of the original 

Anticipation was a major part of the Watchmen event, just as it was back in 1841 when issues containing the next installment of The Old Curiosity Shop caused riots on the docks of New York City (spoiler alert: Little Nell? Dead.) Anticipation is a major - albeit mostly unexamined part - of the impact of any cultural artifact that spreads itself across time. There's a reason James Bond movies used to end with the words "James Bond will return" in some form - in point of fact, as I mentioned the last post I made, Ian Fleming was a master in using anticipation in spackling over the problems in his stories, by putting little interlocking cliffhangers that dragged you ever onwards - and it's the same reason we got so excited when Sam Jackson said those words at the end of Iron Man.

Being told about something and then being told that you can't have it yet makes it all the more exciting, for the same reason that being told about a scary monster is scarier than being shown a scary monster. Once you see it, it's concrete. As Stephen King said in Danse Macabre, the monster may be twenty feet tall, but "at least it's not a hundred." The big Crisis Crossover may be twenty characters big, but, dangit, it's not a hundred characters. 

Not every experience is improved by anticipation, but many are. And this? This is one of them. Every one in the theatre had our own hypothetical movie that we'd be watching in our heads before the lights went down. We always do. (I had a much different movie in my head especially before Green Lantern, but we will talk about that on another day when I have had my lithium.)

So ... this is a firefly in a jar, caught on a summer's night. It will only last so long, and when it's gone, it's gone. 

How is it as a firefly, then?

Well, it's all right. I enjoyed myself.

But you know what movie I went back to last night?

Rampage.

Because it's exhausting. It's damn near three hours long once trailers are included. Stuff gets thrown at you fast enough that you genuinely don't give a crap about a lot of it - and for those who disagree, here's a little test: Name Thanos's henchmen. And if you can, did you know them before the movie? If you get more than one, you're a better man than I am. Honestly, I can't even tell two of them apart - there's the big guy who knocked around Manhattan at the beginning of the movie, and I'm almost positive he was also in Wakanda near the end, with the big dome and the Vision and like that. 

There's whole sequences in the movie that I would pay big money to lose, just to reduce the narrative load a little - and, I'm sorry, but they pretty much all revolve around the Vision and Paul Bettany. When he puts some goddamn life into his voice, he's a good actor. When he's playing The Messiah 2.0, he's not just a snoozer, he's actively annoying ... and it's not helped by the fact that the Scarlet Witch and everyone near her is a moron. Unstoppable bad guy who wants to kill untold quintillions of intelligent life across the universe on his way? Fuck it, get out the ice cream scoop and get that gem off that there forehead. Yes, I know, from a narrative sense, it helps. It plays into the whole "sacrifice your loved one for a greater good" theme/question of the movie, but fuck, it was artificial (in a bad way), it didn't feel organic to the movie, and it let them bring Ms. Plot Device Herself back into the movie - I like the actress who plays T'challa's sister a lot, but she's what The Smart Guy usually is in these stories, which is a way to get yourself out of or into a problem - she's not a character, she's the author saying "Well, Thanos is just going to bloody well show up with this here gem still in the forehead, deal with it" and flipping the audience off. 

I really would have liked more from other sequences, too: Thor's trip to the forgeworld would have been an awesome movie that nobody except me and the other three people who liked Thor: The Dark World would have gone to. I'd have liked more information about Titan - which, thank the Maker, is no longer the moon in orbit around Saturn - and so on.

So it's not the movie I had in my head in that respect: I really hate Q - style characters who Provide The Gear or Solve The Problem but have no other personal arcs or involvement in the story, and Paul Bettany playing Jesus bores me silly. Fine. No worries there. You can agree or disagree on those, and I'll be fine.

I'm sad about two other characters though - one a mischaracterization, and one a wasted opportunity.

Mischaracterization first: Zoe Saldana can play badass. I've seen her. Hell, she was in a movie with three (I think) other actors who're in this movie with her where she was the scariest one (The Losers, if you're interested. I like it, the snuke(sic) aside. Your mileage may vary.)  In Marvel canon, Gamorra is described as the baddest-ass woman this side of Lynda Carter. What does she do here? Whimper and beg the Man in Her Life to shoot her. And as soon as he doesn't, she rolls over pretty much instantly to give Thanos what he wants. This is not badass. Okay, sure, she does a bit of stabbing, but it's vanishingly brief in comparison to the whimpering and the rolling. What the hell, Marvel?

Wasted opportunity second: Captain America: The First Avenger is my favorite Marvel movie. The lead actor plays Cap with a sense of humor. He's got opinions. He's got attitude. He's got a personality. In this? And Winter Soldier? And Civil War? Cap is a stoic, glum character to whom things happen. I know, it's hard writing a genuinely decent character, but Cap (here and in a LOT of recent comics with him) is a total stiff with no personality. The actor (sorry, I know he's a Chris, but I can't remember the last name and I'm not gonna look it up right now. He's not Hemsworth or Pine, but I'm blanking on what he is) is genuinely funny as hell. He was the best part of the Fantastic Four movies, he was the best one in The Losers because he was funny, he has serious comic chops ... and he's asked to play a role that could have been played by Tor Johnson. 

So, after all this, you may be asking "why do you like it, then?"

Well, Zoe Saldana and Paul Bettany and Chris (*mumble*) aside, the actors all do a damn good job. Marvel's got a big group of actors who can steal a scene,  ham it up when needed, and crank it down when needed. Cumberbatch and Downey have good chemistry together, Rocket and Thor play off each other well (although Rocket drops out of focus a bit early in their sequence. He needed more "Whee! Weapons!") 

As a set of character pieces, the movie generally works, Vision aside. They're fun little micro-movies that are well worth watching. 

And then there's Josh Brolin, who totally nails it here. I'm sorry, Andy Serkis, but if there's any justice in the world, you aren't going to be the first guy to win an Oscar for a CG performance, it's Brolin. He makes Thanos believable - it really is Jim Starlin's Thanos up there, but it takes some heavy lifting to make him work, and Brolin does. There's some minor continuity issues between Thanos's appearances, but in general, for once, Marvel has a villain who's not forgettable and wimpy. Seriously; Brolin pulls off a performance that, while perhaps not written as well as, I dunno, Passage to India or something, makes Grimace's butch brother actually have gravitas.

So - this isn't a movie. It's an event. It won't make sense in five years. But it's still worth it to watch the actors work.  

We're reading Emotional Agility for a book club at work. While I have some of my usual self improvement book issues with it - primarily regularly the ability of an individual to dramatically change their external life through changing their internal self -> internal change and growth are great! and also trauma is real and other people have real effects on us. etc. etc. etc. - it has also given me some good things to ponder.

One of the sections, "Walking Your Why", delves into what your values are and keeping them front of mind when choosing your actions. I like to think that my values are pretty strong and clear, but it is also clear that I don't always have them front and center. The book lists a couple ways to get at what your values are: The usual list of questions ending with what if by some miracle all your anxiety and stress disappear, what does your life look like? and a journal exercise examining what you did that day that was worth your time. I stumbled across another method that I've been finding really useful - ask other people. P says the first family value of ours that comes to his mind is "being welcoming". S says one of mine must be "cooking".

So dear reader, what do you think my top values are? What are yours?

(I'll put my list-in-progress in comments)

xpost from dreamwidth

Yesterday, driving home from work, I had the opportunity to 
take an often-considered side route. There's a ferry 
crossing the Willamette river, whose signage has tempted 
me for several months. My usual commute winds through 
agricultural fields with almost zero traffic.This time of 
year it is especially beautiful. I lament the lack of 
pull-over opportunities for pictures - there are no 
shoulders on these roads.

Yesterday was a short work day, a sunny day, and I knew 
it was time to float my car over a river. 

The road to the ferry was new to me, too, and yielded 
another treat, a view of the many acres of hops just 
starting to grow up the thin strands of the frames that 
suspend them. Hops pickers will mount ladders when it's 
harvest time. legend has it they can sometimes fall asleep 
on the ladders, due to the soporific effect of the hops.

The hops fields seemed to go on for miles. I spotted one 
sign that marked those hops as destined for Full Sail beers, 
just one of numerous local breweries I am quite familiar 
with.

The approach to the ferry itself is of course a short slope 
downwards. Only two cars ahead of me, and only two dollars' 
cost for the crossing. This ferry is the fifth incarnation 
since 1850, each one named for the man who started the 
service.

Now, this river crossing is far from monumental. The span 
of water is only 580 feet! But the unique sensation of 
driving onto a steel deck and floating across a moving 
river was significant to me. Sure, it would have been 
much more exciting if men still poled it across, and the 
ferry was made of locally felled trees. I did not at all 
mind the diesel motor, and the overhead and underwater 
cables that guided the small craft (a maximum of nine cars 
at once). I'd guess the float across was accomplished in 
less than three minutes. I was to the right and a little 
behind the car next to me, and all I could see of the older 
woman seated on the passenger side was her right hand, with 
a firm grip on the handle built into the dash. She seemed 
to be challenging her comfort zone more than I was.

After the crossing I was quickly reunited with the rest of 
my usual commute. That modest diversion was important to 
me, as are all opportunities to try new and different 
things. I have had many fine experiences because I just 
had to follow one or two or five more turns on a forest 
trail, or drive a beautiful rural road just because it's 
there. It is one of the ways I maintain a wonderous regard 
for life in this world.

You can think about something that evokes no emotional response, if you want--but you don't do it, do you?  Not unless you have to.  "I don't care" is the quickest way to nip a conversation in the bud.  And why is your job disappointing?  Because you spend all of these precious hours doing something that you just don't care about.

Human beings care about stuff.  It's where we start.  We may later use our rational part to look more closely at something, but the caring comes first.  By the time our analytical brain turns on, we're generally already emotionally invested in...whatever it is.  We're well downstream from the our original point of departure, and we have little desire to backtrack--to go back upstream and start the trip again with both the gut and the rational mind on board.  So we start reasoning, analyzing, discussing from just where we are. 

The people whose boats are floating near us become our tribe.  The ones floating way over there are not, and they include the evil, the misguided and the stupid--the fleet of deplorables.  By the time we engage with others on a subject, we have pretty much figured out our position.  Our logic is internally consistent and our answer the right one.  That means we can spend our time passionately defending that answer and pretty much ignoring the babble of others...unless those others agree with us. 

And if this Us and Them dichotomy is emotionally satisfying, then you can go for it.  If you actually want the world to become a better place, though, this isn't going to help.  To have a discussion that might actually lead to something, somebody (hopefully everybody) needs to return to at least a semi-open mind.  They also need to agree on the meaning of the terms that they use and on what can they can take as common ground.  There will be some common ground, although at the outset, nobody may know what it is.

Let me try to make my points by talking about something that most people don't--and shouldn't--care about.

There is an "IQ" math quiz going around on Facebook, which I reproduced below.  Over 3000 people have "solved" it and then gone on to debate the answers.  We have the "Answer is 96" team and the "Answer is 40" team, and so on.  And each team is absolutely sure their answer is unassailable.  They're passionate about it.  You can figure out why--and I bet it isn't a love of math.

Looking over the posts, it seems that virtually everyone makes these two assumptions:

1.  There is only one correct solution, and in it, all of the equations have to be true.  If all of your equations are true, you have proved that your answer is the right one.

2.  "+" isn't really "+" .  On the other hand, all other symbols are being used in their normal way. 

The first assumption is common enough in its form; it echoes "There is only one true God" among others, and it includes the always-popular confirmation bias:  paying attention only to data that supports your conclusion.  I'm letting that go today.  I want to take the second assumption as a poster child--an emotionally neutral poster child--for the problem of and importance of terminology.

Assumption #2 is perplexing, in its way.  Why would people "know" that all of the other symbols mean exactly what they've always meant, but that the odd one out is the plus sign?  Why not assume that "=" means "less than or equal to", and give any value of 19 or more as the answer?  It may be what is called a "Schelling point" in game theory.  In a cooperative game, a Schelling point is a good one to choose simply because, for some reason, most people figure it would be chosen.  So I'll accept the idea that the "+" is the odd one out as common ground. 

Of course, the puzzle could have said, "? is a binary operation and 1 ? 4 = 5, 2 ? 5 = 12", and so on...and then asked how ? worked.  But instead we have "+", which we now assume isn't really "+", but is pretty much like "+"--which should be good enough if you're not being a pedantic prig.

But it's not.  Virtually everyone assumed that this new "+" was a binary operation (although they may not have ever heard that phrase), that it took the two given numbers and always returned a number as the answer.  You know, just like the usual "+".

Except--and here's where the debates started--with regular addition, A + B  and B + A are the same.  With regular addition, you can figure out A + B for any two numbers.  Do these properties have to hold for this new "+"?  A + B uses arithmetical operators--just one, in fact.  Does the new A + B have to do this?  Because if not, A + B might mean "the entry in row A, column B of this here table".  And if you're upset that you could fill that table in an infinite number of ways...well, sorry, but it's not hard to prove that you can come up with an infinite number of different arithmetical formulas that all "work" for the data given.  As two examples, you can get A + B = A(B+1) or A + B = 1/4((A + B + 1)^2 - 16).  The first of these has A + B different from B + A; the second has them being equal.  Both of them agree on the answer to the puzzle...and on almost nothing else.

I kinda hope you skimmed that last paragraph.  Who cares what the right answer is?  My bet is, almost no one.  But they care about their answer being right.  And almost no one is interested in seeing if the other answers offered are right, too.  And this is in a case where it's trivial to check to see if the other answers work!

And matters are only made worse because the problem used a "+" sign, a common and universally understood symbol, but deliberately used it in a way that refers to something that wasn't addition, but was "like it in important ways".

Trivia?  Absolutely.  But we see the same thing in discussions about meaningful and important things, and then we don't need to muddy the water by using terminology that means whatever we want it to mean at the moment, leaving it to others to sort out.  This is especially true if you're trying to find common cause with the people in those boats on the other parts of the river.  They're not all a fleet of deplorables, and we need to keep track of the differences.

If you don't mean "all Republicans" or "all men" or "all police officers" when you speak of Republicans or men or police officers, then please take a couple of syllables to say so.  "Many Republicans", "too many men", "most police officers", or whatever.  This does not turn the conversation away from your point.  It keeps the conversation on your point by getting rid of an objection to something you didn't mean anyway.  It also keeps you honest with yourself, forcing you to remember that the statements you are making are not universal truths, regardless of how important certain cases are, and how largely they loom in your thoughts and heart.

Words easily become confused with truths.  If you get in the habit of making sweeping or hyperbolic statements because they sound strong and definite, will you be able to remember what you actually meant?  Will others?