Or at least I haven't been.  Too many blogging platforms, too little energy to write.  I moved my Livejournal over to Dreamwidth, posted there a few times, and that was it.  Tonight for some reason I decided to click on the email reminders I still get, and here I am.  Read a little bit, but decided not to go all the way back.

If I want to keep posting and not get daunted, I guess I should write something quick off the cuff on some random topic, or a few.

Simon (eldest son) is now 18 and just finishing his first semester of university, taking computing science, but he's still at the stage where he's mostly taking other stuff, like physics and statistics and calculus.  And he's having more trouble with the calculus than the other things; luckily I remember a fair bit of calculus myself so I can help.  They're using this system called WebAssign or something where they submit answers online, and apparently it's both fairly capable of scientific notation and fairly forgiving of unreduced forms.  But it also only allows a certain number of tries (in this case three), and it doesn't give you the right answer when your guesses are exhausted (and it sounds like they didn't discuss them in class, either)...and usually he only comes to me after his first two guesses were wrong.  Hopefully he does okay in his final exam.

I was quietly happy to see him sitting with Jinian (his nine-year-old sister) on the weekend, working on a programming project.  I gather there's some framework for building Bullet Hell games (he told me the name, but I've forgotten) which features some programming, and he was patiently explaining the programming bits to her.  So that's nice.  Jinian's been struggling with math a little, but programming is easier than math, isn't it?  Or maybe it just seems that way.  I saw someone write recently that "talent" is just that stuff that you did a lot of when you were young because it seemed fun and easy...

Patty Lin is coming to town!

It's true. Patty is flying in on Thursday night, and her husband Mike is flying in on a Friday-Saturday red-eye because he has to work a full day on Friday before flying out.  They were originally flying out to see Hot Breakfast's Second Annual Very Dorky Christmas Show, but it has been cancelled because the venue sucked and basically didn't want our money.  So much for that.

So instead of having a Christmas gig, we're going to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi instead.  We're seeing the non-IMAX, non-3D version, because from what I could tell, that's mostly how it was shot.  (They said they shot a few scenes in IMAX format, but it was only a few scenes. Meh.) 

I bought tickets ahead of time on Fandango, and as of last week, we were the only people in the entire theater.  (All of the other theaters were almost max capacity... but that's because they were 3D and/or IMAX.)

In related news, two weeks ago was the 10-year anniversary of me buying this house. I still haven't had a housewarming party yet.  I still haven't hired a frau[1] (aka a cleaning lady / cleaning service).  I used to use a cleaning service when I lived in Arizona in the mid-'90s, and I kept using one when I moved back to DE.  When I bought this house, my fraus didn't want to clean my house, since they specialized in apartments, so I had to find a new service, and I never got around to it.  (Not entirely true. I brought one in, but I didn't trust her.  She didn't seem to be all there, and she told me that her husband worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and died on 9/11.  She told me about the enormous amount of money she received from it, both from his life insurance and also from some kind of government payout. She bragged about her huge new fancy house she had, and she never said "But I'd trade it all to have my husband back," which seemed strange.  Anyway, things didn't add up, and I didn't feel entirely comfy with her getting intimate with my belongings, so I after the initial "try-before-you-buy" clean, I didn't call her back. 

BUT!  Patty's coming to town, so Matt called around and hired a cleaning service that we both feel good about, and they're coming tomorrow (Monday) and I am excite to have a clean house again.  And I will gladly give them my dollars every two weeks to maintain a clean house. Hallelujah!

And in addition to the fraus, Matt also called Stanley Steemer to come clean the bedroom carpet, the great room area rugs and my grandmother's two green chairs.  I am very excited about that, too.

And maybe the plumber will actually show up and fix the basement pipes, and then my house will be as good as gnu!  Did I mention that I'm excited? Because I'm excited.  Yay!

Anyhoo, I need to get to bed because we have Bruce Springsteen rehearsal tomorrow and I have to be sharp for it (no pun intended).  

G'night!

-------

[1] When I worked at the law firm in the early '90s, my lawyer told me that the German word for "cleaning lady" is "heinemachenfrau."  I fell in love with that word.  Turns out it was wrong, and the right word starts with an R, so it's "reinemachenfrau." However, Google Translate doesn't acknowledge that word (probably because I'm likely spelling it wrong), and instead it wants me to use the word "putzfrau" which, dare I say, I almost like better. 

Advent of code is fun, if you like programming.

In December every day thru Christmas you get a little puzzle that you need to write code to solve. You get some text and some rules; a single value will be the answer.

I wrote a programming language (called SAI) a while ago and I'm using it to solve these puzzles. I may post a few solutions here, so if you want to solve them on your own, don't read further, or any other "Advent" posts.

-- spoiler --

Here's the solution to the first puzzle, December 1.

In the code below, source is the provided input to your puzzle solver and the two debug statements print out the solutions to parts 1 and 2 of the puzzle:

  set
    elements to source.split('') thru it-0 // note!
    previous to elements last
    result to 0

  each elements as elem
    if previous = elem 
      set result + elem 
    set previous to elem
    
  debug "Part 1: ${result}"

  set
    result to 0
    len to elements.length
  
  count 0 to len as pos1
    set pos2 to (pos1 + (len/2)) % len
    if elements[pos1] = elements[pos2]
      set result + elements[pos1]
      
  debug "Part 2: ${result}"

I designed SAI to be easy to read and with a minimum of punctuation and special symbols, so it looks more like pseudo-code than actual code, and in general resembles a typed out version of what you would verbally describe a program to be doing. Also, this program is certainly not as efficient as one could make it. But I believe that readable and maintainable are more important than efficiency, with very narrow exceptions.

Note that SAI compiles to Javascript, so is subject to some of Javascript's bullshit, in particular the strange handling of numeric values vs strings of digits. A simple and fast way of converting a string to a value (if you're sure it is convertible) is to subtract 0 from it; that's what is happening here.

The company car's transmission blew up. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but "it stopped working" isn't very sexy.

The shop says it should be fixed by late Wednesday / early Thursday.

Sucks that I'll be out of work most of the week, but it could be much, much worse.

That brings us to today. I'm actually kinda happy to be vehicle-less. When I'm done with work for the day, or on my days off, I try to leave the car parked and walk everywhere anyway, so this isn't terribly new territory. I try to pick hotels that are within walkable distance of 'stuff' thanks to my 'leave it parked' policy.

Today's walk via Google Maps:

After the park, and before returning to the hotel, I was walking through a residential area. About a block away from me (I was on 76th - a very busy road) I saw a dog running loose through the neighborhood. I stopped and watched him for a few minutes. He seemed very healthy, and I was pretty sure I could see a collar on him. When I saw him trying to (I assumed) re-enter a fenced in yard, I made my decision to try to help him out.

Clearly, he hated me.

He was absolutely charming. Still clearly a pup (though not a baby) he was youthful, but not wild/crazy. Once he'd decided that I wasn't going to hurt him, he cozied up to me and didn't leave my side more than for a second when he got excited.

I made some calls and someone came out to pick him up. Thankfully (?) they explained some bureaucratic bullshit about how I was technically over the county line and he had no jurisdiction and... yadda yadda.

He did do something mildly useful by giving me a leash for the pup which was little more than a rope lasso. He then went back to his truck to get the phone number of the folks I would have to call. They would have been my third shelter (SPCA, the local shelter, and then his recommendation.)

But while he was digging up the number, the owners of the house (that the pup was trying to re-enter) came out and claimed the dog.

I'd only spent between 1/2 hour and an hour with the dog, and I sincerely had a hard time giving him up. Maybe my idea of volunteering at a shelter isn't such a great idea.

Lastly - a quick video. (Sorry for the vertical video - in my defense, I was playing with a derrrrrrrrg.)

ETA: in the video I say “Owasso Texas”  which is something I kept doing over and over again, and I have no idea why. I was actually in Owasso Oklahoma. 

Have you ever had this thing like, when you've just taken a nice handful of something snacky, like potato chips, and tossed them in your face and started chowing down, that your body decides that NOW, right NOW would be the perfect time to have a gigantic coughing fit?

And you're standing there with a mouth full of food and you know exaaaaactl what your diaphragm is going to do in a very short period of time with no conscious control and think, "I don't want to die." 

And you have to judge, can I swallow all of this VERY quickly, or is there somewhere I can spit it out VERY quickly, before there begins this massive wheezing intake that would likely be extremely counterproductive to clearing your lungs, followed by a 100km/h explosive burst of air coming out with god knows what in it?

You ever had that?

Because, you know, that's one of those times when you realize you, your being, your self, is merely riding along in that meat space-ship in an purely *advisory* role. 

Hi, I'm your friend Sean, and sometimes I turn a sink full of partially chewed food into existential commentary.

[ ding ] please drive through.

I posted this to Facebook on time last night, then I just had to get some shuteye. Sorry I'm late, creative accountability pardners.

Creative prompts from Aaron Humphrey: Nicholas If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barbon, a candelabra, "the wifi is down."

YouTube absolutely crucified the audio here. I don't know why. It pains me to say this but it sounds way the hell better on Facebook. Lyrics below, it would be nice if you could hear them.

Some
Some people
Some people make
Some people make it up as they go along

Some
Some people
Some people can
Some people can do anything they want

Some
Some people
Some people will
Some people will say anything

Some
Some people
Some people have
Some people have a lot of fucking nerve

An asymptotic curve
Approaching infinity, ay ay o
You thought you were the grasping man’s Galileo

And the only thing that bothers you
Is posterity

So you wrote and wrote and lectured with
Such clarity

And you tried to sell the rights to what you’d never owned
As the lord protector shoved the sword back in the stone
As you fought the lawyers in the street
I admit that part was kind of sweet
But you did it all for you and you alone
Nicholas Barbon

Now
Now I don’t
Now I don’t know
Now I don’t know how to get along
Without your shiny toys

Now
Now I see
Now I see why
Now I see why the end of every song
Became a royalty check

Now I’m insured against
All acts of God
You’re betting that he won’t show up
The cobbler’s kids are wonderfully shod

And if the candelabra ever falls
You’ll have plenty of time to pack and skip town
While we’re all still asking why the wifi is down

And you tried to sell the rights to what you’d never owned
As the lord protector shoved the sword back in the stone
As you fought the lawyers in the street
I admit that part was kind of sweet
But you did it all for you and you alone
Nicholas Barbon

When you think you’re too tired and cranky to do anything, go see a small-budget live show, preferably one with a talented friend in it. You will catch yourself talking to yourself out loud in the bathroom, saying, “I like my life.” 

I actually caught myself saying, “I like my life, but I’m so tired.” 

Note to everyone else: Kyra Baker’s one-woman show, Witness, has its final performance on Thursday night, at The Asian Arts Initiative.

https://my.firstpersonarts.org/single/psDetail.aspx?psn=51900

You might remember Kyra as Officer Foster in Traveling Light and as Anne in Fox Haven. I knew that she came from a very religious family, that there was a schism, and her brother refused to attend her wedding. I never felt comfortable asking her about it, I just figured the time would come when she’d talk about it.  This show will make you never hate Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

I should not be awake right now.

I drove exactly 300 miles yesterday over 6.25 hours driving between rehearsals, Matt's performance at a north Jersey wedding (nobody we knew-- it was just a gig, and I did not attend... I was just the chauffeur), my parents' place, and home. 

I was very happy to see my folks yesterday, even though it was a quick visit. 

I have two more rehearsals today and another performance. 

I bought my house exactly 10 years ago Friday. 

​​​​​I still have boxes I haven't opened since they were moved here from my old apartment. 

I spend a lot of time waiting for my phone to do what I'm asking it to do, which often isn't much.

I think operationally, not strategically.

I move gently.

If I have a problem, I solve it fundamentally.

I think mentally-- and when I fly I'm so high, I do it intercontinentally.

(Those last three lines courtesy of Robert Bryan and Dave Peters. Listen here.)

E                          D

Teach your kitties Python,

A

Teach your kitties Perl,

E                           D

Teach your kitties C++,

A       B              E

That’ll melt their world.

Miaow!

Teach your kitties Fortran,

Hey they’ll always eat.

Teach your kitties COBOL,

Join the obsolete elite!

Miaow!

Teach your kitties JavaScript,

Now they are confused.

Teach your kitties Eiffel, it’s

A skill they’ll never use!

Miaow!

E                      D

Kitties haven’t got much RAM

E                                 B

They can’t draw UML diagrams

But all the boss on Upwork knows:

They’re experts on stack overflow

Miaow!

When you’re kitty’s ready,

Call the agency.

Soon she’ll be debugging

Thermostats in C!

Miaow!

Teach your kitties Python,

Now you’re living large!

Ship them off to SpaceX

On an automated barge!

Miaow!

You know it’s chilly when there are 3 cats on the bed, and none of  them are fighting.