Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1519
Dealing with jetlag, Mamdami, unclaimed funds websites, returning to chores, yay. Jane screen time, restless nights thinking about AI books.
Good morning! I am home! It is great! Jetlag? Not so good though! Only slept one hour on our five-hour redeye. All of us only slept an hour. Jane only slept an hour. What a mess. We got home at 8 AM and all went back to bed. Jane and I slept till noon, Emma slept longer. And then last night! I thought I had this nailed. Went to bed at 9:30, asleep by 10:30, no problem, get to wake up at 7:30 my gloriously late summer wakeup time. But nope. Woke up at 1:30 in the morning, couldn’t fall back asleep till 4. Alarm went off at 7:30, I turned it off, assumed Jane would wake me up in an hour or so, but nope. Slept till 10:30. Jane slept even longer. We’re all messed up. I’m glad she’s caught up on sleep, but she’s going to be impossible tonight.
Woke up and got thrown right into work, since I was late. Just got off my weekly leadership meeting, which is actually a really good meeting to do first thing upon returning to work. Everything went really well while I was gone! I am pleased. These guys are great.
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What a great thing to wake up to the fact that Cuomo lost though. I went to bed really depressed about that election. I looked at a round-up on the Times of the last dozen or so polls and I swear to god, that dude was polling probably +12 across all polls. I had a sinking feelign that Mamdami fever was all hot air and was going to deflate when I went to bed, and we were not going to have to wait a week, and Cuomo would have won by the time I woke up. I am sorry I am such a pessimist right now. And such low table-stakes for the people who want change in this country: can’t even fucking beat Cuomo.
But no! Surprise! Frabgeous Day Callot Callay! He lost! And I am sure Mamdami is good, he seems very talented and very competent and the absolutely racist politicking against him made me like him more. But I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about him and I don’t really care. I would have taken any of a half-dozen candidates, I mostly just wanted Cuomo to lose and some evidence people care.
And people care!
Woo!
We have a loooong to-listen queue this week. So much music I added on the trip, and I haven’t been listening to new music at all for two weeks now, since I only listen to it at my desk. We are listening to Mixes of a Lost World right now, the new remix album by the Cure. The mixes are way better than the mixes on the old Mixed Up album of yesteryear, but still, I question the purpose of this album. Also it is long: two and a half hours WTF. I liked the Four Tet one, though.
When I woke up last night at 1:30 after three hours of sleep, I was consumed with thoughts about this stupid AI essay I think I’ma gonna have to write, which I think is going to be (very short) book length? I am not psyched about this. But I think I have to do it. So for three hours I would lay there with my eyes closed, think of some important point, get up, turn on the light, grab my phone, open my notepad and add it to the outline. And then do it again. And again. Maybe ten times across four hours. Gawd. Let’s look at the note now in the cold light of day. Hrm. Actually! This looks pretty good!
I don’t want to write a book about AI. But the discourse is just so, so bad. I need something to hand to someone when they ask my opinions on this topic. I need something to point to when I explain why I want kosher-like labels on AI-free products.
Of course I have had these manic episodes of plotting before. I would say they are a mixed bag. The Star Trek and Man Nup books both came from this process, but so did several of my utterly failed initiatives, like trying to buy Giphy and trying to buy Meetup, lol. So I guess maybe the writing manic episodes fare better than the business ones.
Oh god I am getting distracted by looking at the outline. Shouldn’t have peeked. Need. to. Stop. I have work today.
Man. I am so out of it. Gave myself a whole day to adjust between Alaska vacation life and NC work life but it wasn’t enough. It was a productive day, too: did my countries maps flashcard game, got everything correct but two countries, that was good. Except they redesigned the game! Very disorienting. I ama man of habits.
Reorganized my Youtube WatchMe playlist. Moved the like four hours of music vidoos I will never watch to their own “music for later” playlist, for easier organization of the remaining videos in the playlist. I have been meaning to do this for months, I am very excited about it.
Tagged and sorted all my vacation photos. Jane helped. That was cute. She loved the act of picking “the good Jane photos” and separating them out from the rest.
Dealt with my mail, paid my bills, caught up on all my work reporting and finances.
Oh and I deposited my $200 check I got from NY State Unclaimed Funds: do unclaimed funds in every state you ever live in. It is super fun. Strong recommend. I have another $50 from Mass coming. Not the biggest haul but not bad for like 30 minutes of effort. Unclaimed funds!
Oh right I’m supposed to end on a Jane anecdote. She was great on the plane. I let her use her iPad for the entire flight from Fairbanks to Seattle. They didn’t have wifi on that flight, so she just played minecraft. And she wasn’t a pill at all! So yesterday we let her use it for a single hour, Minecraft only, and she was a total pill! Just the worst! Now it’s banned again. We cannot get her to grasp that her behavior post-scree dictates the amount of screen time she gets. She just turns into an absolute Gollum demanding the precious. We are putting that thing away for a while.
BUT once the gollum phase came back and Smeagol returned, just so cute and cuddly yesterday. These are great parenting years, man. I am gonna miss it.
Just like that creepy, nosy guy in the airport told me.
We are still a ways from having a playlist ready, so here is the new Wet Leg video to tide you over. Didn’t love it? I kinda liked the song, but it was my first listen and as a rule I don’t like to have my first listen of a song be with a video. Video is great, though, if not edited a little bit slow. But the stop motion craft? Top notch. Oh shit. Is it AI? Gawd. I hope it’s not AI. But hey. It’s all I got today:
Farewell!
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.