Author: BCM

I am not doing a very good job keeping up with my journals. I appreciate the discipline that someone like Jonathan Mann or Beeple have with their daily task. I can’t even imagine keeping it up for five or thirteen years. Unimaginable. I guess ultimately I’m not doing it for other people. It’s not like I’m going to sell my blog as NFTs. I don’t even have a plan for this anymore, if I did I would have it somewhere that it would survive me … Github pages, perhaps?

Anyways, we are making some progress around the house. The contractor has started work on the front of the house, and has been out several times over the last week to fix the storm door and light fixtures. Yesterday the painter was out and started on the porch. The rotting wood around the garage doors has been replaced and will get painted as well.

I also managed to get someone to grind out the tree stump in the front yard. My neighbor, whom I’ll call OCD from here, had hired a tree crew to trim some trees behind his property, and I’d gone out to see if they would grind it. The first crew wanted me to call their office for a quote. Nope. The second crew said they didn’t grind, but told me to look out for the guy when he came. So he came by yesterday morning, so I walked out and quickly made a deal. Seventy five bucks and he had the stump gone in twenty minutes. After he was done with OCD’s yard, he came back and offered to dig a hole so that we would be ready to plant our replacement tree. Noice. So now we’re ready to get started with our landscaping project. I think I’ll outsource that as well.

Younger got sent home from school. They said she had a fever of 101, but I checked when she got home and couldn’t detect one. Maybe my thermometer is broken. The girl literally ran around the kitchen yelling today is the best day ever! when she got home. She had missed Valentines day on Monday so she came home with a bag of candy.

Missus made General Tso’s chicken for dinner, I ordered two hundred and thirty dollars worth of groceries. I think we’ll be set for a while.

I’m working on Rust Exercism’s. They’re getting very difficult and require a lot of thinking and planning. I don’t even know what to do with this Alphametic one, and am doing another that has to do with sublists of raw arrays. They’re difficult, to say the least. I’m sticking to my discipline of not looking ahead at the answers. I’ve got to figure out a solution, as ugly as it may be, on my own before I look at the idiomatic way of doing things.

I’ve also been playing Lost Ark, against my better judgement. For one, I’ve got enough going on without trying to pick up an MMO, but the team seems to be interested in it so I’ll give it a shot. I don’t think I’ll stick with it though, it seems to be targeting pubescent boys. All of the female figures have huge breasts and sway their hips in this hugely exaggerated gait. It has some interesting gameplay elements, but I don’t think it’s worth my time. I’ll probably stick with it in spite of myself.

I have been reading some books on game design. Since I’m going to be working more and more with the Unreal Engine devs, I figure it’s good to pick up some of the formal knowledge on the subject. I was reading a few days ago and remarked to Missus that I’m surprised that it’s take me till now to really study games as a discipline. It would have been such an obvious track for me coming out of high school. I wonder why I never considered it.

Last thought: I need to move my wake up time. There’s just not enough time for me to get the kids ready, write, and meditate before nine AM. And no room for exercise. I haven’t lifted in days. Granted, I did go skiing, and ran, so maybe I should be so hard on myself. But I would do better to get up earlier. It’s the going to bed part that gets me.

I’m rushing to write this as my laptop battery is almost dead. I have less than fifteen minutes.

We woke up and decided to do another day of skiing. I was originally going to go by myself, but somehow got the whole family involved. I bought a four-hour pass for Elder, we figured out that Younger was free. Missus only wore her snow boots and would provide support while her father and I dealt with the kids.

It was a bit of a disaster. Younger didn’t want to follow my direction and wound up going pretty much straight down the green slope until she got fast enough that she was scared, then she’d just fall over. Rinse, repeat. Elder was on her own for a while, doing the kiddie slopes, till it was time to walk back to meet up with Missus. Then she threw the whine-card. Walking up the mountain in her boots was the hardest thing ever, and she fell down at one point and basically refused to move.

I lost my temper, and embarrassed myself as the asshole yelling at his kid. I dumped them off with their mother and went back out for another two hours by myself. I did a run with FIL, but he was worn out from yesterday and I felt the need for speed.

I did pretty good, and managed to stay on my feet the entire day except for the beginning of my second run up on the blue slope. It was icy and I busted my finger when I fell, but it was right at the top, and I got back up and flew down without any further problems. My quads though… oh my gawd they burned.

I’ve really pushed my legs this week. Leg day on Thursday, a three mile run on Friday, then skiing on Saturday and Sunday. They are super tight. And not to mention the three hours of driving I did each way. I feel like I need a massage or a soak with some Epsom salts or something.

We put the girls down early. They took a nap on the ride down but I don’t want any issues in the morning.

Today was a pretty good day. It’s nice not having to worry about the money. I bought breakfast, the tickets, goggles for me and the kids, ski wax, a couple drinks at base camp, dinner at the truck stop, and gas both ways. I don’t think I’ve ever travelled or taken a vacation like that with such a lack of care for spending money.

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

So the girls had their first skiing session today. It was a bit painful to start with since we went a bit too fast with them, but they got the hang of it and we had a nice evening.

We were going to drive up last night, but it was seventy degrees at home yesterday, and it’s supposed to snow overnight tonight so I figured our chances would be better for a Sunday session. So we drove up this afternoon, had a quick dinner, and headed out for a two hour session. It’s pretty hard trying to lug all the gear around to where the girls could get started. I felt like a sherpa.

I had to fight with Elder because she wanted to use poles and I told her to start without them. We miscalculated and went to the top of one of the green runs and the kids almost lost control — well they did, actually. I had to step in front of Younger at one point to save her and wound up knocking the breath out of her. Elder fell down and was ready to quit after five minutes. Thank goodness my FIL was there to take her off my hands.

We found the actual kids starter slope and half an hour later they were both zooming down it no problem. Well, except for Younger, she kept having problems with her skis releasing on her, but she was a good sport. We got back and everyone was all laid up with sore feet. Me, oh my, tomorrow is going to hurt.

I did a leg day on Thursday, and my Whoop told me that I was recovered on Friday, so I went for a run. The weather was super nice. Since I’m still breaking in my new running shoes I went for a short loop, just under three miles. These shoes though, I don’t know. They are not as comfortable as my worn-down Adidas, and they forced me into a front strike on the balls of my feet, which meant I was really putting my calves to work. I was super sore this morning. The three hours in the car didn’t help either.

To make matters worse, I wore short socks with my ski boots, which means I have some pretty sore areas on the front of my shins. Hopefully it won’t be too bad tomorrow, because I really want to get back out there tomorrow — sans kids for a half day. I managed to get a couple of runs on the green slopes, but only one on the blue, and I want more.

Missus is completely out of shape. She said the girls can ski better than her now. She just hung back the entire time her dad and I were with the girls. I think they had fun though. I know they want to go tubing, but if it comes down between them tubing or me skiing, I’m going skiing.

So I’ve been binging 4X space games lately. I’ve had a couple of games of Stellaris going upstairs and downstairs, but I was doing some research on others in the genre to see what I had been missing. Then I stumbled across this trailer or Master of Orion and was like hell yeah.

The game is actually more polished and simplified that I expected. It seems like it’s targeting a less sophisticated gameplay loop than Stellaris or Endless Space. Seems like it plays faster as well. I thought I’d be able to rush through one last night and wound up staying up past my bedtime as a result.

These games all seem to have various components that are the same between the two: galaxy map exploration, solar system management, and planetary production. In MOO, the battles spawn these arena instances where it takes on an RTS feel. The rest of the game is turn based. Stellaris is real-time through and through, although you can pause it in the single player version.

It’ll be interesting to see which ways we go with Star Atlas. I’m not actually on any of the gameplay projects right now, and haven’t been following what’s been going on with the crafting and ship mission work. Today is the last day of the sprint though, so we’ll be getting updates on the various projects later today.

The dao is making progress. We’re digging into the architecture for the rewarder system, but it’s all mostly planning and figuring out what our parameters are going to be.

I think yesterday made two times this week that I’ve broken routine. At least I can say that I’ve been getting plenty of sleep. Who knew all it took me to go to bed on time was a strap on my wrist. I’ve been working out as well. Nothing as strong as my times when I had Daily Burn and would spend 45 minutes every day doing a weight lifting or yoga video. Now I barely find time to get twenty minutes in.

To be fair meditation is taking a good chunk of my morning, but I’m going to have to start getting up even earlier if I’m going to get things done before the girls wake up. That means going to bed even earlier, might even be before the girls do. Wouldn’t that be something.

I’ve done a couple Exercisms over the past couple days. Just a couple of easy Rust ones to get me going. I wish someone had designed a Solana course. Of course, that’s a brilliant idea.

I could write more but life calls.

I’m slowly unwinding certain… nonessential aspects of my life. Cutting off certain relationships, or winding them down rather. I’m still managing IT infrastructure for some failed projects and started transferring domains today. Work was very productive, we actually have some guidance on a few key deliverables. I ran also. This evening has gone pretty good.

“A fool who continues in his folly will soon be wise.” I’ve been listening to more Alan Watts, and this kinda summed up my approach to things right now. One of the things that my freshman year religious studies professor tried to explain about Buddhism was that it was like trying to walk through a concrete wall by not walking through the wall. “The Tao that can be named is not the Tao” kind of stuff.

Basically what I’m saying is that we need to write a Solana program from scratch. I don’t think I’ve yet to do that in any respect, instead, I’ve been reading other people’s’ code and reading unit tests. I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s not even imposter syndrome at this point, we have to deliver.

I’m training my Whoop fitness band, or rather, it’s training me. It’s calibrated to my sleep schedule and has me going to bed an hour earlier than normal. I’m pretty well rested but the key will be to make sure that I stay that way. I ran about two and a half miles this afternoon with my new running shoes. I decided to make it a short run because I haven’t broken them in yet, and I think it was a good call. I’m not sure whether I’ll keep them, they seem too narrow for my wide-ass feet.

Tomorrow is going to be a challenge. Missus has to get up early tomorrow to get her mom to a medical appointment, so that’s going to screw our whole morning. I’ll have to take Elder in a bit later than normal, and she’s already dis-regulated. She had a field trip today and is upstairs whining about one injustice or another.

I should probably take it easy tonight.

It’s early evening, and all three girls are in the kitchen getting dinner ready. I had a pretty good day, even considering that I tried to sabotage it by staying up too late last night. It wasn’t too bad, but it was enough to throw off my regular schedule. The good news is that we finally incentivized Younger to staying in her bed all night.

The trick was getting her to go to bed on her own. Normally she calls for her ‘five minutes’ with Missus, which usually turns into half an hour or more. I’ve been trying to stress to Missus to get her to stop laying in the bed until Younger falls asleep, but she hasn’t been doing that. So Younger is still so used to relying on Missus physical closeness to calm herself, and it leads to her waking up in the middle of the night and coming into our bedroom. Not last night. Younger went to sleep on her own, and we didn’t see her until about fifteen minutes before our alarms were to go off. She was bright and shiny.

We’ve been having some interesting special time lately, doing a lot of lifts, where I lay on my back and let the kids stand on my hands while I press them up like a bench press. It’s good for their balance, and my muscle control. Today we expanded it a bit and I finally got Younger to stand up on my shoulders. It’s actually quite a lot of pressure on my shoulders. I can’t imagine Elder standing up there. I’d like to keep practicing, to see if I could get Younger to climb up my torso, stand on my shoulders and onto my hands so I could press her up in the air, cheerleader style.

I finally got a copy of It Takes Two, a game about a divorcing couple who get turned into a couple of dolls by their young daughter and have to work together to get back to her. It’s a split screen game that requires that both players work together to solve various puzzles and challenges. It’s quite fun, although the cartoonish artwork is a bit at odds with some of the language in the game. We’re about a quarter of the way through it, and we’re enjoying it.

Work was ok today. Got some things done and started reading a PhD dissertation from one of the founders of Machinations. It’s about three hundred pages on emergent gameplay. I’ll have to add it to my texts on data-oriented design that I’m working through. Who knew that I’d be doing academic research as part of my job?

Friday was another night of largess, and I paid for it Saturday with a general feeling of tiredness that lasted throughout the day. My mom and stepfather came down to celebrate Christmas, so it was still a good day, but I was so beat that I went to bed early and was asleep by ten.

The kids enjoyed themselves. Nana brought sugar cookies and some decorative markers for them to use to decorate, and they went to town with it. They enjoyed their presents. I cooked sirloin, sous vide with some creamy mushroom sauce that I made with Missus’s grow your own mushroom kit. I baked some diced potatoes as a side along with a store-bought green bean casserole. We drank a couple of bottles of wine and had various cheese and crackers for an afternoon snack. Then we wrapped up the evening with Encanto, which most of us hadn’t seen yet. Then they left and we put the kids to bed and I read twenty minutes of Rainbows End and promptly passed out. I didn’t even care that I hadn’t journaled or meditated.

I’ve got a busy morning. I’ve got SAIAdao business to attend to this morning, then I really need to turn my attention to the house budget, not to mention all the other stuff that needs to be done around here. I’ve got computer monitors everywhere, and more computers than I know what to do with. And I need to workout.

I got my Whoop fitness tracker in a couple days ago. It’s still initializing my data, but it’s already telling me that I need to go to bed earlier than I’ve been doing. About an hour, actually. My mom got me new running shoes, so I need to break those in before I got for a run, but for now I just want to do twenty or forty minutes of weight lifting before I hop on a call.

Here’s to the week ending better than it began. My mood is much improved. My morning meditation was full of mind wandering, but I’ve been going to bed earlier than usual and so I’m well rested this morning. I actually had dreams last night, full of sex and drugs and strangeness. I ran almost five miles last evening, after the cold weather melted away and I decided I’d been sitting still for too long.

I got a new Macbook Pro yesterday, a gift from someone who helped me with SAIAdao and who I brought with me to Star Atlas. Higher companions, indeed. It arrived just in time, as well, I think I squealed on the Zoom call when I saw the UPS truck pull up outside the door. It seems neither of my two Dell/Alienware Ubuntu laptops were able to handle the secondary monitors. Chrome would cause the CPU sensors to go haywire, signaling an overheat, sending the fans into overdrive and throttling the CPU. It had gotten to the point where I was unable to participate in a meeting without them crashing. Anyways, it’s a bit difficult to adjust, what with all the differences between command/option and CTRL/ALT/WIN keys.

I had a call with the Machinations team yesterday about project A.L.A.N. Mach actually sprang from the founder’s PhD thesis, so all my autonoma and Turing-complete state machine mumbo jumbo went over well, but I still couldn’t answer the question about what we’re trying to build, or rather what I’m actually trying to do. It’s still a pie-in-the-sky idea, mostly wrapped up in my head, and I need to spend some more time fleshing things out in my head.

But first I need to concentrate on the daos. We had a bit of miscommunication issue internally and so I need to do some cram research sessions to fill in the missing piece. But first, I need to focus on getting out the next series of airdrops for Rebirth holders. And I need to get my own transferred as well. Adding to the list of crap that I need to deal with, my FLEET script has been throwing errors, and I don’t have the logging setup properly so that I can tell what the hell is going on. I know that there were RPC errors with our node providers, so I need to figure out what to do about it. We definitely need some sort of queue system that can resend transactions. In short, there is much to do.

And it is Friday, which means happy hour and probably a late night of hanging out online with people. It’s been a couple weeks since we had a proper Star Atlas happy hour, and I’ve got ideas about that. Human radio ideas. Just add it to the stack of things that I want to do.

I’ve been listening to Alan Watts lately. The Waking Up app added hundreds of hours of his talks to their app, and it’s pure gold. It’s completely replaced my podcast feed. I needed some philosophy in my life, that’s for sure. It’s definitely calmed me a bit. I think it’s helping fill a certain gap. My Intro to World Religion course freshman year (1997) really blew my mind and freed me of a lot of family baggage that I had been carrying around with me, and listening to Watts talk about eastern philosophy and various subjects is helping me shed a lot more. Plus I’ve been reading The Mind Illuminated before going to bed. A lot of Watts rhetoric is repetitive, he had certain go-to phrases that he would bring up during these talks, maybe it’s the way the editors grouped them together, but hearing them repeated over and over really brings them home.

But the morning carries on, and I must end here for now.

So yesterday ended on a much better note that it started. The kids came home and I made sure to give them all my attention as soon as they came in the house. If I use the words special time they immediately want to wrestle and do horsey rides, so I had to be a bit subtle with them.

I had found a couple sheet music sites that had version of the Bruno song from Encanto, so I played that for them a few times to see what kind of grasp they had on the words, then we spent an hour going over it and trying to figure out who was singing which parts. It was pretty fun.

I managed to have a talk with Elder about our fight that morning, and more importantly, why we had been fighting. She seemed to get the picture, and we managed to get through the rest of the evening without any arguing. And she did everything that I asked. There was one moment when I was putting her to bed and she did that thing she does where she tries to fight me, but I managed to de-escalate it. She had the nerve to tell me that I hadn’t given her any special time. The nerve.

I played some Stellaris last evening. It’s been a while since I played it and I’m struck at the number of things that have changed since I last played it. They really refined some of the first contact missions, and there are other, more subtle changes as well. The game is really massive, as far as the number of various game mechanic and systems that are in it. It’s quite the achievement. I can only imagine if we can get half the functionality into Star Atlas, not only from a multiplayer experience, but as a multi-faction system where individual decisions are made both at the player level and at the faction level as well. It’s going to be interesting.

I had a couple of meetings with the other PMs yesterday and unloaded some of my anxiety about the last week or so. It was good to get things off my chest. I feel much better. The crew was very supportive, and we got some good work done around process. Then we played some games. We tried to start up a guild in Ogame, we’ll see if it goes any further than before.

Younger is home today. She had a “sore throat” last night so Missus wanted to keep her home. I think she’s being gullible. So I’ve got my morning routine down this morning and everything is fine so far, save for my laptops which still perform like shit for some reason. I can’t determine whether it’s the dual monitors or some other thing going on that is causing the CPUs to reach their temperature limits and get throttled. Something to do with Chrome, it seems. I don’t know, my new Macbook is coming today so I won’t have to deal with it for much longer, hopefully.