Category: post

Five checkmark day

Been a long time since the last 5 checkmark day, but today’s been worth the wait.

Went for an 8AM hike up Wansfell pike with Chewie. Had the whole hill to ourselves. Met a fell runner on the way up, and sole woman on the way down. The quietest ascent of this hill I’ve done.

After a lazy afternoon, went for a walk down to Waterhead to stake out swimming and kayaking locations for later in the week.

Now opening a beer and looking up routes for tomorrow’s adventures.

Lakes, mountains and hikes, just the holidays I needed.

Gardening

I also think gardening is great because I am a perfectionist and gardening is really helpful for learning to moderate that tendency a bit – every year something is doing amazingly and something else is just completely destroyed by something unpredictable.

My boss, R (not that one), in the gardening channel today.

I just love that description, her insight, and her self-awareness.

Continue reading Gardening

Swish…

I’ve spent most recent weekends working on a big, breaking change to some of my Chrome extensions. I even took today off from work so I could drive the work through to conclusion.

Finally at 23.00, everything was ready, tested, retested, ready to be deployed. I deployed the server side components and tested them again. Then, I packaged the extension, uploaded to the Chrome webstore developer dashboard, and submitted for review.

It usually takes about a day for the review, though sometimes it can even take up to a few weeks. So, I’m expecting the change to go live sometime late tomorrow, or maybe Monday (it’s already weekend almost everywhere). Time to sleep 😴

…

Instead, here I am, 45 mins later, writing to tell you that the update has been reviewed, approved, and published. Already.

How am I gonna sleep now? 😬

Five checkmark day

And a 2x day

An 11K run with the boy, and some gardening in the evening is all it took to get the step and the floors targets.

A long sleep helped. The cool, if humid, weather helped. A happy boy helped. A first week, in a month, of running all four runs helped. Spending all of Friday in bed reading while hugging the boy also helped.

Je t’en prie

Learnt a new French phrase while reading a book about a gentleman in Moscow. I like the sound of this better than the usual de rien.

Easy switch

A friend1 recently mentioned how many of our old acquaintances self identify as libertarians, and how comfortable many of them are with authoritarianism.

In my head, this played out as…

I’m smarter than you, don’t tell me what to do, how to live. (Libertarian)

…turns easily into…

I’m smarter than you, I will tell you what to do, how to live. (Authoritarian)

Of course, there’s a big execution gap between telling people what to do, and forcing people to do it. In other words, between being an armchair authoritarian and the real one chaining up the country. Supporting the real one provides a comfortable bridge over that gap.

  1. The friend is an IIT-IIM grad. The acquaintances are all IIM, if not IIT-IIM grads. Perhaps the superior status signalling provided by these institutions is a trigger for the “I’m smarter than you…” base that leads to the two isms. ↩

Faith. Blind?

Parents are shit scared. They realise how bad is the situation. Their network is full of infected and suffering people. They’ve lost friends and acquaintances. They will not hear one word against the God or his organisation.

Friends are shit scared. They’ve suffered and recovered. Their parents and siblings are infected but stable. They’re scared, not of Covid, but of the God who demands and commands this blind loyalty. They’re scared of what’s happening to the nation, the society, and their future and safety in it.

I fear for both.

I’m sad that I’m so far from both.