The Brow @lowbrow@writing.exchange

went to the gym for the first time in forever. i just went in the pool and hot tub for a while, but wow, it like... it brought all the aches out to play afterwards. i _hurt_. it's not an entirely bad hurt, but it is a bit excessive for how little activity i actually did. i forgot to take NSAIDs with me, oops.

Along with my new job has come a lot more bicycle riding, which is great. I dragged my bike out of the garage and gave it a minor teardown+cleaning. Now I'm trying to think outside the box a bit about what I can do to customize it. I've already got a nice seat w/storage pouch below, cargo rack/panniers, and bottle holder. What next? Some sort of technological doodad? Silly lighting?

Oh lord, i keep like, losing time. Things just fly right by. But i really feel better than I have in a long time. I confess that I _am_ ready for a bit of a recharge, though. Like, a lot of sleep, and wasting some time doing meaningless (to other people) things for myself.

I think I just bought myself a new radio, so a good start so far. :)

I am very happy that my university system is fighting against for-profit journal publishers by not agreeing to Elsevier's onerous contract terms. Research needs to be available to everyone, not paywalled where only huge institutions with tons of money can access it.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/University-of-California-s-break-with-the-biggest-13672062.php

I've been super busy and haven't had a lot of time to pursue much in the way of recreational activities lately. I'm very behind in personal writing projects again.

Does anyone else still send letters? I think I need to write up some nice real actual letters to some folks with some lovely stamps. It's quite overdue.

ahh. life is really fun right now. looking forward to a new keyboard!

I really shouldn't have done all that walking and biking with my heavy backpack yesterday. I try not to carry it much further than to the car and back, but I got a little stranded and had to hoof it a long way, and now I'm paying for it in pain. Oops!

I've been busy at my new job, and I love it every single day. Insane.

I started my new job on friday O_O :D

It's strange the roles we find ourselves taking over time. How many people really get to make a plan and see it come out exactly the way they imagined?

I maybe could use a minor break. The kind where I don't have to plan anything for a while, absorb technical knowledge, compete with anyone, or even particularly verbally express myself. Painting, or something. Something a little free-form and a little creative, anyways.

We celebrated twenty years of our Linux User Group tonight. This silly cake helped. Woohoo!

Managed to bash out a solid four pages in my journal yesterday, it felt good. No public blogging lately, though.

I may write a blog soon about what I'm doing currently on my raspberry pi. I've fired up Sonic Pi, which is a sort of live-coding synth music maker. Playing with the tutorials, I've got this great sort of randomized ambient space music thing going on. It's soothing, like I'm alone in my ship and far from Earth. As generally a bit of a space cadet kind of person anyways, I dig it.

Why yes, yes I am spending saturday night programming python for fun. I'm actually having a good time, too.

Do many other people still keep private journals or diaries on paper? It's one of my favorite things to do, even though I'm not always good about staying current. I have public or semi-public blogs online, but I always end up keeping a separate analogue journal for myself, too. It just feels good and right.

OTOH, I've got so many half-full journals it's not even funny. I'm about halfway through my current book now, and I really hope to finish it within the next year or so.

I managed to squeeze in an entry into my paper journal on december 31st so that I can say I made at least one addition in 2018, woo. Now my resolution is to get back into writing in the thing more often again, like I did in 2017. I confess I'm not entirely sad that I skipped hell-year 2018. I don't even want to talk about half the stuff that happened, even to myself.

I did manage to squeeze in another 2019 entry just after the clock rolled to January 2nd, too. I'm off to a good start!

Happy new year, everyone. Good riddance to 2018, and may 2019 just be... less confusing, overall better, and not actually bring the apocalypse or anything. Cheers.

I realized the other day that I've completely neglected my paper journal for literally the entire year. My last entry is from October of 2017... I'm running out of days to squeeze in at least one entry for the year!

Why yes, yes I am still alive, thanks for asking. I've been pretty quiet with posting on the ol' wr.ex, but i'm still here, regularly reading what all the nice people have to say.