Entry 777: A Mostly Optimistic Post

It was another rough news week. We seem to be having a lot of these over the past, what, five and a half years? As you've probably noticed, I don't really delve into the doom and gloom on this blog. I'm not naive to it, it's just not what I want to write about, and being that this blog really serves no purpose other than giving me an outlet to write about what I want to write about, I'm not going to write about things I don't want to write about. I'm going to write about things I want to write about, and today that's a really interesting episode of the Lost Debate podcast I listened to about AI. Before I get to that, however, I want to link to an episode of a different podcast, The Gist, about renewal energy. It's good, and reasonably optimistic, and probably on a more important topic than the AI one, but I personally find AI stuff more fascinating than climate stuff, so that's what I going with today.

You should listen to the Lost Debate episode yourself, but if you don't, I'll give you the tl;dl (too long; didn't listen) version below. And if you want the tl;dr version of my tl;dl version, it's this: Over the past year or so, the advancements in AI have mostly stalled out, and there's no indication that they will leap forward again anytime soon. This means the promise of a benevolent super-intelligence solving all the world's problems will likely go unfulfilled. But I don't think too many people were banking on that anyway. On the contrary, I think most people were apprehensive about the prospect of machines attempting to destroy humanity Terminator style, or at least of taking all our jobs, replacing all our human relationships, and depriving of us of any sense of purpose whatsoever. It seems that those things probably won't happen either.

Now, before I go any further, I should say that I am not an expert in AI, and I'm largely regurgitating what the guest of the podcast, a computer science professor named Cal Newport, said. But I do have a strong background in applied math and scientific computation, so I understand a lot of the concepts at a high-level (and I feel confident I could learn the nitty-gritty details if I took the time to do so). I have just enough of a comprehension to put my own spin on things, so I'm not just mimicking what the expert says. Also, everything everybody says is just speculation, anyway. Nobody actually knows what will happen. Not all speculation is the same--some people should be listened to over others--but it's still speculation and predictions. There's no reason why I can't add my opining to the mix.

Okay, with all those caveats out of the way, here are my thoughts...

To understand why AI technology has seemingly stalled, it might help to understand how AIs like ChatGPT work. I once heard somebody describe these AIs as an "amazingly good auto-fill." Basically, given a prompt, they decide what the "best" first word is, and then using that first word as addition input, they decide what the best second word is, and then using that, they decide the third word, and then the fourth word, and so, until they get to a point where the best word is no word, and they stop. If they were good at deciding what each word should be along the way, they will have produced an intelligent response.

This begs the question: How do they decided the "best" word along the way? That's where things you probably heard of like "training" and "machine learning" come into play. Basically, before an AI is released to the public, it goes through a long computing period, where it scours a kajillion bytes of available data -- books, blogs, songs, etc. -- and then it remembers certain markers about these things. So, when the user prompts it, it goes, Oh, I've seen something like this before; I should respond as follows...

It might be easier to think about in terms of a game like chess. The best chess engines can now annihilate the best human players. In the past 30 years, we've gone from machines can never beat humans to humans can never beat machines. The way computers are able to win so consistently is by making moves no human could ever think to make. For example, a chess bot might just give up a knight early in the game for seemingly no reason. It has a reason -- it's played against its self millions of times, and it knows from experience that a knight sacrifice in this given situation is a winning move -- but there is no way any human could possibly deduce this. Humans strategize and think a few moves ahead -- if I do this, they'll do this, then I can do this... Machines assess given situations, and then use what they've learned from their extensive training sessions to make the corresponding moves with the highest win percentages. Nobody, not even the machine itself, can explain exactly why a machine made a certain move other than that's just what the numbers developed through training say.

Because games have well-defined rules and state spaces, it's not too surprising that computers can get very good--far better than any human--at games through this type of learning. It's much, much more surprising that AIs can learn this way for life in general. But they can. In fact, this is what jump-started the AI hype a few years ago in the first place. The major AI companies decided to ramp up the training of their chatbots, using more computing power for a longer period of time, and the results were off the charts. Just by increasing training, the chatbots got way better at things -- holding conversations, solving logic problems, writing songs, etc. So, they did it again, and the gains jumped up again. So, they did it again, and again the results jumped.

This is when we really started to hear about AI taking over, as the belief, understandably, was that AI was going to just keep getting better as the training got more intensive. Working under this assumption, the AI companies ramped up again and built massive computing warehouses, and subjected their chatbots to super-powered months-long training sessions. And the needle barely moved. They got better but only marginally so. Apparently, the improvement for Meta's commercial product was so minimal, it wasn't even worth releasing as a new version. Just as weird as it was to see these incredible jumps in the first rounds of training, it was equally weird to see things suddenly stall out.

So, that's where we are now, and according to Professor Newport, the upward scaling of the training was the promise behind AI. That was basically the whole shebang. Without that, AI is just a normal, impressive, maybe-good, maybe-bad new technology, not a humanity altering singularity. And for most people, I think, this is a comforting thought.

Alright, I actually had a few more things to say on this, but I appear to have run out of time -- gotta go get my flag football coach on.

Until next time... 

PS -- Like last time, I had to hustle off to the game before posting this, and like last week, Lil' S2's team came up victorious. It started out shaky, as Lil' S2 threw a pick-six on the game's opening play from scrimmage, but we persevered, and pulled it out 18-13. I had a moment as coach I'm particularly proud of. Late in the game with us losing, we faced a big 4th-and-long. Defenses are allowed one blitz per four downs (where a kid can just run straight for the QB), and they hadn't use it yet, so I knew they would. The entire drive I had this kid M playing QB, so I put Lil' S2 next to him, seemingly as a running back and then I had M call "go!", but I had the snapper hike it to Lil' S2 instead. The blitzer predictably came for M, giving Lil' S2 enough time to get off a bomb to our star wide out Z, who made a brilliant catch in traffic, converting the first down. Then we scored the go ahead touchdown a few plays later. Bam!

Entry 776: Back To Normal Chaos

Finally! Both kids are in school again, so we are back to our regular schedule, so we are back to normal chaos. When you have a spouse who travels as much as S does, the natural of order of things includes a relatively high degree of disorder. She's here now, but leaving again at the end of next week, then returning for, like, ten hours, and then leaving again for a few days. It's okay. As the kids get older, it gets easier on me. It's the little things. I still have to do most the big things--meals, dishes, laundry, etc.--but the smaller things the kids can often do on their own now, and that takes a lot of the burden off of me. For example, Lil' S2 can walk to and from school now. He also can be home by himself for a few minutes. Just those two things are huge boons when it comes to planning out my day. Also, my sister-in-law just lives up the street and is almost always willing/able to help out when asked. (We have a nice quid pro quo going: She watches our kids; we watch her dog.) Also, also, S's travels earn me a lot of relationship capital. S already goes through spells in which she thinks she's "doing all the work." I, of course, disagree with this assessment, but it would be even worse (in her mind) if not for her work trips.

My take on the "doing all the work" thing is that she often underestimates the amount of total work that is being done, which I think is common for people -- everybody, not just S -- when they get stressed out/overwhelmed. Also, I think there is a prioritization thing going on, where people don't "count" things as much if they personally aren't that invested in them, which can cause a skewed perspective. For example, S isn't into sports, so I don't get as much credit for transporting/equipping/coaching Lil' S2 in his many sporting endeavors, even though it's a huge time and effort commitment on my part. Similarly, there are things S will worry about that don't seem all that important or pressing to me, and so I'm less sympathetic toward her in regards to these stressors. For instance, a few weeks ago, she became fixated on getting a new car, and it ate up a ton of her already limited bandwidth, even though our old car still worked fine. Yes, it was getting old and wearing down, and we were going to have to replace it at some point in the medium-to-near future, but the immediacy of the issue in S's mind seemed completely self-imposed to me. On the plus side, we have a new car now, so that's cool. 

Anyway... the only reason I feel comfortable airing S's and my marriage peccadilloes is because we have a strong foundation underneath it all. That's a welcome realty check I've gotten recently talking with people who have real relationship problems. I mentioned in my previous entry the father of Lil' S1's friend who is going through a contentious divorce, and I had a very strange text exchange with him last weekend. His son spent the night at our house, and he came over to pick him up in the morning. We were making small talk, and so I asked him where he was living now. He answered, and I literally thought nothing of it. Then a few hours later, I got a text from him asking how I knew he was getting a divorce, as if somehow it was supposed to be a secret, even though they separated like six months ago, and his son and my son hang out all the time. I wrote back a very vague, anodyne response, and the exchange went from there. It wasn't bad, necessarily, just weird and more than a little awkward. Apparently, he wrote similar texts to a bunch of his son's friends' parents, which is not the type of thing somebody does when things are going great for them. So, I tried to be human, while not really saying anything of substance and definitely not getting into the middle of things. And next time I see him, I'm sticking to the weather as a conversation topic.

This text exchange made me think of a friend of mine who also got divorced recently. We also met this guy and his ex-wife through our kids' friends, and we became pretty close socially, especially the dad and me, as we've gotten together for drinks quite a few times. He's been handling his divorce the exact opposite way, where it's been super amicable, and he's been very accommodating -- so accommodating that more than once I've thought he's being too accommodating. I thought he was getting walked on a bit and should be more of a hard-ass. However, in light of how this other dad is handling things, I see things in a different light, and I really respect the way my friend is going about things. It makes a lot more sense to me now, and I bet it takes a lot of strength to be civil in a situation like this (especially given he didn't want to break up in the first place). I mean, I can only imagine how terrible getting divorced would be, and that gets multiplied by one thousand when there are kids involved. Getting through it in a way that minimizes the damage--even if it means sacrificing a bit of what you want and putting your ego and hurt feelings and animosity aside--seems like a very worthy goal.

That last thing I will say on this, for the sake of fairness, is that breakups don't just involve one person, and I don't know everybody's full story (and don't need to or want to know), and it might not always be possible to navigate the situation like my friend is doing. It's something I hope I never learn about first hand.

Alright, my time here is up. I have to get ready for Lil' S2's first flag football game of the season.

Until next time... 

Update: I forgot to post this immediately after I wrote it, so the flag football game already happened. We dominated in a 27-0 victory. Lil' S2 threw a couple of touchdown passes in the effort. 

Entry 775: Only Halfway Back To School

We've got one kid back in school this past week, but what I've found is that having one kid back in school isn't that great when you have two kids total. Lil' S1's school doesn't start until after Labor Day because for some reason they can't just follow the public school schedule and make life easier on everybody. I find myself growing more and more resentful towards Lil' S1's school the longer he goes there and the more I learn about it. We pay a lot of money to send him there, and yet we have almost all the same hassles of public school. In some ways we have more because public transportation isn't as easy and because of this staggered schedule with his brother. His school is not even that great academically. I could say plenty more on the subject, but I'll stop there. It's not a great look for a parent to rag on his son's school in a (kinda) public forum. I'll just wrap it up by saying he likes it there and wanted to return this year, so we enrolled him again. It was his choice. That's what I tell myself to not get too irritated. Also, I don't look at our bank account when tuition is due, and every now and then I say a little prayer that he will want to go back to public school for high school.

But Lil' S1's school really needs to start again. He's been off the past week with no camp or anything, and it's been rough. He's not the type to run around with the neighborhood kids like his brother (plus, there aren't any boys in the neighborhood his age; plus, plus, even if there were, they probably would have been in school this past week, anyway), so he just putzes around the house all day, which is distracting when I'm working from home, and it means he gets way too much screen time. S and I have to come up with things for him to do, or else he's just doing to play on his devices, and it's hard for S and I to come up with things for him to do when we have to do our jobs to make money to afford his private school. He does like to bake/cook, which is great, but it's almost never healthy foods, and he always leaves a massive mess in the kitchen when he's finished. He can make a pretty good pizza from scratch, but he can't clean off the hook attachments he uses to mix the dough. Even when we get him to "clean up" after himself, I still have to go in after him and do the job for real. If I didn't, we would continuously have oil drips and flour dustings all over the counters and all our appliances would be caked in gunk.

I just need to get through this weekend, but it's a long weekend, literally, and possibly figuratively -- we will see how it goes. S is out of town on a combination business/social trip, so it's just me for the next few days. Last night went okay (other than the Mariners blowing a big lead and losing). Lil' S2 spent the night at a friend's house up the street, and Lil' S1 had some buddies over to play D & D. It's a regular campaign he does, with the location rotating between the participants' houses. I guess it was our turn because S told me right before she left that she set it up at our house. I didn't mind, but for the fact that one of the dad's was over an hour late getting his kid. Pickup time is 6:00 pm-6:30 pm, and dude arrived at 7:45 pm. I got increasingly annoyed as the lateness waxed because I wanted to shower and eat dinner and relax for the night, and I couldn't get in a relaxing mindset until all the kids (other than mine) were out of the house. Also, I didn't want to start doing those things and then get interrupted. I hate that.

When the dad finally showed up he apologized, but I found his excuse to be quite weak. He said that he had to pick up his daughter at her friend's house, and her friend's mother "put a giant plate of food in [his] face". So, in other words, he hung out and ate dinner with somebody instead of picking up his son. Here's what he could have done instead: not that. He could have said, "thanks, but I don't have time to eat right now, because I have to get my son." That is, in fact, what I would have done. Also, the story doesn't hold water, regardless. For one thing, when picking a kid up at a friend's house, you often don't even go inside and when you do, you rarely get beyond the entryway. I doubt this friend's mom answered the door with a plate of food in her hand and literally foisted it upon her guest without his consent. She almost certainly invited him, and he accepted, despite the fact that it would make him late to pick up his son. Then there is the fact that he was an hour and a half late, and eating a plate of food takes--what?--twenty-five minutes? The math doesn't come close to adding up.

The thing is, this guy just went through (is still going through?) a pretty contentious divorce, so I'm inclined to cut him a lot of slack. I don't think life is going great for him at the moment. However, a huge pet peeve of mine is when people behave as if their time and their life are more important than yours. So, in interacting with him, I tried to strike a balance between showing I was mildly annoyed without acting like it was the biggest injustice of the 2025. We actually ended up talking quite a bit (in our entryway), because his son was super slow getting his shoes on and gathering his stuff, and by the end of it, I was mostly over it. The kids were trying to talk us into having an impromptu sleepover at our house, but I said no, because I just didn't want to deal with it anymore. However, in order to placate Lil' S1, I basically said he could do it tonight, and I think he's going to hold me to that. That's okay--if I'm in a sleepover mindset in advance, it's not that bad.

Alright, time to go because I gotta get some lunch. I'm super hungry because I'm back on my 16/8 fasting diet. I listened to this doctor on a podcast talk about the adverse health effects caused by visceral adiposity (inner fat that surrounds your organs), and one possible sign of having too much visceral adiposity for men is having a big belly, and I have a pretty big belly, especially in relation to the rest of my body (I have very little noticeable fat elsewhere). The rule of thumb I found online, from a seemingly reputable source, is a 40-inch threshold. I measured my stomach from middle of the bellybutton to middle of the bellybutton, and it's about 41 inches. So, now my goal is get it below 40 and keep it there. Now, all the usually caveats with this apply -- you can't precisely assess overall health with a single number, the human body is complex, everybody is different, etc., etc. But there is very little downside to me trying to shrink my belly a bit (through hopefully there will be a downsize), and the potential upside, being healthier, living longer, being healthier longer, etc. is huge. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Also, I like the idea of using stomach size instead of weight as a metric, as more muscle mass (which is a good thing) can lead to a higher weight. Plus, when I look at myself in the mirror with my shirt off, I don't think Look at all that excess weight, but I do think, My belly is way too big, given how much I exercise. Might as well deal with the problem directly.

Until next time... 

  

Entry 774: Octogenarian Mom

We went back to the South Puget Sound region a week and a half ago for a relatively short trip to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday, and it was wonderful right up until the very end. The afternoon before we flew out, my 12-year-old nephew broke both of his ankles, and he and his father (my brother) spent the night in the emergency room. He was at one of those trampoline/foam pit/fun-zone places, and he apparently landed awkwardly and hit the ground too hard and got a hairline fracture in each ankle. It sounds like it was pretty fluky. He had already fallen into the pit like a dozen times (it was an American Gladiators style joust setup) before he got hurt. He's a very tall kid for his age, and it sounds like he unluckily found a crevice in the foam and hit the bottom with his feet. He literally slid through the cracks. It was a total bummer to end what was otherwise a fun and festive vacation.

But the good news is that my brother and his wife just bought a van, so they are decently equipped to transport a child in a wheelchair. Also, kids heal quickly. In a few months, my nephew will likely be back on his feet, running around, and it will be a "remember when that happened" topic of conversation. By contrast, if something like that happened to me, I would probably walk with a limp for the next half-decade. I mean, a few years ago my father fell off a small ladder and broke his foot, and he was laid up for many months and needed multiple surgeries just to get back to semi-normal.

Before all this went down, however, it was a good trip of seeing people I hadn't seen in a long time. I saw a handful of family members I hadn't seen since July 2017, a few more I hadn't seen since January 2017, and yet one more I hadn't seen since summer of 2007. I also randomly ran into two friends from high school I had mostly lost touch with. It's funny, when we came out to visit my family for a month a few summers ago, I didn't have a single chance encounter like this with anybody, and then I come back for just a week and have two of them.

Everybody came out for my mom's 80 birthday celebration. It was really a great event -- a lot of fun and the right amount of sentimentality. I feel so fortunate to have such a great family and friends (a few of my best buddies came down from Seattle with their families for the party) and that we are in a position financially/PTO-wise to fully take advantage of it. It really is a blessing, and not everybody is going to be around forever, so it's ultra important to take it all in now while it's still possible.

There were two big surprises for me this trip. One, which is not so great, is that my uncle has Parkinson's disease. He's in his late 60s, I believe, and he's always been quite healthy and spry for his age, so it was a total trip to see him at my parents' house shaking uncontrollably. He's still quite fit -- he says he runs or hikes almost everyday -- but he's much less outgoing and communicative, understandably so. His jaw quivers a lot, which, I can only assume, makes talking much less fun than it used to be. There is a genetic component to Parkinson's, which, being that my uncle and I share a direct ancestor (my great-grandfather, his grandfather also had it), isn't the most comforting thought for me, but I'll cross that bridge if/when I come to it. I'm not the type to go out and search for early warning signs. Yes, I might catch something sooner than I would otherwise, which would help with treatment, but I also might not and think I did, and then I will be living with that undo mental stress. I'll keep it in the back of my head, but that's where it's staying unless circumstances change.

The other surprise is that one of my longtime childhood friends has transitioned (is in the process of transitioning?) into a woman. This definitely threw me for a bit of a loop at first -- I had no idea she had any sort of gender dysphoria or anything like that -- but it's cool. She seems happy, and if that's the case, then I'm happy for her. To each their own, live and let live, and all that. It's trite but true. Also, I think I adapted to my new-old friend pretty quickly. I only misgendered her once (and she was cool about it), and after a little while talking to her it was like, Wow, you're a woman now! ... So, what else is new?

Alright, gotta go. But first, obligatory pic of Chambers Bay.

Until next time...  

Entry 773: Rabbit, Run... Please

I had the rudest of awakenings Friday morning. Well, technically, I was already awake but barely. My alarm had sounded, and I had arisen, but was not yet fully dressed, when S barged into the room in a panic. 

"Lil' S2 left his bike out and a bunny is stuck in the wheel!"

"Wait... what?"

"It's just stuck! It's bleeding! I think it's dead!"

"Uh... okay."

"Just put some pants on and get it out! I don't want to touch it!"

"There's a dead rabbit in Lil' S2's bike wheel? And I have to get it out?"

"Yes... I'm going to a Solid Core class. Bye!"

"Okay, bye... thanks for leaving this for me."

"Sorry!"

Then she was gone.

I peeked out the window, and S's description was accurate. A rabbit had somehow gotten its head stuck in the spokes of Lil' S2's bike* and was lying there bloody and lifeless. Now, just the sight of roadkill squigs me out a little bit, so I was dreading the idea of touching a dead animal and then doing... something with it. But the thought of it just sitting there on our walkway was worse, so I got dressed, grabbed a paper sack, found some old gloves we bought for a ropes course, and went out the door to get this thing over with as quickly as possible.

*It should have been stored in our shed. Lil' S2 forgot to put it away (because he's 9), and neither S nor I noticed it to remind him. When I told him later that a bunny had gotten stuck in it because he left he out, he replied indignantly, "That's the bunny's fault!" which I found morbidly humorous for some reason.

I was pondering what to do with a dead rabbit -- burying it near the creek seemed like the best option -- but as soon as I touched it, I realized it was a moot point. I could feel warmth and life still inside of it. So, then my mind turned to the question of what to do with a badly injured rabbit, but first I had to get it unstuck from the spokes without injuring it further.

And I'm not sure I succeeded in that regard. It's head was really wedged in there, so much so that a spoke had cut into its eye, which was causing the bleeding. I had to really pry to get it free. Once I did, I was hoping it would up and run away, but no such luck. It just laid there, staring at me with its haunting, bloody eye. I picked it up and put it in the paper bag, and it did fight me but very feebly. Once in the sack, it made no attempt to get out. This poor thing was not doing well.

As I saw it, I had four options: 1) Find an animal hospital that will take it (or do the equivalent of dropping it on the porch, ringing the doorbell, and running); 2) build it a habitat in a cardboard box and nurse it back to health, kids'-book-style; 3) go old-school, conk it with a shovel and bury it near the creek, using the justification that I would be "putting it out of its misery"; 4) release it near the creek and walk away, telling myself that that's just nature, but also feeling a bit guilty that I was too lazy and uncaring to do option 1 or 2.

I went with option 4. I'm mostly okay with it. I mean, it could move a little bit, so it's possible that it found a safe place to rest and gather enough strength to survive, and if it didn’t, well, Mother Nature is an evil hag, isn't she? Billions of living things die every second -- that's just way it goes. Also, I had a bunch of work to do and just wanted to get on with my day ASAP.

So, that was that. I'm still trying to figure out how it got stuck in the first place. Obviously, it didn't know any better, but something drastic had to have happened for it to wedge its head into such a tight area, especially since there was seemingly nothing there of interest to a rabbit. It's not like there was a carrot on the other inside it was trying to get to, and even if there was, a rabbit would have good enough instincts to go around, I think. My best guess is that it got spooked and ran full-speed ahead into the bike wheel without even seeing it, hitting it in the perfectly right-wrong way to get its little head stuck. It doesn't seem very likely, but it's the best I got.

The whole ordeal put me in a weird mood for the day. It's not like I was totally bummed out, and I didn't even think about it that much, but every now and then I'd get a tinge of -- I don't even know what to call it -- unease, I guess, and would think to myself, Why am I feeling this?, and then I'd remember, Oh, yeah, that's right: maimed rabbit. It did get me out of an errand at least. We ordered carryout, and S wanted me to go pick it up, but I was in the middle of a workout, so I balked at it a little bit, and so she started into a whole soliloquy, "I have to go to two different places, and I'm tired of driving kids around all day..."

"Sorry to cut you off, babe, but I had to pull a half-dead rabbit out of our kid's bike spokes this morning, doesn't that buy me anything?"

"Actually, it does. I'll get the food."

Nice.

In general, I feel like these types of things I do go underappreciated. Whenever there is something gross or physically taxing or technical that needs to be done, it's just assumed that I'm the one who has to do it. S will sometimes feel put out that she's doing "all the work" with the kids because she does most of the registration and appointments and stuff like that (although now that Lil' S2 does so many sports leagues and camps, which I almost always sign him up for, it's not that lopsided), but my response is always that that's not the only work that needs to be done. I mean, I could give a whole list of things that I do fairly regularly that S has never done -- clean the gutters, sweep debris off the roof and pick up the yard after a storm, clean the maggots out of the compost bin, put air in the tires, unclog a toilet or clear a drain, change a lock, carry bulk trash to the curb, reset the router, resync the controllers with the PlayStation -- but I won't because that would be petty of me.

Alright, that's all I got. Until next time...

Entry 772: Work Trip

I mentioned in my previous entry that I had a work trip on the horizon that I wasn't exactly jumping for joy over. Well, said trip has come and gone now, and other than some bullshit delays on my return flight (or deplaning, rather), it went well. When it comes to travel, I'm usually glad I did it in retrospect. I don't really like traveling, particularly when it comes to flight, but I'm very tolerant of it because I like going places, and you can't go places without traveling there. Transporter/wormhole technology still seems millennia away (if it's possible at all), and despite advances in AI and bioengineering, Total Recall-style memory implants are not a thing yet either (and even if they were, I'm not sure I'd be up for conspiring with a creature living in a man's stomach to save the martian race). We are still just using big old jet airliners like it's 1977. And somehow air travel has actually gotten worse over the years--at least in terms of comfort. It's much cheaper now than it used be, and the inverse relationship of price to comfort is not just incidental.

The purpose of the trip was to attend a big industry summit hosted by my new parent company. My team was invited to present something, so a colleague and I gave a talk. As far as I can tell it was successful. We got a lot of engagement during Q & A, which is usually a good thing. Also, my colleagues in the audience told me it went well, and it didn't seem like perfunctory politeness. I don't mind public speaking, except for this thing that has started happening to me relatively recently, where immediately before I open my mouth, I feel like I'm not going to be able to get the words out. It's like that can't-move, stuck-in-mud bad-dream feeling. Thankfully, the words do come out, but it's like I'm speaking with a knot in my throat for the first half of the talk. I don't think it's super noticeable, and I'm able to power through it, but it's pretty annoying. I guess it's nerves, but it's weird because I don't feel anxious in any other way. Maybe it's a good thing, as my martial arts instructor said once before a test to level-up: "If you are nervous, good. That means you care."

I was also hopped up on acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, and phenylephrine, although I don't know if that mattered or not to the quality of the presentation. I caught a cold last weekend and by the day of the talk (Tuesday), I was in the snotting uncontrollably stage of my ailment. I typically do not take cold medicine. It's expensive and doesn't actually do anything to cure your ailment. But I do think it can help to temporarily suppress some of your symptoms -- even if it's just through the placebo effect -- and when you are blowing your nose and sneezing every ten seconds and have to speak to an auditorium of a hundred people, you take all the relief you can get.

It sucked at the time, but in retrospect it wasn't the worst time to be ill. I mean, it's never good to be sick, but I'd rather be sick away from home at a conference than be sick when I get back. I fought through it, and now I'm better, and I get to sit here in good health and blog, while I look outside at a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I'd much rather have it this way than have been healthy a few days ago and sick now.

Anyway, the fact that it's a beautiful day is notable, as we've been short on those in DC this summer. It's either been insanely hot or storming or both. Heavy rains and thunderstorms are in the forecast seemingly every other day. I get so many flood warnings on my phone, they've become meaningless (which is a legitimate problem; it's part of why so many people in Texas were caught off guard). The t-storms came on Thursday during my return flight, but we got in at the perfect time... almost. We landed safely -- there wasn't even much turbulence -- but they wouldn't let us out of the plane for three hours. Yes, that's right, we sat on the tarmac after landing for thee hours. That's an hour longer than the actual flight time.

The issue, as kinda explained to us and kinda inferred by me, was that due to lightning in the area, it was unsafe for the airport staff to set up the ramp needed for deplaning. (We were on one of those smaller commuter jets that don't pull right to the jetway.) So, we had to wait for the storm to subside. The problem with this is that the storm had already mostly subsided by the time we arrived and was only forecast to get worse again later. I kept looking outside at the concrete, watching it get dryer, because the rain had stopped, and thinking to myself If it's not safe enough to deplane now, when will it be? My phone app said a storm warning was in effect until 10 pm. We arrived around 2 pm. Are they going to keep us here for eight hours?

No, they were not, thankfully. Around 5 pm, they taxied us to different part of the airport, and we all just walked down the stairs and off the plane and that was that. Why we could not have done that when we first arrived, I have no idea. I also do not understand why they could not have set up the ramp. Yes, I'm sure it's less than ideal to wield around a giant metal object when lightning is nearby, but sometimes people have to do (slightly) unsafe jobs. That's what hazard pay is for. Give workers a big enough bump, and you will have a line of candidates. You could even charge the passengers for it. Put a $10.00 hazard pay deposit on the tab. If you have a normal flight, you get it back. If workers have to work in hazardous conditions, you use this money to pay them extra. I would gladly go for that.

I mean, when we deplaned, they brought the fire department out to help us down the stairs -- the fire department! How is that a better use of resources than finding somebody to set up a ramp? It's utter silliness. I'm sure it's part CYA, but it's also part "zero COVID" mentally, where decision-makers become overly focused on preventing one bad thing (in this case lightning hitting somebody) and create a more hazardous situation in the process. Is taking first responders away from their other duties to help some airline passengers down some stairs actually a net safety plus for society? Also, by waiting so long to let us off, I, and presumably many other passengers, had to travel from the airport while the storm was particularly bad. That's more cars on the road; more people not in their homes. Not to mention the physical and mental stress passengers are under, sitting in the plane, not knowing when they will be let off, feeling kidnapped. Like I said, it's completely baffling, and I have half a mind to write a sternly worded letter to somebody about it. But I have another half to not do that. They've already taken three hours of my life -- three and a half if you count the time it's taken me to write this screed -- they don't need anymore.

Until next time...   

 

Entry 771: Luray Caverns

S has been on this kick of thinking we don't spend enough time together as a family, and since last weekend's trip to the fancy movie theater didn't quite go as planned, she upped the ante and booked a two-day excursion to Luray Caverns and Shenandoah National Park. We actually met our friends there, so it wasn't just the four of us the entire weekend, but it was enough of just the four of us to qualify as quality time together (and then some).

It was a mostly successful endeavor. The kids fought a bit, which led to Lil' S1 embracing the role of martyr and sleeping on the floor, but kids will do that. Them sharing a bed, we've come to learn, is just not tenable. We're not at the point of booking two rooms (yet), but we definitely need a room with an extra sleeper sofa or a roll-away cot or something like that. They've never been good with sharing a bed, and we used to get around it by having S and I split up and each co-sleep with one of them, but I put the kibosh on that one a while ago. S doesn't mind, but it's a hard no from me. Lil' S1 is like 5' 5", 130 lbs now, and it's weird to spoon with your son when he's that big. Lil' S2 isn't quite that size yet, but he moves constantly in his sleep. It's annoying just listening to him jostle, let alone being right next to him.

We drove up Saturday morning and spent the afternoon at some sort of street fair that wasn't actually on a street but rather in a big field in the middle of nowhere. It was seemingly 1000 degrees outside, and there was no air conditioning to be found. We couldn't even sit in the car and cool off that way because we were precariously low on gas, not taking into account that there isn't a gas station on every corner once you get outside the city. Also, we didn't have any cell service, which has nothing to do with the temperature, but did make it much more difficult to navigate. It's ridiculous how reliant we are on smartphones with an internet connection now.

The kids had fun though. There was a nice creek nearby, so they all just hopped in that. I waded in as well, but the jagged rocks hurt my feet, and the ones that were smooth were even worse to walk on because they were hella slippery. I foresaw myself eating it in a very embarrassing manner, so I came back to the safety of dry land after only a few minutes. Lo and behold, not too long after my return, a dad about my age tried to fetch a toy his daughter dropped that was being washed away, and he completely wiped out, hard, soaking (and possibly injuring) himself in the process. I felt for the poor sap, but I also felt good about my own sagacity: Wise move getting out DG, wise move, indeed.   

After that we went horseback riding, which is something the boys had never done, and something I hadn't done in probably 29 years. I remember going with my cousins once when I was an older teenager, and we visited them in 1996,* so I'm guessing that was the last time. It was cool. If you don't spend a lot of time around horses (which I don't), you forget how massive and impressive they can be. But also, they never went faster than a walk (by design), so after a while, it's kinda like, All right, this is getting pretty repetitive, and I'm getting a little sore. The trip got cut short by a few minutes because it started to rain, and I can't say I was all that disappointed. The scenery was definitely interesting, though, including the people. As we were riding, we went past a couple who was driving through the trails in some sort of flatbed mini truck, and both driver (man) and passenger (woman) had a diaper-clad baby on their lap, and they had a half-rack of Busch on the flatbed.

*I remember the year because we watched Michael Johnson and his gold shoes win a bunch of races at the Atlanta Olympics.  

We stayed the night at a lodge in Shenandoah National Park, and then we went to Luray Caverns the next day (this afternoon). I'll have to cut this post short and end with some pics because I have to get ready for a work trip. I fly out tomorrow and return Thursday. Between you and me, I'm not exactly super excited about it, but so it goes.

Until next time...