Notes from a Fiery Nest

Don't worry, it's fine!

2021-01-29T03:17:22Z

I had an appointment with my optometrist recently. A little while back, someone drove into their front window, and things aren't repaired fully yet.

The instructions for coming to the appointment: You'll get to a boarded-up storefront. Go around to the back. At exactly 10:30, come to the back door and knock. Wear a mask, and come alone.

Me: 🤔 Sounds legit!

comments

Rare thing! Update!

2020-05-10T02:41:32Z

I miss people, I miss activities. I'm glad I have my partners in person, at least... otherwise, sanity would be not-great. As it is, we're making the most of the extra time together.

I'm working from home, which is... ok, better than not working, but not my favorite way to be.

I considered going back to playing keyboards during The Isolation, but I realized that I would drop it once aikido and gaming meetups got going again, so it's hart to justify the expense. A friend mentioned the Roli controllers, which look like a lot of fun to me. Someday, maybe... hopefully not too soon if it's because I can no longer do aikido!

I have managed to shift a little bit of my gaming online: we've played a bit of 1830 via Board18, and my biweekly RPG has moved online reasonably effectively, just as we were starting a new arc. It's not the same, but it's something.

For walks, we've been avoiding parks during the worst of the isolation policing, and going mostly to outlying crown lands and the like. It's still a big country out there, with a lot of nowhere in particular.

Hopefully, y'all are staying healthy and somewhat sane!

comments

Brief update

2020-03-05T02:48:48Z

Busy, but wanted to get this out there. I didn't even post my most recent reflection here, but I hope to remedy that soon.

Work news: I was promoted to team lead in January, and folks here seem to like what I do and how I do it, which is a step up over the Powers That Be at my old place.

Family news: my father passed away on Sunday morning, succumbing after a long decline to dementia; the funeral is on Friday. Mixed, fairly intense emotions, as you can imagine.

comments

Reflection from a couple of weeks ago

2018-10-09T11:37:45Z

Reflection for 22-23 September 2018
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Text: Wisdom 2:12, 17-20; Psalm 54:3-4, 5, 6, 8; James 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37.

( Content notice: reference to child abuse. )

comments

Patio beginnings

2018-06-30T18:52:25Z

The contractor for the patio we're getting put in started work today. It's expensive, but I don't envy him and his assistant shoveling in the hot weather... I did that with my folks at a couple of houses, and I know it's hard work.

In related news, roughly half of the back yard is now weed-free. Sadly, this also eliminated some wildflowers we were cultivating.

comments

Lazy?

2018-06-17T19:06:57Z

melannen posted this little guide to figuring out whether you are really just lazy, and I found it helpful; you might, too.

comments

Summer camps

2018-06-06T18:43:30Z

Near where I work, there are ads on lawn signs for various summer camps, including things like "Detective Camp," "Lego Camp," "Science Camp," and "Back to School Camp."

Back to School Camp? Really? I guess this is what parents threaten their kids with if they don't get good grades. Kind of like Krampus for summer vacation!

comments

New car soon

2018-06-03T23:37:37Z

We're getting a new car soon... the old Mazda 3 is near on 310,000 km, so it's about time. So, we're selling it to a guy for not-a-huge-amount-of-money, but still more than the trade-in value, and buying a new Mazda 3.

This will probably be our last gasoline-powered car, as I read the technology curve!

comments

Reflection on the Ascension

2018-05-15T00:18:50Z

Reflection for 12-13 May 2018
The Ascension of the Lord, Year B
Text: Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 4:1-13, Mark 16:15-20.

( Driving out demons and picking up snakes... )

comments

From the office

2018-02-22T16:26:31Z

comments

Hardware vulnerabilities

2018-01-11T16:05:02Z

"Child," said Aslan, "did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?"
--C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawntreader

Apparently, not always so. The Meltdown and Spectre attacks are interesting and clever exploits of speculative execution, a trick we are using to execute programs more quickly.

An internet-connected device isn't like a house: it has to be a fortress, because it is much harder to prosecute attackers, due to the relatively high anonymity and jurisdiction-crossing freedom of online attacks.

comments

Travel, interrupted

2017-12-30T21:24:11Z

We went down to Virginia to visit diaspora's parents this Christmas. The stay was relatively uneventful, it was good to see folks again and get a break from Ottawa winter, all about as you'd expect.

On the way back, though, we ran into a traffic jam along I-95 around Stafford VA. A couple of cop cars went by on the shoulders, so we figured there would be a delay because of an accident, par for the course, no biggie. A few more cop cars went by, which was a bit weird, but you know, maybe just an overreaction or something.

Then we drove past an accident where it looked like a simple rear-ending, pulled off on the left, with a couple of police cars, and things opened up for a bit, although I suspected that that was a secondary accident caused by an inattentive driver.

Sure enough, traffic jammed up again, and yet more police zoomed by, driving down the paved shoulders at speed with sirens going.

A helicopter hovered in the sky over the highway ahead, and stayed there.

Traffic came to a standstill. Police cars just kept coming. A couple of fire vehicles and one ambulance went by. Still more police, including an investigation unit truck.

We were completely stopped for about an hour and a half. Cars started turning back and driving back down the shoulders. Eventually, a state trooper came and told us to do the same, and then we were directed to cross over to the other side and redirected down a country highway (US-1, the Jefferson Davis Highway).

The country highway was crawling, unable to cope with the huge volume of traffic. We stopped for lunch and gas after another hour and a half, and heard that not just an accident, but a shooting was involved in whatever incident was delaying us.

After lunch, I asked a trooper directing traffic, and he said that the highway was reopened, so we escaped the rest of the detour crawling down US-1. If he hadn't said that, we might well have turned back, because the detour looked like hours more.

We went back to the Interstate, which itself took about twenty minutes, and once there, waited about fifteen minutes more for traffic to start flowing again. A little ways down the road, we drove by the investigations unit truck and a few police cars, and there was spill absorbent scattered across the highway.

We only found out the rest of the story the next morning, because by the time we got back to Ottawa, it was about 4 a.m., about four and a half hours after our expected arrival time.

Googling the news, it looks like a man shot his wife and then led the police on a chase onto I-95, in the course of which he tried to shoot at police. The minor accident we passed first seems to have been a result of one such attempt, where the officer ducked just in time: the bullet was retrieved from the driver's headrest. Eventually, the fugitive hit a guardrail and rolled his SUV, and shot himself. He was taken to hospital by helicopter, but died there.

The police handled the whole thing very well, as best I can tell. No police fired weapons, despite the fact that this person was shooting at them. Only the man's wife and he were killed or seriously injured, and they even tried everything they could to save him. Police don't always live up to their mission--none of us do--but their handling of this incident was a pretty good example of how they can maintain lawfulness even under extreme circumstances.

comments

Rockets!

2017-11-10T13:16:46Z

I concocted a cocktail last night which tastes remarkably like Rockets candy; this was unexpected, but not a bad thing. Here's the recipe...

5 parts Beefeater 24 gin
4 parts Southern Comfort
1 part Galliano
several drops DSB Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

comments

Progress!

2017-11-05T19:24:37Z

Physio for my arm seems to be working well; the nerve test is this Friday, and hopefully it will show that things are okay, so I have hopes of going back to aikido classes next week.

My new boss has started, and I am gradually handing over the reins of various management-y things. We get along well; I hope that she will steer a safe path through the political challenges of being the hardware manager in an increasingly software-oriented group.

Despite the often wet weather, diaspora and I have been getting out for a few walks, looking at assorted birds and other things, and generally enjoying outdoor time together. This year, we discovered and explored the High Lonesome Nature Preserve, where we pretty much never encounter anyone else except occasionally around the entrance. It's a very nice trail system, although there are a couple of wet bits (at least this year), but the mosquitoes were heavy during the summer.

comments

Ouch.

2017-09-29T20:12:10Z

I've been off the mats, away from martial arts, for a month, due to what we're pretty sure is a pinched nerve in my arm. It's not doing great things for my sanity to be away from aikido in particular, but at least the weather has been good enough for me to spend some time outdoors.

Physiotherapy is in progress, and sometime next month I should get a nerve conduction test; hopefully, I will be free to go back to practice before too long.

comments

This weekend's reflection

2017-08-21T22:08:30Z

Reflection for 19-20 August 2017
Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
Text: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28.

( In which Ironphoenix wanders through the Gospels a lot... )

comments

Smartphone, dumbperson?

2017-07-13T17:18:12Z

A recent study demonstrates that having a smartphone within one's sphere of awareness is distracting, reducing one's ability to concentrate effectively. From the Discussion section of Experiment 1 (p. 146):

[T]hese results suggest that the mere presence of one’s smartphone may reduce available cognitive capacity and impair cognitive functioning, even when consumers are successful at remaining focused on the task at hand.

It seems that it is best to leave the phone out of sight, and preferably even in another room, when doing anything which requires intensive thinking.

comments

Last weekend's reflection

2017-06-29T00:18:49Z

Reflection for 24-25 June 2017
Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
Text: Jeremiah 20:10-13, Romans 5:12-15, Matthew 10:26-33.

( Read more... )

comments

Good to be back

2017-06-06T20:32:48Z

After a hiatus of a few weeks, I'm back to my martial arts practices. The break was enjoyable in some ways, but it's good to see everyone and catch up, to move that way again, and to experience (and contribute to) the energizing effects of the space and practice.

comments

Phishing warning (yes, another one)

2017-05-04T13:30:12Z

Google Docs shares may not be what they seem; exercise caution, and if you have gotten caught, revoke permissions to the fake app and change your password ASAP.

Telegraph article

Wired article

comments

Phishing warning

2017-04-15T15:23:04Z

There is a unicode hack which can make a link look like a trusted site while actually sending you to a phishing site in Chrome or FireFox. Actions to fix this are described in the article.

comments

Leather jackets?

2017-04-11T14:56:22Z

Since Danier has closed all but 4 stores, where does one go to get a good leather jacket in Ottawa? Recommendations?

comments

Pictures of the flood

2017-04-11T13:55:39Z

Pictures from the flood mentioned in my previous post; cellphone camera, click to biggify.

The sign is a warning of possible standing water on road in spring or after heavy rains.

comments

Halloooo DreamWidth!

2017-04-10T18:39:13Z

It's great to be here tonight, folks! Or at least, that's what two-thirds of LJ's userbase seems to think right now!

This should still crosspost there; I'll keep my LJ alive for a while, but I've ended my automatic paid account renewal.

In other news, I had hoped to get to Quebec City for a martial arts seminar (aikido and iaido), but got hit last week by the flu that's going around town. I spent the weekend in town with family instead.

diaspora and I got out to the Cobbs's Creek and Bearbrook Creek spring floods yesterday, where we saw more water than we usually would, and consequentially fewer geese. We did still see a decent number of Canada and Snow Geese, and quite a few Pintail Ducks. We also saw more muskrats than I've seen in one place before, including some young ones--very cute.

The water was high because of recent intense rains, which flooded not only the creeks, but our basement, via the window. Fortunately, the main casualties were empty boxes, which went out with recycling this morning. We'll have to get the back yard regraded, as the root cause of the flooding is subsidence of the ground around the foundation. We'll probably recaulk the window too, and get some insulation replaced to head off any mold issues.

Yes, I'm trying to be a bit more vocal on here... maybe we can get some energy back into a decent social platform!

comments

Username!

2009-05-04T19:25:55Z

Yay... I got here before my LJ username was taken!

comments