Mark Carroll's Journal

When people pause in uttering a sentence, my mind is often eagerly prompt in filling the space. For example, on the train there is an announcement about the carriage, I forget what, but there's a pause where I want to fill it in with, … may be larger than it appears or somesuch, which I suppose my brain concocts from some combination of Doctor Who and car side-mirrors. There is also an announcement instructing to tell them if one sees something strange (a headless horseman or a two-headed goat or whatever) which also includes a brief pause, ripe for completion with, … then throw something at it.

More striking, though, is that my brain wants to put words to music. I notice when existing mundane sentences fit a line of music from some song or jingle, could be from any time or genre, ranging from Henry Mancini to South Park. And, with little tunes like fancier alarm tones, my brain wants to add lyrics to them. They range from nonsensical to unprintable but there you are. Sometimes it will just substitute part of a sentence: for instance, from this commercial from my childhood, I notice various other unlikely things that might be, … just enough to give your kids a treat.

For me, the most striking part is that, although I am neither musical nor lyrical in any competent sense, my brain clearly notices when an existing verbal phrase fits an existing line of music or vice versa. This suggests that I am indexing somewhat by syllable patterns, perhaps emphasis too; that would explain why, when I am trying to remember a word, I will typically have a good idea how many syllables it has. There's some cognitive architecture lesson here about how brains handle language, at least mine.

I routinely use generative AI in my workplace, my employer encourages it and pays for it. It works well, it's a definite help. At least for the meantime, it requires my expert supervision, close monitoring, to do good work but it's actually rather clever at times even if often rather dumb too. Where my work strays beyond my expertise, it fills in for me.

I have probably mentioned that I like the description of computer programming as mathematical engineering, it captures what I enjoy most about it. It's rewarding to devise and express good solutions. I love to create systems that do well at behaving in desired ways.

So, sometimes, for those parts of my work tasks to which I was looking forward, I've typically been working with the AI enough that it has the context to say, hey, you still have this bit unfinished, shall I do it? and I'm like, no, let me!

For the moment, I can still capture some crumbs of what I love to do. However, I wonder how obsolete that's becoming, the future's arriving faster than I expected. You could drop me back into the 1980's and I could be very happy writing software but these days nobody wants programmers who could hit the ground running in that kind of environment. Given the speed at which coding assistance has become rather good, I can't help but wonder if the 2030's will largely have only jobs for people who can direct the constellation of artificial agents well. That's a thing I'm sure I can do competently to support my family but … how much do I want to?

I love to learn about what clients actually need, figure out how I can meet those needs by creating software, then to deliver something valuable to them. But what I love most is the part of the process that machines may soon do maybe not quite as well but far cheaper than I.

I find myself looking back to things I once did and appreciating that at least I had the chance. I have loved doing simple things like feeling the hot, dry breeze in Death Valley, driving a rusty pickup truck through the Ohio countryside in the sunshine, walking along the beach in Aberdeen, and frequenting the AANI weekend market in Taguig. Or, in this case, the chance, repeatedly, to be paid to solve interesting problems by creating software by my own brain and hand. Of course, I can still do what I like as a hobby though it feels emptier if it just means that I am doing something the hard way. I also wonder how healthy it is for one's likes to be overly nostalgic. I have an elderly relative who probably feels as if the world has gone downhill since the 1950's. I don't want that to be me someday, I should find more ways to embrace the future.

I had mentioned our family visa fees. To give a clearer idea of how much the process costs to bring a family member to settle here in the UK, the full route from initial application to citizenship costs well over £8k in fees and well over £5k for NHS access during that period. That's per person, so tripled for R. and two kids. We get a bit of a discount because R.'s youngest is under eighteen but we're still looking on the order of £40k in total, and that's without legal fees which, if we were using a solicitor's team for the process, would probably increase it by half again. Of course, it doesn't cost the government anything like that much to process the applications, the equivalent process in the US is very much cheaper. Still, it strikes me that ability to pay the fees at all should be sufficient evidence of ability to support ourselves without resorting to public funds.

Just on my walk to work this morning, twice I had to dodge tourist groups blocking the entire pavement. I thought that I had avoided this in escaping Cambridge, England, but apparently not. Not being attired for leisure, I occasionally have people ask me for help with local navigation. At least, a no-steps route at the Edinburgh end worked well for me today and took little longer. I don't feel enormously steady on many-steps and can experience some vertigo so it would seem foolish to make a frequent habit of them.

In considering the prospect of moving house a little south, it occurred to me that Glasgow's buses are best avoided and the south-side trains will go up to Central, not Queen Street from where the better Edinburgh trains depart. If I want an easy commute, it behooves me to remain near a subway station from which I can easily transfer at Buchanan to Queen Street. I wonder if there is any prospect of finding a garden flat (so better for L. the dog) in our youngest's school catchment area within easy reach of the subway; it seems a tall order.

At the last part of my way home tonight, I stop to pick up the car from a local car park. I left my parking space clear because the electricians are fixing a light above it. I did so on a previous day when there was word of their arrival, on which they helpfully spent their time partly on other activities that did not require cars to have been moved. So, second time lucky, one hopes. That first was a while ago, their work was interrupted by an unexpected-by-us holiday on their part.

Pensions guys presented to us at work and got me to thinking: I have a mountain of debt at a reasonable APR and I am in a high income tax bracket. I don't have much in pension savings so old-me will be in a low tax bracket. I expect that my debt grows faster than my pension. However, I can pay pre-tax money into my pension. So, better to direct spare post-tax money toward the debt or pre-tax into the pension? I wonder if a cranking of approximate numbers yields an obvious correct answer. It would be nice to not think about secondary factors like less debt means better APRs or that I can deduct paid mortgage interest from my US taxes.

Years ago I implemented a composable simulation language into which, were it handy now, I could easily plug these questions for a year-by-year simulation. Back when working on demonstrating that technology's application to financial planning, I was amused that such inevitably led to the question, when do you plan to die?, so this pensions question is a nice exception in that I can simply optimize for starting far-off retirement in the best position.

Having already complained about the IRS expecting expats to file taxes but often requiring them to have a US telephone number, I should note that I was lucky enough to set up my EFTPS account before allowing my US cellphone plan to lapse and I have remained able to use it since.

An interesting aspect of US taxes is how individuals have many options for how to file. Some of those choices affect and may even constrain future years. In my limited experience, this is in marked difference to the UK where, as an individual, if I must file at all then I just tell them what happened and they go away and figure it out for me and explain what they did.

As a US expat, a particular set of choices is how to handle my employment income. I can try excluding it using form 2555, I can try to get credit for the tax paid using form 1116, I can try deducting that tax on Schedule A, etc. (I itemize because I can deduct my mortgage interest.) Furthermore, I can combine these: e.g., excluding part of the income then applying another form to the pro-rated remainder. Then, I get to try out different form 1040 tax worksheets to see how it works out in each case. So far, I've not needed form 1116 but it's always worth checking. Annoyingly, a few years ago they changed the law such that I can't deduct UK council tax, though at least my reading of the US-UK tax treaty suggests that I can deduct my payroll-deducted pension contributions. (There's also a social security treaty that can be useful for self-employment tax.)

I have receding gums and my teeth are somewhat exposed toward the root. It is with considerable trepidation that I face cleanings from a dental hygienist. One cleaning I had back in Dundee had my teeth still aching for a couple of days afterward.

My present dentist is quite excellent. It was only through unusual luck that I was able to land them as an NHS rather than a private patient. Given my past experiences, what we do is: when a cleaning is due, they do half my mouth in a session: four injections to numb one side, then the cleaning is under local anæsthetic and, so far, after the anæsthetic wears off a few hours later, I remain pain- and ache-free. That, I could get used to.

I wish that I had been born a little later when we could just adjust our bodies to keep on producing teeth, or at least when we could grow clones of our teeth that can be popped in when the current are in poor shape. I remain impressed that our cells organize themselves into the structures of our various teeth.

I have not posted any entries here for well over a month. It's because I find myself short of time for doing personal things on the computer. I have not even addressed the various minor computer issues that I mentioned previously.

One reason for my being short of time is that I have been putting plenty of hours in with my day job. As well as learning my way around, I am now leading the delivery of an overdue project, mixing both people and project management with coding. This suits me well, it's what I am good at and what is needed, and I am paid decently for my efforts and experience, but it leaves me with little spare time on weekdays.

Another reason is that we now have a puppy, mostly a brindle Shih Tzu but clearly a bit of something else too, his snout is a little longer which may help his respiration. He is very much R.'s but we all help out and I love to be with R. so I will tend to come along on walks and suchlike when I can. He gets on reasonably with our two kittens, now they are used to each other. I was interested to find that, even on his short legs, he can outrun me. For running, rather than alternating paws for his steps, he switches to bounding with bilateral symmetry in how he moves. This weekend, he's learned to enjoy snow.

These changes raise some questions. With working, happily being with R., helping with pressing chores, winding down at the end of the evenings, I don't have much time left for lower-priority pursuits like personal computing, social media, playing music, etc. I should figure out what is important enough and how to fit it in, and deal with that the list cannot be as long as I might like.

When applying to universities for my first degree, I largely targeted four-year courses in theoretical physics. I achieved A grades in A-level pure maths, applied maths, physics, and was most curious about fundamental physics. I am not a genius but I am interested and capable, I could have hoped to understand plenty and figure out at least something more.

What actually happened is that I noticed that the University of Cambridge's tripos system at the time allowed me to apply for computer science, switch to natural sciences after the first year, and still do as much mathematics and physics as the physicists. I considered applying for maths there instead but did not want the hassle of caring about STEP papers on top of my examination load (I actually took four A-levels and another GCSE).

Once studying at Cambridge, I was bothered by that, in the final term of my freshman year, we were getting ongoing updates from physics lecturers about what may or may not be examinable. It turned out that they were in the midst of redesigning the physics course. Then, the mock examination was far easier than the real final. Reasoning that they were incompetently making up a new undergraduate course as they went along, I bailed and stuck with computer science, rather than remain among their year of guinea pigs.

The above is background for: I never lost my curiosity about physics, even though I know that, by the time I might plausibly get to study properly, I will be decades behind others and my faculties will be waning. I read things about, say, parity violation and the weak force: how we have only left-handed neutrinos that experience only that force, that it doesn't affect right-handed electrons, etc., and there is such a sense of what is going on? that demands explanatory hypotheses investigated using maths and computing. I envy those who get to search for the answers even though, regarding the greenness of grass, I probably took the better-paid option.

I was reviewing my papers and discovered a misfiled 1099-S from 2022, I had put it in the house file instead of the higher-priority tax file. The IRS haven't seemed to mind that I hadn't noticed it but it does mean that I am supposed to report it on Form 8949, which will be easy in this case: it's about the sale of my main home, in which I lived long enough to adjust the whole gain away, and I am already using Schedule D anyway.

In consequently reviewing last year's US tax return, I also realized that I may be able to claim a bit more than I had, by adjusting Form 2555 a little and combining it with a Form 1116, so the effort is probably worthwhile. I should probably have done this in 2012 also but never mind, it's far too late now. Last year's taxes were always going to be tricky but this year's should be far simpler.

One thing that I find odd about US tax law is how much is left to the filer to decide in non-trivial strategy, much a here are the rules, now play the game and try to win the most, made worse by the fact that a decision in one tax year may constrain the available options in later years. Though I shan't attempt it, it even works backward: at first glance, my use of Form 1116 in 2022 looks to enable me to amend my 2021 return to claim more back, but that way madness lies.

So, this weekend, I plan to figure an amended 2022 return, including the missing but inconsequential Form 8949 and also using Form 1116 to improve my situation, and post that off to Austin, TX. I shall probably not have to face anything worse than a couple of worksheets, fortunately I don't have qualified dividends or the like.

I have had an eventful few days after spilling coffee on my laptop computer. As a rule, I try to keep drinks separately from, and preferably lower, than the computer, but I violated it thoughtlessly. After drying my computer out, opening, inspecting, cleaning, experimenting, it responds to input if the SSD hard drive is not inserted. With the drive in, it freezes at the BIOS welcome screen. The drive is unreadable in a USB enclosure so, although the drive is on the opposite side of the motherboard from the coffee impact, it appears to have been catastrophically destroyed by the incident.

Through further faults of mine, I am behind on both noting more recent passwords in some written form and on backing up my laptop. With all the moving house and catching up with other deferred chores, especially given now being in a small flat, my personal computing remains in disarray. So, I screwed up in a few ways at once. Fortunately, a path remained to make these mistakes far less consequential than they could have been. While moving house and setting up the new flat, at least I had made encrypted remote backups of some of the more critical items.

My data is linked by a varied and idiosyncratic arrangement of memorized descrambling algorithms, of keys, passwords and passphrases, and of variously encrypted archives of various things in various places. I got around to unpacking the hardware that allows me to read the old backup (and make new ones!) and finally worked out a half-remembered descrambling algorithm and, between them, they bootstrapped a chain of each step unlocking the next as I regained access to things, including those more up-to-date critical items.

I also used all this, another computer, and Docker, to create a virtual environment that lets me do the more important things for which I had used my original laptop; one puzzle there was in discovering X11UseLocalhost. In due course, I shall put a new hard drive into the real laptop computer and gladly get back to using that one instead.