Mark Carroll's Journal

Today is my first day of leave from work for over the Christmas break. This morning we sent the boys off back home to Asia to visit family, now it's just me and R. I am relaxing on the sofa with our dog L. while R. brings some sanity to the kitchen storage. I already feel my headspace increasing and have been getting some small postponed things done. Many more await.

I am quite good at sleeping. Given the opportunity, I can do plenty of it. This morning, I dreamt we lived somewhere else and I spied a sizable swirly unnatural-looking Weather Thing approaching, and turned to R. to strongly suggest that we leave the house now and drive elsewhere.

Again, I thought back to high school where one of my math teachers figured Cartesian coordinates for the vertices of a regular dodecahedron and, looking at one, I wonder what the straightforward strategy is for doing that. I like to think that enough staring and turning would help make it clearer. Now, this is where I wish I had a large desktop system with lots of PCI-e slots for used RTX 3090's or somesuch: it's the kind of thing I'm happy to try idly chatting to some opensource LLM about. It's not as if anything's riding on the answer. Perhaps they're rather better at classic book suggestions than anything analytic though.

I also got to wonder about mobile telephony. ( How might routing work? )

My mention of idly chatting to LLMs reminds me, I have three sizable pending purchases in mind: such a desktop AI system, a small laptop for use while commuting, and a cross-trainer. The interesting question is how to prioritize them though clearly the first there should actually be last while I cross my fingers for the bubble bursting. Also, I'm reluctant to spend too freely until I'm more ahead of the higher-interest debt.

In the meantime, I've found that, as usual, BBC iPlayer didn't exactly help me discover that there's recent Later… with Jools Holland to provide me with a somewhat alternative musical backdrop, albeit a considerably mixed bag of such. I've been enjoying ex-BBC's Stereo Underground recently which is also nicely varied. Given that it often plays the music of my childhood, it makes me wonder: I think of all the energy of especially some of the more punk-ish songs, and how exciting life seemed to me at the time, especially with books filling my head with new intellectual worlds to wrestle with. There's something there I'd be interested to recapture, about possibility and choice, about who I am and what I pursue. I may not quite know which destinations make sense but one of the many wonderful things about R. is how supportive they are.

I took a few days off work, I'm back in the office this Friday. My time off has kept me rather busy with all manner of unexpected things, to some extent that looks to continue. To give one example, on the evening before Thanksgiving, with a raw turkey marinating, there is a large puff of smoke, the power breakers trip, and our electric oven appears to die. Fortunately, the top element for grilling still seems to work, with which R. coaxed us a turkey after all. The new oven arrives this weekend, when we'll see if we can replace the fitted oven ourselves or if we fall back to summoning a tradesperson. Also, for making one of the pies: canned pumpkin seems to have largely disappeared from the general supermarkets, we ended up ordering that from Amazon.

Not wanting to bother with VPNs and Peacock and such, I usually find one of the free Thanksgiving parade streams that shows the centre of the action from some other city than New York. I think it may have been Philadelphia or somesuch last year, this year I stumbled upon Chicago's, not the best choice as it turned out to heavily promote some sponsor's product for cleaning up fæces.

Among other things keeping me busy, today I did my office desk booking for the rest of the month, and tomorrow we are to get our SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations: I seem to have found local Moderna which costs us £85 each but the risks are too high to not do this at least occasionally.

R. and I sometimes head into Edinburgh on the train for in-office work, sometimes on separate days, sometimes together. Today, R. went in, and I stayed home and helped out with pet care. I hope that I am becoming more productive as I grow more familiar with my employer's codebase. I also look forward to getting around to personal programming projects at home but not quite yet it seems, still I have to figure how and when to fit that in. A task this evening is to schedule our influenza vaccinations. COVID-19 vaccinations are becoming a distant memory, it's a pity our BUPA health insurance doesn't reimburse them.

( Our expensive family visa journey continues. )

I read John Wiswell's Someone You Can Build a Nest In which was gentle and engaging. Whether in science fiction or fantasy, I always enjoy insight into a fairly non-human character. Definitely a nice enough way to pass the time. (Though, R. noted that it is far more gory than I had noticed, somehow that all passed me by.) I might be running out of television to watch, though. There is a bit more Chief of War left but it is far more buttocks than smiles and R. noted arrant ahistoricity in the portrayal of Zamboanga (languages, buildings, clothing). We are giving The Mayfair Witches a try on Netflix, R. read the books long ago.

A local Tesco Express convenience store has opened quite near us so we have a very handy source of heavily discounted food that must be sold before it turns into a pumpkin, assuming it isn't already one. So, among other things, we found ourselves eating sandwiches recently. With luck, the store will soon correct their loud alarm siren that warns whenever somebody outside walked near the customer entrance.

I have been frustrated that I am not yet more rapidly productive at work. Yesterday was another example but my legs started off achy and, as the day wore on, it became clearer that I was coming down with some kind of a cold, and that my throat was not feeling good. Then, I didn't feel sleepy last night and stayed up late.

In the end, I slept. This morning, I woke up feeling quite rotten, especially my head, so I got out of bed in search of medicines and drinks. Having rested, I now feel a little better. I have even taken a bath and now feel up to actually dressing instead of lying around in my pyjamas.

At least we didn't have grand plans for this weekend. I expect to be feeling somewhat improved by Monday.

Today was a very windy day. Schools and stores closed. Fortunately, we didn't have to go out, except for taking L. the dog outside every so often. A lorry blew over on the nearby busy bridge. I wondered if the wind would bring power lines down but we still have electricity.

In work, I wrestled with Node.js and TypeScript and finally saw some success that enables better progress henceforth. Neither is my forte but with luck I learned enough to be faster next time.

Update: The following morning, we had hail then sleet.

( Work remains busy, bringing my first project nearer delivery. )

( British unemployment benefit isn't generous. )

( I filed my US taxes but am not holding my breath for the refund. )

( Tax paperwork for charity donation irritated me. )

( Me and our dog are both heavier. )

( We are looking to move just a little south. )

I am not managing to read others' journals anywhere near as completely as I once did. Perhaps if I post rather more briefly, I will get around to posting at all. It's been very many weeks. I will try to mention the occasional random things, even if the picture of things as a whole is left even more incomplete than before.

In recent times, I have not enjoyed an abundance of energy and willpower. Of course, all the house-moving and setup and whatnot has been quite the stressor. Still, all that is now mostly past. Things still go wrong with the flat, the latest is that next I must chase an installer harder about some bad wiring they did, and money remains tight while we pay off the flat setup. On the other hand, I have R. here with me, they are a great help in various ways, so it's just not me dealing with things as it was back in Tennessee.

Aside from my regular full-time work, I try to do something each day, whether a chore or some more leisurely expedition. For example, on Sunday we explored Pollok Country Park then sat a while in the sunshine, reading, and yesterday we shopped for groceries, and for items for high school next month. So, things do get done. But, quite often, I do no more than one per day: after that, I feel tired, ready to just rest, watch television, whatever before bed.

My eating is not going as I might hope. I make plenty of good decisions, just some bad ones too, the overall effect being insufficient discipline to stay on track. This is partly a money thing: in checking discount expires-soon shelving, it is difficult to pass up anything both tasty and cheap. However, it's mostly me just feeling tired and hungry and thinking, screw it, let's eat a nice thing.

I do think that I shall get there in the end but right now it feels like it will be a slow journey. The money situation will ease (though I wish the mortgage were on US interest rates) and we'll crawl ahead on our to-do's, as we settle they should arise with less frequency, but all this takes time.

( After moving to the new flat, still plenty to do but much now done. )

( I think it was a good move. )

( Since the move, money will be tight for some time yet. )

My eldest happened to be nearby around their birthday so I got to walk over a couple of times and say hello, which was great. I've not been able to see my kids as much in recent months, with all the property viewings, the move and setup, etc. Maybe next weekend, here's hoping.

New jobs are always an interesting challenge for me. For the job I took in moving to Scotland, I am eager to perform well but have been wrestling with a variety of technologies that are new to me and poorly documented. An additional impediment has been my working from Apple silicon instead of Linux x64.

Today I faced some sparse third-party documentation and used it to write and push some half-plausible code. This is most pleasing and feels like a turning point toward actual productivity. While I appreciate the faith shown by those who hired me, I do like to reassure them by tangible work product that they chose well.

Working nights from Metro Manila complicates the task a little but not too badly. Last night (afternoon) was unusually restless for me but, on finding myself rather awake, I simply got some work done. I didn't feel too bad after R. kindly let me sleep through to nearly 9pm before I started my workday properly.