I'm job searching and I'm terrified. My current work pays well but it's a part-time gig that doesn't offer enough hours, and I've just pulled the end of the meager savings I had out of my IRA to hopefully give me enough time to find something consistent with benefits. I have at least a few months, but nobody is offering anything to entry-level engineers. Everyone's looking for experience, and all the positions I see are for senior engineers. I'm throwing resumes at those positions anyway but I know it's fruitless. It just gives me a chance to feel like I'm doing something. In the meantime I'll keep spending my free time learning skills that will hopefully broaden my options. Neural nets, DSP, C. Next is probably getting a basic understanding of SQL. Things are going well with the person I'm seeing--I think we're solidly in situationship territory. They only came out as a lesbian recently and as nonbinary even more recently than that, and they weren't intending to jump into something monogamous so quickly. I'm the first person they've really dated since coming to terms with all of that, and they've mentioned they still want to have more varied sexual experiences. The intimacy is good, the sex is really good, we text every day, our personalities mesh well, and we have fun going out. We're both reliable, considerate, and attentive to each other's needs in various contexts. We're both independent and want to live our own lives. I'm interrogating a lot of my beliefs around what it means to be with someone, what it means to label it, and what I'm actually looking for. Most of my needs are met. I'm just working on getting used to the idea that when spring/summer rolls around we might be fucking other people. The stark acceleration of anti-trans and anti-queer legislation is terrifying on a deep level. I also reconnected with an old friend who I hadn't spoken to since transitioning. It was good to see him again! I'm recognizing how important it is to have friends in your 30's. I'm hoping that when (if) my financial situation stabilizes I'll have some energy to make more.
I'm sorta pissed off about this whole lab leak thing bubbling to the surface again. To me it was a mathematical certainty at almost the dawn of the pandemic that it was clearly a leak. People who I'm close with told me I sounded like a racist conspiracy theorist when all I was doing was making a statistical argument about how many coincidences would have to align to make it not true. I guess that's the nature of the pile-on mentality...people believe what their in group believes without respect to consideration of a fact set that differs from their assumptions in any way. You and I and everyone else are guilty of it in certain contexts, but you'd hope that scientists could rise above it in the name of science. But that's naive too. What was it that Planck said? Something like no one ever changes their beliefs in response to new data; the old people just eventually die. Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's annoying that we have to wait for Trump to be out of office for two entire years before we're allowed to use logic. Someone can be right for the wrong reasons, but agreeing with that person doesn't mean you agree with them about everything. There shouldn't be guilt by association.
Fuckin' masks, dude. Little old ladies hissing at me for getting within ten yards of them outside in a park without a mask. Drivers in their cars giving me the stink-eye for running along the street without a mask. Cashiers at bolt stores staring death at me for wearing a mask indoors. Panicked people glaring at my daughter, hiking without a mask, as they stumble by in their chin bras. Butcher shops refusing to serve me unless I take off my mask. We're in negotiations to take over another birth center in a couple years. Couple we've known for fifteen years? Generally lovely people... if you erase that whole Facebook Trump period where they loudly decried the Communist State of California that wouldn't serve them ice cream because they were unvaccinated. You know what? I'm going to erase it. What's the fucking point. She's come around to recognizing that she was a cast iron bitch to my wife back when my wife was a student, and that she was entirely too focused on her own problems to be able to recognize the problems she was creating for everyone else. I think it's important to recognize that for three, four really ugly years there the demagogues managed to make the whole country think it was about their demagoguery. I think rehashing it just leans back into the demagogic bullshit. Do I want to rub the Republicans' nose in their January 6 shit like misbehaving Golden Retrievers? You damn betcha. But I also recognize that focusing on their now chicanery is a lot more pragmatic. There are several reasons you might wear a mask now: - you work with the public a lot and realized you get sick a lot less if you wear a mask in the winter - you had a covid exposure and are mandated to do it for like six days - you're immune compromised and it's helping to keep you alive - you live with someone immune compromised and it's helping keep them alive - you aren't vaxxed but you recognize that COVID can kill ya so you're taking pragmatic steps to not get sick - it smells bad in here ...but you still see everyone walking around trying to parse everyone's reasons like a bunch of East Germans on either side of the Stasi divide. Stephen Colbert's monologue on Monday dealt with the DOE's lab leak take. He went off for a good 30 seconds about how the DOE needs to stay in their lane because of course he did. Why the fuck would the Department of Energy have an opinion? Because "The Department of Energy used to be the Atomic Energy Commission and it's where all the eggheads went and it's where we still keep them and the Human Genome Project was largely funded by and ran on the computers at Los Alamos National Lab and Sandia National Lab and in fact biowar and modeling has largely lived wholly within our former atomic program including most of our COVID modeling since the first days of the pandemic" isn't common knowledge, isn't common sense, and isn't funny. Ultimately we just wanna know who to laugh at. That got way too tribal for way too long.
I'm at SpaceOps 2023 in Dubai, where I just gave two presentations (my colleague couldn't make it so I presented his paper as well since I was a coauthor). The most amazing thing is that as I was wandering around the conference afterwards, meeting people, I'd go to introduce myself and they'd tell me they'd attended one of the two presentations and wanted to talk about it. Super crazy feeling.
my facial feminization surgery timeline: nov 30 2022: i meet with my transcareprovider and mention i want to have FFS because starting jan 1st 2023 my insurance covers it. she says ok as soon as the year turns you'll have a referral jan 9th: haven't gotten a referral yet. i email tcp and she says sorry the process changed you need to contact another office jan 13: i send an email to that office jan 20: no response from them, i contact my tcp and bitch jan 23: the office gets back to me and says i need a therapy letter feb 6th: i meet with a therapist to get a letter feb 9th: i get the letter and send it to the office march 2: i get a call today saying ok we processed the letter, the earliest appointment we have is JUNE 29TH for an initial consultation, so tag on another 2 or 3 months after that minimum. what a clownshow
S/O had a minor operation last Wednesday, then a minor car accident that Friday. She is fine, but the car is not. Been playing catch up since then, and not caught up on everything I’d like to be (including my post on FL politics here). Mostly commenting here to say I haven’t forgot about it.
I was able to talk with lil on the phone the other day. It was great. So nice to hear your voice, lil and to know that you are well. Played a dice game called, “Farkle,” with the kids last night. It was a ton of fun. My 5 year old won. It was neat to see our kids getting along so well. Gaming ftw. Work is challenging right now. We have a patent protected, best in class product that can grow hair. But I’m still finding fundraising challenging in this environment. Bonkers. Now, if I had a product that used AI to grow hair, we’d be all set. Whatevs. We will grind it out and get 510k and then take over the World! Muahahah! Been playing tennis, lifting weights, Krav Maga-ing and drinking less. I need to add running back into my life. It’s hard on the ole knees though. Tennis is too. Tennis is so much fun though. Traveling to Costa Rica soon. Never been. Looking forward to it. Much love to you all. Onward!