Sigh, goodbye, tooth [status]

Sep. 5th, 2025 01:27 pm
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[personal profile] rebeccmeister
Somehow, it's the Friday of the first week of classes. Tooth-out Day. I'm glad that this one could be done at my regular dentist's office, instead of having to travel to the oral surgeon. A small comfort. There is nothing about tooth removal that is good, even in the best possible circumstances it is tragic. This was the best possible circumstances.

That was rather bizarre.

Sep. 4th, 2025 06:31 am
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[personal profile] kareila
A rustle in the kitchen woke me up around 4:30am, and I couldn't get back to sleep. Upon emerging from the bedroom, I heard voices upstairs, which meant both kids were awake. So I went to investigate, and found them playing a DS game.

I mentioned something to the effect of being glad that they could still play their old video games, and Will expressed interest in revisiting some of the CD-ROM games that they played on the ancient iMac when they were little. That machine is buried downstairs in the office closet, but its box of games was nearby, so we looked through that.

Will then asked where the Myst CD was, and I said that I had moved it back into my box of PC games when we were packing. So I opened up that box, and the boys boggled over its contents. I told them that most of those games would only be playable on my old Windows 95 laptop, or in emulation.

Then I realized that the aforementioned Windows 95 laptop was right there, so I got it out and plugged it in. The hinge can't support the screen any more, but otherwise it still works.

And that's how I ended up playing the original version of You Don't Know Jack with my oldest kid, who wasn't even born when it was released. But it held up surprisingly well! And we were pretty evenly matched.

I didn't find much left on there in the way of personal documents, apart from a copy of the release notes for the final version of the ChaoticMUX source code, oddly enough.
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[personal profile] kareila
A good friend of mine (who reads as much as I do, if not more) recently sent me his current top 5 list and when I tried to reciprocate, I had such a hard time narrowing my list down that this is what I came up with, in roughly reverse chronological order.

  • The Murderbot Diaries series (7 books to date) by Martha Wells (2017-2025)

  • The Ambit's Run series (2 books to date) by L.M. Sagas (2024)

  • The Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik (2020-2022)

  • The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood (2020)

  • Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone (2019)

  • The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (2019)

  • The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club trilogy by Theodora Goss (2017-2019)

  • A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (2019)

  • The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (2019)

  • All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (2016)

  • The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie (2013-2015)

  • The Old Man's War series (6 books to date) by John Scalzi (2005-2015)

  • Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (2012)

  • The Martian by Andy Weir (2011)

  • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2011)


Honorable mention: Seanan McGuire, T. Kingfisher, Becky Chambers, Jim Butcher, Katherine Addison

And yes, I know that there's a new Old Man's War book coming out later this month, but I have plenty of other books to read in the meantime!

On racism

Sep. 3rd, 2025 10:21 am
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Yesterday I read [personal profile] siderea's post about the US's current vice president, and felt a deep sense of horror.

But it wasn't just that post, it's that it led me to read the Wikipedia entry on the Human Biodiversity Institute, which I hadn't known about, and whenever I encounter horrible misappropriations of biological language, I get incredibly angry.

My introduction to Lysenkoism was through The Dialectical Biologist, by Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, whose thinking and writing I respect. After learning about Lysenkoism through that book, I did read a bit more about it, but didn't dig especially deep. I am now thinking I should sit down and read Lysenko's Ghost, so I've ordered a copy.

If you don't know anything about Lysenkoism, either, it might be best to understand that it was a Russian State-imposed philosophy on biological trait heritability that shares characteristics with the Lamarckian concept of the inheritance of acquired characteristics (and apparently calling it Lamarckism is potentially a misnomer anyway?). Anyway, it contributed to some really horrible decisions about crop management in Russia, that led to widespread starvation.

Those who teach introductory biology from a "history and nature of science" standpoint will often contrast the Lamarckian perspective with a Darwinian view of the genetic basis of trait inheritance - i.e. that characteristics have some sort of fixed, heritable genetic basis that is passed on from parent to offspring, et cetera et cetera.

Anyway. The contemporary scientific understanding of trait inheritance actually falls between the so-called Lamarckian perspective and strict genetic inheritance; phenotypes reflect a combination of influences by genetic information, epigenetic information (e.g. DNA methylation patterns that impact expression), and environmental influences, including how those influences unfold over the course of an organism's development.

But human beings have a long, horrible history of misunderstanding and misappropriating this scientific understanding of trait inheritance when it comes to applying it to our thinking about human traits. Hello, eugenics. Ugh.

I talk about these topics in my introductory biology course, because I think all of this is crucially important for people to understand and think about, regardless of what they go on to do next. I do think that what I teach could be viewed as a form of indoctrination; I am trying to teach people how to think about things. (I am never, ever going to tell them what to believe, however!)

In one of the last lectures of the semester, I talk about how "race" is a social construct (NOT a biological one), and about how as a concept it has been used to harm and oppress people. The problem is it's a bad idea that refuses to die, because humans have extremely strong ingroup/outgroup biases by default.

At the end of the day I probably do need to know about the existence of these kinds of wrong-headed supremacist groups that are co-opting the language of biology for their stupid and horrible ideas. And in this particular instance it was important to read all the way through the Wikipedia entry to learn how other marginalized groups are viewed/portrayed, too.

Also at the end of the day, the fundamental actions to take remain unchanged. I will continue to do my educational work (including educating myself!). I will continue to try and talk with and protect and help people (and the environment) where and when I can. And I will continue to try and ensure my own survival and well-being so I can carry on with it all.

The taste test [food]

Sep. 2nd, 2025 01:22 pm
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At least two people were curious to learn about how reconstituted coconut water powder compared to coconut water from a carton.

We did not do an extensive taste test, but I reconstituted some of the desiccated stuff, and then put it in the fridge so it would be at the same temperature as the carton we currently have on hand (Field Day organic brand). The powder went into solution very easily, which is a very different experience from reconstituting coconut milk powder or just powdered milk in general.

I poured amounts of each type into identical fancy teacups, and then S and I tasted them both (I didn't tell him which was which until after initial tastes, but I was not a blind taster myself). We both thought the reconstituted stuff tasted a bit smoother and more flavorful than the Field Day.

So, for anyone who might have wondered, the reconstituted stuff seems totally fine and drinkable. I think some of the other brands of coconut water in cartons might be a bit more tasty than the Field Day stuff is, but I also think that anyone who switched over to the powder from the cartons would be satisfied with the experience.

But you might want to be aware that S and I are often happy to drink Tang rather than other sports drinks, when we are in situations that call for liquid salts, sugars, and maybe even some trace vitamins and minerals.

We are, after all, mostly just using coconut water to make paloma cocktails these days.

The River Circus

Sep. 1st, 2025 02:48 pm
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These photos are more fun, and I'll put them behind a cut.

click for river circus photos )
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This is how far along I got with stripping paint and rust from the car:

Rusty corner

If I want to get all of the rust, I'm going to have to get in there and take off that plastic thing, and get some additional tools, because I don't think I can fit the angle grinder in behind the outer metal lip. And after getting this far yesterday, I Just Couldn't Even Anymore. (combination of allergies, general face pain related to teeth/TMJ + wearing PPE, general tiredness and despair) So this might also be headed to an auto body shop, which I'm also not excited about trying to find and arrange.

Plus once the rust is all out, S says there are some sections I can fill in with Bondo because those parts are cosmetic, but now I'm kind of concerned about structural integrity of other sections.

-

I made better progress on some boathouse clean-up follow-up projects, however. Here's some of the crew that filled up another entire dumpster on Saturday:

Yet Another Boathouse Work Party

Here's a sense of some of the stuff that went into the dumpster:
Yet Another Boathouse Work Party

We had to clear things away from the fence line, because the City is going to replace the entire fence. We used Ancient Technology (well, mostly) to move this shed (rolling on pipes):

Yet Another Boathouse Work Party

A lot of the junk that wound up in the dumpster had been located in the space beyond this trailer and shed. It does feel pretty good to have the space cleared out.

Yet Another Boathouse Work Party

This morning I went back to the boathouse to drop off a couple of things, and then worked on Even More Shipping Container Reorganization.

I think this is the shipping container we will eventually send back to the rental company, once we have better oar storage figured out for this big stack of sweep oars:
Boathouse projects

There are around 40 oars in that stack (4-5 sets of 8).

I moved dock supplies to the front of one of the other shipping containers that we'll either purchase from the rental company, or swap out with one that we will purchase instead of renting.
Boathouse projects

Those are 3 more sets of sweep oars - the best sets that we use the most these days. Plus a stack of riggers, and all the rowing machines the club has at the boathouse at the moment. Keeping the rowing machines inside this shipping container is a vast improvement over trying to store them inside the boathouse, where the high humidity destroys the electronics.

I also used a rare earth magnet to clean up the area where we disassembled some of the old wooden racks.
Boathouse projects

We should not be leaving screws and nails lying around on the ground!

--

The boathouse work is exhausting, but there have been some good developments. Some time ago, while organizing, I encountered a cordless drill and batteries, but no charger. I obtained a charger, but then found the batteries were dead. After I got new batteries, the drill now works! And I even remembered to bring the dead drill batteries with me to the hardware store for disposal. There were some driver bits at the boathouse, but no drill bits, so I got a drill bit set for the boathouse, and now I shouldn't need to bring down my personal drill from home quite so often anymore.

Yesterday's small epoxy projects included reattaching a plastic antenna cover onto a walkie-talkie. Now that the epoxy has set, I brought it and another rehabbed walkie-talkie back to the boathouse and got them put away. I also brought down all of the supplies I've obtained so far for hard-wiring lights onto one of our safety launches. They might as well clutter up the boathouse instead of cluttering up my house, while I get the rest of the parts together to finish up that project. I'm getting there. Slowly.

Getting the walkie-talkies and safety launch light stuff out of my home office really helped with reorganizing my home office space for clothes mending projects. Now, will I actually DO the clothes mending? That remains to be seen. I probably need to figure out how to deal with the car first.
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Right now our home internet is kind of slow, so I think I'm going to just upload photos when I go into work tomorrow. Which is a bit of a shame, but c'est la vie.

Anyway, Flotsam! came to town over the weekend! S met up with me on campus Friday so we could bike up to Erie Canal Lock 2 in Waterford for the Friday night show, which was great fun. The Old Erie Canal Lock 2 was a lovely venue. Saturday evening, we loaded up Petrichor with some cooking supplies and rowed over to a park on the opposite shore in Rensselaer. We weighed anchor, cooked up and ate some vegetarian reubens, and enjoyed the whole show a second time from a new vantage point. The boating part was really fun.

In the meantime, I feel like I'm in the midst of trying to fix a hundred small things. I figured out where my bike light wiring had gotten pinched, and after taping over that spot pretty thoroughly with electrical tape I think I should be okay with that for now.

Today I got out one of those small tubes of epoxy, mixed some up, and put it on a handful of small plastic items that have cracked.

I also made a very simple wooden latch for the catio.

Then I finally got to work dealing with a rusted spot on the car. I only made it partway on that project, because the rust extends further on the car's underbody than I feel like I have the capacity to deal with right now. So that project is looking like it's going to turn into some phone calls to some auto body shops, and several hundreds more dollars gone to car maintenance.

I get that motor vehicles have their conveniences, but I still have to question whether it's worth it in the end.

And now it's just about time to cook dinner. Chili and cheddar biscuits!
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This has turned into a period of a whole bunch of small projects. The main purpose of this post is just to share a bunch of photos, mostly photos of small projects.

But first, the Dark Dahlia has been blooming, once again, so let's pause and admire one of its blooms:

Dark Dahlia Season

I aim to get it back out of the ground sooner this year, so hopefully I'll figure out a way to keep it such that it is able to come back even bigger and better next year.

On Sunday morning, I made more ketchup for S.

Even More Ketchup

I did not bother to can this ketchup, because he will eat it soon enough, and besides, it's ketchup.

I managed to carve out some time to get my rear fender stay replaced. Getting the old bolts out went fairly well, except I did break a drill bit in the process of drilling them out.

Fender stay replacement

I had to take a mini-hacksaw to the second bolt, too. But eventually I got it out.
Fender stay replacement

The new fender stay is very shiny compared to the rest of the fender.
Fender stay replacement

Somehow in the process of working on the fender, I did something to the dyno hub/light wiring. The projects, they never end.

I'm still working on Catio improvements. One of the improvements is the addition of more solar-powered lights, so it looks even better at night.

Solar-powered catio

Solar-powered catio

Other random photos:
Zine package

I ordered a bunch of zines recently, including a Zine Grab Bag, and I have zero regrets.

We keep enjoying a cocktail that has coconut water as one ingredient. I noticed this product available for sale near the coconut water, and when I did the math, found that it was marginally less expensive, and involved substantially less packaging, compared to the cartons of coconut water.

Coconut water powder

Boathouse projects continue apace. For example, here's the stern of a boat right after I applied some epoxy in an attempt to figure out how water has been getting into the stern compartment.

Yurious stern compartment leak patching

I need to work on the car rust project this weekend. There's still too much to do.
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Sigh. Unfortunately, once the dentist got to work on it, he discovered the decay extended too far into the buccal wall, which meant they did not have enough material left to clamp the bracket for making a crown.

I was aware this was a possible outcome, based on everything that happened with the former molar on the opposite side last December/January. Thirty years ago, my pediatric dentist put preemptive fillings into both molars because the central crevice was deep to begin with.

This is sad for me, but I must move on.

Rowing Camp [rowing]

Aug. 25th, 2025 04:15 pm
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Some time ago, I was talking with a teammate at coffee about rowing skills development. Periodically, teammates have expressed an interest in rowing practices that have a strong emphasis on technique, but we have a dilemma in that we have really limited time during our regular practice, and also often want to fit in a good workout, too. Somewhere in the conversation, I mentioned how, back in 2007-2008, we had a pair of coaches come to visit us in Arizona to offer a weekend sculling clinic. These coaches actually still travel and lead rowing clinics, which meant there might be a chance they could come to Albany and do the same for us.

My teammate really liked the idea, and what's more, she was willing and able to figure out how to implement it. She figured out a good weekend, she convinced the club's Board, she worked with the coaches, and she got 19 of us registered for it all (oh, and she kept us all really well-fed!).

And it was great, in a hundred different big and small ways. From the clinic I came to appreciate that my general template for an effective rowing stroke is matched to the template they coach. Because they came to our club, they were able to offer my teammates and I a series of recommendations on how to adjust all of our equipment to get it to work better for us, along with clear explanations for why. (and recommendations on what to look for in future equipment acquisitions). They even gave those of us with coaching roles/aspirations a chance to ride along in a safety launch to observe how they conducted the rowing clinic sessions. This sort of thing is incredibly helpful for developing one's eye for good technique and technical issues.

And they kept it all very fun!

2025 08 22 All-American Sculling Camp at Albany

2025 08 22 All-American Sculling Camp at Albany

2025 08 22 All-American Sculling Camp at Albany

More than anything, it was helpful to have time out on the river to row and pause and do drills at a much more relaxed pace.

That said, we were split up into morning and afternoon groups, and my afternoon group had a more interesting time of things because of the weather. The water stayed calm and flat on Friday, but by Saturday afternoon, the wind had picked up coming out of the south, as it tends to do when storms are rolling in. That meant whitecaps.

When the water gets to be more rough, it is a whole lot easier to go out in larger boats, because they are inherently more stable. Unfortunately, my subgroup consisted of 5 rowers, which you might note is a number not evenly divisible by 2. When coaches asked, I said I was willing to take one for the team by continuing to go out in a single, while everyone else grouped together into a quad.

Being in a less stable boat makes it much more difficult to work on refining one's rowing stroke, because every little muscle twitch translates into wiggle of the boat. On the other hand, we haven't yet figured out how to control regatta weather, so it can be useful to practice rowing in rough water just to learn how to cope with it. I know I have a tendency to get really tense in rough conditions when I'm in a single, so the chop, gusts of wind, and swells were a good time to work through some of those reactions. The clinic was an especially good time for it all because we were in relatively small groups, it was daylight out, the water was warm, and we had no need to be in a big hurry.

There were also a number of other watercraft out in the middle of the day, that we rarely or never see first thing in the morning, like this cruise boat that is usually moored to a sea wall up in Troy:

Last day of 2025 Albany All-American Sculling Clinic

Our conditions on Sunday afternoon were the most challenging. When it's windy, the water in the center of the river is naturally the most rough. The coaches had noted that there was a section along the river's far shore that was a bit sheltered, so they came up with a plan for us to go over to that section and row up in down in the best water we could find.

Just one small obstacle: we had to cross the nastiest water and get over there in the first place*. During the crossing, I had a couple moments where I just had to stop and float, despairingly: I was too far away from where I had started to be able to easily turn back, but still very far from the opposite shore. To make matters more interesting, I'd had to deal with several larger swells (maybe 1.5-foot waves?) that had curled up and over my boat's decks, filling up my foot well. There was nothing to do but wait, give myself a moment, then keep going, sloshing along. After what felt like ages, I finally reached more protected water, and could instantly feel myself relaxing. I used my hands to bail most of the water out of the foot well, and got to do some rowing.

As our session progressed, our coach had us turn back downriver in the direction of the dock, but continue to hug the far shore. We passed back south through the train bridge as the wind and water conditions continued to deteriorate. Then we had a choice to make: should we attempt to cross back over the river to the docks, or turn north again and find somewhere else to cross?

I opted to cross then and there, but let the coach know it definitely wasn't going to be a pretty crossing. Once more, unto the breach.

Twice towards the very end I almost went for a swim, once when one oar got stuck in a wave, once when I attempted to hand-bail in swells that were still too steep. Lesson learned, wait for calmer water before hand-bailing.

But on the other hand, I am so pleased with how the Wild Blue Yonder handled the waves. Even with the foot well full of water, I had enough remaining buoyancy I could continue to row, and do so without major risk of equipment damage. This is in contrast to one of the club's quads, that swamped to the point where the rowers were up to their waists in water and could barely row or do anything. (most rowing shells at that point are also at very high risk of damage from strains and stresses). And the shape of the Wild Blue Yonder's seat deck and foot well are such that the boat won't ever fill with more water than what I took on.

That doesn't make my boat invincible, by any stretch: it seems that my sealed bow and stern compartments both leak, the leaks are just slow enough that I have some time to travel before all hope is lost. So I am not going to make a habit of rowing in those sorts of conditions.

In any case, quite a time.

Last day of 2025 Albany All-American Sculling Clinic

And as I noted, a great camp.



*I just want to emphasize that a ton of talk and strategy go into crossings. The typical convention is to cross perpendicular to the main direction of travel, but this doesn't work well when there are waves moving parallel to the crossing. So when there are waves, the crossing has to be made at an angle. But the waves will also push watercraft back to parallel, so both forward movement and the direction of travel have to be managed in the middle of a rough crossing. I also figured out that I could benefit from doing more work to read the wind and waves - take it easier in larger swells, pick up the pace in smaller swells, anticipate what is arriving before it arrives. Sailors seem to love that stuff.

Monday Monday Monday [status, rowing]

Aug. 25th, 2025 10:22 am
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Someone must have been handing out some really good drugs in Albany over the weekend. As I rode to rowing practice, I observed a man lying in the middle of the median on his back, smoking a cigarette and waving his phone around. When I arrived at the boathouse, there was a couple enjoying themselves (so to speak) on the hood of a car. I saw them while I was still far away enough that I just gave them some dings of my bell to give them the idea that other people might be showing up soon. I don't think any of my teammates (or coaches!) encountered that spectacle.

Then, to the dentist, where I learned I will get to experience my first root canal on Wednesday. Now I need all the psychological help I can get to help me get through that project, sigh. It's the tooth on the opposite side from the molar that is now gone, so I'd like to keep it if I can, but the dentist says it's common for tooth issues to be symmetrical on either side. So we all just have to hope he caught the situation soon enough for now. I am comforting myself with the idea that beer and cocktails are liquid, so even if I wind up without any teeth in my old age I can still drink fancy beverages to console myself.

Other than that, the weekend was wonderful. All rowing, all the time. Plus some seafaring adventures, so to speak. That all deserves its own post. Maybe after I get photos and videos uploaded.
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