If the Nine is dark it’s not because of the killings, it’s because of the jokes.
Burnout
When I get burned out, it’s because I’m doing so much work I don’t have time to do the work I want to do.
I had a job recently which was a great job: good coworkers, boss, pay, etc. But because of the way the contract was structured, I didn’t get to do a whole lot and often couldn’t do what anything directly. I had to watch others or prepare for others. I got burned out something fierce.
Right now I’m over committed with my free time. Employment is whatever, but I’m pushing the Nine, trying to shape Bedtime Stories up into the final draft (Final Draft #4, so yeah), and writing Death Mountain. A couple of side stressors, get into better shape and not spend money, are hardly unique or especially challenging, but screwing around and spending money were two things I could do that I liked to do. I am now broke, so obviously that’s not so good on the planning end.
I’ve also noticed that often I do nothing, spend a lot of time doing it, and then don’t have time to do things I want to do. I always thought this was me being ridiculous, but I’ve read about the same phenomena from CS Lewis and Marcus Aurelius.
However it happens, this feeling results in intense feelings of powerlessness that initiate burnout. The solution seems to be work more, but work smarter and harder. I am not sure how this is done.
Which of course I wouldn’t be. If I knew how to work smarter, I would, but that itself is a learning process and a lengthy goal.
All of this is a lengthy way of saying nothing, but it’s what I’m thinking about.
I visited Evergreen Library today, a bit outside Denver but not far. It’s amazing. A deer and her fawn nested ten feet from the windows, and I got a table with natural sunlight and a view of trees. Powered through my two hours of DM, which is steadily contracting in productivity as I try to work out all the little plot holes. After that I went and roamed, and wound up driving up Mt Evans. The highest paved road in the US services the peak, and at the top it was sub freezing with biting wind. I had no clothes or boots, so I did no hiking. The road is CO RT 103, Squaw Pass. It’s worth a trek, but be careful. The road isn’t well paved, and its busy with cars, bikers, and wildlife.
It would be interesting to go back, fully prepared, and hike a little in those conditions. That’s good prep for serious mountaineering. But I’d need a buddy and probably a GPS, and I’m not kitted out to undertake such things yet.
The mountains did remind me why I live here. I could see over the shoulders of lesser peaks into Denver sprawled out on the plains, as well as formations of white-bearded old men with their arms linked to the west. I saw the Sangre Cristo Basin (I think) spread out, mountains on either side, and tall purple shadows in the distance. They really do look like phantoms standing in a line.
Mountains are weird. They don’t look like peaks, but rather low bumps on brown fabric, the green stopping far below and the white only frosting the tips.
Mountain goats aren’t. A pack of them, five or six, blocked a road for a while, and they looked exactly like you’d think. If you have a picture of ‘big goat’ in your head, that’s a mountain goat. Don’t embellish; you’ve already got it.
Thanks
To begin with, thank you UnicornofAmber and Raksha_The_Demon for kudos and comments. I appreciate it a great deal.
I never know what to say on here. I think writing about writing is a bit self-indulgent, but my plate is so full I have little time to do anything else. I rode La Veta Pass (Old) which was delightful, and worth doing. I might have blown a shock later, but we’ll see. Lovely area. I want to go back and check out the Highway of Legends, which I only briefly traversed.
The NC700 might not be the best for long road trips, but it is what I have. It’s a great bike, a jack of all trades.
Thanks
Did I miss thanking a guest for leaving kudos on the Nine? I can’t tell. If I did, know that I deeply regret this ingratitude. I owe you a debt, and in a time of darkness, I will arrive to pay.
Unless I’m playing in character in which case I’ll probably, like, burn your village down and steal all your gold. But I’ll do it gratefully!
Unrelated, I really want to watch the Hobbit: DoS again. Seriously, arguments about timing and bloat aside, Smaug is the best dragon in film. The old animated Hobbit is the runner up. Hollywood, make me more dragon movies!
Thanks
And thanks to the guest who liked my Frozen saga of Florida Woman!
Writing about writing isn’t that interesting, so I’ll talk about what else I’m doing.
I’m running iterative solutions of the logistics map through an FFT. Let’s unpack that (talk to the duck programming).
The logistics map is the equation Xn+1 = a * Xn * (1-Xn). The constant a is selected at the beginning, and describes the behavior of the function. I’ve been using 3.6. The first input is Xn, where n is 1. So X1 is the first input. In programming, it’s often X0, but this difference is not meaningful.
Suppose I use 0.5 as X1. X2, or X1+1, is 3.6 * 0.5 * (1-0.5) or .9. X3 is 3.6 *0.9*(1-0.9) or 0.324.
N X
1 0.5
2 0.9
3 0.324
Each number results in a deterministic iteration that gives the next number. One can see that for n=1, X=0.5 is the same as n=3456, X=0.5.
With me? The n doesn’t matter. Each X must give the same next X if the coefficient a remains the same.
But it is very difficult, if not impossible, to conclude what the nth X will be, even if you have an earlier X, without going through each step. So if X1 =0.5, I can’t figure out what X5324 is without calculating all 5324 steps in between. Mathematicians call this chaos, and physicists call it non-linear behavior.
But that only happens during chaotic behavior, and whether or not the series will give chaotic behavior is determined by a. So for some values of a, the numbers will bounce between two common numbers. (Sometimes more than two. Any bouncing is called harmonic behavior) Then you don’t need to know what Xn-1 is to figure out what Xn is, you just need to know the n. This is exactly different from chaotic behavior.
What’s really interesting is that these two different behaviors, chaotic and harmonic, depend exclusively on the parameter a, and there seems to be a hard and sharp distinction between them. No one knows why. Wikipedia has a good article on it here.
I’m using C++ to do a bunch of these mappings (calculating lists of Xn’s) and putting the lists through little filters. It’s just a project of curiosity, and it buffs up my C++, which had atrophied. The C suite is probably the highest scoring programing language across three metrics: commonly used, powerful, and free.
End of May
There are times when following politics induces some frustration. Remember, dear readers, vote Me in 2020: The Greatest of Three Evils!
I feel like it’s taken me a year to learn how to write. I don’t mean the writing itself, for that is the work of a lifetime. But the time management that goes into writing, the matter of scheduling, the art of figuring out when to seek editorial guidance and when to charge on, these things have taken me about a year. Now my time is almost up.
I’m not sure what to do. Gritting one’s teeth and bearing on is all well and good, but editors, layout designers, artists, and illustrators all expect to be paid, and I agree completely. One can’t grit one’s teeth through paying a bill when one doesn’t have money. So back to the fulltime job, the real grind, and put aside the time-lessons I’ve learned about writing?
We’ll see how it goes.
The Nine may switch to Wednesdays and Saturdays. It may also stop appearing entirely. There’s peanut butter in the cupboard, and water in the tap.
Negative Interest Rates 1
Negative interest rates are nothing more than a tax on wealth. These are semi-voluntary taxes paid by banks, savers, and investors. That’s it. The manner in which the tax is calculated results in some bleed-over effects into corporate debt, but that’s a taxation based disincentive to save. It’s just a tax.
Interests haven’t gone negative in five thousand years of recorded history in absolute terms, but they definitely have in interest + tax terms. It’s just uncommon.
Feedback
Youtube tends to ask very poor feedback questions.
I always ignore their suggested videos because those videos A)do not meet my interests, B)are of low quality, C) start with ten minutes of some useless person blathering on about who they are before getting to the meat of the issue like how to un-clog a sink, D)have terrible music, or E)are simply of inferior quality. Youtube music tends to exclusively suggest hour-long compilations which I do not like, or mix-tapes, which are usually inferior. If I want to hear a particular song, I want to hear that song. I am uninterested in hearing some influencer describe what it means to them.
However when Youtube asks for feedback, they limit the responses to a preselected list of self-absorbed ego-flattering nonsense. One such choice was: video is too popular.
How unbelievably arrogant and yet worthless is that? How can anyone fail so hard as to ignore a selection like ‘video suggestions do not match interest’ and instead ask, “Is the video too popular?”
A master-class on self absorption, Youtube. You’re living down to every stereotype about Google.
Strangers
I’m pretty good at talking to strangers and bad at converting them to friends.
In places where talking to strangers is somewhat expected, waiting rooms included, I’ve had good luck with random conversations. I’ve noticed a few tricks to this. The first is pick your target carefully and the target should be, drumroll, whoever is closest to you and not doing something else.
When I’m in a doctor’s office and signing in, I don’t seek out the attractive person somewhere else. Nor do I bother the woman with the kids (unless I want something specific, not a conversation, like a paper she’s standing in front of. Even still, I try to avoid them). No, the best targets are other people near where I’m doing whatever, and especially if they look bored. Phones and headphones are out unless, again, I have something specific I need. The ideal person to strike up a conversation with in a place like a waiting room is someone waiting bored by the desk while I’m filling out a paper, and it’s even better if I’ve finished a paper too.
Second I ask a direct and specific question, one that doesn’t require much interpretation, about the situation we’re in or what they’re doing.
“How long have you waited?”
“Did you speak to a nurse, or is the receptionist taking these?”
Etc. The objective is no-burden questions that suggest responses from a relatively safe bin.
“A few minutes.”
“Either one is fine.”
There’s a slight appeal to vanity in here, because the responder can take a mildly authoritative response. They know the answer, there’s an obvious reason I’m asking, and nothing lends itself to argument. I’m kinda scary-looking, so with strangers being non-threatening helps. Putting people in a mild position of authority with no responsibilities helps too.
Third is non-verbal communication. An awful lot of people will grunt in reply, and that almost always means no conversation. I drop all attempts. However that won’t hurt later attempts to talk to someone else. It’s hard to think I’m crazy if I ask who to give my form too. I always take such responses at face value, but anything non-verbal or non-answer means I drop the matter. So if someone says, “I don’t know,” I nod, and don’t ask again. If someone says, “I was going to give it to the lady in the blue shirt, but I haven’t seen her in a bit,” I take that as an invitation.
Finally, I pursue with mild personal information and equally mild questions, but both rely on non-threatening specificity. Nothing critical is said without conceding a point. The compliment always follows the but.
“The lady at the front counter said this might take a while, but I was hoping to get out within an hour. I think she’s going to be right.”
“That barber takes a while, but he does really good work.”
“Do you know anyone here?”
At parties or mixers I get a bit more personal, again asking general questions but ones that can be easily dodged.
Kudos and Thanks
Dear Sudaki, thank you for leaving kudos on the Nine!