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Of old there was Sauron the Maia, whom the Sindar in Beleriand named Gorthaur. In the beginning of Arda Melkor seduced him to his allegiance, and he became the greatest and most trusted of the servants of the Enemy, and the most perilous, for he could assume many forms, and for long if he willed he could still appear noble and beautiful, so as to deceive all but the most wary.

When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eönwë the herald of Manwë, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West. But it was not within the power of Eönwë to pardon those of his own order, and he commanded Sauron to return to Aman and there receive the judgement of Manwë. Then Sauron was ashamed, and he was unwilling to return in humiliation and to receive from the Valar a sentence, it might be, of long servitude in proof of his good faith; for under Morgoth his power had been great. Therefore when Eönwë departed he hid himself in Middle-earth; and he fell back into evil, for the bonds that Morgoth had laid upon him were very strong.
-JRR Tolkien

Good luck, everyone. I’m rooting for you.

I’ve been having some frustrations. Nothing terrible, but many are aggravations. In the interests of maintaining some balance, because I really am in a good place for all my aggravation, I want to mention something really important to me, a positive thing, about engineering.

I can just test it.

I don’t have to take anyone’s word for biscuits. I can just test it. Some theory floats around that sounds like pure nonsense? Boom. Test it.

In deep learning, there’s a point that borders on aphorism: validation data must be distinct from training data. Most references state this as a natural law on par with ‘gravity points down,’ and the shear blind willfulness of it drives me wild.

So I tested it. It’s running now. Took about ten minutes to fork my data appropriately, or not fork it rather, and set the thing to run.

Don’t misunderstand. They’re probably right, and the forked data will probably work better than the other. But I don’t have to believe that at all. I can just test it. There are matters to be taken on faith, including literal faith, but also matters by time and priority I simply can’t duplicate. Virology is the current-events one, but there are plenty of big issues I can’t test. Maybe I could have had I spent the last twenty years learning something different, but I didn’t.

But in engineering, I can to a large extent. So when I’m reading something and start arguing, loudly, with a book, I can throw the idiot to the wind and run my own simulations. And that is not everything, but it is something.

The students, they come to me and beg for extensions. They say, “OTS, please! The homework is due tomorrow and I need more time!”

And I reply, “I stop giving extensions the day before it’s due. That way only people who got a reasonable start on it get extensions, and everyone else who failed time management doesn’t.”

And the students reply, “But sir! I’m begging. I had a tragedy!”

Gently swirling my coffee, I ask, “Was it Covid?”

“It was worse.” They’re weeping now. “It was my mother’s roommate’s cousin’s nephew. I held him in my arms after the life left him, Mr OTS. I can’t stop seeing it.”

“Ouch. How did he die?”

“Eaten by bears.”

I sip my coffee. “You held him in your arms after he was eaten by bears?”

The student nods emphatically. “Yes. It was gross. That’s why I need an extension. I’m traumatized.”

In spite of my better judgement, I am moved. I hold up the first of three fingers. “Okay, yes, that’s pretty traumatic.”

The student nods even harder.

I lift another. “Second, ew.”

The student is forlorn. “You have no idea.”

“The smell?”

“The smell.”

We bond.

I hold up my third finger. “Finally, go wash your hands.”

“Mr OTS, about the extension-”

“No, no. Wash hands first. Use soap.”

“Mr OTS-” The student looks worried now. I think the conversation has gotten away from them.

“Safety first!” I declare. “Hands. Go wash. At least thirty seconds.” And I put my coffee down long enough to snap twice.

They run off, but when they return, another tragedy has struck. I’m gone. My office is dark. They get no extension, and they are doomed.

But at least they’re cleaner.

Goodreads login redirect points to www.goodreads.comundefined, spelled like that.

Might want to fix that, guys.

I’m sure you’ve heard that inoffensive bit of advice that you shouldn’t do waking things in bed. No reading, no playing on phones, no talking. When you wake up in the morning, get out of bed immediately. The idea is that your habits can train you not to sleep when you go to bed, as bed is now a wakeful place.

If that’s so, if those habits do train you to wake up, why am I exhausted when I’m at my computer, in my kitchen, or at work? Aren’t those places that would train me to wake up even more? Why do I lay down and feel wide awake within moments if the same habits do the exact opposite elsewhere?

I call shenanigans.

I tried to write a physically correct flat-Earth story. So the fantasy world is flat, and people interact upon it like they would on a flat Earth.

I ignored some things that just didn’t work or handwaved them away like gravity. It’s a magical world, so the gods made down point down.

The problem is, some things are so alien to the real world, I keep slipping. Things like seeing long distances. From a mountain, the characters can see all other mountains at least sometimes, and dawn moves all weird.

To simplify things, I tried a geocentric world, and now it takes me fifteen minutes to figure out how the phases of the Moon work.

I love romanticizing the past as much as the next person, probably more, but Saruman just gave his speech about machines of war.

No one gave a speech about drinking tainted water and dying of dysentery.

I’m scrolling through Redfin pictures murmuring, ‘Yeah, baby. Show me that dishwasher.’

‘Ooh, you got en suite laundry? Cause I’m dirty.’

The upside to deadlines is they force you to actually stop rewriting and overthinking and get something done. All of the spare mental compute cycles that normally get devoted to contemplating useless things, how exactly I describe a room, get absorbed into ‘Oh, Crap! I need to get this done!’ Since very few people properly understand the raw brilliance of my room descriptions, this is probably for the best.

The downside is that the upside is no guarantee of quality. Sometimes I slap out crap because it’s something.