💾 Archived View for home.groovestomp.com › gemlog › 2021-06-01.gmi captured on 2022-01-08 at 13:46:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I was "late" starting my sourdough this week. The last two batches I made had various issues. The first was
the better one; having developed properly and baked well; just in a formless blob resulting from not having
proofing baskets. The second batch I over-proofed; and that is just not a satisfying bread to have. I
intended to wake up my starter Wednesday night, then make the levain Thursday morning, then making the dough
Thursday afternoon/evening. But it turns out it's a good thing that I didn't. Thursdays are busy with Lily
having soccer at 5:30pm; so I have to start supper (hotdogs and french fries every Thursday due to timing) at
4pm. This schedule leaves no time to really due the autolyse and bulk fermentation. So the part I actually
missed here was doing the Wednesday night feeding. I fed it Thursday morning by doing the levain... but I
think that wake up feeding is necessary. So I wound up treating the Thursday feeding as a regular feeding and
I did the levain again this morning. I should have the time this afternoon to do the autolyse and bulk
fermentation normally; thus avoiding the issues that lead to my over-proofing last week. This schedule of:
Thursday evening feed - Friday morning levain - Friday afternoon dough - Saturday morning bake; was presented
to me by the person who shared the starter with us. (They handily wrote it down on a piece of paper.) I
wanted to see if I could try out some other schedules; but I think their schedule is great; especially after
having stumbled through a non-schedule there last week.
I took the time to do a proper shave with the disposable triple or quad blad razor I have instead of using the
electric razor. I've been listening to "Listener Favorites: Tim Collins | Overcoming Anxiety" from "The
Unmistakable Creative Podcast" this morning.
TODO: Followup on electric razor thoughts - Braun series 7 - One I have. - usb charging - any thoughts at
all? - Mostly "power" and time to shave - Results are decent enough
I decided there's no time like the present to start actually writing. I've been struggling a bit with praxis
here; the typical writing styles I've used haven't meshed well with my need to just get stuff out. Thankfully,
I was inspired by "How to Write a Novel in Half a Month: A WMG Writer's Guide" by Dean Wesley Smith. This
book was notably *not* what I was expecting, but the perfunctory journal style of the writing serves as an
excellent template for just getting thoughts written down, so thank you DWS!
I did my ten minute mindfulness meditation. I'm using Insight Timer. I did all the guided meditations you can
do for free; so now I just use it as a timer. It's nice that you can configure sounds for: start, stop,
interval and you can do ambient sounds as well. I've been finding myself appreciating unguided meditation
more; but I feel like I need to recalibrate with a guided meditation once in a while. Guided meditation is
tricky; however, because the voice or the ambient sounds or the frequency of interruption or the manner of
speech or any number of things may be off-putting. I really liked Sam Harris's guided meditation in Waking Up;
but that app is very expensive to subscribe to. Headspace seemed alright. I might spring for that one next
time it goes on sale.
And now it is time to focus on work. :-\
One of the ongoing issues at work is a lead is chronically shitting out work for others to clean up. I was
working on a task to connect the full CI/CD pipeline for a new service and he sidetracked me by introducing
several new dependencies and saying that it doesn't work now. This is right in line with every
"collaboration" I've had with him so far, so it's par for the course. Anyway, I've come to realize that I have
a better way of dealing with this problem. I generally like to work in coarser grained tasks that allow for a
lot of iteration and discovery. I'm finally realizing that this does not work well when other people are
involved. There's poorer visibility on where I'm at, and the chance of getting sidetracked by random external
inputs increases tremendously; as in this case. This particular case involved the lead working on a separate
task and introducing new dependencies. The CI/CD pipeline doesn't account for one of these particular
dependencies properly, so that needs to be investigated and resolved. But that is clearly a separate task
from hooking up the initial pipeline as I've now completed. So going forward I'm going to have to be
extremely cautious when working with this developer to ensure the work to be done is explicitly scoped, split
into small, discrete chunks and documented well for expectations. This is the typical defensive posture when
working with overly aggressive stakeholders.
We have our daily standup at 9:30am. It's unfortunate, but my current mental state is really coming through in
video calls where my voice is monotone and my responses are terse. I'm sure everyone can see it, and I kind
of feel bad in that regard; but I don't think there's a big benefit to faking an upbeat attitude. To the
extent that it will provide a facade of cheeriness to my peers, sure - that helps them maintain a positive
outlook and that's a good thing. At least I won't be interacting with anyone for the rest of the day, so I
don't have to worry about how I'm presenting myself for any supposed interactions.
I wish Disroot was actively supporting custom domains right now. I'm forwarding emails from those custom
domains via NameCheap to my Disroot account; but this has limitations. Specifically, I can't actually set the
"from" field in emails the way I want to; because Disroot is like: "Nope! That's not actually your email!" And
this makes sense to do; but it's frustrating on my part because I'm only forwarding to work around the lack of
custom domains! Apparently they are working on tooling to improve support so they can do custom domains again
in the future. I hope that time comes soon so I can pay them to get that support. All this is to say that I
really want to spend my time hacking Emacs-lisp to configure my mu4e mail configuration; but I feel blocked
until Disroot has this support again; since my issues right now are around multiple account support in mu4e
and migrating away from other email providers I've been using.
OK, I did a little bit of work, but my head _really_ isn't into it. I setup Ripcord again. I also grabbed a
Protein shake but I decided to skip the snack this time. I typically do an apple or banana each time I grab
the shake; but I'm not feeling it lately. Maybe it's this malaise ... who knows? I grabbed a club soda and
it's really hitting the spot. Listening to some tunes; specifically "I Am Steve" by Hey Steve, which is just
fantastic. This reminded me of something that I felt needed noting down here.
In my taxi responsibilities for my children, I often listen to radio. One song that's come on that I've
enjoyed is "Really Wanna Let You Down" (RWLYD) by Monowhales. Anyway, they other day we were driving as a
family to Nono and Nona's house and the Mrs was playing The Beatles. "Don't Let Me Down" came on and made me
immediately think of RWLYD. Is there a mashup for that? I haven't looked yet; but there really should be. I
started singing: "Don't let me down... Really wanna let you down." :-) I did a Spotify search for RWYLD and
listened to all the songs that came up automatically and I've been digging it. It's an indie/alt-rock feed
that's been hitting the spot. There's a few new favourites added to my gigantic, unsorted liked songs list;
so that's all good.
OK, I'll try to get a little more work done here before lunch. I'm a little worried I will weasel out of push
day today for workout since I am 100% not feeling it whatsoever; but I don't want to skip it either... Maybe
post-lunch or mid afternoon when I do the autolyse.
I started listening to "Christopher Kelley | The 4 Quadrants of Well Being" on The Unmistakable Creative
Podcast. I ate some balogna sandwiches for lunch, added beer to the steaks to marinate for supper and took a
nap until my 13:30 meeting at which point I joined without video or audio and made my coffee then sat down to
write this. I am definitely not going to do my push workout today. If I try it, I'm sure I'll injure myself.
Hmm. On the other hand, I could just half-ass it. A half-assed workout is better than no workout. And I don't
mean actually doing a half-assed job; but paying extra attention to how my body responds and being super
careful not to push it too hard. Yeah, I'm actually liking this idea, and I think it will help with my mental
health to get this going, too. So, sure, I'll still anticipate doing this after the autolyse for the
sourdough. Oy, this meeting is that other lead I referred to before. He keeps calling "RDB" (Relational Data
Base) "RDP" (Remote Desktop Protocol). It's killing me. Gah.
Hot damn. Every thing somebody says I'm interpreting in the most negative way possible and everything is just
pissing me off. I'm a fun person today!
OK, I did my workout. I did the dough for the sourdough. We're now in bulk fermentation stage, so I just leave
it at this point until 19:15 at which point I shape the dough and let it start proofing overnight. So far so
good. I'm hoping this next batch is the best batch yet! My workout was minimal; just three exercises: chest
press, tricep extension and overhead press. But that's okay; this whole week has been more minimal like that
with the exception of my leg day, and that's because leg day is not as intense as I build up strength with
posterior chain exercises with my physiotherapist. I'm done for the workday, too. I made some progress; but
folks are filtering out of availability depending on their timezones; so I'm getting blocked on code reviews.
That's all fine. I like not being the bottleneck for others; and my mind has not been into getting actual work
done anyway. I'm happy with what I managed to get done today! Tonight will be steaks. The kids always fuss
about it; but Dee and I love it. So I expect a bit of a fight at dinner again. After that, it is more dank
than it's been lately, so movie night might be an actual movie night today. That will be nice.
The kids are in bed. We watched Zootropolis (aka Zootopia) for movie night.
I managed to get the dough shaped and started proofing with relatively little error.
Supper was OK. The steaks were relatively low quality; but they seasoned well. Unfortunately, the BBQ didn't
get hot enough to give them a nice finish; but they were certainly servicable. The boy fought his food, which
was a bit of a surprise. He's fine with meat; it's our daughter who's picky in that regard; but she did a
great job. She's been doing great all around! She typically has a sunny disposition and is adapting well to
having more responsibilities. I feel she's getting the short end of the stick often; so I go out of my way to
tell her she's doing well and to tell her we love and value her. Still; gotta keep doing that often. With
kids quantity IS quality.
I picked up Apocalypse Now with the making of documentary. I'm not sure if we'll get around to watching that
tonight or not. Dee noticed my demeanor; and while I feel a *lot* better now than I did for the majority of
today, it's as good an indicator as any that we should have a *serious talk*. :-\ I mean, this is nothing new;
but maybe the angle this time can be on productive mechanisms. Planning that trip to a small town, thinking
about systems to put in place to get me where I want to be. Her, too!
Alright, I think I'll cut it there. The goal was to start writing and I have surpassed my expectations. I
was thinking about 1000 words a day, and Emacs is telling me I've surpassed 2000 words by a decent enough
margin. Great! Catch you next time!
Published on June 01, 2021
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