(In the beginner-friendly subgroup, one of the coaches said I was getting a really good bluegrass tone out of it. I started to say "Yeah, I like—" and he said, "No, you’re getting a really good sound." I should probably have that embroidered and hung on the wall.)
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
in which musicians look at me funny.
Friday, January 5, 2024
I CAN HELP
Saturday, December 30, 2023
pfeh.
The job I wanted fell through last week: I assume they have a funding squeeze (real or imagined, probably passed down from the Board). It was a really good fit, too, in terms of shared principles, with lots of room to grow over time. But here we are, and no one will do any hiring until they sober up from New Year’s, so it’s a good time to bang on my various projects. One in particular, building a sort of rolling practice cabinet so I can have multiple violins out of their cases at once, feels ambitious but doable, since I can use the goodies down at the makerspace.
Of course, I was down there yesterday afternoon, failing to make a relatively simple jig to sharpen my chisels and plane irons. I think part of the secret sauce is to just buy actual wood and then build the thing, instead of trying to economize with scrap wood. And
It’s raining again, which is delightful in itself and sorely needed in general, but also we had a lot of epic flooding last year, areas of the city we didn’t know could flood: we were supposed to go to a friend’s house for dinner on New Year’s Eve—only a couple miles away, but as we watched the news and alerts, it became clear that even if we could get there, we wouldn’t be able to get back.
So maybe not all the rain at once.
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
PROJECTS
- It can’t cut anything it’s not touching.
- Edges can only cut along one axis.
- Blades attached to motors are more dangerous.
- Keep everything about yourself as far away from the cutting action of the blade as you possibly can.
Sunday, November 26, 2023
turns out I love my work.
"I feel like there are decisions being made where I can’t see them, in meetings I’m not invited to. Am I being paranoid?"
"No, you are absolutely correct, we have these meetings about The Project, and we can read you into it if you want, but they are meetings which have made both me and Matt visibly angry."
[Matt is justifiably legendary for his patience and kindness, and while I’m no slouch in the patience-and-kindness department, it is known that me getting visibly angry takes a lot.]"Oh. Shit. Okay. Never mind."
Patrick Rothfuss’s masterwork The Wise Man’s Fear gets its title from a saying in that world:
"There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man."
Managers can be extremely non-creative, partly because they don’t know what else to be, but also because there’s a sad mode of management where the job is being a "bullshit umbrella," protecting teams from the rest of the company. At large companies this is most commonly all you’re allowed to do, unless you also enjoy throwing elbows in institutional—let’s say bureaucratic—politics (which some people do). But it’s so much more fun to treat it like a collaboration with the engineers, because the two jobs are radically different: woe be unto ye whose only way to promote an engineer is to make them a manager.
So, sure, see what I did there? I’m not hiding anything, and I’ll be as transparent as I can, but no one with good sense wants to deal with work which is not their job, which is making multiple gentle men angry.
Friday, October 27, 2023
smaller world than I thought.
"A friend of mine is moving to Sweden to study it!""Amy H—?""Yeah!"