the haps.

I keep starting blog posts, thinking about Tim, and I'm not finding much to say that isn't private for one reason or another; it never stops being weird to miss someone even if you never saw or talked to them.

It's a big month: our anniversary, Tim's birthday, my friend J.D.'s yahrzeit, a niece's birthday, Dad's birthday.

I hit my 4-year anniversary of picking up the violin. If I were out in playing in the world, I would be enjoying the looks I get when I tell people I started when I was 40. It is an idiotically awkward instrument, and I think folks have trouble imagining that anyone could learn it without the plasticity and parent-enforcement of childhood. But no, I just wanted to play cool Scandinavian tunes.

We have momentarily discouraged the Oriental cockroaches—who much prefer to stay outside–by the simple expedient of having a bunch of guys demolish the concrete behind the house. Looking at the underside of the concrete, which of course is as uneven as the ground it was poured over (and obviously not flattened beforehand) I think they actually don't live as far underground as I'd thought, and as the ground settled over the years, they had the underside of the concrete to live and travel in. Maybe shared with the ants, when those are around.

The boy is doing well, if "boy" can describe someone several inches taller than me, and with considerably more facial hair. He's back in person at school, vaccinated. Learning stuff, occasionally talking to other teenagers, and generally being a delight to have around.

My previous company filed for an IPO this week! So that's a new experience. The date and price are kept under SEC-enforced lock and key, and then there's usually a 6-month lockout period for current and former employees (or something). 

My current company remains a big ship to steer, self-encumbered in new and exciting ways, but it's moving along. The tech job market is nuts, though. My former minions departing my former company are scoring absurd levels of compensation at new jobs. It's unreal.

And, finally, I've been reading a lot about machining, out of curiosity. I've been watching machining videos for a long time, mostly Clickspring and This Old Tony, and wanted to know how it worked. How do you take the messy, uneven, nonlinear materials of the world, and make flat surfaces? How do you create something accurate to within 0.0001 inches? (About the thickness the ink a Sharpie dispenses.) The answer, it turns out, is "kind of a pain in the ass, actually," but mostly it starts with somebody rubbing 3 plates of material (granite or cast iron, usually) against each other, and scraping down the high spots. When each is perfectly flat against the other two, they're all flat, because the surface common to them all is a flat plane. Few people do that themselves, and instead you usually acquire a "surface plate" for your shop, and use it to calibrate the more complicated gear that absorbs daily wear and tear.

Dunno. Could be worse.