randomcub | Reading

Two Thursdays ago, I had another emergency dental visit. After the dental visit, I discovered that I had a rash on my left arm. It remained there for many hours, but it was gone the next day. I have no idea what triggered it.

To recap (pun intended), at that molar tooth location I have now busted 1) the original tooth, 2) the repair work on it, and 3) two different temporary caps on it. Thankfully, I have a scheduled appointment tomorrow to get the final custom fitted metal crown for it. Hopefully that fix lasts my remaining years without further incident.

During the last week, we got new features on the block where I live. First, there appeared an actual roundabout in the middle of the previous intersection on the north end of my block. This is great news to prevent the cars speeding down my block at all hours of day and night. It hasn't been as much of a problem recently as it was several years ago. This will help, though. The city calls these roundabouts 3.7F traffic circles. There are plenty in my area already, but "mine" is new.

I have no idea what this means for fire trucks, though. The fire station is a few blocks directly north of me. They frequently travel down our block to get to locations quickly, because my street is the intersection right outside their fire station. They'll have to travel elsewhere now, maybe? Unless they just have to travel more slowly through intersections. Obviously the roundabout wouldn't be allowed to block emergency vehicles, but it does seem like an unusual impediment to their fast travel.

A few days later, my block also got not just 1 but actually 2 speed bumps!

That seems like overkill, but maybe the people pushing for speed bumps didn't know we were getting a roundabout. I had no idea. My block just got a whole lot safer for kids on the block.

mellowtigger

I intended to write about Trump-related stuff today, but there's just too much news now. There's little point in continuing the laundry list. It has become quite clear that citizens in the USA live in different realities. Why argue facts with any group whose leader actually ends fact-finding projects, fires fact-finding people, deletes past factual data, and just rewrites information as whims demand?

So... I focus inward instead? I still see absurdities, but maybe I can do something about my own failings. I've come up with this list of what I find as my own current personal hypocrisies of behavior.

Click to read the 4 items...

I make continuing efforts to reduce my daily household plastic exposure, then twice a day I spray nasal drugs from plastic bottles up into my nose within easy reach of my brain. Tired of plastic in the brain? Here's some more! Good luck, brain.
I tout the joys of having a "wild" yard instead of grass, but I haven't been tending it properly. I may have done an even worse job of it this year than last year. I'm just so very tired all of the time since starting this current job 2 years ago. I don't want to set a bad example that convinces the city to stop supporting Lawns2Legumes efforts like my yard has been. I want to be proud of it, but it's just a mess right now. I'm not doing well at something that I like and encourage others to do.
I encourage renewable energy use, and I even subscribed to wind-sourced energy from Xcel. Then I run the window a/c unit upstairs nearly constantly, and I set it lower than it normally would be to cool just a single bedroom, because I need that cold air to fall downstairs and cool the rest of the house like where I work every day too. It's just not ideal. I just subscribed to an AI service too, if only temporarily to test it out. I know full well that AI energy usage is driving very bad trends. MIT says that "AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households."
I keep writing here that I intend to write less of the gloom and more of the hopeful stuff and at least more of the science stuff like I used to do in the past. Do I ever get around to it? Do I? UGH!

It was clear at work today that the summer slowdown is over. The new semester starts soon. We've got about 1 more week until the blackout dates when managers do not approve any vacation time, because we need all hands on the proverbial deck. I soon will have even less energy for all the things that I ought to be doing in order to live up to my own expectations for myself.

But Trump... ugh.

mellowtigger

Today, after work, I played a demo for game on Steam. It's called Tiny Bookshop. Surprisingly, it has a native Linux version, so I didn't even have to turn on Proton for it to run on my computer. It plays well with keyboard/mouse, but it looks like it would do great on the Steam Deck too.

Instead of a little free library (paging threemeninaboat), you manage a tiny for-profit bookstore. Your store is on a trailer behind your car. Each day, you read the newspaper to buy new inventory or items. The events you read about in the newspaper might convince you to visit a different location in town the next day to sell more books. The items you buy can boost or reduce sales of different genres of books, and you decorate both inside and outside your tiny bookshop. There's a journal that automatically records important details for you, which helps you keep track of things like which city locations sell which book genres more frequently.

Visitors to your tiny bookshop sometimes ask for your help to find a book. They describe what they're looking for. You click on each book on your shelf (genres are color-coded, so you don't have to click every book in the store) to find if something matches. If you find a great match and recommend it to them, you can even get a big boost for all sales that day. If not, they'll come back another day, and you can try to stock something overnight that might work better for them.

The free demo version of the game lets you play only 2 game days, then it ends. But that's plenty of time to see some of the mechanics in use in the game. I think the whole thing is nice. I found it enjoyable and... quaint? It's nice to play games that are entirely non-combat. It's 10% off from regular price on Steam right now, thanks to the Wholesome Games sales now through August 14th.

mellowtigger

After work today, I signed up for the Eternos.life service, at the cheapest level. It's the AI platform that I mentioned back in April, because they offer a service to create a digital avatar of yourself. I'm just too curious. I want very much to experience it.

I recorded a 30-second speech from a script prompted by the website, then I recorded a 90-second script. After just those 2 minutes of sample audio, it started saying new things back to me in my own voice and inflections. Before I can share a link for other people to interact with it too, I need to train it on "Datasets". Those datasets are texts and supporting documents (images, videos, audio, etc.) about something in particular as a full story, up to 7000 characters each. Their prompting text is this:

"Enter your story or insight here in first person point of view. For example; My first experience with school was kindergarten at Shelter Rock Elementary School in Manhasset, NY. I was there through 6th grade and my first memory of that school was... You can use the SCRUB button at any time to correct spelling and grammar!"

I asked the AI Assistant if it can import from a blog. Unfortunately, it cannot. It did write, "However, you can manually input the content from your blog into the training tool as datasets!"

So... I have no idea what stories to tell it. Is there any blog post that you associate most with "me"? I figured I could try one of the antifa ("Be like Wonder Woman. Be antifa.") posts. But they seem to be prompting for biographical information? What questions should I answer for the AI that would enable it to speak "as me"? I have no clue.

mellowtigger

We are still short-handed on the weekend shift, so I continued working Saturday and Sunday. I took vacation time for Monday-Wednesday, though. I intended to do some yard work, but I got almost none of it done. The day that I went outside and tried to clean up the front yard a bit, I came back inside afterward and slept for about 2 hours when I sat down in the living room chair for a few minutes to cool off. I'm just so tired all of the time, it seems. Even today, I laid down in bed around 5pm, thinking I'd take a quick nap. I woke up 3 hours later. Exhausted, after a busy day of doing not much of anything.

I accomplished a few things this week, at least. On Wednesday afternoon, I did the interview for the lead position on my team at work. That night, I got almost no sleep. I went to bed at 10am, and I saw every hour on the clock until 7am except the hours of 1am, 5am, and 6am. My brain just wouldn't shut off, replaying questions and answers from the interview. I dislike interviews so very much.

I also went to another emergency dental appointment on Thursday morning. To review quickly, I busted that tooth a few years ago, then I busted the repair work, and recently I've busted 2 temporary caps on it. Ugh. I get the permanent metal cap in 2 more weeks. Apparently these days, caps are custom fit to molds they took of what remains of this tooth. I hope I can go 2 more weeks without doing any more damage to it.

After the last dental appointment, I rode the bus past my house northward to the Colonial Market to get a burrito bowl to take home for lunch. I walked past 4 police cars at the store entrance, with officers searching the nearby ground for evidence of something. Apparently it wasn't store related, though, just the neighborhood being what it is.

And, finally, this morning I woke up to another dream.

I don't remember the early part of the dream, but I had a "splinter" in my hand that was annoying me. I went to the bathroom in front of the mirror and tried opening up the wound where it was. I saw a dark line of something that was bent in a semi-circular loop. I thought that was weird, a splinter curling around that way instead of just going straight in. I used a needle to pluck at the top of the loop and pull it out of me. It came out thicker than expected. I put aside the needle and used my other hand to pull it out. It became clear that it was not wood or metal but was a worm of some kind. I got about a finger's length out of me, then it started wriggling. My hand was too slippery from the blood/fluid, and I lost my hold as it started worming its way back into my wound. I felt emotions at this experience, and emotions are bad for thinking, so I woke up.

Clearly, that dream was related to the actual splinter that has been bothering me all week. It's in my left foot, though. On the first day, when I couldn't find what was in my foot, I put some medication on it and put an unusually large band-aid on it, thinking it would help stick to that spot as I walked on it. That night, I forgot about the bandage and removed my socks before getting into bed. The next day, I thought, "What is that sensation on my back?" I felt around and removed what turned out to be that band-aid from my foot. That was a rough night's sleep, apparently?