New Year list items!

• Happy New Year!
• This year we made 161 dumplings. This is more than last year. And exactly as delicious.
• Nearly all of the old pre-WordPress log is now back online (at exactly the old URLs, too; yay, Panix!), so you can now follow the dumpling-count links ‘way back into the past if you are so inclined, and enjoy the old #996633 based color scheme (or the alternate CSS skins, haha I was so l33t back then!).
• I go back to work tomorrow, after being on vacation for quite a long time due to having neglected to take very much vacation during the year.
• Work is, as I have mentioned previously, in Manhattan! I am exceedingly fond of Manhattan, and these days regularly wish it were a bit closer to home, or that one had (and could afford) a nice little pied-à-terre down there to spend the night now and then.
• The other day (while on vacation) I went down and had dinner with the little daughter, and then went out for a night of amazing jazz and blues at two prominent and wildly different Harlem clubs: Minton’s, and Paris Blues. Drank more than I had in years (bottle of beer, a screwdriver, and like four sangrias), walked a lot, and had a great time; the day deserves a weblog entry of its own, but may not get one given how much I’ve been writing weblog entries lately, so here we are.
• While I haven’t been weblogging, I have been hanging out now and then on Quora (where I have apparently answered like 68 questions, although most not recently), and on Twitter (soooo much time on Twitter; it is among other things where I get most of my news).
• Among other things on Quora, I answered a question with what turned out to be more or less that “How I Outgrew Libertarianism” post that I’ve been meaning to write here for years. Maybe I’ll eventually post it here, too, as-is or fleshed out.
• I’m still in Second Life a few times most weeks, but not nearly as much as I used to be. Not sure why, exactly; probably the four hours a day of commuting every week day has something to do with it! (A SL client that worked on Metro North would be interesting.)
• I was in WoW (rogue, demon hunter, priest, etc) pretty intensely for awhile after the expansion came out, but I got bored as usual at about the point where the main things left to do involve organized raiding parties.
• After consulting the little boy about it randomly, I started playing SWTOR in early December, and rather quickly found myself with a max-level Jedi Shadow. (SWTOR doesn’t seem to have web-page character profiles, tsk!) The game is extremely WoW-like, except for being in space, and having a stronger notion of linear stories than WoW (and a whole lot more voice-acting and cut-scenes; a whole lot).
• What else, what else? Just finished reading Single White Monk, and am vaguely thinking of writing a review and posting it somewhere. It’s an odd book; despite being about (parts of) the life of a Zen monk, there’s hardly any Zen at all in it, explicitly or otherwise.
• Donald Trump and his odious administration continue to do awful things to the nation and the world, primarily out of a desire for wealth and power, and secondarily due to ignorance and incompetence; I hope that among other things 2018 sees the Republican Party’s role in the U.S. government significantly reduced.
• I admit that I have not been going to protests or calling my (already anti-Trump) representatives as much as I did earlier in the year. If I made New Year’s Resolutions, one of them would be to get back to doing more of that in 2018.
• Another one would be to have more compassion, and less snark, in my discussions with people that I disagree with on Twitter. (See our earlier discussions on how best to show compassion for, say, neo-Nazis, in a way that maintains compassion for everyone else.)
• I’ve gotten pretty good, I think, over the years in noticing that, while it would probably be neat to own that thing, I would also be perfectly happy not owning it, and by not buying it I avoid increasing the number of unnecessary things I have. Another resolution would be to do a similar thing with food, and notice that, while it would be yummy to eat that thing, I would also be perfectly happy not eating it, and by not eating it I might be healthier in the long run.
• One barrier to that is that eating (unlike owning objects) is in many cases helpful in staving off anxiety and depression, which while still well-controlled (yay, Rosuvastatin!), is also still always there in the wings.
• I’m sure there were other things I was thinking of posting as list items here, but I can’t think of them at the moment, so perhaps I will post this soon.
• Happy New Year Some More!

Stuff Which I Do

I write poems! Very rarely! Except lately. I am telling myself maybe I will make a PDF book of those 30. Maybe even make an eBook out of them! Get an ISBN number! Put it on Amazon! But probably I will be too distracted. :)

I do Second Life! Which is to say, I build things and write scripts and go listen to live music and poetry, and dance and fly and explore and decorate and just sort of lie about. I even have a whole nother (secret) weblog about this activity. I think virtual worlds are likely to eventually become Extremely Significant, but until then and even if not, they are (Second Life is) incredibly fun.

I do World of Warcraft. My main is Spennix (some flickr pictures, web profile), a gnome rogue, currently level 90, ilevel 477, working vaguely on Isle of Thunder dailies and various achievements and pickup raids and stuff, but mostly just sitting around feeling heroic. :) See also Spennatrix, my Night Elf Priest healer, and Spaenorus the spacegoat Paladin Tank, both still leveling when I get around to it, which isn’t all that often. And a bunch of other characters that get played even less often.

I play WoW when I am feeling too antisocial to go into SL, generally. :)

I read books! And I used to occasionally write them up for my website or Amazon. I don’t do that very much anymore ’cause of all the other things I do. Also I think the homegrown Content Management System behind the former is broken. Amazon still works, though!

Some of the books that I read now are on my iPad. And I think I don’t read as many as I used to; I don’t have much patience with things that aren’t interactive. Still love them, though.

I play Real Racing 3. Vroom vroom! It is fun! I have like 9 or 10 cars now!

I no longer play (what was that called?) Eternity Warriors 2, because it got boring. And also wanted me to spend money all the time, as previously noted.

I no longer play Diablo III either. I’d forgotten entirely about it, actually, until I started writing this here weblog entry describing stuff which I do.

I make system software for supercomputers! Or I lead a team that does that. Not the inside parts that make the computers super, so much, as the outside parts that adjust the cooling flow and make sure that they don’t blow the circuit breakers, and dispatches the jobs in the right order. Still, it’s interesting. And I get to program (sometimes). And I get paid for it!

I write novels! In a month! Or at least I have a few times. The last time I tried I sort of tailed off and didn’t finish. Some of the earlier ones I like quite a bit though!

I bake bread, again not often enough. Let’s see, here’s a recipe. You can make that, too!

I sit. Sit in order to liberate all creatures, while realizing that there is no liberation and no creatures. Sit zazen. Maybe even shikantaza. Or just sitting.

I hike. Ha ha, no I don’t! Too busy typing on keyboards. But I did, now and then, years ago. And it’s still part of my self-image. Which is interesting. But I should really do it again sometime. Up Turkey Mountain, or down in the Glens.

I watch old Buffy episodes! Although since I’ve just ended Season 5, so Buffy is dead at the moment, and although I am sort of looking forward to seeing Dark Willow, Season 6 sounds kind of intense, so I’m not doing that at the moment.

I watch old Firefly episodes! Although since there are so few of them I’m doing it very slowly, so as not to run out. Firefly is very cool.

I watch old Babylon 5 episodes! Haha I’d forgotten all about this one, too. I have these on DVD (Buffy and Firefly are on Netflix streaming). I’ve watched up to, let’s see, Season 4 Episode 8 or so, when the Big Cosmic War Question has been revealed and resolved by Sheridan telling all the Big Cosmic Forces to bugger off, and now it’s going to be more about mere human politics, so I sort of stopped there and haven’t watched the next one for probably years now. How the time speeds by!

I sort mail. Lots of mail! Gad, look at all this mail! Piles of paper publications that want me to read them (I need to figure out how to transform at least the New York Times Book Review to iPad form; then I might get around to reading through it now and then). Piles of appeals for money (one year we organized them all and picked a set to give a certain amount to every month and resolved to throw all the rest away instantly, and then never actually did that, mostly my fault). Piles of ads and coupons and catalogs and things (and that’s after immediately recycling 90% of them). And then piles of “other” and strange things and things that I ought to do something about, someday, maybe.

Thanks to M for taking care of the actual bills that come in the mail. :)

What else do I do? I often have a bagel for breakfast. I try to go to the gym and pretend to walk or bicycle, and lift heavy things, about three times a week, and sometimes actually do that. I sleep! Not enough. I like sleeping! But I like other things too. I eat all sorts of things; chocolate is good. I take various medicines in the morning, including an SNRI, a multivitamin, fish oil, Crestor (although I suspect it’s evil) and something or other else. Often at work I go down to the little “Grab and Go” or whatever it’s called next to the real cafeteria, and bring food back to my office to eat while working (and work while eating).

Anyway, that’s what I recall tonight! :) Now for some of the sleeping stuff…