Urgan Shows Up, Does the Thing

[Urgan]

8/2/2019 - 8/4/2019

We Survived

 

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Justice/Rectitude 

Within: Samurai Don't Complain (in fitness or in the meeting room)

Nailed it.

 

Without: Giri

Mop floor

Clean shower

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

Within: Crying in the Dojo

Technique Review - 9/10

Iaido Review - 3/5

Buki Waza Review - 4/5

 

Benevolence

Within and Without: Love

9:00 Dinner - 10/10

Cat grooming - 5/5

 

Politeness

Within: Rēsetsu

Too Many Curses - 20

 

Without: Do 道

Drawing Japanese Characters - 4/5

 

Honesty

Within: Shinjitsu for Me

I am dancing right on the line of what is feasible. Some days my energy is good...others, not so much. 

 

Without: Matomo for Thee

Say (Only) What You Mean - 33/35

 

Well this was certainly a week fit for Two Face. Work was deader than three week old dead, gym was 2 and 3RM PRs on all four lifts. 80lb 3RM for OHP, 200lb 2RM for squat, and 232.5 and 235lb maxes for deadlift. Friday I finished Tripoint. Saturday I read the entirety of Hammerfall, also by Cherryh. Busted through a few books that fizzled out (two total there, I think?), skimmed one that wasn't a novel, and now we're on The Green Rider by Kristen Britain. 66 books to go. Definitely a fluffy homage to LoTR in tone, but not a direct retread like whatshisface a few books ago. Tripoint was really good, Hammerfall was okay. Too much desert in there for it to be great, any book about trekking through the desert is going to be a hard sell, but we made it. Finished that book off at 4AM, but we finished it. By then husband was up for his trip to the Chicago area pulling a trailer on Sunday morning. Funny thing about that. The work truck's water pump went kaput and took the serpentine belt with it, along with power steering and brakes. This is Not Good for an 11,000lb combined load. Luckily nobody died and nothing was hurt in Louisville. Our (no RV coverage) and his boss's (no boss in the car...) AAA insurance failed him twice, so that was hilarious. Meanwhile I hear scratching in the attic when I finally crawl my carcass out of bed around noon. So imagine me running interference for husband's issues while talking to my parents about a possible new freeloader. I managed to get brunch at the diner again in the midst of this (pancakes = diarrhea still, btw. I checked) and get back home before dad came over to verify no active critter running amok, but some insulation got knocked/fell down somehow that doesn't look like it was completely a matter of gravity. We're in wait and see mode there. Meanwhile husband got himself towed to a part shop and fixed the truck in the lot, then drove his happy butt to a hotel for the night lol. On the road now. Oh and I bought a laptop for $700 at 10PM before the price jumped up at the end of the day. Because laptop is randomly turning off after being left alone for only a few minutes and I need a backup. Touch screen and dvd-rom still built-in with matching harddrive capacity at 1TB and seemingly a decent processor (I've always had Intel, but this is an AMD Ryzen 5...). I know about two things about hardware, so. Maybe it's not crap. We'll see.

 

I didn't get to everything I'd wanted to between all the Sunday chaos and lacking the second pair of hands. Not fussed. Life goes on.

[Urgan]

August 2019 Goals

We started from the bottom, now we're here

 

"July" ended on a crazy note with husband breaking down while on the road, a fire drill over a might-be roof critter, and a new laptop on order. From 113 unread books to 66 books--nearly cut the unread book count in half! I got rid some more junk over the course of the month, took a good stab at office closet decluttering, and went through a drawer I'd been dreading looking into for the last 7 years. Whew. I didn't go swerving off course for my goals, at least. It's time to round off the bushido goals~

 

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Bushido.

 

Justice

To recap, this is "morally correct behavior or thinking; righteousness." 

A backstop of morally correct behavior is Giri--you do the thing because it is the right thing to do, not because you feel like it that day.

 

Giri

Chores du jour:

 

Clean shower

Clean toilet

Clean sinks

Dust 

Mop floor

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

A generally agreed-upon definition of courage is "knowing what's right and doing it." Samurai define it as intelligent risk-taking, or "the betweenness of cowardice and rashness" as I saw posted online and rather liked because it really concisely sums my understanding of the Bushido virtue. Not using risk as an excuse to not act or just acting blindly.

 

Crying in the Dojo

This schedule seems to work. I need to also focus on the weakest techniques to bring them up to a basic level of proficiency. 

 

Technique Review - 0/8

Iaido Review - 0/4

Buki Waza Review - 0/4

 

Keep heizen and carry on

These are distinguished from Giri in that they are not simple to-do tasks, require significant monetary expense, and/or are at the least intimidating. I need to step beyond the intimidation and investigate the below.

 

Let's re-evaluate current savings plans.

 

Benevolence

Samurai, on the basis of strict adherence to a moral code that is built on doing what is right, must consider the well-being of others as a top priority. After all, the purpose of being ready and willing to die is in service of others, both the lord and the layman. Life and limb aren't the only aspects that encompass "well-being," of course.  Mundane day-to-day things matter as well, especially among friends and family. Traditionally, poetry and music were "gentler" pastimes samurai used to help foster love toward others while living in a role that requires the willingness and ability to do violence on demand. Now I'm not into poetry (writing, on the other hand...) and my instruments are in a rather...sad state after 16-ish years languishing in a closet.

 

Love

My parents have been doing home renovations, which has made their ability to do gym things just difficult enough that it's pointless to needle them about it right now. I will do my best to be encouraging and take care of everyone as best as possible. I haven't been doing a great job of keeping up with scooping cat litter, which is frankly not a negotiable point.

 

Keep in Touch - 0/8

9:00 Dinner - 0/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Cat Box Care - 0/12

 

Politeness

The samurai idea of politeness or decorum consists of two interconnected parts: manners and a sense that there is a proper way to do essentially anything. Manners is an extension of benevolence in that one genuinely cares about others well-being while at the same time not hiding behind it as a coward's shield from calling a spade a spade when warranted. Propriety dictates that there is order in everything, even the peaceful pastimes. Whatever you do, do it well. There's joy in simplicity and single-focus in the moment without distractions. 

 

Rēsetsu

I think having uttered 20 curses in a month is pretty good considering I could rip off about that many during one good long rant. Anything that hits the air gets logged. 

 

Too Many Curses - 0

 

Do 道

Moar kanji plz....but not too much kanji. Just the right amount would be good.

 

Drawing Japanese Characters - 0/4

 

Honesty and Loyalty

It's the best policy. The counterbalance to Politeness has arrived. Not only is this virtue meant to work in tandem with Courage to be sure we aren't staying silent in the face of badness for fear of ruffling feathers, it also is the currency or "credit" of one's word in the case of a shadow of a doubt. You know your girl doesn't really have trouble speaking her mind, it might be a bit too much of this virtue is applied (hence the Shut Up goal previously mentioned).

 

Shinjitsu for Me

I can't be lying to myself. The most obvious honesty vis a vis NF is understanding that I know how much I am signing myself up for and whether I can keep commitments.

In a word, how good am I at setting targets for myself each month? I feel my targets are ambitious, but doable given nothing unexpected happens. If it does, I'm not beating myself up. It's an ambition, not live-or-die

How many things am I dropping and why? I tend to not enforce shower cleaning and mopping, point blank. 

When I say I can't do something, is it because it was truly out-classed in importance or am I just avoiding it? It's about 50/50, honestly. 

Am I just making eyes at shiny new hobbies (dusty old ones...) that I have no way to actually making part of my life without it coming at the expense of something else? I am prioritizing reading over as extensive a Japanese language practice, technique practice, and chores. It's a choice made with eyes wide open and I'm not abandoning anything wholesale. It's just a bit of a time bias. This isn't bad, given I am juggling a whole Home Depot's worth of chainsaws and Youtube usage is down, down, down. A win by any standard.

 

I believe cutting current unread books in half (again) before scheduling time for only 1 book/week is doable. This gets me to the 600-pagers, which would demand a miracle and serious dereliction of responsibility to get through more than one of those a week, or over a weekend. 400 pages is already difficult enough. In the meanwhile, clean the stupid shower. 

On that note, I'm able to do Japanese practice daily of a kind--I use Drops and DuoLingo and hit the bare minimum for both. These are both great apps for vocabulary and a general language learning platform. Lingodeer, however, is a more thorough "lesson" plan and I have dropped it due to Book Life. I should be able to peel off a few minutes during the week at least. Also, touch that story outline at least one a week maybe?

 

33 Unread Books

Lingodeer Time - 0/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Matomo for Thee

I can't be lying to other people, either. I suppose a good way to touch on this goal without feeding the Too Much of a Good Thing beast is to evaluate each day to see how often I say things I don't mean. Mostly hyperbole and suggesting I will do things I have no intention of doing, as is common. Maybe avoiding conflict with my husband by not saying what I really think because Tired. That happens a lot, too. 

 

Say (Only) What You Mean - 0/28

 

Honor

Honor is a two-edged sword. It can propel us through the densest of obstacles and the darkest of times for the sake of your immortal reputation, to the benefit of yourself and others. It can also propel you to take terribly erroneous action (or inaction) because on the other side of this coin is pride. And we know what comes after pride....

It's a balancing act to make sure you are acting for the right reasons. This obviously ties back to prior virtues.

 

Sotsugyu Already

I'm not seeing jobs (that aren't headhunters fishing for heads) in the pool to which I feel good about applying. I also need to sharpen my automated testing skills. It won't do to hold onto the bile from May. Bad things can, do, and will happen. I will keep looking at the job market to see what is available against the chance that a really good opportunity shows up and/or something egregious occurs. A good start for those automated testing skills would be to create tests for launching all the pages on our new site.

 

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin drop-downs.

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

I found some more stuff that needs to be taken care of. Honestly I've done a really good job of cutting down on junk. 

 

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Self-Restraint

Now this is a thing that I am struggling with. It's essentially a combination of Righteousness and Politeness--the common Japanese idea of not displaying profound emotion for fear of cheapening it--much less every fleeting thought that enters one's head. I let circumstances and people jerk my emotions around really easily. Speaking what's on my mind is a great thing, but a - blurting things out and b - giving people control over my emotions aren't so great. There is a good balance between displaying feelings and not displaying every feeling every second of every day. This is a global goal--home, work, gym, dojo. It's another meditative goal, where effort/awareness is the aim. Did I think before I spoke today? Did I barf out emotion in a way that does no good? Did I seek to uplift the atmosphere around me or did I drag it down?

 

Exhibiting Yokusē

Home

Work

Gym

Dojo

 

Note: I have combined Honesty and Loyalty, because the two are so entwined in my mind. Whew, this is all of them!   

 

Debriefs: 

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

[ReturnOfTheDad]

Good goals!

[Mistr]

2 hours ago, Urgan said:

 

"July" ended on a crazy note with husband breaking down while on the road, a fire drill over a might-be roof critter, and a new laptop on order. From 113 unread books to 66 books--nearly cut the unread book count in half! I got rid some more junk over the course of the month, took a good stab at office closet decluttering, and went through a drawer I'd been dreading looking into for the last 7 years. Whew. I didn't go swerving off course for my goals, at least.

 

Yay for huge progress in July!

 

2 hours ago, Urgan said:

How many things am I dropping and why? I tend to not enforce shower cleaning and mopping, point blank. 

 

You have a priority list and these things are on the lower end. Some messes count more than others. I confess that our kitchen floor got honest-to-goodness clean only about once a year before Elf moved in. The shower was cleaned more often. If you're fine with doing these chores every 6 or 8 weeks, that's fine. If someone complains, you can get them to do the work.  

 

2 hours ago, Urgan said:

Am I just making eyes at shiny new hobbies (dusty old ones...) that I have no way to actually making part of my life without it coming at the expense of something else? I am prioritizing reading over as extensive a Japanese language practice, technique practice, and chores. It's a choice made with eyes wide open and I'm not abandoning anything wholesale. It's just a bit of a time bias. This isn't bad, given I am juggling a whole Home Depot's worth of chainsaws and Youtube usage is down, down, down. A win by any standard.

 

I believe cutting current unread books in half (again) before scheduling time for only 1 book/week is doable. This gets me to the 600-pagers, which would demand a miracle and serious dereliction of responsibility to get through more than one of those a week, or over a weekend. 400 pages is already difficult enough. In the meanwhile, clean the stupid shower. 

On that note, I'm able to do Japanese practice daily of a kind--I use Drops and DuoLingo and hit the bare minimum for both. These are both great apps for vocabulary and a general language learning platform. Lingodeer, however, is a more thorough "lesson" plan and I have dropped it due to Book Life. I should be able to peel off a few minutes during the week at least. Also, touch that story outline at least one a week maybe?

 

Active choices on how to use your creative time are always valid. This summer you are doing a lot of reading fiction and learning to write Japanese. All that experience will percolate into your own writing. At some point you will come back to your story and think "ah, no, this is what I should do here".

 

I'm curious to hear your reviews of Drops and Lingodeer. I've used DuoLingo for learning French. Right now I'm working through more audiobooks before I go back to online apps. I'm in French V. When that is done, I need to find the next way to study.

 

2 hours ago, Urgan said:

I'm not seeing jobs (that aren't headhunters fishing for heads) in the pool to which I feel good about applying. I also need to sharpen my automated testing skills. It won't do to hold onto the bile from May. Bad things can, do, and will happen. I will keep looking at the job market to see what is available against the chance that a really good opportunity shows up and/or something egregious occurs. A good start for those automated testing skills would be to create tests for launching all the pages on our new site.

 

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin drop-downs.

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

I found some more stuff that needs to be taken care of. Honestly I've done a really good job of cutting down on junk. 

 

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Good plan. I am inspired by your sorting and donating goals.

 

2 hours ago, Urgan said:

Self-Restraint

Now this is a thing that I am struggling with. It's essentially a combination of Righteousness and Politeness--the common Japanese idea of not displaying profound emotion for fear of cheapening it--much less every fleeting thought that enters one's head. I let circumstances and people jerk my emotions around really easily. Speaking what's on my mind is a great thing, but a - blurting things out and b - giving people control over my emotions aren't so great. There is a good balance between displaying feelings and not displaying every feeling every second of every day. This is a global goal--home, work, gym, dojo. It's another meditative goal, where effort/awareness is the aim. Did I think before I spoke today? Did I barf out emotion in a way that does no good? Did I seek to uplift the atmosphere around me or did I drag it down?

 

Yes, I agree this is a worthy and difficult goal. It gets easier with practice. I'm working on asking myself "will this really help them, or do I just want to contribute to the conversation?"

[shaar]

2 hours ago, Urgan said:

 

Too Many Curses - 0

 

 

*softly* holy shit

 

ACK sorry

 

I uh, phew, that is a GOAL right there, I'd fail that one every darn day I think.  I'm impressed~

 

(But look I sad darn there instead of the other d word ha HA)

[Urgan]

2 hours ago, ReturnOfTheDad said:

Good goals!

 

Thanks! It's quite a lot, but half of it is passive-ish at least lol.

 

16 minutes ago, Mistr said:

You have a priority list and these things are on the lower end. Some messes count more than others. I confess that our kitchen floor got honest-to-goodness clean only about once a year before Elf moved in. The shower was cleaned more often. If you're fine with doing these chores every 6 or 8 weeks, that's fine. If someone complains, you can get them to do the work.  

 

There are so many hours in the day and it seems like 10 minutes after you get the floor spotless, you turn around and there goes a tumbleweed.... I swear cat hair oozes out of the very air.

 

16 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Active choices on how to use your creative time are always valid. This summer you are doing a lot of reading fiction and learning to write Japanese. All that experience will percolate into your own writing. At some point you will come back to your story and think "ah, no, this is what I should do here".

 

This is a real thing that happens. It's weird, too.

 

16 minutes ago, Mistr said:

I'm curious to hear your reviews of Drops and Lingodeer. I've used DuoLingo for learning French. Right now I'm working through more audiobooks before I go back to online apps. I'm in French V. When that is done, I need to find the next way to study.

 

DuoLingo is like a scattershot rapidfire series of questions--feels a bit random, actually--and you may or may not have actually been exposed to before on the app. This is good in that it covers vocab, grammar, and characters. Bad that it feels like you just got a newspaper to the nose and have no idea why or what you should have known to do. They just got a male in addition to the female voices which makes me happy. It's only been female voices on all the platforms I've tried 'til now.

 

Drops does the one thing really, really well and that's vocabulary. It will drill you some vocab. You won't ever feel surprised by a digital flashcard. Sometimes a few of the pictures are reused or contradict one another a bit, but it's a program made by humans. The other problem is you can't learn just with it for free because exposure is time-capped. The time cap is good to keep you time-boxed. Bad if you just don't feel like you got enough exposure to all the words (and at 1100+ words I do NOT feel like I have enough time with them mixed up in the pool of all possible words to feel like I have a strong grasp on half of those lol). 

 

LingoDeer is structured like an actual lesson plan. You have the option to drill vocab AND grammar (with randoms!) that you have been exposed to via lessons thus far. Bad about the lessons is they either feel short or like the variety is not awesome. 

 

Thus why I'm keeping up with all three--they each handle the weaknesses of the others, I feel. If there was one and only one to recommend, I'd point to LingoDeer, followed by Drops for the vocab. DuoLingo is just a wildcard.

 

16 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Yes, I agree this is a worthy and difficult goal. It gets easier with practice. I'm working on asking myself "will this really help them, or do I just want to contribute to the conversation?"

 

Guilty. Sometimes I manage to slap my own hand and avoid doing it (particularly on NF forums), but not nearly often enough.

 

1 minute ago, shaar said:

 

*softly* holy shit

 

ACK sorry

 

I uh, phew, that is a GOAL right there, I'd fail that one every darn day I think.  I'm impressed~

 

(But look I sad darn there instead of the other d word ha HA)

 

HA. Yeah, as an act of self-control it was like nearly choking a horse that just wants to run....its stupid mouth. I think a whooooooole lotta cursing, but don't think about the white elephant, ya know?

[Urgan]

8/5/2019

What

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Justice

Giri

Clean shower

Clean toilet

Clean sinks

Dust 

Mop floor

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

Crying in the Dojo

Technique Review - 1/8

Iaido Review - 0/4

Buki Waza Review - 0/4

 

Keep heizen and carry on

Let's re-evaluate current savings plans.

 

Benevolence

Love

Keep in Touch - 0/8

9:00 Dinner - 0/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Cat Box Care - 0/12

 

Politeness

Rēsetsu

Too Many Curses - 1

 

Do 道

Drawing Japanese Characters - 0/4

 

Honesty and Loyalty

Shinjitsu for Me

33 Unread Books - 30

Lingodeer Time - 1/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Matomo for Thee

Say (Only) What You Mean - 1/28

 

Honor

Sotsugyu Already

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Self-Restraint

Exhibiting Yokusē

Home - I was by myself when not at work

Work - Not awesome by any description

Gym - A+

Dojo - N/A

 

Wow but Monday was strange. I wasn't preoccupied with work most of the day, which was good since my machine locked me out after one password attempt (right or wrong) multiple occasions. No I'm not a retard, I did not enter the wrong password 9+ times at any point. It has done this infrequently for a few months, but this day it decided to do so 4 times. I finally escalated it and the IT Helpdesk manager had such a fun time trying to pin down what was going on, he did see it happen at least which was an obvious gaslight-type relief. This battle is To Be Continued, as there was no solution found. 

 

Husband is coming home Tuesday afternoon/evening, or so I am told. I decided to just go home instead of the dojo for the night because I wasn't really interested in doing the Post-Test Random Things Day and mom was running on empty, so despite what she told me I was convinced it would be more stress than it was worth. Got tacos and blew away 3 books as CWOTs. Remember how I said Green Rider wasn't as annoyingly obvious about its LoTR and was just fluffy fantasy? Well. 10 pages further in and every single force of badness introduced has been shown to be playing on the same side of the poker table. I looked up the summary of book 2 just to check that the main character actually makes it to her dang destination inside of 400 pages. Good news: she does. Bad news: she has time travel powers. Or time travel happens and in the stupidest way ever. And it's a 6 book series. Read the summary of The Enchantment Emporium and tell me if you got "incest orgy eugenics" out of that one. Please. And then there's The Rook. It just did not do anything for me. I have read this premise done a lot better (A Madness of Angels, anyone?). Went back to Cherryh and the Forge of Heaven I'd been delaying. Better than I was afraid of--nothing like a few garbage books for perspective. Space young professional watches immortal space Arab terraform his aliens-had-a-tiff-and-broke-his-planet-after-someone-got-their-germs-on-it by way of nanomachines and other science. (Eat your heart out, explain a film plot badly!) Yeah, I can live with that. And finish it by Friday night. And I still had time to just sit around and do nothing after reviewing the weak techniques via video. BOOM.

[Mistr]

19 hours ago, Urgan said:

There are so many hours in the day and it seems like 10 minutes after you get the floor spotless, you turn around and there goes a tumbleweed.... I swear cat hair oozes out of the very air.

 

No kidding. The cats are a constant dust bunny factory. We measure the level of fur in the house in Dorians, based on our grey cat. One vacuum cleaner tank full is about one Dorian, or enough fur to make a new cat.

 

19 hours ago, Urgan said:

DuoLingo is like a scattershot rapidfire series of questions--feels a bit random, actually--and you may or may not have actually been exposed to before on the app. This is good in that it covers vocab, grammar, and characters. Bad that it feels like you just got a newspaper to the nose and have no idea why or what you should have known to do. They just got a male in addition to the female voices which makes me happy. It's only been female voices on all the platforms I've tried 'til now.

 

Drops does the one thing really, really well and that's vocabulary. It will drill you some vocab. You won't ever feel surprised by a digital flashcard. Sometimes a few of the pictures are reused or contradict one another a bit, but it's a program made by humans. The other problem is you can't learn just with it for free because exposure is time-capped. The time cap is good to keep you time-boxed. Bad if you just don't feel like you got enough exposure to all the words (and at 1100+ words I do NOT feel like I have enough time with them mixed up in the pool of all possible words to feel like I have a strong grasp on half of those lol). 

 

LingoDeer is structured like an actual lesson plan. You have the option to drill vocab AND grammar (with randoms!) that you have been exposed to via lessons thus far. Bad about the lessons is they either feel short or like the variety is not awesome. 

 

Thus why I'm keeping up with all three--they each handle the weaknesses of the others, I feel. If there was one and only one to recommend, I'd point to LingoDeer, followed by Drops for the vocab. DuoLingo is just a wildcard.

 

Thank you, that helps a lot. This is the first I've heard of Drops and LingoDeer.

 

 

39 minutes ago, Urgan said:

 

Wow but Monday was strange. I wasn't preoccupied with work most of the day, which was good since my machine locked me out after one password attempt (right or wrong) multiple occasions. No I'm not a retard, I did not enter the wrong password 9+ times at any point. It has done this infrequently for a few months, but this day it decided to do so 4 times. I finally escalated it and the IT Helpdesk manager had such a fun time trying to pin down what was going on, he did see it happen at least which was an obvious gaslight-type relief. This battle is To Be Continued, as there was no solution found. 

 

That sounds frustrating. I would not think you are a retard. I often have to type my password two or three times. I am blaming my keyboard although really I suspect the problem is with the cadence of my typing being off.

 

39 minutes ago, Urgan said:

Read the summary of The Enchantment Emporium and tell me if you got "incest orgy eugenics" out of that one. 

 

I enjoyed it, but it is definitely 18+ and not for everyone.

[Urgan]

2 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Thank you, that helps a lot. This is the first I've heard of Drops and LingoDeer.

 

Let me know how you find them if you give them a try. 

 

3 minutes ago, Mistr said:

That sounds frustrating. I would not think you are a retard. I often have to type my password two or three times. I am blaming my keyboard although really I suspect the problem is with the cadence of my typing being off.

 

It is very much a situation that demands faith when you say you did not do something stupid. Although the message I am getting is not the same as "you made too many attempts to enter your password," it's still embarrassing. I am told this is not a strange problem for them to see....

 

4 minutes ago, Mistr said:

I enjoyed it, but it is definitely 18+ and not for everyone.

 

I mean, books have a right to exist independent of any one person's opinion of them. I just wish it had been a little more upfront about it, so to speak. Goodreads was more than happy to point it out for me, so I ain't even mad. Besides, we've been over the point where I do some research on these things before I just buy them (because wow do covers lie) and at this point forward I'm going to do a full background check on anything so much as hinting at a supernatural atmosphere because this isn't the first series I've encountered this summer that sounded really cool and then.....oh. Okay then. Chalk it up to unicorn chasing. 

[Urgan]

8/6/2019

Experiencing Tuesday

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Justice

Giri

Clean shower

Clean toilet

Clean sinks

Dust 

Mop floor

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

Crying in the Dojo

Technique Review - 1/8

Iaido Review - 0/4

Buki Waza Review - 1/4

 

Keep heizen and carry on

Let's re-evaluate current savings plans.

 

Benevolence

Love

Keep in Touch - 1/8

9:00 Dinner - 1/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Cat Box Care - 1/12

 

Politeness

Rēsetsu

Too Many Curses - 1

 

Do 道

Drawing Japanese Characters - 0/4

 

Honesty and Loyalty

Shinjitsu for Me

33 Unread Books - 29

Lingodeer Time - 2/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Matomo for Thee

Say (Only) What You Mean - 2/28

 

Honor

Sotsugyu Already

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Self-Restraint

Exhibiting Yokusē

Home - Perfect.

Work - Not great, but I was cognizant and co-kvetching was attempted to allow the person I was kvetching with vent about how interacting with End User made them feel (word cloud: defeated, perplexed, annoyed, frustrated, baffled, miffed, wtf, why). End User hates our new page. Well sorry we'll cancel all development and rewrite the whole thing then.

Gym - N/A

Dojo - N/A

 

On track so far. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the hardest days of the week to get through. Husband made it back into town in the early afternoon. Late at night I diagnosed him as having spent 3 days driving and thus the soreness around his ribs and chest were attacked with Tiger Balm and Tylenol. Reading is on track--got rid of another book I just won't ever get to. I thought I'd be able to finish the book I'm working on in the gym, but I was about 100 pages off where I thought I was lol. So just kidding there. Otherwise we're right on track.

[Urgan]

8/7/2019

Shots Fired

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Justice

Giri

Clean shower

Clean toilet

Clean sinks

Dust 

Mop floor

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

Crying in the Dojo

Technique Review - 2/8

Iaido Review - 0/4

Buki Waza Review - 1/4

 

Keep heizen and carry on

Let's re-evaluate current savings plans.

 

Benevolence

Love

Keep in Touch - 1/8

9:00 Dinner - 1/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Cat Box Care - 1/12

 

Politeness

Rēsetsu

Too Many Curses - 1

 

Do 道

Drawing Japanese Characters - 0/4

 

Honesty and Loyalty

Shinjitsu for Me

33 Unread Books - 29

Lingodeer Time - 3/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Matomo for Thee

Say (Only) What You Mean - 3/28

 

Honor

Sotsugyu Already

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Self-Restraint

Exhibiting Yokusē

Home - I was a sounding board for Problems at home, but I think I managed to walk the line

Work - A little better than yesterday

Gym - No conversations with other humans really

Dojo - Meh. C.

 

I just generally wish this week was over already--more than the usual desire, this has been a real slog of a week and everyone around me has had some sort of problem all the same time. That creates an oppressive atmosphere. Gym time was okay, I was able to squat and pull heavy triples. At the dojo I'm pretty sure I was called out and used as a demo uke for it. (Addit: Stupid slug brain mixed up two events.) Yay. For iaido I find I somewhat prefer a 26" blade, but 26" blades are not falling out of the sky at the moment due to Sensei's usual source being out of stock of that particular type and no idea when/if they will restock. There's a 24" just sitting in storage, but I stupidly decided to hold off on that and wait another week or so to see if Sensei can find one to order elsewhere. So now I'm probably not going to iaido that I just found out will be happening this Friday for the combined reasons of being done with wooden iaito and gunning to finish a book or two between now and midnight-ish on Friday. Seriously I'm going to be a yellow belt swinging a wooden sword. 

 

Forge of Heaven has turned out to be quite an entertaining book. Shorter in practice than in appearance as I'm skipping all the political bits in favor of the parts featuring Young Professional and Space Arab. Cherryh has a knack for writing characters who become friends/dependent on one another when they have no immediately obvious reason to do so/plenty of background reasons to be hostile. And they don't necessarily have to bang one another as shorthand for emotional connection (although they sometimes do and mostly she manages to avoid the sensation that it's just being included to check a box for marketing). What a concept. 

[Kishi]

I'm really sorry to hear that things are going so wrong for you and yours this week.  Good times never last, but the good thing about time is that it passes, and bad times don't last either. You'll outlive this. And worst case, you can stab it. (iaido lets people do that, right? I, uh. I'm not familiar with lots of things).

[Urgan]

8/8/2019

What productivity?

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Justice

Giri

Clean shower

Clean toilet

Clean sinks

Dust 

Mop floor

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

Crying in the Dojo

Technique Review - 2/8

Iaido Review - 1/4

Buki Waza Review - 1/4

 

Keep heizen and carry on

Let's re-evaluate current savings plans.

 

Benevolence

Love

Keep in Touch - 1/8

9:00 Dinner - 2/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Cat Box Care - 2/12

 

Politeness

Rēsetsu

Too Many Curses - 1

 

Do 道

Drawing Japanese Characters - 0/4

 

Honesty and Loyalty

Shinjitsu for Me

33 Unread Books - 27

Lingodeer Time - 4/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Matomo for Thee

Say (Only) What You Mean - 4/28

 

Honor

Sotsugyu Already

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Self-Restraint

Exhibiting Yokusē

Home - Minimal fuss

Work - Easy given I only worked until 11 at the office

Gym - N/A

Dojo - N/A

 

Today my sinuses decided to stage a mutiny, so I went to work from home, figuring that would help. It didn't really. 

 

Finished Forge of Heaven. It was a really, really good book and I was afraid it wouldn't be for the same reason I couldn't finish 40,000 in Gehenna. That is, people dying off generationally and being replaced with impossible-to-sympathize-with jerks. This did not happen. The opposite happened and I am immensely grateful. Peeled off another book that just didn't do it for me, then settled on The Child Thief (Brom). That was the one good part of my day. That and the tamales I got because CBF to cook while weaving in and out of headache town.

 

Confirmed iaido is a no go this week. I'm going to wait on some word about what size blade I'm going to train with--I only have a bokken and a 29" at home and in the dojo I'm working with a radically shorter blade. Bah. And my ego is involved in no small measure, being the only person in the room still sporting a rattly wooden number this week of all weeks with no idea when that won't be the case just isn't something I'm interested in.

[Urgan]

22 hours ago, Kishi said:

I'm really sorry to hear that things are going so wrong for you and yours this week.  Good times never last, but the good thing about time is that it passes, and bad times don't last either. You'll outlive this. And worst case, you can stab it. (iaido lets people do that, right? I, uh. I'm not familiar with lots of things).

 

It's just been a week. An entire week of reasons to be in a very foul humor with life in general. If I had a target, I could imagine it and maybe from time to time we drill scripted "combat," or rather snippets of it. The sword is real steel/alloy with a pointy tip and a lot of us really have no idea what we're doing. I'm over here rubbing a bleeding wound on my right thumb just holdingthe play-pretend sword, so. Sempai says there's nothing for it sometimes but to wait for the callus to develop. Well if there's anything in this world I'm good at.....

[shaar]

On 8/6/2019 at 11:30 AM, Urgan said:

 

Read the summary of The Enchantment Emporium and tell me if you got "incest orgy eugenics" out of that one. Please.

 

I........

 

 

Huh.  Fascinating.  Also big yike.  At least it's over?...

 

On 8/7/2019 at 9:58 AM, Urgan said:

Tiger Balm and Tylenol. 

 

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

 

The Only Real Remedy here.

 

21 hours ago, Urgan said:

 

It's just been a week. An entire week of reasons to be in a very foul humor with life in general. If I had a target, I could imagine it and maybe from time to time we drill scripted "combat," or rather snippets of it. The sword is real steel/alloy with a pointy tip and a lot of us really have no idea what we're doing. I'm over here rubbing a bleeding wound on my right thumb just holdingthe play-pretend sword, so. Sempai says there's nothing for it sometimes but to wait for the callus to develop. Well if there's anything in this world I'm good at.....

 

AND YOU SURVIVED.  The best reward from a shit-kicking week.  Next week better look out 'cause here you come and fuckadoodle if you aren't taking any prisoners~

 

(yeah i swore oops sorry not sorry actually huh i swore twice ugh sorry)

[Urgan]

8/9/2019 - 8/11/2019

Previews of things to Come

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Justice

Giri

Clean shower

Clean toilet

Clean sinks

Dust 

Mop floor

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

Crying in the Dojo

Technique Review - 2/8

Iaido Review - 1/4

Buki Waza Review - 1/4

 

Keep heizen and carry on

Let's re-evaluate current savings plans.

 

Benevolence

Love

Keep in Touch - 2/8

9:00 Dinner - 2/8

Cat grooming - 1/4

Cat Box Care - 3/12

 

Politeness

Rēsetsu

Too Many Curses - 3

 

Do 道

Drawing Japanese Characters - 1/4

 

Honesty and Loyalty

Shinjitsu for Me

33 Unread Books - 25

Lingodeer Time - 5/15

Story Outline - 1/4

 

Matomo for Thee

Say (Only) What You Mean - 7/28

 

Honor

Sotsugyu Already

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Self-Restraint

Exhibiting Yokusē

Home - Pretty good

Work - Okay I totally failed this one, if you count telling someone "I hate you." to his face multiple times because that's what happens when you try to force your 2+ hour will-run-over-time-to-go-home meeting onto me to escape it yourself

Gym - Rock solid

Dojo - N/A

 

Gym time went well enough--just work, no PRs. Work was a ****-fest that never wanted to end, I ended up skipping iaido. Had a headache and a tired. Finished The Child Thief.

Saturday I did all of the sets of triples, a volume PR of sorts. Kanji happened, I finished The Right Stuff, putting me at 25 books to go, a mere 5 400-pagers left, and moved all unread up a row. I have all books read and unread on three bookcases now. Whee. 

Sunday I sorted the dish towels, got rid of a few. Pulled the shower caddy out of the shower to remove the excuse for it not getting done Monday afternoon. Hit up that story outline. Stuff. Things.

[Urgan]

On 8/10/2019 at 8:32 AM, shaar said:

I........

 

 

Huh.  Fascinating.  Also big yike.  At least it's over?...

 

Yeah, me too. I took Goodreads's word for it, because more than one person described it as such and life is too short to verify it for myself. I did not assume I had bough a supernatural romance book and even if I had, it jumps clear into Supe Romance Stage 3 (The Kinkening) on go. 

 

On 8/10/2019 at 8:32 AM, shaar said:

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

 

The Only Real Remedy here.

 

We'll call it the T2 Protocol.

 

On 8/10/2019 at 8:32 AM, shaar said:

AND YOU SURVIVED.  The best reward from a shit-kicking week.  Next week better look out 'cause here you come and fuckadoodle if you aren't taking any prisoners~

 

(yeah i swore oops sorry not sorry actually huh i swore twice ugh sorry)

 

Um. Well. Someone might not survive this week based on how it's started (here have a 1.5 hour meeting with no breaks between your other meetings and with as much notice! gee thanks!). And that clearly wasn't even the meeting I was dreading while coming into work today, so......

[shaar]

2 hours ago, Urgan said:

Work - Okay I totally failed this one, if you count telling someone "I hate you." to his face multiple times because that's what happens when you try to force your 2+ hour will-run-over-time-to-go-home meeting onto me to escape it yourself

 

Ahahaha HOO BOY HOWDY EAT SHIT GERALD

[Urgan]

20 minutes ago, shaar said:

 

Ahahaha HOO BOY HOWDY EAT SHIT GERALD

 

Say it again for the guys in the BACK

[Urgan]

Anyone have an opinion on Connie Willis by chance?

[Urgan]

8/12/2019

Except nobody asked

武士道   (ぶしどう)

Justice

Giri

Clean shower

Clean toilet

Clean sinks

Dust 

Mop floor

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Courage

Crying in the Dojo

Technique Review - 3/8

Iaido Review - 1/4

Buki Waza Review - 1/4

 

Benevolence

Love

Keep in Touch - 2/8

9:00 Dinner - 2/8

Cat grooming - 1/4

Cat Box Care - 3/12

 

Politeness

Rēsetsu

Too Many Curses - 3

 

Do 道

Drawing Japanese Characters - 1/4

 

Honesty and Loyalty

Shinjitsu for Me

33 Unread Books - 23

Lingodeer Time - 6/15

Story Outline - 1/4

 

Matomo for Thee

Say (Only) What You Mean - 8/28

 

Honor

Sotsugyu Already

Create tests for Customers, Orders, Operations, IP, Finance, Reporting, and Admin

 

Battle With Meiyo and Humanity

Sort through dish towels

Sort out the pantry

Round up all donatable electronics

Drive away donations

 

Self-Restraint

Exhibiting Yokusē

Home - Vented about ambush meeting, men exhibiting selective Alzheimer's 

Work - Failed by way of ambush meeting

Gym - 100%

Dojo - Not a word about work or any other PITA-esque topic

 

Nailed a 1.5lb 5RM PR on bench, 95lbs. Life nailed me back with that ambush meeting. I did in fact survive it. It was a kickoff for a "big" project of retesting everything on the website, more or less, which is why a kickoff meeting seemed asinine. Dojo featured two techniques - one of the weak links and one that wasn't super familiar, so that was a productive evening. A kokyunage and everyone's favorite, iriminage. Also, we did it fam. We cleaned the shower.

 

Realized Blackout is going nowhere fast and in order to have a conclusion of any kind will demand I buy into a second book...and I'm just not sure I'm willing to commit considering I already ditched a book by this author and am ambivalent about this one in terms of plot and (main) characters. It has three. The supporting cast and historical detail actually are the only reason to consider Blackout IMHO--most of it is really detailed and makes you feel like it's an authentic experience, except apparently there are a few errors in "translation" from American to British, which I wouldn't catch because my British English is not exemplary. Ditched another book as subpar to its predecessors, bringing our total to 23 books until I need to limit my expectations to 1 book/week. So now I'm reading Alternate Realities (Cherryh). It's three short stories, two of which I will be reading. I anticipate they'll both be good, Port Eternity is starting off entertaining. It's only about 180 pages for each story, so the margin for error is small. 

 

I have this thing about selectively dreading some sequels and leaving gaps between reading books in a series that span a decade, then it's really hard to kickstart the effort to catch up. Some books have simple plots, and then there are books by Robert Jordan. Jane Lindskold and L.E. Modesitt Jr are examples of two authors I liked but the last time I read from them it was easily 10 years ago. I'm not sure if it's neuroticism or failing interest in the series more that is the cause of this stupid behavior. OTOH, I am directly in the middle of these series. It feels like a shame to not make an attempt finish it, but I will have to determine whether I was being dumb about not just charging forward before the Sequelitis took hold or if it was actually a case of masochism losing the fistfight with self-preservation. Giant shrug. I'm suspicious that Lindskold's series finished an arc that made continuing on seem arbitrary? And Modesitt can be quite dense in this universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a goner. When it has less competition I should have greater patience. This is a thing I could probably research and put to rest quickly if I had a free minute today.

[Kishi]

So, I know you're not looking for more books to read and that you're pretty set, but if you are looking for some fun popcorn books, The Dresden Files is a good series. It starts off rather problematically over-masculine, but about the 3rd book or so is when it really starts to hit its stride, and it's not like the first two are necessarily bad either.

 

Maybe just a place to go for some fun once the present projects are done.

[Urgan]

23 minutes ago, Kishi said:

So, I know you're not looking for more books to read and that you're pretty set, but if you are looking for some fun popcorn books, The Dresden Files is a good series. It starts off rather problematically over-masculine, but about the 3rd book or so is when it really starts to hit its stride, and it's not like the first two are necessarily bad either.

 

Maybe just a place to go for some fun once the present projects are done.

 

I have heard those are good. Amusingly enough they seem a lot in the same vein as P.N. Elrod's work, which I have enjoyed. 

 

I find I am fairly gender agnostic when it comes to book voices, but if I'm going to bias it's toward a male perspective, because I like men. Le gasp. Nothing wrong with a female lead, but these days they have to convince me they're normal human beings and not Sassy Female Protagonist #58. There are plenty of Generic Male Protagonists floating around to balance the Force. Second only to failure to fully command the language is the literary crime of boredom. 

[Mistr]

Congrats on PRs and getting the shower clean! 

 

Elf promised to clean the bathroom before going out of town for a few days. I'm not holding my breath.

 

22 hours ago, Urgan said:

Anyone have an opinion on Connie Willis by chance?

 

I read Bellwether and thought it was excellent. Good characters, understandable science and human relationships, and funny to boot. I have not read her more recent work, but she's won a lot of awards. Probably a good bet.

 

Do you have access to a library that has some of the series books you don't own? That would let you read them (or start them and give them up as a bad choice) with no financial or book shelf commitment. I like to use the library for fluffy "read once" novels. If I find a gem I can go out any buy my own copy.

[Urgan]

12 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Congrats on PRs and getting the shower clean! 

 

Elf promised to clean the bathroom before going out of town for a few days. I'm not holding my breath.

 

I wouldn't hold my breath either, just on the odds that any given human being anywhere is cleaning a shower. I have a man who knows what the right thing to do is, it's a matter of making it as inconvenient as possible not to do the right thing is the ticket. You'd like to think asking directly would be sufficient and you would be so very wrong. Asking is like suggesting it's an option for things a person could physically do with their time, theoretically, to which he will readily agree is a true statement. And yet. The shower remains in its defiled state. 

 

12 minutes ago, Mistr said:

I read Bellwether and thought it was excellent. Good characters, understandable science and human relationships, and funny to boot. I have not read her more recent work, but she's won a lot of awards. Probably a good bet.

 

I heard so many good things about her, and yet I was neither repulsed nor amazed by her. I may return later, who knows?

 

12 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Do you have access to a library that has some of the series books you don't own? That would let you read them (or start them and give them up as a bad choice) with no financial or book shelf commitment. I like to use the library for fluffy "read once" novels. If I find a gem I can go out any buy my own copy.

 

My strategy for new books so far has been a combination of reading Amazon previews and Goodreads. I suppose failing Amazon that would be an option, presuming the local library is any good. Hoover's library is pretty big, but I don't know if the county we live in now has one to speak of other than this tiny thing that kids itself at being a library. Hmm. 

 

Addit: Note most of the things I bemoan actually involve the fate of multiple books on the shelf. Because I bought books ahead. Because I am a recovering book hoarder.