Broad Strokes
I’ve done it again. Dropped regular publishing to this blog. Last post was 2021/01/26. Nearly two years. Well, before this self-flaggelation goes to long, let’s get on with an update.
The past two years has not been fairly eventful. There’s been changes in my career. I’ve taken on new hobbies. But happily most of the foundational stuff is still trucking right along.
In September of 2021, I moved to a different team at MyJob Co. (yes, I’m using a pseudonym for my employer). The move was a good one for me, too. It removed a wall in my career path and promised work more fitting to my temperament. Generally speaking, I’m pretty happy in the new role. More on that below.
At home, life is still moving pretty steadily. The GF and I are still an item. We are still living in the same apartment. But we are now a less full-house. We both still work from home. (I am, technically, hybrid, though.) We make our plans and execute many of them. In other words, we are doing okay.
My “Post-COVID” life is still very much like my COVID life. Even if the world is trying to stubbornly rollback to pre-COVID.
The TL;DR
Homefront
GF and I are living very much in this present COVID world. We get our jabs as updated vaccines are released. Masks on when we are at stores, traveling by public transit, or at crowded close-quarter venues. We both still work from home. It’s the routine. We gladdly take advantage of services that sprouted up because of COVID: Take-out from resturaunts that only provided in-house services prior and BOPUS grocery shopping (brilliant!) are two highlights.
What I think has taken longer for us is adjusting to returning to the social world. We were never social butterflies by any stretch of the imagination, but there was less handwringing in the decisions of which events we would attend. Now, we run a rick vs reward analysis against each choice. AND because we are not the only ones doing the RvR, so many of our regular social events have gone the way of the dodo. There just wasn’t enough of a reward to continue hosting some events. All that said, we are making efforts to get back into the world. In October we went to an annual party called Seduction, a benefit for the Seattle Erotica Arts Festival. And last month, we went to Sumo and Sushi, which is as advertised on the tin. This month we will attend a performance of the Seattle Men’s Chorus which a friend of mine is a member. Next month, we will go to another party similar to Seduction, but more interactive for attendees.
Under the home roof, our home has gotten a little less crowded. Two of our three cats have passed. The hard part was that it happened within a few months. Harder still is that our third cat will probably be passing in the near future. The air around the home seems to fill with a melancholy perfume. Rose and Toa were dying from things that old cats die from: kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, heart disease, etc. Like most old cats, they tried to stay as long as possible and would have tried to keep staying beyond any reasonable sense of need or want. But we had to let them go. Quality of life had diminished too much and it was time to stop their suffering for our sake.
Claude is still trooping right along. We have his hyperthyroidism and IBD under control. He’s become more social, active, and vocal (Christ, is he a shoutty cat). What he faces is progressive kidney disease. Currently, at stage three. There are medications that could slow the progress, but they would only give a few extra months and require a very strict routine to maintain. The cat can be a little squirrely on a good day, but setting a routine to wrangle him for daily shots or oral meds would make both of us miserable. I’d rather my old man have happier golden years than more time.
Enough, about the cats.
The J.O.B.
As mentioned above, I am working with a different team at MyJob Co. The team is a platform and processes engineering team. No one particular IT or software engineering dscipline, but really jack-of-all-trades kind of team. I made it on to this team with support from a friend and my 9 months prior as primary “engineer” (I was a technician then and still am at this writing) on a big project for my previous team. Since joining them in September of 2021, I have added to my engineering experience. It’s not what most may think it is. I spend a good deal of time in meetings, writing documentation, and gathering telemetry. Since joining the team, I have written and/or modified a handful of scripts. On the flip side, I have helped a partner team update a fleet of their devices and expand their services to more locations. Also, I have pushed firmware updates to thousands of other devices. The one drawback is that after six months of this kind of heads down engineering work, I was thrown back into technician work.
We maintain a lab space for use by our partners. The space needs constant maintenance and that type of work is best done by a technician. Taking time from engineers to do this type of routine labor is just not effective management of resources. However, the change to my work routine and expectations was a setback. I felt like my value was reduced and my aspirations sidetracked. It was a shot to the ego, that’s for sure. Since about March of this year, I have spent two days of the week in the MyJob Co labs doing the grinding work that I last did in December of 2020.
The bright side: I’m up for promotion to Engineer 1. I have spent most of this year preparing my resume with my leadership (which has changed twice since I started with this team). Until I started that, I wasn’t very certain how much I deserved to be an engineer. Preparing the resume gave me perspective on the contributions and growth I have made over the course of the year. The resume was submitted (presumably) before or on December 1st. It is going through a process called “calibration” where a panel made of representatives from other engineering teams review submissions and discuss merits. It can last for a month. A month. In the meantime, I keep doing the grind, finding my way, and contribute positively to the team where I can. There’s just no sense in phoning in the work. Bottom line, it would only diminish my standing.
Hobbies
I’ve piled those on since my last writing. Let’s start with garage kits. This craft has been around since the Sixties. It’s a kind of model making, but the models are often hand crafted by sculptors in a home garage. Get it? “Garage Kits.” It’s a small industry in the US, but fairly large in Asia. Kits are typically manufactured in some kind of poured resin. The molds are based on original sculptures. A lot of the kits are unlicensed inspirations from existing popular properties. But frequently, artists get licenses from property owners. So there is plenty of gray area here. What’s important to know is that because the market for these are so small, finding affordable and decent quality kits is a challenge. Thankfully, we have the internet.
Anyways, I got into this pretty quickly. I have over a dozen models downstairs in my hobby cave. To date, I have completed three models and have been working on the same model for the past year. These kits can be a simple as four of five pieces or hundreds of parts. Moreover, because the kits are based on finished sculptures, they need to be parted out for casting. Which means that making keys in the contact points is its own art. I have plenty of models that have nothing more than flat planes at their joins and others that have precise alignment keys. It a fun puzzle that once put together still requires that I add color or customize the form.
I also took up 3D printing. Not sure how I feel about this. It’s an expensive hobby. Resin 3D printing is a messy hobby. FDM 3D printing is a wasteful hobby. Both are finnicky, time consuming and material sinks. And my friends get more use out of my equipment than I do. I’m gonna leave it there.
What I want to make time for is digital and practical sculpting. There are figures that I see in my head that I want to see in the world. I can’t find analogs for them on the internet. No garage kits. No 3d printable models. They just don’t seem to live anywhere, but my brain. I just need to break through my ego block to get the work underway. All of the above things I got into because of this. My thinking is that building garage kits and printing 3D models would teach me about assembling and painting my own sculptures. Sure, superficially they can do that, but the reality is that I am spending time learning how to do those hobbies instead of learning how to sculpt.
In the end, the 3D printing will probably be wound down. It will have use for my own sculptures, but limited. The garage kits are fun, though. (I’m finally get one kit past her awkward stage. She’s looking great now.) It could still provide some useful insights.
