bryant | Entries tagged with personal

No, bigger than that. We’re moving to Dublin!

Long story short, my illustrious employer needs someone with my skill set in the Dublin office, and both S. and I think living in Dublin sounds like an interesting adventure, so we’re doing it. Estimated move date is sometime in September, pending the excitement of getting a visa (in process) and all the other logistics details. The plan is to keep us there for three years, after which we’ll return to the Seattle area and carry on with our lives.

Even though we’re getting a good relocation package, it’s daunting. We may not need to find our own place to live eventually; we still need to talk to tax consultants on both sides of the ocean, and get paperwork done, and figure out what we’re going to move.

That last is a whole thing of a thing. We can ship stuff, but it’ll take months to get there by boat. We can take a few bags on the plane. We can maybe move a few things by air, like maybe one of the televisions? I am in the middle of the somewhat difficult task of figuring out which tabletop games I want to bring. There’s gonna be a lot of stuff going into storage for a few years.

Such an adventure, though. I have a spreadsheet of cities which are direct flights from Dublin. Rome is three hours away. This is going to be ridiculous.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Aw, that’s cute, I thought I wasn’t going to watch as many movies as I did in 2022. Instead I went from 423 watched to 508 watched. Remember when I said “I want to spend more time following my whims”? That worked out really well. In 2022, I did a weekly challenge plus a weekly movie watching club plus another weekly movie watching club — it got to be a grind. In 2023 I was more varied about my tastes and I had more fun.

I also went to not one but two film festivals, SIFF and Fantasia. S. came with to Montreal! Including shorts, I watched 36 movies at SIFF and 45 movies at Fantasia, so that’s a pretty big chunk of the additional movies right there. The festivals were immensely fun and I really, really need to remember how much I enjoy that kind of thing.

My time spent watching movies was absolutely worth it. My top ten movies of 2023 were excellent, and there were way more good ones than just those ten. Plus this was the year I really discovered Iranian cinema (A Separation, Certified Copy, No Bears), I got that Bergman boxed set and watched a ton of it, and I dug into 1970s American film in a more serious way.

Directors who were largely new to me who I really liked: Bergman, as per the above; Claire Denis, as a direct result of watching Trouble Every Day and Stars at Noon as a double feature at the Grand Illusion; and Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, thanks to the 2023 Hooptober challenge. I also kept watching more than my share of Aki Kaurismäki.

Oh, and while I only watched one Bela Tarr/Agnes Hranitzky movie in 2023, it was in fact enough to cement them among my very favorite directors. It gets no more grim than this. I’m very glad I got to watch Werckmeister Harmonies on the big screen, and I made a point of making Satantango the first thing I watched in 2024.

My most watched actor was Juliette Binoche, thanks to Claire Denis and a rewatch of Three Colours and a bunch of other good movies. After her it’s a lot of Shaw Brothers character actors — we finished the first volume of the Arrow Shawscope set, and got started on the second — plus some 70s Italian actors which I chalk up to a lot of poliziotteschi. Huh, I watched nine of those grimy nihilistic Italian crime flicks in 2023! Not bad. I did say I was more varied about my tastes.

How about 2024? For the second year running, I’m going to watch more TV. One reason I held off on this post for a month was because I wanted to test that theory out, and in fact I only (ha) watched 24 movies in January. Six a week is a lot of movies, but I also caught up on some Slow Horses and got started on a couple of other shows. It feels good.

S. and I won’t be attending Fantasia, barring something pretty unusual. I do plan to hit SIFF harder, since I got a pass this year, and I’ll be doing Noir City at SIFF this month. I also got a subscription to Radiance Films‘ releases for 2024. Not cheap! But I think of all the boutique Blu-ray labels they come closest to hitting my sweet spot, and S likes the look of the upcoming releases. So that’ll be cool.

All in all, if I had to guess, I’ll probably see close to 400 movies… but no weekly challenges again, other than our beloved Boofest.

As is perhaps obvious, I’ve stopped copying Letterboxd reviews to this blog. I finally figured out how to script downloads of my Letterboxd data, though, so over the course of the next month or so I’ll be writing code to pull my reviews into Datasette, which accomplishes my goal of making sure I control my own words without clogging up a mostly inactive blog.

And just like I said last year, the best video store in the country makes it possible for me to watch a huge range of movies I couldn’t see otherwise. If you have a local video store, and you like movies, support them. They need you.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

This is another belated post. As with Maggie, I didn’t have the heart to write it immediately. I finally wrote my post saying goodbye to Maggie because we were pretty sure Nixie didn’t have all that much time left; I’m writing this one because we’re going to visit a lovely pair of foster kittens this weekend, and one way or another I expect we’ll have new cats soon. Happier moment, same desire to speak before new emotions arise.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Maggie passed away a little more than a year after Bunny, on July 13th, 2022. I didn’t have the heart to write this at the time, but I wanted to memorialize her before the year ended.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

The second jury found the defendant guilty on all counts. As I said earlier this year, I’m at ease with my decision. Now that the case is over, I am comfortable saying that I think the defendant probably did it — I just didn’t think the evidence at hand proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.

There were no eyewitnesses who could identify the defendant as the shooter, although the shooter was inside a car which was clearly the defendant’s. He and his girlfriend certainly acted like people who wanted to hide their car after the murder. If I knew my car has been used to commit a crime, and I was living the life this guy was leading, I don’t think I’d be too optimistic about telling the police that it was my car but it wasn’t me.

The police didn’t bother tracking down some crucial evidence, particularly around the timing of a visit to a car wash. The defendant’s cousin said the visit was before the murder; the police said it was after. The timing matters for a few reasons, so why not just get the security footage to eliminate the uncertainty? It felt a lot like they were confident that they could just say what they believed to be true and win the case. I didn’t see any signs of lying or ill intent — just a casual approach. Or even an overworked approach.

The jury heard that one eyewitness identified the defendant in a lineup with a 75% certainty. We did not hear that the other eyewitness at the lineup said that the defendant was “absolutely not” the shooter. That second eyewitness is living without a home, and couldn’t be located, and you can’t reference second-hand testimony. None of that was part of my decision, because we didn’t know that during the trial. Still.

The tragedy here is that Zula Werede is dead, not that the defendant is going to spend a lot of time in jail. His death alone is tragic, but whatever happened was terribly random. Why was Herr, or whoever, driving through that parking lot at just the right time? (No indication that Werede was followed.) We’ll never know.

The defendant probably did it. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing that way. I’m not sad he was found guilty, but one of the things the trial really brought home for me was how little jail time is going to mean. Many of the witnesses were living subsistence level, desperate, addicted lives. We don’t address the causes.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Feeling mostly better other than being a bit more tired than usual. The final timeline:

10/29: almost certainly my initial exposure — I was at a loud crowded event without a ton of mask usage.
10/31: light symptoms.
11/1: first positive test (all my tests were at home).
11/2: Paxlovid course started.
11/6: Paxlovid course ends; maybe a couple of negative tests in the next few days? Can’t recall.
11/11: testing positive again; feeling sick but able to focus.
11/13: negative test (probably because at-home tests are not 100% reliable).
11/15: positive test again; able to focus well enough to deliver budget presentations.
11/19: able to write code again! A surprisingly important milestone.
11/23: negative test again, and this time the negative tests stuck. Haven’t tested positive since.
11/27: still getting a bit tired here and there, as noted, but I feel pretty much OK otherwise.

All told that was three and a half weeks of positive tests, and I felt pretty sick during most of that. Able to focus but definitely not great. Please get vaccinated and boosted.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

One of the ways I knew I was getting sick was that my ability to code dropped through the floor, so I’ve been fiddling with things from time to time as a test.

I’m still veering between faint positive tests and negative tests, but I got a wild hair and wrote some Python today. Credit for the underlying text and mechanics goes to Oliver Darkshire. I have taken the liberty of skipping assassination attempts when there’s no chance of success and decided that you can’t try an assassination attempt after an ending is reached.

./ldor.py
Lions are released onto the streets in an attempt to calm the population.
Flames: 1
Desolation: 1
Relocation: 0

You might want to assassinate the emperor, but there's no chance.

<snip>

Work continues on a house made of pure gold. It keeps melting.
Flames: 5
Desolation: 3
Relocation: 3

You might want to assassinate the emperor, but there's no chance.

There are no goods at market. "If you have no bread, then eat shit" is the word from the palace.
Flames: 5
Desolation: 4
Relocation: 3

Would you like to assassinate the emperor? [y/n]: n

The emperor sits in front of the flame and commands it to obey. It does not.
Flames: 6
Desolation: 4
Relocation: 4

Would you like to assassinate the emperor? [y/n]: y

You failed to assassinate the emperor with a roll of 11, and you are dead.

Obviously my play is sub-optimal. Don’t expect too much from me yet.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Well, “no big Paxlovid bounce” remains true, but last week was certainly a small one. I tested positive again on Friday and the weekend was pretty much no fun; no huge symptoms but I’ve just been tired and a bit fuzzy. Testing negative again today, which hopefully will continue. S. is still fine. We’re masking diligently, we have house zones we keep to, and we have air purifiers running.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Capturing this for my own reference and in case reading about the mechanics of health care are useful to anyone. I had not previously had covid to the best of my knowledge.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

In no particular order:

Bainbridge Island (Streamliner Diner, Poulsbo and viking cups)
Goofy train rides in Snoqualmie
Ape Caves & maybe staring into the crater of Mount St. Helens
Poke my nose into Cougar Mountain
Big Four Ice Caves

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I completed my superior court jury duty a little while ago, and enough time has passed so that I can write up some coherent thoughts on the experience. This is as much for myself to help me process as anything, but I do have some helpful tips if you ever find yourself serving on a jury.

Mundane details: jury selection was over Zoom, while the trial itself was conducted in person. It was a homicide case, although we had scope to consider manslaughter as well. The whole thing lasted almost exactly four weeks, including a little more than a week of deliberation. We were unable to reach a verdict; the judge and the lawyers were very clear that we shouldn’t consider that a failure on our parts. There will be a new trial.

I’m not talking about details in public for various reasons, but feel free to ask in private if we know each other.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

My apologies if you’ve seen this already; I mostly wanted to capture the memories in a place more mine than Twitter is. If you are sensitive to pet death, probably move on.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

If coronavirus isn’t gonna get me to start blogging regularly again, nothing will, huh?

To quote myself on Instagram: We’re doing just fine. We’re self-isolating — shopping once a week, not socializing at all, sane amount of food in the freezer, working from home. We drove down to Magnuson Park this morning and were happy to see it wasn’t crowded. Walked down to the water, admired a couple of ducks, waited for people to pass by on the main path, walked back to the car.

A few coping strategies have worked well for me. I am paying more attention to a couple of Discords I’m in. I figured out how to stream pro wrestling into Discord from my browser, that was fun. Sorry about the copyright, NJPW! I won’t make a habit of it post-pandemic. I’ve gamed online, um, twice now and I need to find a couple of people who want to try out Electric Bastionland. I finally made some sorbets to use up extra farm share fruits.

Stay safe out there, y’all.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

What do you know; it’s a different culture! Um.

That was a pretty great trip. It was really satisfying to find out that I’m still able to do a 14 day trip with one bag successfully; I’m getting older but still pretty functional. We saw places I’d never seen, which is always awesome. My backpack was stolen on the way to Budapest (literally from three feet above my head, kudos to the thief) so that was sad, but I had my electronics and passport and credit cards on me at the time so it could have been worse. I’m lucky to be able to take that kind of loss in stride.

I did find out something interesting about my resilience. I can be very minimal if I’ve planned for it, which I knew. However, as it turned out, the thought of figuring out where to buy some replacement clothing and toiletries and a bunch of other small things was daunting for me. I didn’t mind being bare bones, I minded having to reconstruct my framework for travel on short notice. In the end Delta rebooked our flight at no cost so we could cut the trip short and not spend any additional money. Right call, and we’ll revisit Budapest again some day.

Things I liked a lot, in rough chronological order: Paris croissants, Disneyland Paris (the main park), the Amsterdam houseboat we stayed in, pannekoeken, rijstafel, Amsterdam museums, Utrecht city center, Cologne Cathedral, drinking kolsch in Cologne, the train from Cologne to Vienna along the Rhine, Vienna cafes, Vienna ferris wheel, apple strudel, and a fake ruin bar in Budapest.

Things that were underwhelming: Walt Disney Studios Park, the Disney hotel, the Imperial Quarters in Vienna, and food at Disneyland Paris (worse than Disneyland or WDW’s food).

A casual goal for the Europe two-week trip was trying a one bag approach to packing. Context, in case you’re randomly wandering across this: I’m nearing 50, I’m not in particularly great shape, but I have decent tolerance for roughing it. I’m also in the big and tall category, and was still able to find technical clothing that’d fit (albeit not with a ton of variety).

I brought an Osprey Farpoint 55 backpack, which is 55 liters of capacity spread among a main pack and a zip-on day pack. It doesn’t have as many interior compartments as I’d like but I made up for that with some packing cubes and all’s pretty well. I checked mine but I’m pretty sure I could have gotten away with carrying it on the plane.

Packing list (all clothing made with technical quick-dry fabrics):

3 long sleeved shirts and 4 plain T-shirts
3 pairs of pants
3 pairs of socks plus 1 pair of compression socks for the flight
4 pairs of underwear
iPad, Smart Keyboard, iPhone, lots of cables, and a universal charger
toiletries including a bottle of Dr. Bronners peppermint
Allbirds sneakers and a pair of sandals
Bathing suit
Light rain shell
Fold up travel hangars and a travel clothesline
Travel towel (invaluable for drying hand-washed clothing)

This all fits neatly in the Osprey with some room to spare. My plan was to hand-wash laundry every night or every other night. After a couple of iterations of this I think that would be perfectly possible but better to save it for necessity. We probably had to hand-wash at Disneyland Paris since it’s not a great place to find a laundromat, but I’m currently sitting at a brown cafe in the middle of Amsterdam drinking coffee and waiting for a laundromat dryer to finish up and that’s working out just fine for me.

Next time out I’ll add a pair of socks and a pair of pants so I can go a bit longer without feeling grotty. The shirt load out depends on the weather. If I expected to need long sleeves every day I’d want an extra long sleeved shirt. As is I’ve been fine.

The Allbirds aren’t great walking shoes but they’re okay. The ankle support is fairly poor. On the other hand, they’re very light, which is why I chose them. I’ll stick with them for travel purposes. Conversely, I wouldn’t bother with the pair of sandals under similar conditions. No point bringing something I’m only going to wear around hotel rooms.

We did a quick two-day visit, which is not all that long, but I think we gave the parks a pretty good once over. Disneyland Paris itself — the castle park — is spectacular. Walt Disney Studios Park is pretty dead but has a couple of excellent rides. And Disney Village is a dull shopping area.

As hotels go: I’d kill to have enough money to stay in the Disneyland Hotel casually. It’s literally part of the approach to Disneyland Paris, and it’s gorgeous. Sequoia Lodge was fine: less polish than I’d expected from a Disney hotel but I have no serious complaints.

I am really glad we made it out for a two day trip and would recommend it if you’re a big Disney fan and have the ability to get there. In more detail…

( Read the rest of this entry » )

S. and I took an Amtrak up to Vancouver last Friday, hopped onto Skytrain, had a nice lunch in Gastown, and boarded the Ruby Princess for a one day repositioning cruise down to Seattle. This frivolity is brought to you by the opportunity to check out a cruise line’s style cheap before booking a longer Baltic cruise in a couple of years. We’re gonna stick with Holland America but the Ruby Princess was fun.

We’re not experts in any way, but the Ruby Princess struck us as skewing a bit younger and more flashy than the relatively staid Holland America aesthetic. (Same corporate parent, by the by.) We spent two hours on karaoke and it was fairly awesome.

The main dining room food wasn’t great and the upsell for booze was kind of tiring. The buffet was better — the Indian food had some real spice to it and I liked the roast beef a lot. I also think Holland America’s buffet had more variety.

The open pool spaces were abundant but kinda inward turned. I really liked the aft pool deck on our Holland America ship, because it was very open and you got a great 270 degree view of Alaska. The Ruby Princess has a super-cool terraced aft pool, but it doesn’t have the same panoramic view.

I’d guess the ship was maybe 60-70% full. Judging purely by the karaoke, a lot of locals had the same plan we did — fun night out and some pretty scenery.

Definitely worth grabbing one of these if you live in a cruise ship port that has ‘em.