Weeknotes 2023 W41: Recovery

Defreyne, Denis

Weeknotes 2023 W41: Recovery

October 9–15, 2023

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500 words

Quick bits:

With my hospital roommate, I have identified the top three German inventions. In no particular order: X-rays (Röntgen rays), the printing press, and Apfelschorle. I will not be taking questions.
I am down to 6 emails in my inbox. That’s the lowest amount of emails in my inbox I’ve had in years.

My heart surgery went without a hitch. I returned home on Tuesday. I am doing well, and near the end of recovery. I’m following doctors’ orders and am holding off on doing exercise until mid coming week or so.

A significant part of the recovery time seems to be mentally processing what happened, and how lucky I got.

When I opened up the Fitbit app on my phone for the first time after surgery, I spotted a section called “Heart Settings,” but when I tried to open it, I got the error message “oops, something went wrong.” Ha.

I went back to work on Wednesday, the day after leaving the hospital. Maybe I could’ve gotten a few more sick days, but it is fine the way it is.

There is a new AI-based search tool at work, and the #1 example of how good it is, is that searching for the term “benefits” surfaces the page titled “Benefits.” AI technology really isn’t delivering, is it?

I skipped the final acting class on Wednesday as I didn’t quite feel recovered enough to participate. My attendance was spotless before that, and I imagine it must’ve been not so nice for my scene partner to have nobody to work with — I’m sorry!

In other bad news, the new eight-week intensive acting course that I signed up for is not going through due to lack of sign-ups. I’m so sad. I’ll need to figure out what else I want to be doing.

Entertainment:

I finished Drive your plow over the bones of the dead.¹ It’s excellent. I was flying through the book, which I attribute in part to the hospital stay with not much to do.
I purchased Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and it’s rather good. I’m enjoying it.

Links:

No one actually wants simplicity (Luke Plant)
New talk: Making Hard Things Easy (Julia Evans)
Tokyo Rising: So pretty!
Here’s What Ethical AI Really Means (Philosophy Tube)

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Penguin Publishing Group, 2019). ↩︎

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