Weeknotes 2024 W31: Solitary envy

Quick bits:

• Palestine must be free.

• Wikipedia has dark mode now? Very good!

• My area of Berlin is typically free of mosquitos, but there was one in my bedroom yesterday. How did it get there? And why? Did it not have a map?!

• I got reminded that when I got run over by a bicycle the other week, I did so in front of a hospital. Two days before that, I got run over at a stone’s throw from another hospital. I am really good at picking efficient traffic accident sites.

I had my first two days at my new job. First impressions are good. Very good, even. Could this be the job I’ve been looking for, for so long? The job I deserve?

Time will tell.

This company does remote working properly. In video calls, people dial in separately, even if multiple are in the same office location. I like this a lot, because it puts every meeting participant on equal footing.¹¹¹ This is in stark contrast to my old employer, where, despite having multiple office locations and people working remotely, remote workers would consistently get the short end of the stick. Meeting participants not close to the microphone would be inaudible or unintelligible. 

The office is in a nice location, too (Prenzlauer Berg) where there are plenty of good food options.²²² Multiple people spontaneously offered their condolences when they found out where the office of my previous employer was: an area with almost no food options at all.  The office and its surroundings are so nice, in fact, that I am considering coming to the office on a semi-regular basis.

My coworkers are nice, and the communication channels are all open, which I greatly appreciate.³³³ I wrote about the importance of this in Week­notes 2024 W03: Open channels.  No more Microsoft Teams and Outlook, either, and the laptop I received is the best machine I’ve ever worked with.⁴⁴⁴ The laptop provided to me at my previous employer was filthy when it arrived, so obviously second-hand and seemingly not cleaned for an eternity. Eww. 

I have a distinct status-quo bias when it comes to work. This manifests itself in thinking that even though things are bad, they won’t be better elsewhere, or that the risk of changing employers is too high. I can tell that I’m happy I overcame that status-quo bias.

I bought the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection,⁵⁵⁵ The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection (Zachtronics, 2022), published by Zachtronics.  because solitaire games are fun, and oh my — are these solitaire games well designed!

I am envious, because my own solitaire game feels simplistic and very unpolished by comparison. How dare the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection be so good!

Envy is motivating, though, which is why I’ve been updating my own solitaire game, continuing to prepare for additional game modes. I’ve also made it auto-perform obvious moves, like automatically moving aces to the foundation piles.

The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection makes it clear that there is still innovation possible in solitaire card games, and so I am already playing around with my own variations.

In the mean time, enjoy a small update to my solitaire game.

I am on IMDb now. The sole writing credit on my IMDb profile is for a short film that’s still in postproduction, but you’ll hear it here once it is finished.

I suppose that I can now properly call myself a writer. Not that I couldn’t have done that before: if you write, then you are a writer.

Fiction writing continues to be a struggle for me. There are three reasons that I can identify:

• Too simplistic: The story ideas that I come up with don’t seem to be fit for anything bigger than a short story, or a novella at best.

• Bad organization: My organizational skills get in the way when fleshing out story ideas. I don’t have a good workflow for evolving an idea. The material I create for any story of non-trivial size becomes a mess, and even Scrivener can’t help to keep me organized.

• Emotional work: A good story requires a ton of attention to detail especially to the human aspect, which means a lot of emotional work is required. Emotional work is hard work.

Entertainment:

• As I mentioned above already, I bought the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection.⁶⁶⁶ The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection (Zachtronics, 2022), published by Zachtronics.  It’s so good.

Links:

• It’s Not Just You. No One Wants Kids Anymore. (Fads)

• Invisible Attackers (Tim Bray): Insightful write-up about the recent flare-up of racism and abuse on Mas­to­don and elsewhere.

• Public Work by Cosmos: Prepare to lose some time in here!

• David Beckham Beach Kicks DEBUNK (Captain Disillusion): Cap D is back!