Random Access Memories

It’s a shame that David Bowie died. But I think it should be a reminder to us all to do what we want in life.

“I really had a hunger to experience everything that life had to offer, from the opium den to whatever. And I think I have done just about everything that it’s possible to do” – David Bowie in an interview with The Telegraph

“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring” – David Bowie to his audience at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1998

Well, he certainly didn’t bore us. 🙂

These were both printed on my 3D printer this morning. Same feed rate, same plastic, same temperature, same nozzle diameter.

So when the one on the left started coming out “weird” I thought the printer must be broken somehow.

What I finally realized happened, is that I had changed the nozzles recently. From the .3mm one to the .7mm one. The part on the right was printed with the larger nozzle and printed fine. But after that print I went back and changed some of the settings in the slicer and created another gcode file. It set the nozzle back to the .3mm setting and gave me the part on the left by only extruding half the plastic it should have.

Moral of the story? Double check ALL your settings if something looks wrong. 😀

So, someone I know just bought a Windows manual for 80$.

Yep, the good old paper copy “book”. I cannot stop wondering why.

What could possibly be worth so much, that is not already online?

Feels like just a blatant marketing gimmick to get people to spend money for outdated information.

So, I’ve mentioned this a few times and some people give me the “WTF?!” reply. They don’t grasp how an extrovert can be shy.

Being an extrovert just means you don’t like being alone. It doesn’t mean you have good social skills or you lack anxiety. It doesn’t mean you’re “good” at getting along with people.

I’ll give you an example.

Tonight I went out to a bit of a party. I dressed up, and when I left I thought that I looked really nice. Didn’t have any worries on the walk all the way there.

I arrived and there were about 40 people in the space. Some soft music was being played. Tons of conversations were already going on.

And as I looked around the realization hit me in the face like a cold fish, “I know none of these people”.

Suddenly they were all far prettier than me, happier than me, more self-confident than me, or on the arm of someone to support them. My overwhelming feeling? I didn’t belong there. I was old, ugly, and not looking happy. (The last one I know was true, the first two were anxiety.) I tried to talk to someone and it ended up extremely awkward, which threw more gasoline on the fire. Normally I can actually handle a decent conversation. I’m sure nobody there thought I was crazy.

So after a few minutes trying to see if there was some way to feel more “in place” and failing, I left. I spent all of ten minutes there.

On the walk home I was upset, ashamed, scared.

And that my friends, is what happens when you’re an anxious and shy extrovert. You end up back home where you don’t want to be because while it sucks to be alone, it’s not terrifying.

You wait and try to find people that understand and can put up with the little quirks, and you rarely if ever jump in the pool without them.

A quote from the head of technology at the architecture firm i’m working for. It was in response to me asking about timelines and deadlines relating to technical work on support tickets. (IE. They can wait.)

I’ll get right to the point. The recent takeover of a federal building in Oregon is terrorism.

Just because they are white and wearing cowboy hats and not dark-skinned wearing turbans makes no difference. They are threatening violence to intimidate people into meeting their demands.

The FBI definition is as follows:

“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:

– Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
– Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
– Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

Let’s stop acting like it’s just a simple “protest”.