secretagentmoof

This is about three years late at this point, but eh. Still recovering from ba.5, where I doubt that fourth time will be the charm.

Visiting Japan was a very mixed bag. I enjoyed the sights, despite some of my favorite things either going away entirely (favorite tonkatsu place) or changing beyond recognition (AFURI now has a zillion branches, is more expensive, and the quality of their chaashu has gone down). I have to admit that it was disappointing to get there and have the main things I wanted to see in Tokyo canceled because the strongest typhoon in decades caused major havoc. On the other hand, I went to a bunch of places in Kansai I'd never been to before; if you're into sake I would very highly recommend wandering the Nadagogo district where there's something like 40 breweries within 5km or so. I particularly liked Hamafukutsuru, and at the Sawanotsuru museum I ran into some retired folks that were also doing day-drinking sake wandering and ended up chatting with them for a good long while in a combination of "English for Japanese speakers" and "really terrible Japanese" and "chotto matte, let me look this up".

On the other hand, the trip made me realize just how much anxiety lurks and dominates much of my perception; I failed to ask pals that I've known for years if they wanted to meet up because I just couldn't deal with things, even despite having some tasty anxiolytics. There were some events I failed to go to because I felt that I couldn't communicate well enough, or would stand out too much, or would generally be intrusive somehow. I couldn't and can't decide if realizing that the same sorts of activities and interactions would be difficult for me in the US as well. And then there's the undercurrent of nostalgia for when I was living there and genuinely happy and content for the first time in years - before the combination of getting laid off, realizing just how difficult I found it to communicate in Japanese, and discovering just how awful many of the jobs there were made me decide that living there probably wasn't very tenable. That this led me to working briefly and disastrously for Google in London is part of the irony.

Next post will probably be along the lines of "Death of sysadmin, looking after the folks, gender politics, and how hard are Spain visas to get?"

I've been meaning to post my "decade in review" and "thoughts about my japan trip, redux" and "update japan travel recommendations", and even started a few times, but it's seemed relatively futile, uninteresting, or both. Getting blocked on Twitter by someone to whom I had the temerity to suggest that my neuropsychological woes are not, in fact, solely due to childhood trauma or a refrigerator mother has not exactly reinforced my inclinations to communicate, either. (For what it's worth, I believe my woes are mostly due to a combination of genetics, [over?]sensitivity to emotional states and physical stimuli, and indirect childhood trauma mostly centered around not understanding how I function.)

Looks like I started an entry in May, but never finished it. How time flies.

My sister had her first kid in May, so that's nice. She'd mostly given up hope of having any after IVF hadn't done anything, so quite the surprise for her. She and her husband haven't disclosed what their work situations will look like, but Mom has volunteered to babysit come September or October (as the practice where she'd been working for the past thirty-odd years is finally shutting down around then.)

Last night, the second person my age I've known personally died from cancer. "New normal."

The urge to GTFO Chicago is increasing. It's nice and all, but it's still incredibly midwest-conventional, and I miss having large amounts of freaks around. And while the city is great when it ain't winter, that's still five-ish months out of the year for now. (The S2 spreadhsheet in this PLOS ONE paper says that by 2050, Chicago will have roughly the same weather that St Louis does now - and St Louis doesn't get regular amounts of snow, so I'm told - but that's cold comfort in the short term, ho ho ho.) LA sounds like the most intriguing place right now, as the other places I would actively prefer to be (Berlin, Tokyo) have extremely difficult and possibly insurmountable logistical challenges (language, healthcare, other stuff).

I still don't know wtf I want to do career-wise, either. Maybe some combo of infosec/"the responsible adult" role, as classic unix sysadmin seems to have pretty much died from the combo of devops, systemd, and cloud computing. No certs and no direct job in that field, either, although in practical terms about 25% of my last job was infosec and infosec coordination.

A complete lack of motivation coupled with extra-heaping amounts of anhedonia is pretty much No Fun.

Last night I dreamt that I was a blonde woman who was trying to get together with some sort of vaguely Norse demigod type person - and to help things along, I hired a "forensic accountant" who dressed entirely in black with his face in shadows and who only spoke in whispered short sentences. I was advise that the demigod needed to take the wooden sword from the display case - something which said demigod had wanted to do all along, but needed an excuse - while another demigod stood by and mused about how they were never able to grow that kind of wood on Earth for some reason.

I am coming the the end of my month-long vacation to Amsterdam and Berlin. I fly out tomorrow, and while I had sorta wanted to go out with a bang and drink and club the night away, I still have some shit I want to do tomorrow before my flight; so instead, with a whimper, I am eating salami, smoked cheese, and mustard sandwiches and drinking incredibly cheap beer in my hotel room and writing this.

Amsterdam was fun. It was my second time there, so I had a better idea of what to expect. More and more, it reminds me of a European version of Las Vegas, where loads of chavs and Europeans go to smoke pot and gawk at the hookers and generally make asses out of themselves. The vast majority of shops seem centered around the tourist trade, and I didn't meet anyone at all who didn't speak excellent English. (Still some interesting gaps; I asked what the 'turnover' was for businesses in the area, and that was a word that they hadn't encountered before.) I also got to meet up with my erstwhile coworker Peter and his wife, which was really quite nice; I hadn't seem them for at least five years. Didn't get to talk to them for nearly long enough.

I'm still trying to get to grips with the population distribution of Amsterdam - i.e. where do the native a'damers actually live? There were far more grocery stores than I expected around in such a small area, so I'd guess that more of them are living near the city center than you'd think - but the city only has a population of around 900k, about the same as SF. Some of the other larger cities - e.g. Haarlem - are only about half an hour away by train, so it forms part of a larger conurbation; I'd guess that the people who don't live in A'dam itself are those who don't want to, not those who can't.

Hotels in A'dam are usurious, even in the shoulder season (i.e. when it starts getting cold), but it looked like most other costs - transport, food, etc - weren't that bad. The food was OK, but I wouldn't call it a gourmet wonderland. Having easy access to Belgian beer for cheap was really quite nice, though.

Overall, the people seemed generally pretty nice, if a bit blunt; the big exception is when they got on their bicycles, where many of them turned into gigantic flaming assholes. I didn't get to chat to many native Dutch folk, but they were pretty warm once they got into the conversation and had more of a sense of who you were. (After a nice conversation about San Francisco, amongst other things, one of the shopowners said to come back for a coffee if I were in the area again.) I also got the impression that - again, like Vegas - very, very few people asked about what it was like to be in a so amazingly tourist-heavy area. One of the barkeeps said that many Dutch folk will initially speak to most waitstaff in English, as they don't expect that they'll necessarily be or speak Dutch.

So, overall, A'dam was nice; I liked Arendsnest for beer, the Van Gogh museum for Van Gogh, and the the Stedelijk museum for modern art. (I wouldn't bother with the Rijksmuseum unless you really, really like Golden Age Dutch portraiture or reaaaallly want to see Rembrandt's Night Watch in person.)

Two weeks from now, I'll be in Amsterdam for a week and Berlin for three weeks. Any suggestions for what I should see or do while in either place? (I was definitely going to go back to the Van Gogh museum, but that's about the only definite plan I have thus far.)

I should write up a 'state of the moof' post, too; it's been a while.

I have now been without internet for six days. AT&T has been utterly fucking useless in terms of telling me what the actual issue is, what the estimated time to resolution is, issuing consistent trouble ticket numbers, and not living up to the Lily Tomlin quote, "We're the phone company. We don't care; we don't have to."

I was training to be a psychiatrist for vampires and other supernatural creatures, and I had this handy wristband I could toggle so I could appear either vampirelike or human. When I was a normal human, all the vampires looked pale, deformed, and/or crazed, circling around me madly and cackling and screaming gibberish; when I toggled myself to vampire appearance, though, they became perfectly ordinary looking, dressed in normal clothing and not their usual rags or outlandish costumes, speaking in a normal tone of voice and in a relaxed, friendly manner about perfectly reasonable topics. On the other hand, humans who saw me as a vampire began to panic, run around, and shriek, causing an undue fuss. Since I didn't know the neighborhood well enough to know which grocery stores were for humans and which were for vampires, I had to be very cautious and hide until I could be sure who was what.

I went into the city to see an exhibition ("Trace") by Ai Weiwei; it consisted of Lego portraits of various political prisoners/dissidents. It was originally part of a larger installation at Alcatraz, and the parts on display were kept exactly the same as it was there; there were empty spaces where the concrete beams were at the prison. They also had little kiosks explaining wtf all those people were and why they were being held. It was nice enough, I suppose, but I was underwhelmed; I think I spent all of 30-45 minutes there, and a lot of that was dawdling and/or chatting with the docents about the exhibit. Chatting with the docents was the most interesting part - although I'm a little surprised that I was able to engage with them, much less carry on a conversation. Perhaps the klonopin is helping.

After that, I wandered around Clark street and up to my old haunts on Belmont - which have almost completely been replaced with big box stores (Target, DSW), utterly generic and interchangeable restaurants, or utterly twee boutiques. The local punk store, The Alley, which used to be the place to go for body jewelry, band T-shirts, leather clothing, and insane platform shoes... has moved across the street to a nice little storefront where there's a coffee bar on the first floor, and a small, curated selection of band shirts, jewelry, leather wristbands, and shirts featuring the former store's logos. Had a latte and chatted with the barista there about the neighborhood and technology, encouraging to look into the tutorials and material out there and to not get suckered in all starry-eyed by big corps with the lure of being able to make videogames. So that was nice.

After my nice little two hour jaunt, I got back to the car to find the battery was completely dead. Reading the manual, I found out about the following purported features: the key will not release from the ignition lock unless there's power, the battery is in the trunk/rear of the car, there is a jump-charge point in the front but it consists of a well-protected plus terminal (good!) and a random rusty as fuck seemingly-arbitrarily-chosen bolt as ground (baaaaad.) Also, according to the manual, if you pop out a plastic insert in the bottom of the steering column there's a plunger you can press to release the ignition key; I was completely unsuccessful in finding/engaging it. Similarly, if you happen to have a 3.5in/10cm or longer screwdriver, there's a panel in the back of the liftgate you can pop out, wedge in the screwdriver, and release the gate. That didn't work, either. When digging around in the back to try and find the panel, I found the hidden storage compartment! Where helpfully, my dad had put.... two pairs of golf shoes. And no jumper cables.

Two random people had come by to offer their help, but neither of them had jumper cables or could assist me with the random wacky bullshit features of this oh so wonderful 2007 Chevy HHR. If I had been able to get the key out, I would have walked up to the WalMart a half mile away to get jumper cables or a jump kit... but given the neighborhood, I also wouldn't have put it past people to randomly lock the doors and make the car completely inaccessible. (Another fun fact - there is precisely one entry keyway, on the driver's door. None of the other three doors or the liftgate have key entry.) Time to call the parental units, whose car this was and who I had thought would have had tools and supplies in the back.

Dad answered their landline and cleverly avoided my question, "Do you have towing services included with the car insurance?" by saying I should call AAA [The American Automobile Association, providers of roadside assistance, maps, etc]; I tried rephrasing this two or three times, but no dice. So he read off 9 digits of AAA account number and hung up. As he failed to give me the actual phone number and I was somewhat irritated at him already, I tried finding the number online; no dice. Called my sister, who I knew would actually answer my questions in a correct and timely fashion, and got the phone number. Called them up to find... AAA account numbers have sixteen digits and Dad had neglected to give me the first seven.

Called Mom on her cellphone and explained what was going on this time around. She read off her entire account number and verified the phone number for service. Mom also revealed that she had moved the car that morning, and got confused as to which levers were for the windshield wipers and which were for the lights; she had set the lights to manual on and not in the automatic position in trying to turn off the wipers. We theorized at the time that was what had caused the battery to drain, and she was extra apologetic on the phone. I told her I wasn't mad at her, it was an understandable accident - but I was kind of pissed at Dad. She gave me a sigh of understanding, and offered to come and get me if need be. I told her I didn't think it would be necessary. Ho ho ho ho.

Called AAA and was told somebody would be there to jump the car in ninety minutes. I ate a hotdog from the nearby place, sat on the front bumper because it was 90F and all the windows were rolled up (and were, naturally, power windows with no manual override), and stewed. Guy finally showed up with his power kit, and while he was nice enough, he seemed like kind of a dimwit. He didn't have any sandpaper or wire brushes to clean off the contacts; instead he seemed to think that just moving the jumpers around would eventually provide a good enough connection. Eventually, there was enough power for the dashboard indicators and headlights to come on, and I could turn on the radio! But the windows didn't work, the ignition wouldn't turn over, and none of the locks unlocked. Sad trombones played in my head, and the battery guy said he'd call the tow truck.

AAA SMSed me to say that the estimated arrival time for the tow truck was 11:58pm; as it was only 9pm, this was a rather unpleasant surprise. I figured, fuck it, I'll go drink in one of the local bars to pass the time. It was a surprise when the driver called 20 minutes later to say he was about two blocks away - when I was about five blocks away from the car - and I hustled on back. I arrived just in time to see the tow truck driver start to pull out of the alley where he had been turning around, and some asshat park his car right in front of mine with maybe a foot of clearance. Both tow truck driver and I were decidedly not happy; he said he could either call out the flatbed, or try to winch the car up by one wheel and angle it out so he could get the tow bar fully engaged. I opted for the latter, as I didn't want to wait another couple of hours, and after nine or ten iterations of pulling forward and backing up on the rather narrow street that was parked up on both sides, success! The car was angled out, the tow bar was fully engaged with both wheels, and we could head back towards the house.

It does not sound like the life of a tow truck driver is a happy, jolly one. He said he'd been working for sixteen hours, hadn't eaten for eight, and his asshat co-manager was being particularly useless that day. I told him that if he wanted to stop and eat, that was fine by me, but he waved it off; I asked him if this was a normal occurrence for him, and I got to learn further sordid details of the towing life. He said that he was part of an independent towing company, and that AAA jacked him around quite a bit, making him drive across town several times a day and not giving enough time for that or for finishing the tow. In addition, he sometimes did car repossession; he's been shot at, stabbed, had the windows of his tow truck attacked with a baseball bat, all sorts of exciting stuff - and even the normal tow jobs seemed to bring out the craziness in lots of people.

Anyhow - we got to the gas/service station a few blocks from the house, Mom arrived, we paid the nice man, and went home. The next day, we found out that it wasn't the headlights that caused the battery to die, but the starter went kablooey and shorted out as well as a short or two elsewhere. Oh, and that the shocks in back were so dead that both the springs had broken. And the front brakes were pitted and needed repair. And one of the tires was bad. And there might be other things, too.

Thus ends my little story of going out on a nice summer day, having two hours of leisure and five hours of car issues. I think this illustrates part of why I have trust issues with Dad, really strong urges to check on or fix things myself instead of relying on others, or for asking for things in general.

I awoke to find myself in Canada and as a skinny, gangly teenage blonde girl. This was a dark, spooky Canada, though; there were spooky eldritch things lurking everywhere. The ATM that appeared after the proper incantation that let you deposit and withdraw mojo looked interesting, but I didn't get to see it up close. I may have been a magical being myself, possibly a shapeshifter, but I spent most of first my time trying to find something decent to wear and to figure out how to get enough cash to buy a train ticket back to Michigan.

At some point, a werewolf started monologuing at me, talking about how werewolves were the only supernatural creatures accepted by society, mostly because they had such a long history in popular media, and because they could shed their animal guises at any time they wished. At that point, it switched to a video presentation showing the various types of werewolves (cyborg werewolf, virtual werewolf, old-school werewolf, witty and urbane Tex Avery-ish werewolf) and how various werewolves reacted when discovered. Some claimed it was just cosplay; some said it was shooting as part of a movie. One unfortunate said, "This is just a costume! Let me show you!" A voice off to the side said "oh no, man, don't do that, it's a bad idea" - but the first guy just closed his eyes, grunted, and concentrated. And what do you know! The werewolf head popped off to expose a baby head. "Seriously, man, don't do it!" warned the other guy, but after more grunting, the entire six feet lower body of the werewolf popped off to show the torso of an infant, followed by a triumphant "See! I'm a perfectly normal... baby...." before keeling over. At that point, the video presentation paused; an overlay appeared showing an internal diagram of the 'baby' and the werewolf body. All that the baby contained was the brain, about 100 cc of lung, and no other organs (e.g. a heart) or digestive system - all of those were still in the werewolf body.