Dispatch #20 (October 2024)
By David Eisinger · View original post
Note: I’m trying to get back to posting these in the first couple days of the month, so this dispatch only covers the last two weeks.
I turned 42 this month (apparently I have a very common birthday). Hitchhiker’s Guide aside, 42 doesn’t seem a particularly important milestone, but it is the product of six and seven, and so 42 represents the end of my seventh six-year cycle, which is an interesting way to think about the phases of life.
- 0-6: early childhood
- 6-12: elementary school
- 12-18: middle + high school
- 18-24: college + first job
- 24-30: my 20s; started at Viget
- 30-36: late single-dude period
- 36-42: family man
What will the next six-year cycle bring? Hopefully more of the same. Life is grand.
To celebrate, we headed to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which was a scene. Nevie loved Dollywood and visiting with her grandparents, and we enjoyed some time at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Nico started daycare last week, which is bittersweet; it’s been wonderful having him around all day. But we love our daycare and it’s fun to have him and Nev in the same place.
Just a few more weeks until my half-marathon. I’m feeling relatively good, hitting my mileage goals, though I’m discouraged with my pace and energy level on the longer runs. I’m trying to make time to run while it’s light out – I don’t think running in the dark after a long day is doing me any favors.
Finished a couple small house projects: a hanging system for Nev’s art table and some storage for our reusable grocery bags.
One of my favorite things about running is this: it doesn’t matter what else happens throughout the day – if I run, it was a good day. I feel the same way about these little home improvement efforts: any day I use my tools, skills, and agency to improve our living space is a good day.
This month
- Adventure: Wilmington to meet my new nephew, Bull City Race Fest half-marathon, camping at Fairy Stone State Park
- Project: make a new music track!
- Skill: keep working my way through my drum programming book; I loaded up some samples onto my SP-404 and have made decent progress
Reading
- Fiction: House of Assassins, Larry Correia – this series isn’t blowing my mind but at this point I’m invested enough that I’ll see the whole thing through
- Non-fiction: The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew B. Crawford – this is really very good and speaks to me at a deep level; a little dense if you (like me) don’t read a lot of academic writing but highly recommended regardless
Links
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There are moments with children, even in a boring, safe, suburban existence like mine, where you just feel like you’re in Survival Mode. And every once in a while it lifts and you feel like you’ve moved beyond just surviving, and you feel like you’re actually living. The children eat their food. You all tell stories and laugh. Books after tubs with no whining. You’re a quartet, and you’re all performing the same music.
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Contemporary cycling is all about spandex and personal bests. The bicycle designer Grant Petersen has amassed an ardent following by urging people to get comfortable bikes, and go easy.
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Making money depends on other people, so it’s harder. It’s not entirely under your control. It’s an outer game. Reducing what you need is easier. It’s entirely under your control. It’s an inner game.
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Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language
Perhaps this is why I see the ethos behind the programming language Go as both a rebuke and a potential corrective to my generation of strivers. Its creators hail from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer commercial ambitions, and it is, for my money, the premier general-purpose language of the new millennium – not the best at any one thing, but nearly the best at nearly everything. A model for our flashy times.
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To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
You have to imagine a life you can live with, where you are, when you are. If you don’t, you’ll never be satisfied. Neither AI nor anything else is coming to save you from the things you don’t like about being a person. The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it. That’s what I would tell to everyone out there: this is it. This is it. This is it. You’re never going to hang out with Mr. Data on the Holodeck. I know that, for a lot of people, mundane reality is everything they want to escape. But it could be so much worse.
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There was a time when I felt some resonance between spending time in the social stream and doing my own work. As if the movement of the water imparted some energy or power I could make use of, and then return. But it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way.
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A good assistant to your future self
Yes, a diary is a good spaceship for time travel: for meditating on the present, flinging ourselves into the future, and visiting ourselves in the past.
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Crypto’s missing plateau of productivity
I think that even the most overhyped technology usually delivers some benefit to the world. And often succeeds quietly, long after the hype has died. Recent examples include 3D printing, which has found massive success in prototyping, medical applications - a friend had a filling 3D-printed right in his doctor’s office - and niche consumer items. Etsy is awash with 3D printed lamps, some even that I own. Or drones, which are now used all the time in news coverage, on job sites, and by people filming themselves hiking.
