Brian's World

Dehumidifier

I have little motivation to blog at the moment, but I am using that as the exact reason why I should write something.  It is late, I would like to be in bed at the moment and I am feeling very warm in the basement.  Behind me, the dehumidifier ir roaring away, doing its thing to keep the basement moisture free.

Last Friday my mom had a sizable chunk of skin removed from her leg, so I’ve been at home helping to “take care of her.”  Over the weekend dad decided the grass in Vermont urgently needed to be mowed, so I was home alone taking care of mother on Saturday and Sunday.  Luckily she is not super demanding if you offer her food every so often and bring her reading material (she claims walking is tough).  During this whole process, she and my father seem to think that I am always on-call to do stuff and that I’m not pulling my weight around the house.  Sure, I’m at home which is different than my brother who is working at a theme park, but I’m working just as hard… if not harder sometimes.  I don’t want to attempt to debate whether being a computer “scientist” is harder than operating a roller coaster, but I don’t have a standard operating procedure for completing any of my projects, I also don’t have a boss who assigns me very specific tasks to complete.  I think it is partially a visibility issue.  My parents have no clue what I do all day in front of this screen and neither of their careers have put them in a situation where they can relate to what I do.  On the other hand, standing outside all day repeating the same action for n hours is pretty easy to understand and relate to.

The past few days I’ve been sleeping later than I would like.  When I’m laying in bed I’m usually coming up with pretty good excuses for not getting up, but they are still just excuses.  Examples from the past week include: running low on shaving cream, mom or brother being in the shower, someone cooking in the kitchen,  or the complete lack of friendly-breakfast food.  I would like to execute the same routine every morning just like I do during the school year, but everyone else at home doesn’t believe in static schedules.  I can’t rely on the shower or kitchen to be open at the same time every morning and there is a high probability any special food I acquire for my own breakfast will be consumed before I get to enjoy it.  I have been seeking a reputable vendor of bagels besides Dunkin Donuts, because it is unacceptable in this house to go to Dunkin Donunts unless it is a special occasion (or you are dad and thereby an exception to any of mom’s rules).  The local supermarket (Big Y) does not supply high quality bagels.  Also, if I wake up early, both of my parent will interrogate me to figure out what I’m doing up so early… clearly not “work” or anything like that.

As usual, I spent some quantities of time wanting things that are very unlikely to happen.  For some things, I think that I should just create an AI bot, but I would have to design it in such a way that I wouldn’t be able to recognize it was my bot.  Besides solving the Turing Test, I’d at least have conned myself into believing today had been a good day.  That came off sounding harsher than I’d like, and I should really find a more achievable approach to all this.

Good night moon.