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The best first birthday present

If you live in the US and want to give B🌱 a great first birthday present, the perfect present, here’s what you can do.

Use the link below to find your congress members using your zip code (to find your full nine-digit zip code, visit usps.com):

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

Then use the contact links that show up and ask your congress members to enact a country-wide ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

It is such a basic, pragmatic step we could take to reduce deaths from these sorts of events.

There are many, many other factors that also contributed to this event, mental health chief among them, and those events absolutely need to be addressed. But had this 18 year old not been able to walk in to a shop on his birthday and buy such an incredibly high-powered weapon, more children and teachers would be alive. The event may not have happened at all. It is painfully, mind-numbingly simple.

When you’re done contacting your representatives and senators, tell your friends, colleagues, and family to do the same. Especially people that you think might be more conservative. You’d be surprised how many people agree about banning assault weapons. They just need a little encouragement to be vocal about it.

And then ask those people to do the exact same thing with everyone they know.

I am not looking forward to explaining what an active shooter drill is when B starts school.

This is a condensed version of the message I wrote to my representative and senators, in case it is useful.

There are many, many factors that contributed to the tragedy in Uvalde, mental health chief among them, and those events absolutely need to be addressed.

But banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines is the simplest and most pragmatic step we can take to avoid more death. It *must* be the priority.

Had this 18 year old not been able to walk in to a shop on his birthday and buy such an unnecessarily high-powered weapon, more children and teachers would be alive. The event may not have happened at all.

Please, I am begging you, do everything in your power to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Make the bill simple, inarguable, unavoidable, unassailable.

It is utterly shameful that Congress has not acted sooner. Make it happen.

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My custom bash prompt

This is my custom bash prompt, as defined in my profile (~/.bash_profile). It includes a custom character for the prompt, the path, and the Git branch name (if any). The whole thing is colorful to make it a bit easier to identify the prompt in a sea of characters.

When I’m working on this WordPress theme for example, it looks sort of like this (RSS readers, you’ll miss the colors):

→ ~/sites/commonplace-wp-theme (v0.1.5)

To generate something else, try messing around with the Bash $PS1 Generator.

If you want to try something like this, do not delete the rest of your profile. Just add this at the top.

# Get the Git branch
parse_git_branch() {
  git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/ (\1)/'
}

# Custom bash prompt
# Includes custom character for the prompt, the path, and Git branch name. With colors!
# Source: kirsle.net/wizards/ps1.html
export PS1="\n\[$(tput bold)\]\[$(tput setaf 5)\]➜ \[$(tput setaf 6)\]\w\[$(tput setaf 3)\]\$(parse_git_branch) \[$(tput sgr0)\]"

Note: I got this from someone else at some point… I’m trying to figure out who but haven’t gotten to the bottom of it.

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Success does not mean forever

Success does not mean forever

***

Just because a thing doesn’t last forever doesn’t mean that it failed. It can mean that, but in sometimes things just come to a logical conclusion. Relationships, businesses, projects, hobbies. It’s easy to think that something ending = it has failed. But what a narrow worldview. Is it fear of change?

(This notion isn’t original, I wish I could remember where I came across it. It was definitely on Twitter.)

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NOW v6: End of an era, in Brooklyn, Covid *still* a thing

Updated my Now page, contents below for posterity. View past presents.

Since the last update:

We moved to Brooklyn. B 🌱 is a little over 9 months old. I’m wrapping up my independent dev practice 👩🏻‍💻 and about to start a full time position as a front-end engineer (!). Autumn rushed by 🎃, winter lingered 🥶, spring has sprung 🌷. Covid 🦠 is still a thing.

Putin’s Russian army invaded Ukraine.

If I’m honest, writing this feels a bit… extra, right now. Extra as in work I don’t need, extra as in a bit self-indulgent. There has been so much going on, it’s hard to sift through and figure out what is important. And hard to pause for a breath. But I’ll be angry at myself in the future for not doing it, I’m already frustrated it has taken so long, so here it is.

These are a few things that I’ve wanted to do and have either done, am doing, or am still pondering.

Move to Brooklyn. We had always intended to move to NYC, but we ended up taking a more circuitous route for a handful of reasons. At any rate, we’re here, for almost 6 months now, and it feels like a really good fit. It’s a lovely feeling after being somewhat in limbo for so long. B started daycare soon after we got here, and he seems to love it. He’s now crawling and cruising. He really seems to like computers, phones, and wires, which are an ever-present hazard. This is the first place we’ve lived that we’ve been able to furnish, would you believe. Most rental places in the UK are fully furnished, and the family apartment we rented in SF was fully furnished as well. It’s been wonderful really making a place our own, also a bit expensive. Thank goodness for secondhand stuff.

Wrap up my independent practice, find a full time position. I’m going to be a front-end engineer at SuperHi as of this coming Monday! There’s a lot more to be said about why I’ve wanted to do this and why SuperHi feels like a good fit, but that’s for a separate post. Right now, I’m racing to tie up some loose ends with existing clients. It should mostly be done by the time I start, thank goodness. I’m really going to miss a lot of the people I collaborate with, and the opportunities I no longer get to take. One came in this morning that I was gutted to turn down. But who knows, these things might come around again.

Establish a better day-to-day routine. We’ve fallen in to a decent rhythm, I think. Right now, Sam and I alternate wearing earplugs at night so that at least one of us can get a full night’s sleep regardless of whether or not B wakes up. We both get up at 6:30am, Sam to get B up and me to get ready (shower, get dressed, breakfast, etc.). Then we trade around 7:10am so Sam can get ready, and I entertain B for a bit. At about 7:55am, we both get B ready to go to daycare (bottles + food in a cooler bag, get a clean sleep sack, bibs, pants, etc. ready in case he needs them during the day), and they’re out the door for daycare dropoff by about 8:05am. I then “reset” the apartment so it’s tidy for the day. Empty the dishwasher and dish rack, pick up loose toys or B’s clothes, make the bed, etc. I’m usually ready to work by 8:30am, which is good timing for my day since I’ve got to stop work around 4:35pm, out the door by 4:45pm at the latest, in order to pick B up. We get back at about 5:20pm. At that point, for him, it’s basically dinner, bath, bottle, books, bed. We try to all eat together, but that can sometimes be tough if we haven’t planned enough in advance. He’s lights-out by 7:30pm. After he goes to bed, I usually do a little bit of life admin and then try to chill a bit. I try to be in bed by 9:30pm, asleep by 10pm, but it’s usually more like in bed at 10 and asleep by 11. Recently I’ve been reading before bed, which has helped a bit. Of course, all the above is out the window if daycare has to close due to Covid. I’m not sure when the NY DOH will lift that rule, maybe once vaccines for under-5s are available?

Read more. I was spending way too much of my limited down time watching things on YouTube, doing too much research on something B-related, or doomscrolling the news for updates on the war in Ukraine. I started re-reading the Discworld novels after Lucy Bellwood mentioned Small Gods, and it’s like being reunited with an old friend. I’d like to read Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi next. I haven’t stopped watching stuff though. Recently Old Enough has been delivering when I need a purely wholesome fix.

Meet up with people more often, and meet new people. I’ve been getting somewhere with this, but it’s tough. I hate to be that person that has to schedule way in advance, or has to cancel last minute, but it often feels like there’s no way around it with B. Everyone seems pretty understanding. I met up with an internet friend for drinks IRL a week or two ago which was wonderful. I’d love to meet her again, but I’m not sure she necessarily wants another mom friend. But who knows, maybe that’s just me projecting! Besides day-to-day stuff, we’ve made some travel plans. And it feels like this time we might actually be able to stick to them. We’re supposed to see my family in Michigan in June, Sam’s family and our UK friends in July. I guess there’s still a chance that could get cancelled but… surely not this time?

Improve my fitness, posture, and strength. I was this close to signing up for South Brooklyn Weightlifting Club, but then was offered the position at SuperHi and realized that their schedule just doesn’t mesh with mine. Maybe at some point in the future. For now, I’m going to start running to pick up B if my knee will take it. I just still don’t feel right in my body over nine months after childbirth, and I feel this would help.

Find somewhere to sing. I’d like to sing with others, but not sure if it’s time yet for me to find a choir. Hopefully soon. My main audience right now is B, he seems to appreciate it. Need to learn “Duérmete mi niño” next.

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How to fix our chairs

We have old dining chairs with a teak base and a bent plywood backrest and seat, originally from the UK supposedly but bought at McCarney’s in SF. They’re old and well-used, so the screw holes in the plywood seat are getting loose. When the holes blow out and the seat comes off, these are the steps to fix them:

  1. Pull away any badly blown out chips of the seat base plywood so that you can get it properly level later with filler.
  2. Drill out the stripped hole with a 15/64″ bit. Use masking tape to mark how deep you should go without blowing through the top.
  3. Put a drop of wood glue in the hole and use a toothpick or similar to spread it around.
  4. Hammer a 1/4″ fluted dowel in to the hole and let the glue dry as long as it needs.
  5. Saw the end of the dowel off as flush as you can, then sand down the dowel and any rough bits.
  6. Use wood filler to fill any dings or gaps, and allow it to set up before sanding.
  7. Align the base on the seat to the indentations that are already there, then lightly hammer the screws in to create divots for your pilot holes.
  8. Drill pilot holes in your dowels where the divots are. They should be pretty centered on the dowels, and about the same depth as when you drilled out the stripped hole in step #2.
  9. Screw the base on to the seat.

Quick tip: Buy wood filler in the little can, not a tube. The tube dries out very quickly and is impossible to un-jam. Also, if the stripped hole is a real mess and seems like it needs to be larger than about 1/4″, get the next size up fluted dowel. The bit you use should be 1/64″ smaller than the dowel ideally, or the same size if that’s not possible. If you can’t find dowels the size you want, you can go down the toothpick / matchstick route.

Two down, two to go.

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One way to fall asleep

Lying in bed for ages thinking “why can’t I get to sleep”, then I finally realize every muscle in my body, every fiber of my being is tense.

How does it surprise me every time? A mindful body scan usually does the trick.

***

When I was a kid, probably around 5, I distinctly remember this moment where I was lying in my twin bed staring at the doorway and suddenly thinking, “How do you fall asleep? … I don’t know how to fall asleep!”

I realized that I had never actually experienced the moment of falling asleep (of course not, I was half-asleep at that point) and started overthinking it. It became this process I didn’t understand, and then I was just lying there wide-eyed not understanding and confused about what to do next.

I’m not sure if it was that night or a few nights later, but I eventually asked my mom how to fall asleep. She looked at me and said, “… Um, just close your eyes?” I did, and to me the next day, it seemed like I had fallen asleep instantly. It felt like a revelation, that there was such a simple answer.

I sometimes notice nowadays, that moment between wakefulness and sleep.

Every once in a while I notice my thoughts getting weirder and more abstract and suddenly think, this is it. It’s quite an incredible state, nothing like it. I guess it’s lucid dreaming, but it’s so short… I try to stay in that state but it’s almost impossible, thinking about it wakes me up and leaning in to it makes me fall asleep.

Sometimes I get in to the same state upon waking, but unfortunately that’s usually because I’m coming out of a nightmare.

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Discovering agency

B is learning that he has influence on his surroundings, the world isn’t just something that has to happen to him.

It started maybe a month or so ago when I was gently leaning him back to put him in his sleep sack. He suddenly threw his hand out and caught himself, preventing me from lying him down. Actually, even a bit before that he started pushing away his bottle when he didn’t want any more.

Now he’s grabbing at the pages in his board books, trying to turn them.

It’s pretty fun to watch.