Ben Mann Monthly Feb 2023

Euda time, saying no, stretching, road trip, boring content

Purpose

• An index for my memory

• A menu of topics for my next conversation with you

• A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it

• A skimmable way to spread content I found valuable

Photos

Experiments and experiences

• Alo Moves

  • I had some lower back pain, likely due to carrying Euda on my shoulder a bit too much. After one class I felt lasting relief. Just need to stretch more!

• A week with Euda

  • Mom had to work extra at the flower shop leading up to the Valentine's day rush; dad was on the east coast for work. I took 5 days off to take care of her while Diana worked. I walked around town with her and doggie for hours per day, sometimes listening to a book, sometimes daydreaming. She’s still pretty boring, but she’s getting more interesting fast.

  • https://eudajung.com/ previous UI only supported up to 99 days old. Updated to handle any age.

• Road trip to LA

  • Since I worked during much of the winter holidays, I decided to take some now. We drove down to LA for a change of scenery, stopping along the way in Carmel, Pine Mountain Club, and a few other places. We're in Venice at the time of writing. Traveling with a baby and a dog is a lot of work. We went to Pinnacles only to realize they don't allow dogs. It's tough to do any activity that takes longer than two hours because Euda will need to change, feed, or nap. As long as we allot twice the time it'd take us to do things, we've been able to mostly relax and enjoy our time.

  • Lesson for next time: plan to stay in one place. Consider an all-inclusive resort so we don't have to plan anything 😅

  • Went past a road closure sign to get to PMC faster since we had 4 wheel drive and chains. Drove 30 minutes, then hit an unplowed section of road in a serious snow storm and had to turn back and go around the mountain to come in from the other side. A real adventure!

• Baby's first cold

  • We were pretty nervous about this, but it ended up being pretty benign. I had a minor cold. She caught it from me. It was minor in her too. A stuffy nose, a little baby cough, and some extra phlegm. She slept a bit worse. We used our nasal aspirator more frequently and she was mostly ok.

• Saying no to "catching up"

  • I generally enjoy catching up with friends, but between the baby and work, I've mostly run out of free time. I often don't have a chance to work out or otherwise care for myself. I used to almost always say yes to requests to catch up. Now I say, "I can't, but if there's anything specific I can help with, let me know." This often leads to a more specific request, like "a friend wants to apply to your company" or "I wanted some career advice" or "I want to climb." With that in hand, I can triage better. Once Euda is more self sufficient, maybe I'll have more time. That's probably not going to be true for many years. I guess I'll just have to ruthlessly prioritize.

Life updates

• 📕 Started reading Age of Ambition

• 📘 Started reading The Iliad

• 💊 Passed 6w mark on duloxetine, still good!

• 💍 1 year anniversary

• 📜 Paper on moral self-correction in language models

Content

5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend”, sorted

• Ms Rachel 5/5 if you have a baby

  • This works SO WELL at distracting Euda, and if things go well, she'll learn some sign language from it!

• The Last of us S1E1-8 3/5

  • Interesting world building; some cute side quests.

  • Standard "people who lost everything need to stick together" plot

• Miss Granny 3/5

  • An old granny becomes temporarily young again. She fixes her relationships with those around her, and achieves the dreams she had sacrificed to raise her son.

  • Sometimes cringey, but mostly heartwarming and amusing.

• The Menu 3/5

  • A black comedy satire for all the over the top Chef's Table copycats.

  • They must have had so much fun filming this!

  • I now frequently quote: "This food has no love."

• Hachi: A dog's tale 2/5

  • Abandoned after 20 mins

• F9 2/5

  • Yep, just what you'd expect, including jumping the shark by strapping a rocket on a car so it could fly to space.

• Consider Phlebas 1/5

  • After reading The Player of Games and not getting much out of it, I complained to someone who likes this series. They said Consider Phlebas was possibly the best of them.

  • I found it to be a standard space opera with almost nothing interesting about the world building. The protagonist goes from one fight scene to another with no redeeming lessons. Think "Tom Clancy in space."

  • Abandoned 85% through

• Familiar wife 1/5

  • Hate the main character even after 3 episodes