Author: Starthief

I’ve managed to turn playing with Lego(s) into a kind of work. Lego is particularly subject to taxonomy, with some basic categories and a lot of variants:

(Image is from the Lego Storage Guide at brickarchitect.com. Does SNOT stand for “stud not on top?” There is also a whole taxonomy poster…)

The “Creative Fantasy Universe” set is 1800 pieces — and at least half of them are “weird little fiddly bits” of some kind or other, falling outside the usual bricks and plates. Props for minifigs — enough spears to outfit a regiment, and shields, scimitars, eating utensils… flags and banners, dragon wings and angel wings and lots of little flowers and frogs and so many eyes (be not afraid!) and so on.

The other sets I have (bonsai and McLaren F1/Solus) also have quite a few of these weird bits. (The bonsai has literally 200 “pebbles”, which are either low-profile circular one-stud tiles or something that doesn’t even fit on a stud at all, not sure.)

I have not yet built anything from the CFU set. I haven’t even unpacked all the bags yet, but have sorted most of the bulk. I bought a storage case that turned out to be kind of a mess — flimsy and fiddly and not really enough compartments to sort it the way I’d wanted to. I’m honestly a bit annoyed I’ve spent so much time thinking about how to store and organize the Legos and dithering with shopping for a better solution… so I just ordering a better set of storage boxes and a sorting tray as recommended by the guide. THERE.

But come to think of it, my hobbies and my job lend themselves to the optimization of organization, in ways that sometimes gets a bit obsessive. There’s ModularGrid for comparing Eurorack modules and rearranging them in cases. I have a page of notes for Soulstone Survivors skills and builds. There are websites dedicated to builds, tactics and skill rotations for MMOs, and I may be a filthy casual in a lot of respects but you better believe I spend time on some of those sites. I keep notes on my music-making, spreadsheets of gear purchases and trades and of gear used on albums, the history of modules I’ve tried. I have meticulous, constantly updated notes for work about what I’m working on, what to work on next, what changes are currently in review or building, etc. I have a bunch of online notes on all kinds of things. Scribes gotta scribe, I guess.

There was a thread about “things not to say to people with ADHD” on MetaFilter a few days ago, and the comment thread made me recognize that… yeah, I probably have it. I was never diagnosed, though I’m sure I could have been diagnosed as a child. I’m sure at least some of this organization stuff is a coping mechanism.

My tendency to want to be as small and invisible as possible in social situations works against the usual list of symptoms; “difficulty keeping quiet, and speaking out of turn” absolutely does not fit me.

But I’ve definitely had the stereotypical experience of being a gifted kid who was bored silly with regular classes and thus couldn’t focus and did poorly at times. The restlessness, losing the thread of a conversation because my mind goes elsewhere, task switching. Needing to get up and take a bathroom break, fix coffee, walk around, etc. just to do something else for a moment. Driving someplace on autopilot and missing my turn because I was thinking about other stuff. Procrastinating, or alternately (or simultaneously!) being anxious because the thing is not getting done right now. Lately, sometimes when I’m reading for pleasure I wind up picking up my phone and playing a puzzle game for a bit. Or watching anime, looking at my phone and then realizing I can’t understand the dialog without the subtitles. 🙂 Writing a blog post such as this one, answering a forum post, checking Instagram, doing some online shopping, and listening to music while also working on a bug at work (with other tabs open to research what I’m writing/doing.) And I’ll certainly hyperfocus sometimes when I’m in the zone, whether it’s music, work, gaming etc.

I’m wondering now how this might tie in with my musical inclinations. I like listening to albums, and I like drone music but not that drone music… there has to be a kind of flow more than stasis, but it can be slow and gradual enough that it bores some people and I’m fine with it. Drone or not, music can take its time, but it can’t linger too long without going anywhere, if that makes sense?

This also might be related to the process, where it’s always committing and moving forward — recording a full mix with effects baked in, destructive editing, etc. I felt like it was more fun and better for my creative flow, but I’m willing to acknowledge it might just fit my mindset too.

Anyway, if I do have ADHD (and I probably do) I’d describe myself as high-functioning. Things like procrastination, restlessness, inability to focus, excessive multitasking don’t really get in my way very much. It doesn’t make me bad at my job or unable to finish projects. But it’s good to acknowledge it for myself.

We’ve had cool autumn-ish weather this winter for the most part — a couple of days of snow that didn’t stick for long, a few freezing nights with chilly days, but generally more rain and gray than snow and ice. This weekend it’s going to make up for lost time, with a high temperature of 4F on Monday… and yet 3 inches of snow forecast for Sunday, which is unusual when it’s that bitterly cold.

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Let me amend my gear resolution a bit to also include cheap fun toys. I bought a MØffenzeef MØdular Shtick!, a little USB-powered noisemaker that just does some kind of random drone or noise when you press a button, for about the price of a pizza. I liked a lot of the sounds I was hearing in a demo, and the idea of just seeing what it’ll do and working from the result seems like a good time.

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I’ve recorded three tracks toward the next album already — but I think I’m going to use just the beginning of the third as an intro to something else. I’m also abandoning the original idea I had for the album and will just go with the flow as usual.

Mostly I have been continuing with small experiments. I think I’m going to write up some notes on Phonolyth Cascade first, since I happened to start digging into it to get a better feel. It’s a delay/reverb with 24 allpass diffuser stages and an overall delay/feedback/EQ loop, letting you create a wide variety of effects ranging from retro springy/BBD delays to lush endless ambient reverbs to metallic boxy nightmare reverbs and distorted dubby delays. But it’s not particularly intuitive.

It’s just one of many gems in the collection that deserves a closer look.

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While I like my modular case, especially with my spouse’s pyrography on the side lending it charm, the ergonomics leave a little to be desired. The top row is more of a reach than it should be, given that I need some space in front of the case for the 0-Ctrl/Pod and a little desk space. Some smart cookie suggested putting something under it to tilt it at a bit of an angle, and I thought “yes, I should try that.”

I finally tried it with some of the stands I had used for other purposes. None of them were ideal for various reasons — not stable enough, minimal area of contact with the case, too much space required behind the case, and so on. But as a proof of concept, yes, tilting the case forward does help a lot with the reach issue.

The suggestion mentioned speaker isolation pads, some of which offer a 5 or 10 degree tilt. Which got me thinking about various vibration-isolating feet/blocks, dense foam wedges… aha. I happened to find a set of yoga wedges that comes as a pair of 8 degree and a pair of 16 degree angles, which can be combined for a 24 degree tilt, and the dimensions almost perfectly fit the base of my case. It might be absolutely ideal.

January 2, time to go back to work (from home, at least) and try to remember what I was doing…

And well past time for the earworms from a particular couple of Christmas musicals to be jettisoned from my headspace. Especially that one, thank you very much… uh-oh there it is again. If I had a bugle I would BLOW IT UP.

I’ve had to resort to whistling “Cruel Angel’s Thesis,” “Katamari on the Rocks”, “You’re Welcome” and even playing “Everything Is Awesome” to try to crowd these out.

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I made a list of my current music gear, hardware and software (the “active” list that I use to select plugins in Bitwig). The intent was a sort of checklist to make sure everything gets thoroughly explored and maybe I’ll document that exploration in at least some cases. But laying it all out in that way opened my to just how much stuff I have to choose from, so I have amended my gear plan for 2024:

Don’t buy stuff. With the following exceptions:

• Direct 1-for-1 upgrades which have an obvious benefit.
• Possible replacement of Blinds with Toppobrillo Cluster.
• Filling available Eurorack space is OK.
• Trading modules is OK if well-justified, but this should be minimized.
• Accessories, knobs, panel overlays, etc.
• Software that is especially novel, exciting and relevant to my music — provided I first review my list of current gear to remind myself of what I already have.
• (EDIT: and really cheap fun sound toys.)

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I really enjoyed assembling the Lego bonsai tree my brother got me as a Christmas surprise. I have some fond memories of building stuff with him using our combined sets (mostly Space and Technic). But I don’t particularly want to keep the finished models (as neat as the bonsai is) to gather dust and potentially lose pieces; I’ve already been considering what to do with my modest minifig collection (a proper display case, or box them up or sell them) to get some useful storage space back.

But, why not just get a more general Lego set, combine the stuff I have and enjoy the occasional transient build and teardown? It’s more about the process than the results after all.

I found an 1800-piece “Creative Fantasy Universe” set on Mercari at a decent discount. (I’ve seen in reviews that this set includes a lot of small pieces, especially eyes for some reason, so the piece count may not compare to some other sets… although the number of pieces in the bonsai set was inflated by having 200 “pebble” bits too. But still it should be a pretty helpful starting point.) That plus the various stuff I’ve got should be a nice starting point, though I could see myself adding a bit of Technic or other stuff later. Most likely I’ll want something to store and organize parts a bit, some kind of craft box/tackle box thing with a bit of room to grow.

…or in Europe, 231231.

There are approximately 8 hours and 19 minutes until it’s not 2023 anymore, in my time zone. Hawaii gets 4 more hours, and the uninhabited Baker Island and Howland Island another 2 beyond that. So that’s how much time remains before the early access release of Sumu is overdue… it’s not looking real likely to come in on time, is it?

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2023 was… a year. Was it especially weird? Was it typical? I think the idea of a “normal” year either was always an illusion or it’s been broken.

I can’t really get aboard the “it’s finally over, fuck you 2023” train because it wasn’t all bad. It had some difficulties and some good stuff. There are reasons to be terrified of the future and reasons to be hopeful and no way to know how it balances out. I don’t want to make a list of either good or bad things, though.

Our calendar is arbitrary; January 1 isn’t really synchronized with any particular celestial alignment. Like so much in human life, it’s a thing that has importance because we collectively decided to give it some. But hey, celebrating is fun, and reflecting is useful, and considering the future is also useful. So, do those things, I guess 🙂

Like I had said, we generally spent our Christmas vacation at home. There have been several days of rain and mist and fog and general grayness, and that’s fine, except I’ve missed any opportunity to go for a nice walk. Yesterday there was a pretty good snow but the air and ground temps were too warm for it to persist. There’s still 4 more days off before I have to go back to work, but it’s going to be snowy tomorrow and still quite cold for the rest.

We made ourselves a feast. Slow cooker turkey with apples & onions, spiced root vegetables with walnuts & goat cheese, roasted brussels sprouts & butternut squash, roasted yellow beets for her (I am not into beets at all), garlic mashed potatoes (skin on of course!), dressing, canned jellied cranberry sauce for me, pumpkin chocolate brownie bars, and apple spice “pie cake” (pie filling with cake mix, normally done in the slow cooker but since that was busy, it was in cupcake form instead). The plan was to eat it for three days. We knew it’d be too much, we just didn’t realize just how too much it was, somewhat exacerbated by the fact we couldn’t get a turkey smaller than 7.1 pounds.

Today, to make up for missing our chance at the Georgia Aquarium, we visited the more humble but still pretty nifty St. Louis Aquarium, followed by lunch at The Fountain On Locust, which is a must-try if you’re ever in the city and like ice cream, booze, or boozy ice cream (and the non-dessert food’s good too).

Since our plans had changed at the last minute, my mom shipped our gifts two days before Christmas. The package got as far as the St. Louis regional post office and have been delayed. But we had the stuff sent by my brother, and by the other side of the family, and each others’.

The musical toys were a pair of Otamatones (probably an Amazon wishlist flub), which are trickier than I would have guessed to play, and the Paper Jamz “Pro Microphone” I had put on my list. This seems like a toylike karaoke machine with autotune, but it has mic and headphone jacks so what I see here is a lo-fi granular pitch shifter that does vibrato, chorus, autotune and harmonizer effects, which can get pretty wild with synth input. It’s even fun just using the included mic and built-in speaker for feedback howls, or applying the chorus effect to a desk fan…

I’ve generally been in a phase of trying things out. Plugins I had never tried before, most notably including the Sinevibes stuff (I wound up getting Whirl), and Madrona Labs Virta. I’m definitely going to have to test the latter on bass, but I was surprised at the things I could get from it with synth patches and will probably pick it up even if it doesn’t track the bass that well. Not sure what stopped me from trying it out before, it’s very cool. I’m spoiled by full modular environments and would like to add a slew limiter to it, but it’s still super neato. I’m hoping that “early access” version of Sumu is released in the next few days as promised, too!

I tried AudioThing’s updated Space Echo emulation, and… it sounds great, sure, and I think it sounds better than Cherry Audio’s take on the same device. But I realized I really don’t need either of them. I’ve got Twangstrom for the spring reverb, and plenty of nice delays.

Arturia gave away a very cool new effect called Refract, which split voices in a “super unison” method of some kind and then optionally filters and processes each a little differently, with a choice of bandpass filter, comb filter, distortion, bitcrusher, or harmonizer, making for a surprisingly cool and versatile plugin that… might actually be my favorite new effect of the year, coming in late as it did.

I may make myself a list of things I want to go back and explore in more depth. I’m feeling like I have a lot of tools that do a lot of things, and most of them deserve a more thorough exploration. Kind of continuing what I did with Synchrodyne, Shapeshifter, and Akemie’s Castle last year but extending it further.

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Soulstone Survivors was by far my most-played game of 2023; it more than adequately distracted me from Diablo IV, which is great because I didn’t want to support Activision-Blizzard after the sexual harrassment and union busting stuff (and reviews are not super positive anyway). I think I’m cooling on Art of Rally, and still hesitating to buy the new WRC game even though it’s already discounted. EA apparently laid off most of the Codemasters developers shortly after release, it’s still reportedly got performance bugs to work out, they’re doing that season pass thing in some way and it reportedly has some form of unpleasant DRM.

So lately I picked up New Star GP a bit more, and Guild Wars 2. I never finished the Heart of Thorns expansion stuff because I found it a bit tedious and directionless. I never even started the End of Dragons story, after buying it on discount. But I picked up Secrets of the Obscure — mostly because it offers the Weaponmaster account-wide thing that unlocks more weapon types for each class, as well as a reportedly easier way to get the Skyscale mount. In reality… right now there is an issue preventing characters below 80 from using the Weaponmaster weapons, which is supposed to be fixed in January, and the non-temporary and account-wide Skyscale thing seems to be a tedious collection full of random dumb luck. I went to all of the mapped sites for skyscale eggs and searched them all to find nothing, and even if I’d found an egg I’d be looking at weeks (probably) of collecting stuff. And weeks from now my interest in the game is likely to have tapered off anyway, and I’ll wait for several more months before playing again… so it goes.

We’ve just found out our usual dog sitter needs serious dental surgery and can’t do the thing, so we’re cancelling our Christmas travel that was previously in some doubt for other health reasons. So it’ll be mostly several quiet days at home, not working, with maybe a trip to the St. Louis Aquarium which we haven’t seen since the pandemic.

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For the past few years, I’ve made a point of setting goals for the year, sort of a variant on new year resolutions. And then, for the most part, I just end up following whatever path seems right or fun or necessary at the time, or (let’s face it) kind of lazing out a bit. So they don’t always work out, partly because I’m just not that resolute, and partly because I couldn’t see the future. And most things more or less work out okay.

For 2023:

• I kind of sometimes remembered not to participate in threads where it wasn’t going to lead to any positive result. I also stepped in a few minefields.
• I did not manage to ride the exercise bike any significant amount. I took a few, but far too few, walks.
• I really didn’t cut back on snacks.
  
• I did work on technique and understanding of my gear, and of theory and practice (especially microtonal and MPE.) I did end up shaking the gear tree anyway, and I have no regrets with how that has worked out.
• I did not get into any sort of consistent bass practice, or in any way elevate my bass playing. I played bass quite a bit less in 2023 than 2022. This… is okay. I shouldn’t force myself to pick up the instrument if what calls to me for that part is a synth, and it usually will be. Still, this is an area that I can explore more.

So how about 2024? It’s short, and it’s less formal — more just stuff I am keeping in mind than anything I’m especially committing to.

• I have a ton of excellent options where it comes to reverbs and delays, particularly in software. In recent years, I’ve let myself be tempted by interesting and characterful plugins in these categories, but at this point I probably have too many options. So unless something is REALLY unusual and excellent I’m going to pass.
• That is probably a good approach for nearly everything, where it comes to music gear.
• I also don’t really want more stuff that is going to have to take up space, be stored somewhere, collect dust etc.

However:

• Spectraphon in 2023 was special and worth making an exception for — a real game-changer that also fits extremely well into my setup. Anything like that that comes along in 2024 is certainly fair game.
• I’m already planning to grab Madrona Labs Sumu and Dawesome Myth when they are released.
• Some other FX types that I don’t have as thoroughly covered might get in. Sinevibes has both a phaser and chorus that I think sound cooler than anything else in those categories, for instance.
• A little utility shuffling is likely to happen with the updated Ana, and maybe swapping out Blinds for a Toppobrillo Cluster.
• I’m leaving myself the strong possibility of getting a Noise Engineering Alia, particularly once Cursus is available. It seems like the wave of the future, and even though the NE oscillators tend to be an occasional thing for me, having all of them on tap in Eurorack form will be nice. The plugin versions are good but in many cases, lead to different inspiration and different results.
• I had been considering an EHX Attack Decay pedal. I’m doubting this more though; this would specifically be for polyphonically rounding off the attacks of notes on the bass, which I’ve just said above, I’m not getting a lot of use out of. If I didn’t care about the polyphony, a cheaper pedal or software could do it, or I could just keep using Velvet Machine or granular synthesis which is probably the smartest thing to do.

Yesterday during work hours while stuff was compiling (sssshhh don’t tell) I set up the album art for the next one. Last night after getting back from Casa Nueva (not our actual nickname for it) I mastered a couple of tracks. Then today while compiling stuff, I did some editing of the tail of the final track, which involved playing it through headphones and resampling it with the K.O. II’s microphone and looping it. Fun and easy 🙂

AT&T sent a “self-install kit” (e.g. just the modem/router) for a fiber connection to the new house. The house isn’t wired for fiber, just cable TV coax. So they’ll be coming by tomorrow to actually wire it up.

One of the things the occupancy inspection required to be fixed was reinstalling the basement stair railing — probably removed to make it possible to remove the old washer and dryer. Well, now we have to remove it again so the Home Depot folks can install the new washer/dryer, and then put it back afterwards. Just more stuff for the to-do list.

New Spectraphon firmware dropped today. I updated it, played with it about 3 minutes, watched the short video during lunch. Noise mode is pretty neat and may be a once-in-a-while thing. Chaos mode is SUPER FREAKING AWESOME and I look forward to diving much deeper into it.

New Bitwig release also dropped today. I installed it, ran it and it crashed immediately, just disappeared. Ran it again and it offered to send a crash log, and then it crashed again. Ran the previous version instead. Tried the new one a while later and it seemed to be OK. The new filters and shapers seem quite nice. I didn’t look at anything else. Will check it out in more detail later.

Waiting on the Christmas gifts I ordered to arrive, then a few of them need to be wrapped and shipped, the rest wrapped and brought with us. We’re also traveling for Christmas in a couple of weeks, so we’ll need to get ready for that as well.

My parents closed on the house, and I have now been there 5 times in 4 days. The final walkthrough before closing, running over during my lunch break to pick up the hidden keys, going back that same evening to deal with a furniture delivery, and another Saturday and another Sunday. Today is another furniture delivery and the ADT guy. Tomorrow is, probably, another furniture delivery, and we have to put out the trash cans. Saturday the washer and dryer will be delivered and installed.

It’s about a 15-40 minute drive depending on traffic conditions, usually closer to the latter though. That’s still a lot less than 11 hours and I’ve resolved to try not to complain about it too much, but when you’re going every day (on top of a day job, upcoming holidays and regular life stuff) it can add up a bit.

We’ve been cleaning kitchen appliances, replacing light bulbs and the filter, fixing a grille in the wall that the inspector messed up, moving 120-pound boxes of furniture inside, assembling the needlessly complex furniture, figuring out cable TV/internet cabling, etc. There are two more dressers and two bed frames to assemble (one of which is an electric, adjustable bed) plus whatever other surprise furniture Mom hasn’t told me about. We’ll probably have to get a junk removal company to deal with the stuff the previous owner left in the garage and basement. I told Mom that she should probably get someone to look over the generator, make sure it’s working and up to date on maintenance, and tell us how to use it.

So yeah… busy! But it will be worth it to have my folks nearby where we can help them out, see them much more often, and not have to drive so much, and for them to be in a place where there’s a lot of medical care and not just a small regional hospital, and where there are social things they can do.

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I believe I’m done with recording for the next album. There’s 58 minutes of stuff, and it seems to be flowing nicely as I listen to the not-yet-mastered version. I’m going to choose a different name for the album than I’d originally planned, but it’s important to me to follow the music as it happens and not try to dictate its course in advance, so that is fine. I’ll need to make myself some time to master it and do the artwork, but should be on track for a 2023 release still.

I picked up one more piece of software — Rolling Sampler by Bird’s. It continuously records audio to a buffer of fixed length, and you can select and drag out of it to save a segment as a .wav file. The interface isn’t completely ideal but it’ll do; it’ll be a handy preroll recorder, a way to record live independent of the transport, and a simple way to sample something, drop it back in and play/manipulate it.

I still want something like the ER-301 Sound Computer’s audio buffers in Bitwig, where you can record to a buffer while also playing back from it with multiple independent playheads. It was nice for delays, loopers, and granular stuff, and I’d say it was the main thing that made the module powerful. Having access to that functionality in a much friendlier and more powerful and flexible DAW would be great.

We had a nice Thanksgiving trip to visit my in-laws. They have a very entertaining 5-month old puppy who defies gravity to lick faces and ears, and we’ve got a cute nephew, and the food was all good and the drive wasn’t too bad. So that was pretty pleasant!

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Teenage Engineering announced some ridiculous, mysterious overpriced thing (executive desk toy maybe?) called the Grip Car that caused people to make fun of them again… and then the very next day, announced the “EP-133 K.O. II” sampler/drum machine, which expanded on the very small, flimsy, toylike Pocket Operator sampler. But this incarnation is a hybrid of retro desktop calculator, toy, and modern groovebox. Compact and yet generously sized for playing. Those buttons have velocity and pressure sensors, and there are built in effects, the ability to record unquantized, record fader movements, built-in filters and effects and a live performance sort of attitude overall. It is exceedingly clever, and priced at the bottom end of sampling grooveboxes. The first production run sold out very quickly but I went for it. It also shipped almost immediately and was waiting for me when we got home from our trip.

Apparently the project was conceived by buying a whole bunch of available off-the-shelf parts while hedging against parts shortages, then designing something around it. So that’s part of how they kept costs down. The display, aside from the text segments in the center, is just plain LEDs with a color overlay. (There’s kind of an overwhelming amount of status lights going on at times and I end up tuning out most of it, but it doubles as a fun light show when using the punch-in effects.) Weird as this is to say, it is partially Lego-compatible — the pot shafts and slider are axles, the nameplate/battery cover and the speaker grill are attached with Lego-like studs and there are holes on the side where connectors could snap in (maybe for a stand or to link multiple units together — this is supposedly the first in a series using this form factor).

There have been several reports about non-working faders. This is probably due to the packaging — it’s an extremely tight fit, single-wall thin cardboard box, not as rigid or generally protective as it should be. Some people have been able to DIY a repair with a bent paper clip. Thankfully mine works without issues.

The sound is great at the price, and it’s a lot of fun to play and put stuff together. Hip-hop producers are having a field day with it, and I’m able to get some wonky droney ambient stuff going as well as deep dubby beats and the like, just with the included samples. Sampling the modular, DAW, and other toys should work out very nicely.

It doesn’t do x0x style sequencing, where you pick (for instance) the hi-hat and press buttons to choose which steps they land on. Instead, if you don’t want to record live, you can navigate to the step you want using the +/- buttons and then choose which pads are played on that step. It kind of makes sense, it’s just like live recording but paused. For live stuff, it’ll record unquantized if you want it to, and you can punch in time-correction and even swing, which is pretty unique but really nice to have. You can also manually and very precisely shift steps to nail down just the right groove.

There are a few things that seem weird until you get used to them, but the adjustment period is pretty short. There are also inevitable hidden button combos and config settings with cryptic code numbers, so it’s not a 100% manual-free experience by any means. But for the most part it’s simpler and more immediate than Elektron boxes tend to be.

There are limitations, most of which don’t concern me. 64mb of total memory, which is tiny in 2023 but is really more than sufficient for what the box does. Apparently no way to transfer patterns/scenes to a computer — since I’ll just be using this for screwing around or for temporary things I don’t mind that. No resampling but that’s not common in cheaper devices anyway. No sample loop points for sustained sounds, but apparently that’s coming. There’s only one master effect at a time (delay, reverb, distortion, a resonant LPF, or compression) plus the LPF/HPF per group and live punch-in FX; I feel like the distortion and reverb would have complimented each other nicely, but since I’ll be integrating it with my other gear when not just goofing around with it, that’s no big deal anyhow.

The only real shame is the way the packaging has caused all these slider failures in transit. They probably paid a good bit to license the Muhammad Ali photos and make the box look very nice, it’s just not functionally protective enough.

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The closing for my parents’ house is Thursday. We need to do a lot of little things to help out — the final walkthrough, getting the keys, changing locks, taking some detailed measurements, picking up packages and delivered furniture (from Black Friday sales), being there for the alarm guy, etc. I’ve also got to do a bit more Christmas shopping, and take my car in for service this weekend (Check Engine light, but it’s also nearing the 80K mile service.)