Ravings of an Undead Cheese Minion

So far, this seems to work, but it will need more verifiable results for me to be entirely sure.  I find that doing hourly reality checks and practicing "all-day awareness" is a good baseline principle, but it often isn't enough to lucid dream regularly. At that point I still only become lucid when I sleep in really late, and even then that's not a guarantee. Coupling this with the phase method for astral projection helps, yes, but then again my success rate at phasing isn't all that high. I can do it; it definitely works, but not super consistently yet.  This is not ideal.  Lucid dreaming once a week, which is what I get on average with that baseline, isn't enough to learn proper stability at any semblance of a reasonable pace. I am lucid for like two seconds and then I wake up while attempting to ground myself. No. This is crap. I need more practice.  I started doing reality checks right before falling asleep, and whenever I wake up to write in my dream jour

…and it’s 39 degrees. Why ☹️

We burst out of a glass-paneled restaurant as the sun is beginning to fall. Dappled shadows lengthen and stretch across the lake and the forest that surrounds it. The light of summertime is finally draping this place, and it is warm even as night is beginning to fall. The taste of cheap restaurant mint lingers in my mouth and the air carries with it a light scent of pine.  We take a walk along the paved path to the gazebo. I grip your hand tightly, our fingers interlocked, afraid of losing you in the blink of an eye. When you've dreamed of something for so long, and it finally becomes real -- you fear that it is a mirage. Just another daydream, a carefully crafted visual that can be lost in the very second that a careless car speeds past you, jolting you back into cold reality.  But you aren't a dream this time.  The gazebo stands at the edge of the lake, a blurry reflection dancing in blue. The Fresnel effect causes that blue reflection to fade into clarity the closer it gets

They’re getting 100 degree weather whereas it feels like April here. Cold and rainy and soaking. All the water parks are closed. My summer is shortened. My favorite weekend of the year is ruined.  May has some of the longest days of the year, yet it means nothing, because the sun is blocked and it’s STILL cold and dark after all these months of gloom.  What kind of sick joke is it, that Friday and Tuesday are nice, but every single day of the holiday weekend is cold and wet? It’s like we’re being mocked. A big middle finger from Mother Nature. I made it through another dark and sad winter and in return I just got more cold, more rain, more clouds, more darkness.  I honestly can’t live any longer where I am only happy for 3 months out of the year. June, July, and August. It gets cold and depressing again in September. May used to be a happy month but it isn’t anymore. The rain and cold keep coming back. The sadness remains.

It’s begun.  Yesterday was really nice. I went to the Provo Recreation Center. I did all 4 water slides, including the two outdoor ones. It’s amazing to think that, even despite not touching a water slide since September, the moment I first get on one after a long depressing winter it feels like I never stopped. The form comes naturally to me — rolling with the curves, keeping my arms and legs crossed, and sitting up if the lifeguard sends me too close to the riders before me (why do they do this?)   Yeah, I had to sit up towards the end of one slide. Can’t remember if it was green or red. The lifeguard was trying to shorten the lines, so she sent me down only a few seconds after some kids. But two small children riding tandem — and sitting up straight — are going to go slower than a 168-lb. dude who lays down and does the correct form to go as fast as possible. So yeah, I had a feeling that I needed to look up towards the end of the slide, and I saw that I was about to careen directly

I can't call it summer until there's NO MORE chance of cold weather And look what we've got for memorial day weekend. This is awful! Why is it so cold? And stormy? Lightning closes down water parks and so does cold. It's been cold since mid-September! I just want ACTUAL SUMMER to get here and STAY.  I don't care, I'm going to water parks anyway if they're still open. I'll freeze my butt off but I don't care. At least it'll be nice when I go tonight for a little bit. And of course the storm lasts over every single weekend day and then it gets nice during the week. Ain't that grand.  My weekend was supposed to look like this: Friday, Provo Rec outdoor slides. Saturday: long run, coasters at Lagoon for an hour, then all the slides at Lagoon a Beach, then maybe Cherry Hill, then personal work/cleaning/time with friends, some nice dinner, screwing around on the PC, and plenty of sleep. Sunday was supposed to have a nice warm sunny walk at Riverwo

So Orem Summerfest is using  Midway of Fun  (well, actually Brass Ring Amusements, but Midway of Fun is what comes up when you search them) for their carnival this year. It's June 9-11, and if you want a wristband it's $30 for pre-sale at the library.  Now, if we knew for sure that the carnival would have its full line-up as advertised on the website, then that price would absolutely be worth it.  But I got all excited for their carnival at Traverse Mountain last summer. I left Cowabunga Bay and went straight over, expecting it to be super packed. I met up with a few friends and was really excited to ride a Bayern Kurve.  I was sorely disappointed. They only had maybe 6-8 rides there. The operators wouldn't let me on the kiddie coaster which was the only decent looking thing there, becuase I was supposedly too big, but they let another family on later that had some guys who were way larger than me. So really they were just lazy. I went on the drop tower and a few fun houses

"...I'll make you proud of me Instead of surrounding me, totally hounding me Expecting me to be like all the rest." ~ Twiztid 

I don't understand why it's still so cold.  It's supposed to be warm by now.  But no, memorial day supposedly will only have a high of 62. I feel cheated. May usually feels like the first month of summer but it was never consistently warm. We got an entire nice month taken from us. It should be hot for the water park on-season. I'm still dressing in full winter gear most mornings to go running. Normally I'm in shorts and t-shirts by now. I made it through the winter but the warmth never really came. This sucks. 

Renaming the selected object seems to do the trick. Not sure what causes this issue. 

Sometimes you've just got to hit SELECT in your attribute editor. 

TL;DR I used to have really bad insomnia and it completely stopped by my second week in the MTC which was in January 2013. I've never had it for more than a day since.  I still wake up frequently during the night, but that's good for lucid dreaming attempts anyway, so I actually prefer it. And I fall back asleep super quickly.  This is what worked for me: For like the first 6 months of my mission, I took melatonin right before getting ready for bed. After that, my brain finally got the message of when it was supposed to fall asleep, and I weaned myself off of it. I still take Sudafed every night though.  I installed the app f.lux on my PC, my laptop, and my iPhone. This turns my screen gradually more red as the night progresses. "But how do you do art like that?" Just choose your color schemes before like 7 pm when it starts to turn red, lol. Then use your eyedropper tool. Easy. There is also Movie Mode which I use when I want to watch cartoons before bed. Fun fact: Y

link looks like it's a pirate's life for me

Because this is annoying.  The first time you create your access token, you'll have to type in your username, and then the personal access token instead of your password.  After you do that, keep the same terminal open, and run this command: git config --global credential.helper store You shouldn't have to enter it in after that.  Source Might see if I can use SSH instead of HTML; need to look into that later.

So I don't forget (and ironically so I can delete the floating Trello card with this note on it): Press L to set a label Press D to set a due date. This is easier than the annoying right-clicking thing that you have to do if you're using a mouse.

There was an intern social at 2 PM today. I had a pretty productive morning getting my I-9 documents verified (an 11:40 AM appointment that went very smoothly) and sorting through my Trello board. And I forgot about the social until 2:15 PM. I was supposed to show up at 1:55 PM.  I also got really confused, like "how is it 2:15 PM? I thought it was like 1:45 PM?"  I hate time blindness.  The worst part was that the entire thing was ON MY IPHONE. I shouldn't have forgotten it, because it should've shown up at the top of the screen.  Only then did I realize that my downloaded .ics file didn't have an alert attached to it. I should've checked, and set the alert myself. If it had had an alert, this wouldn't have happened.  I could just jump on right now. But I think that would be weird. They're probably already in the middle of the games that they're playing, so I will just forgo this. It isn't essential, or anything. But this is frustrating. I was

I blew off a lot of stuff to finish this. I started this thing 3 years ago, and it should've only taken maybe a week or two to complete. But, ADHD. This is the time in my life where I need to start finishing things . This is my first summer deliverable, completed, alongside a digital painting I also finished today -- which actually looks at least somewhat decent, though I don't plan on posting it to this blog.  Steve's Imagineering Workshop is a different course, though I believe that the lectures are roughly the same (just judging by the previews and content). It's like $300. I may do this, but not until after my MS program, and this depends on whether or not I get another offer from Universal, or possibly one from Disney, Birket, etc. If this Adobe internship works out and I get rehired, I won't really be worrying about money, but I will take the workshop. If I'm already in the industry, the point may be moot.  Next step: Learning PLCs, but I need to get reall

Current = analogous to how much room a fluid has to flow. There's a lot more room in a sewer, for example, than a straw.  Voltage = analogous to how much pressure there is in a tank of water. If you poke a hole in a small plastic cup, water will spill out, but it probably won't burst out and hit you in the face. More than likely, it'll flow along the edge of the cup. But if you take a sledgehammer to a giant durable tank of water, the water will burst out.  Now what happens if you take a little nail and hammer it into the side of the tank? The water will burst out, but in a narrow stream. If this was happening with electricity, we would call this low current with high voltage.  The reason why we have unit called Power , where P = IV (Power = Current * Voltage), is because we want some sort of quantifiable way to measure both of these aspects combined.  If we want to supply a lot of electricity to a city, we want a lot of power. If we have thin wires (low current) to trans

So far, in 2022 I have completed the following books:  Everest: Triumph and Tragedy on the World's Highest Peak, by Matt Dickinson. Once more, my completely nonexistent dream of climbing Everest remains completely nonexistent as I am once again reminded of how dangerous it is. However, the technology, physical prowess, and history behind it are, as always, fascinating to me.  The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, A New History of a Lost World, by Steve Brusatte. Great work of creative, scientific nonfiction by a skilled paleontologist! Looks like he has another book about the rise of mammals, which should be interesting, because sabers. :O Primary Inversion, by Catherine Asaro. My second read-through, with a more solid mathematical grounding this time. I loved it from start to finish. I love the combination of logic and science with emotion and feeling which Asaro nails every time. I wish we could've spent a bit more time with Jarith, but Jaibriol and Soz have great chemistry.  L

April USED to be like that, but not anymore. Now it's May and it still feels like March and I'm still running in full winter gear every morning when last year I was able to run in shorts and t-shirts. I am SO sick of this. Guess this is my cue to move out as soon as this master's is over. I am panicking a little bit because we have so few months of nice weather before it gets cold again in September, and we're getting cheated out of the first nice month. The SAD symptoms have not been leaving, and they are usually gone by now.  And I am so ready to move and never see another snowflake ever again as long as I live. 

...someone who used to be your friend on Facebook comes up in your recommended lists.  Real talk: why delete anyone, at all? I only delete spambots, or (rarely) someone who I need to fully block. I never purge my friends list because I don't want people to feel bad about getting removed. Besides, I like everyone on my friends list, but if someone deletes me then I assume that they must dislike me. Because why else would they scroll through their list, see me in it, and remove me?  This is going to happen in life but it's still a bit sad. 

This is what I get for trying to incorporate TDD in everything.  There is virtually zero info out there on how to unit test anything inside of an ng-template . Jasmine and Karma just don't seem to see it as existing at all. So even something as simple as checking the innerHTML won't work. It just fails with an undefined error.  Looking on Stack Overflow, either the answers are super complex and not related to what you're doing at all, or (more commonly) they're ignored altogether.  This is extremely frustrating. I don't like leaving unfinished tickets at work. Especially when I'll be gone for the summer and someone else will clearly figure it out before I return in September (or, more likely, disregard it altogether). This is because I hate not understanding things.  I've read pretty much every single Stack Overflow and Reddit thread I could find, and couldn't find any solutions that applied to my situation and actually worked.  The core of the issue is

Why do empty unit tests sometimes fail in Angular? All we have is an async beforeEach , a standard beforeEach  that initializes the fixture and component, and...an empty it should create  block: describe ( "UserDevicesComponent" , () => {   let component : UserDevicesComponent ;   let fixture : ComponentFixture < UserDevicesComponent >;   beforeEach ( async (() => {     TestBed . configureTestingModule ({       imports : [         RouterTestingModule ,         HttpClientTestingModule ,         FormsModule       ],       declarations : [         UserDevicesComponent ,         AppComponent ,         NavComponent ,         FooterComponent ,         PhonePipe       ],       schemas : [           CUSTOM_ELEMENTS_SCHEMA         ],     }). compileComponents ();   }));   beforeEach (() => {     fixture = TestBed . createComponent ( UserDevicesComponent );     component = fixture . componentInstance ;     fixture . detectChanges ();   });   it ( "should c

There are two common methods of scheduling your day that I've noticed.  The first one is to-do lists. Just make a checklist and get all the things in it done. My dad does this and is somehow really productive with it. If I do this, I either derail into an entire train wreck or end up engaging in "revenge bedtime procrastination" and stay up SUPER late trying to finish everything -- and then the next day is shot.  The other one is timeboxing. I carefully designed a timeboxed schedule to work on my pursuits in the summer of 2019, while I was interning at Sling. I spent most of those timeboxes watching YouTube and mindlessly browsing Facebook memes. Then suddenly time would be up and WHOOPS, time for bed.  So, timebox with goals. Hour X is when I will work on my Python review, hour Y is for math, hour Z is for art, then I will do writing for 30 minutes directly after dinner, etc. But for my Python review I want to get through lesson X, for my math review I want to finish my

Python has the methods isnumeric , isdigit , and isdecimal , and absolutely none of them will return true for a traditional decimal number AKA float, such as 1.23. Supposedly, the only solution for this is to effectively do a try-catch with a ValueError.  But that's disgusting and I hate it.  Why wouldn't they have a third function for this?  Anyway, this is my (not super well tested) implementation for it. It worked well enough for the MIT OCW exercise I was doing, anyway.  def is_mathematical_decimal (num_str): if len (num_str) == 0 : return False if num_str[ 0 ] == "-" : num_str = num_str[ 1 :] for char in num_str: if not char.isnumeric() and not char == "." : return False return True So if we have any character that's not a number OR a period, OR a minus sign at the BEGINNING, then it's not a mathematical decimal.  There should be some safeguarding against invalid inputs here, maybe, but honestl

My atomic clock is a really old SkyScan model, and it sucks. It's missing the battery case cover, and I've had trouble changing the time zone from PST to MDT. After DST, it got stuck an hour behind, but then again, it's always been stuck on Pacific time.  I wake up a lot in the middle of the night naturally, and I also set intentions to do so in order to assist with DEILD/WBTB and phasing attempts. I like to know what time it is when I wake up and put it in my dream journal, but my outlet is at the foot of my bed. So I have the atomic clock on my nightstand.  After dealing with these issues for a few months, I finally reset it myself manually, which was apparently a mistake, because it chimped out. I manually changed it because I was tired of doing subtraction in my head at 2 AM or whatever to check what the time was. Two nights ago, I thought it was 4:15 AM, but it was actually 5:15 AM. So I was falling back into a peaceful sleep and then my alarm went off.  Thought I fixe

YEP! It poured buckets of snow on me this morning on my run. May is no longer my second favorite month of the year, because it's apparently not safe from snow. I thought it was. I was wrong.  I only get 4 months to enjoy this frozen hellscape, when it actually gets nice outside. May, June, July, and August. It starts to get cold rapidly in September. Well, now May is screwed up too. Winter sinks its icy claws into everything. It lasts eight months and I hate it.  There's still snow predicted for next week too.  This is supposed to happen in March and maybe April, not May. The temperatures don't even get consistently nice until the week before Memorial Day. This is horrible, especially compared to last year. We are going to have a short warm season. Maybe this will at least kill some wasps. But probably not. 

“But look, this one’s late. I’ll bet that when it blooms, it’ll be the most beautiful of all.” That's something I've needed to hear, lately.