Someday we’re going to actually be moved, and this experience is going to be A Story, in which we try to remember how many times we went under contract. But right now, it just sucks.

Confirmation that this whole “move to Maine” thing is the right plan

A week ago I left my job. We are moving to Maine this summer. Currently we’re still in the process of getting under contract and through all of the bits of inspection and financing, but if all goes well soon enough we’ll be in a place with a bigger barn, more acreage (we might actually grow hay to feed our sheep year round, assuming we can find someone to hay it), and a legislature not trying to make things unsafe for my family. That move wasn’t compatible with staying at my job, and so for the summer I have the difficult task of enjoying myself with my kids in New Hampshire and midcost Maine … we all have our crosses to bear :)I have rediscovered that kayaking is a lot of fun, and that in particular my oldest simply lights up when they’re out propelling themself around on the water. We’re planning to do a lot more of that this summer. We’re also going to see if the three siblings can remember how to be kind and extend grace to each other more often than pushing buttons (or lashing out pre-emptively in order to protect the buttons). I’m also going to see if not being “on” quite so much will help me extend a bit more grace. So far, the signs are good.Today we had two different unplanned kids come over, which was awesome for us, and seem sot have been appreciated by the other parents. Hopefully we’ll manage more of that.I haven’t yet gotten back into the groove of reading, but I’m working on it.I recently listened to this podcast series on churches in decline, and an episode about a church in the bay area trying to stay active. The host interviewed a number of young adults about inviting others to the Church, and all demurred, because they don’t want to just go out an evangelize. And look, I’m not big on evangelism either, and I don’t regularly invite people to attend Quaker Meeting with me, but if it comes up, I do let them know they are welcome, and if I’m being honest, I think most people should go. I mean, the spirit of God lives within us, and speaks to us best spontaneously when we gather in silence, and through our relationships in community. There is one, indeed, who can speak to my condition and also to yours. And I think if you’re attending a church and can’t comfortably say that, or something similar, and mean it because you think it’s a true statement about the world, and a gift to the person you’re talking to, then you probably just shouldn’t really be going to church. (Which is easy for me to say, since I attend the Meeting for Worship where I am a member, which we don’t call a Church, ‘cause the Church is a whole different thing, and is us, not a steeplehouse).I have done some tinkering with computer stuff, and while there’s a lot that can be said about LLMs, I can say pretty conclusively that they are very good at pumping out code in arbitrary languages that more or less does what it’s supposed to. In a week (including two weekends) I’ve stood up a Raspberry PI, a few different services (tailscale networking, plus a calendar/task manager, and Obsidian note-taking), a service on the Pi to manage turning simple tasks and notes into coordinated project/action management with linked reference material, and an Obsidian plugin to turn random notes into tasks. I don’t know javascript, typescript, or python, but I’ve got code from all those languages running and doing more or less what it’s supposed to, plus various Docker installations.I wouldn’t want to use all this stuff in production (I was on a call near the end of my time at work with a developer who had a very straightforward and well-thought implementation for bug-fix that ALSO didn’t really jibe with some of our standard architecture and after talking it through, the architect made him do the more complex but also more correct implementation. I’m sure an LLM could do the thing either way, but certainly my company lacked the tooling and structure to also incorporate the “understanding why”, “making it meaningful to all the needed stakeholders” and “making the call about which possible option to select”, which are much more important pieces of solving actual production issues that affect something more important than me getting to scratch a computer-productivity-system itch), but for being able to do the thing that there are lots of tutorials about, it feels a bit like I’ve unlocked the “how to draw an owl” where there are a few outline circles, and then it jumps straight to the detailed owl. The other observation I’ll make is that my job for the last 8 years has been capturing users saying “I wanna do X” and turning that into “here are some detailed implementation plans for a computer system” and then making sure it actually worked. I couldn’t use generative AI to draw a pretty owl because I don’t know what a pretty owl is. But telling it to write me code that does X, and describing when it deviates from that, that I can manage.Anyway, more to come on the book front, and the computer tinkering front, and the house front, and the kayaking front, I hope. Have a couple pictures of NH in the summer. It’s lovely.

I’ve been retelling The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings as car ride & bedtime story with my 5 year old. We just finished LoTR, so onto the Silmarillion. Kiddo wants me to turn off the water early because it’s hard for her to hear about Eru Iluvitar and The Void over the running water.

Steven Erickson really is “what if literalizing the metaphor but like even more than you think”, isn’t he? (And yes, I do love it, even as I judge myself a little bit)

Fun afternoon on the water with kiddos. We will see how my body feels tomorrow.

Learning that Skrmetti was decided while I was wiring earnest money for a new house in a safer state the week after leaving my job because of that cross-state move is just a little on the nose.

We’re under contract to get out of our house in NH, now all we have to do is find the place in Maine we’ll be moving to …

We finished Dune Part II tonight. It’s visually stunning and definitely a movie of the book but by the end I mostly found myself wondering whether there’s a need for a film version of Dune to exist. (Also, Villenueve really wanted to get to make Dune Messiah, didn’t he?)

Among the frustrations of packing for a move: my books are currently in boxes, and I really want to reread the Borges stories about re-creating Don Quixote and Tlon Uqbar because both seem very relevant to right now, but I don’t want to unpack boxes.

New book on corporations and empire.

Last week was the week I made it official at work that moving states to keep my family safe also means leaving the job I’ve enjoyed doing well for 8 years. And I don’t really want to burden my coworkers with that, but I’m definitely having a lot of feelings about it.

Put the sheep out to mow and the goats decided to show me a gate that isn’t well-enough secured…

I really thought we’d gotten past “Oberlin college students have funny eating habits which proves that society is about to collapse” trend pieces, but I guess not, huh?

General observation that while I do really enjoy reading SFF and am very much an online fan of the genre, it’s also true that the Hugos and WorldCon seem much like like War Games: the only winning move is not to play.

Barn Muck 2025 continues

Barn muck 2025 continues

Oldest kiddo just handed in a short essay “The Drudges of Pern” - “These books that I loved so dearly when I was younger, now leave a bad taste in my mouth because of this small facet of world building.” There’s personal reaction, textual reference, insightful observations … good stuff.

Barn muck 2025 has begun

Nothing like packing up to move to make you realize how many books you have (and how many are still left unread)

Reading George Fox’s Journal (and honestly at 70% done I’m reading to get finished). Kinda bummed at the lack of spirituality and messages (because when he does share some, they are moving!) but really fascinated by the ways in which Fox asserted principled opposition to secular oppression

Reading George Fox’s Journal (founder of the Quakers) and particularly after his opening despair/spiritual awakening, there’s very little of the actual ministry he gives, but then in the period between Cromwell and Charles he actually relates a message he gave at a Meeting: an old couple, their house destroyed by war, has a series of people come and offer to rebuild it, but each in turn takes the money and then says “this house cannot be rebuilt” and leaves. He likens this to different religious leaders telling people that the perfection of Adam and Eve cannot be restored, but the people must tithe anyway, and concludes with the message that Christ comes to do the work freely, and that the house (and divine state of perfection) can in fact be restored. I don’t entirely agree with the theology, but I find the message surprisingly affecting, particularly in the context of Fox’s moment. I wish I knew more of what was being said then.

The rare shot of siblings enjoying each others company in their natural habitat.

Heard a chicken squawking while on a work call today and after watching it go running by, caught a couple pictures of this lovely specimen of local wildlife (who I think didn’t get to dine on our birds today)

Watched “Darmok” with kiddo (5) this evening and about halfway through as Picard & the other captain are starting to figure it out at the campfire, she turned to me and excitedly proclaimed “they’re figuring out how to talk to each other!”