A Song in the Trees

I am authorized to work remotely \o/ at least for the first three months, at which point the arrangement will be evaluated. But they have several permanently remote people, so it sounds like that in itself is not an issue. I will be spending my first... week? there in person though, since I was gonna be in the area anyway to visit my parents and friends for the holidays. So I get to met whoever else is around in person :) I will probably also have the chance to take a course on the data structure I will be working with, which is pretty complex.

We have been having some really beautiful sunsets here lately, with the sun hitting the clouds just right or the clouds hiding the light of the sky in spectacular ways.

I have been getting semi into my old alife friend Creatures again; it's come out on Steam now! The company that owns the IP has been dormant for so long that I'm surprised anyone was around to license it out to the company that brought it to Steam - and have been fixing bugs, unlike the old GOG versions! It's a Creatures Christmas! So far I have poked at the wiki and even updated my alife DW for the first time in five years. (Turns out I can still read the scripting language with zero issues after all that time!) I've already bought the games twice - well, once was a birthday present, the other might've been a Christmas present? - anyway, guess who's buying them again. (There is a direct line between these games and my Ph.D, and I can afford to throw twelve dollars at people who are helping the community out.)

Unfortunately, both games in the Albian Years crashed on me almost immediately (even C1, where the GOG version works fine), so, uh, I hope they fix that because that's not acceptable. C2 seemed to be doing better than with GOG in the microsecond before it crashed, though? I'll see if they put out an emergency patch before I request a refund. C3/DS seems to be working great, though, so after more testing, I'll probably move over my current files and take advantage of the fixes.

In less virtual worlds, today I walked downtown. Not a lot of people out on a cold Monday afternoon, so that was nice. I stopped by the Little Free Library and rearranged all the books, which were in a mess. For some reason there is a plank of wood inside, which I suspect was intended to be a shelf, except that it's very obviously too short? Anyway, I dropped off four books - Tokyo Ueno Station (don't intend to read that again), and the three books I got for free off a student who was moving out, the Foundation Trilogy Omnibus and two volumes of collected Sherlock Holmes. Hopefully someone enjoys the Holmes as much as me and Foundation more than me. In there was a copy of Anna Karenina, and I am still having a lot of Zhenya feelings, so I took it with me.

I also got three more books at the city library, so for now there is net zero change in books in household 😅 At least until I toss the one into the recycling where it belongs. But it was nice to be at the library. The building is kind of rundown and cramped inside and definitely not wheelchair-friendly, but there were some nice changes since I'd last been there, and I feel fond of the place despite its shortcomings. The children's space looks like it's been reorganized, and I noticed they now have a proper YA comics space, some resource posters on the walls ("Dealing with one of these tough issues? Here's where those books are to help you out" "Need to confidentially talk with the Trevor Project? Here's how!"), and even the adult comics now have a whole shelf and a half to themselves, instead of half a shelf! Granted, the majority of the shelf space is empty, which looks a little weird, but I'm wondering if they're intending to get more to fill it out.

I also did a check to make sure nobody had put antivax materials on the leaflet table again. I'm still confused as to why nobody contacted me about my card expiring, but they reactivated it when I checked out, and I walked on home with the books. Like many other libraries, they have also gotten rid of late fees in the past couple of years, though I will still endeavor to return my books on time.

When I got home, I started in Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. The chapter about her daydreams was very interesting to me, though my daydreams are very different from hers, and I think her art has gotten better even with its simplicity. I couldn't put the book down until I hit the chapter about her sister, which was so heavy that I closed the book and just sat feeling sad for a few minutes. I think I'll leave more for tomorrow.