I think the only appropriate way to answer this question requires me to clarify something. In the era of streaming music, most people don’t focus on whole albums anymore, even though bands and musical artists still compile and release music in albums.
So, I don’t necessarily have a favorite album from anything in the last decade or so.
Also, I think for an album to specifically be labeled as a favorite, you need to enjoy a majority of the songs on it.
This has only happened a few times for me.
The ones that come to mind are Weezer (Blue Album) by Weezer, The E.N.D. by Black Eyed Peas, and Stadium Arcadium by Red Hot Chili Peppers.
At the time that I was listening to these albums, back in college, I listened to each one from beginning to end multiple times on my drives to and from campus. (To be clear, the periods of each album for me never overlapped.)
Thinking about this, I kind of want to go listen to them again. It’s been too long.
Which topics would you like to be more informed about?
There are so many things out there that I’ve found fascinating but never delved into. I don’t really know where to start!
All kinds of engineering fields come to mind, but probably because of the idea that I might be able to apply that knowledge in some way if we ever ended up in some strange post-apocalyptic society. Aerospace and chemical engineering, in particular, would be neat to be really well informed about and potentially educated on.
Metallurgy is another topic that I’ve previously found fascinating that I wish I could be better informed about, but alas, we only have so much time. (Differing kinds of smithing would be tagged onto this as well, for various post-apocalyptic reasons )
Of course, I would also like to be more informed about the arts. Art history, modern art, music, the works!
So, today’s daily writing prompt is actually one I already did about a year ago. Instead, I’m going to share something I’ve been slowly working on since April.
San from Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke riding a wolf
I shared this over on my Instagram yesterday, and while I’m overall happy with the end result, I fully recognize I can do better with the painting of eyes.
Something I didn’t share over there is the backstory of how I got to the end result you see above. (If you want a TL;DR of the lessons learned from this little project, I’ll put those at the end.)
It started back in April, maybe even a little before that (technically, if you count when the first discussion with my sister-in-law was had) and there were some “speed bumps” along the way. (And unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of some things at the time, so you’ll only see the outcomes.)
See, I had actually attempted to 3D print and assemble this figurine before the final one I shared. It didn’t go well. Mistakes were made. Attempts to correct those mistakes were made, which ultimately failed and yielded very poor results.
I had originally used a translucent green resin (because it was what I had plenty of at the time while working on another project) which actually turned out to be beneficial in the long run. That one particular detail may have saved me more headaches later on.
The first attempted print, assembled as best I could
If you look closely you can probably see one of the mistakes, even if you can’t quite tell why it’s a mistake in the first place.
San’s left arm is rotated 90° the wrong way
One of the things I failed to do was properly double check the original image to confirm the position of her left arm. (Something I would go on to VERY carefully check in the second attempt.) So, yeah. The bottom half of her spear is making contact with the body of the wolf and forcing it to bend.
I had a similar mistake with mounting the wolf to the base plate.
That back leg should be MUCH closer to the rock
What I had done, for both San and the wolf, was assemble their respective pieces together without checking on their contact points with each other, and the mounting points of the wolf to the base. What was SUPPOSED to happen was the one hind leg and front leg, each having a square-like protrusion, setting into slots that would hold them in place. What ended up happening? Well, the front leg fit just fine, but the hind leg was angled wrong. The square-like protrusion (or peg, or whatever you want to call it) was probably a centimeter off being able to correctly sit in the slot on the rock.
Observing my mistake and fiddling with the angles, I sat there scratching my head at how I fucked it up.
Well, I decided that I could try to fix it. How? By taking a jewelers saw and cutting a chunk off the top of the rock and “rebuilding” the resin up underneath the foot to properly support it.
Obviously, that didn’t turn out so well.
Regardless, I gave it my best effort, and then I made the mistake with San’s arm. With everything mounted and connected I looked over everything and decided to start from the beginning.
I remembered to take a picture this time. Look at the wolf with its purple leg and tail!
It took me about five months to work up the nerve/energy to try again, but for the second attempt I used some new resin I had ordered that was supposed to be water washable (it did well enough in that department). I did make one mistake in the printing process, but it wasn’t catastrophic. I just wasn’t paying attention to object placement in the slicer software.
The slicer software shifted things around when it generated supports. Oops.
Thankfully it was just the one leg and the tail. Those were easy enough to set up in a new sliced file and reprint, but unfortunately I had run out of the black resin, or at least didn’t have enough left to feel comfortable with the attempt. (I really didn’t want a repeat of the printing process from the first attempt that ran low and failed to print the base.) That’s why I ended up using purple resin, as you can see by the replacements I used above.
Once I had the new print pieces done and was happy with them, I made sure to check all the different connection points. The only one that ultimately failed in the second attempt is San’s right hand that is supposed to be on the back of the wolf. It doesn’t even touch, and no matter how I tried to get pieces aligned, it wasn’t going to sit in a satisfactory way, so I just shrugged it off and moved forward. Her feet fit correctly on the wolf and that was enough.
All in all, fun experience and plenty of lessons learned.
Oh, and before I forget, a bonus from what I mentioned earlier about the benefit of using the translucent green resin the first time.
I had the slicer software create infill scaffolding so the body wouldn’t be solid. I had to drain a lot of excess resin.
Here’s the TL;DR Lessons Learned:
If using Unsupported 3D objects in a slicer software: after using the “generate supports” feature, check the layout and positioning of your objects to make sure they don’t overlap. You don’t want fused pieces that need reprinting.
Something that should be noted before even hitting “print” is making sure your machine is level. If resin runs low enough in the vat, objects will not print correctly.
Adding on to the previous point, keep an eye on the level of resin in your vat so you know when to add more, just in case.
Printing a large object: if you choose to hollow it out in the slicer software, be prepared for excess resin being trapped inside. You’ll want to drain it.
When draining that excess resin: drill two holes, preferably on opposite ends of the object. Resin is viscous and extra air flow speeds up draining.
Drilling holes in an object: drill in spots that can be hidden. (I hid them in the tail slot and one leg spot.)
If you want to seal the holes: use more resin and an ultraviolet light source. (I ended up buying a strong UV flashlight for this project.)
Assembly time: check each individual piece that has connections. Check each connection and make sure they fit right before gluing/securing. This may mean holding several pieces together by hand and awkwardly fidgeting them around to see where things need to sit.
Gluing/securing resin prints: super glue works just fine if you have time and want to wait. Or you can use more resin and the UV flashlight.
Tip/advice: you can buy syringes and blunt needle tips in varying gauges. I used both straight and angled needle tips.
Lesson learned for the syringes: I ordered tubes that were supposed to provide UV protection. The UV light still got through a little bit. Keep that syringe away from the UV light sources as much as possible.
I celebrate like two or three holidays a year. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The reason? My family gets together for those and does the standard stuff. Costumes and candy, turkey and fixings, maybe more turkey and fixings with a side of gifts.
I offered the short answer because outside of those three, there are tons of holidays, and the question wasn’t the colloquial “the Holidays”. So, I chose to interpret the question in a much more general sense, because I don’t do anything special to observe or celebrate the vast majority of holidays.
There’s a lot of work depending on which ones a person chooses to celebrate, and I don’t have it in me to add that kind of effort into my annual routine.
Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
I’ll be honest, it took me a bit to think through this prompt. I, personally, alone, have not had any baking or cooking fails that I would count as “epic”.
I do, however, have one with my siblings for a family holiday meal.
Some brief background: while my brother has not been diagnosed (to my knowledge) with any sort of gluten sensitivity, he has noted that he feels better when he doesn’t have any gluten products and made the choice to go gluten free.
So, every family meal we have typically has some gluten free component, which in general is easier than you think. This has been going on for several years at this point and is part of my family’s new normal.
One Thanksgiving my sister and I were trying to follow an instant pot mac n cheese recipe using gluten free rice-based macaroni. She said she had made it before, and I had no reason to doubt her, so I followed her lead.
We measured everything out, and placed the pasta and liquids (I think it was a combination of water and milk, but I could be misremembering the milk part) into the instant pot. She hit some buttons, started the timer, and went to work on some other dishes while we waited.
It can’t have been more than 10 minutes, MAYBE 15 at the most, and the noodles should have been done and ready for us to add the sauce ingredients. Unfortunately, we made a mistake somewhere, and when my sister went to vent the instant pot it started spitting a milky liquid (maybe that’s why I thought milk was involved) which caused us to panic a little and carefully throw a towel over it to prevent the hot liquid from getting everywhere.
As soon as the spitting stopped, we opened the lid. The pasta was still swimming in water. My sister said it should be fine and that we just needed to drain them, so she got a large spoon to try and get some out to check that the noodles were cooked appropriately before moving to the sink. To our horrible surprise we found that the noodles basically collapsed and rapidly turned into a mush. My sister quickly dug in to see if she could find any noodles that survived, but she only made it worse. She mixed the rice pasta macaroni too much, which in its current state didn’t take much at all, and the whole thing turned into a hot, sticky, homogeneous mass.
We looked at each other in mild shock and disbelief before we started laughing at the absolute disaster. We immediately wrote it off as a failure and played with it for a couple seconds. I tried poking it with my finger and it was almost like Oobleck the way it stuck to me.
As it cooled down and solidified more, I noticed the change in firmness and bounciness was almost like what I had seen in those videos of people making mochi. Then it dawned on me why. Mochi is made with rice flour, and as I had mentioned earlier the box of gluten free pasta was rice based.
Sometimes I wonder about how long it takes, how old I need to be, to learn valuable lessons that others seemed to grasp well before I did. When I look to them, I also wonder if they ever really learned them in the first place or if they were naturally adept and have no idea what it would mean to “learn” those lessons.
I almost thought about titling this post around self-respect and image instead of self-importance, but I decided against it on account of perspective.
As kids, as teenagers, and even as adults, we often worry about what others think of us. What we wear, what we say, how we hold ourselves in the company of others. We get so in our own heads about all of it. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. For myself, part of me always kind of knew this, but I still couldn’t get over it.
Where I’m trying to go with all of this is to say that the lesson I wish I had learned earlier in life is to stop worrying about others perception of me, and to stop letting it affect my self-worth, self-importance, and self-esteem. Something that helped make this click is a 2-minute clip from a streamer by the name of Negaoryx who shared it on Twitter (I still refuse to call it X) of a troll in her chat that she chooses not to ignore and instead rips into them about being a piece of shit. To be clear, this persons actions are actually on the other end of the “self-importance” scale/spectrum from where I was at. I had very little self-esteem, where this troll was much more arrogant (and misogynistic, as you’ll see is called out if you watch the clip.) The words that resonated with me most actually come from near the end of the clip.
“…because you think you’re the hero of your own story, but you’re a footnote in everyone else’s.”
Those words, though not directed at me, made me realize that in this great big world, I am nobody. Yet, the same applies to everyone else. It can even go deeper if you stop to think about the fact that there are going to be billions of people in this world who never even know you exist.
So, where the troll is being put down (rightly) for being a misogynistic asshole, her words were almost uplifting to me in several ways. I don’t have to worry about what other people think of me (to a certain extent) because I could just as well be a faceless nobody to them, but I still need to remember that I am not nobody TO MYSELF. The world itself doesn’t revolve around me, but my world is everything around me. There are things I have control over, and things I don’t. It’s not worth the emotional stress of worrying about things I can’t control (other people and their perspectives) and I should only be concerned with what IS in my power to control (how I act and present myself.)
Along with all of the self-worth, -importance, and -esteem comes some amount of humility. Stop putting so much more value into what others think of you than what you think of yourself. Be happy with yourself, and not with who you want everyone else to think you are.
Provided you’re not a misogynistic piece of shit. We just need to be nice to each other.
I’m a sucker for a good burrito. Not the frozen microwavable kinds you get from the store that are usually like 50% tortilla because they don’t have a lot of filling. I’m talking about the kind that risks falling apart or exploding.
They don’t have to be filled with anything crazy. Simple fillings like ground beef and cheese, carnitas and guac, or shredded chicken. As long as those simple fillings are done well and taste great then I’m good, however, I do enjoy a good burrito with interesting fillings like brisket and mac n cheese (again, provided they’re done well.)
Burgers fall into this same general area. With the right toppings/fixings, they’re good. Just don’t go overboard and do that stupid “cheese bomb” shit. I might be getting a little messy from eating a good burger, but I don’t want one that is intentionally made to not be eaten with my hands unless it has no bun (I’ve tried the bunless option at Five Guys before. Not the lettuce wrapped, it’s literally just all your toppings and patties in a foil tray. Makes for a good “salad” of sorts!)
Really, though, anything that is so highly customizable is good in my book.
I do at least a little bit of walking every day (oh hey, post title!)
I’m still sort of waking up as I write this post but to be honest I don’t need to be fully awake to answer a simple question like this.
If there is one thing I could do to help myself be healthier it would actually be to walk more and add jogging/running to my routine. When I worked at a “Big Red Circles” big box store on the overnight shift, I was walking 20,000+ steps every night. I think at one point I was even hitting 32,000+ steps fairly regularly. I walked so much, jogged a little bit, lifted and “threw” truck so often that I actually was in the best shape of my life for about a year. It was great being able to earn my paycheck and get in shape all at once, and it made a nice balance to my very sedentary hobbies. (If I could make the money I am today, or even more, and work out simultaneously, I probably would go back to that.)
Running is not something I do very often at all anymore, though, and I’ve never found joy in running for the sake of running. If it’s part of another activity, like a sport, then I don’t mind it!
Well, not a very thought provoking prompt and response, but that is all I can muster this morning.
Leadership can be such a hard concept for some people to grasp. They can go to all kinds of conferences, attend seminars, read books and still not fully understand what it means to be a leader (and end up just being another “manager”.)
Early on when I first started my current job, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a PMI Symposium (for those unfamiliar, PMI stands for Project Management Institute) and I got to meet with a wide variety of people from different industries. This experience is part of where I got a feel for different leadership styles.
From what I could tell, you could boil down what it means to be a leader into a few key elements. Do I exhibit them? Sometimes. Usually as the situation calls for it.
Some of those elements can be summed up with a simple image I snagged from the Internet.
Okay, so the image says “boss” in place of “manager” but whatever, same difference.
Anyways, the point here is that the leader is connected to and participating in the work versus the manager/boss who is disconnected and just telling people what to do. This may look different depending on circumstances of the work, but the core concept of working alongside the people they lead is what’s important.
Back to the prompt itself, do I see myself as a leader? Sometimes. It’s just a matter of circumstances. If I’m on a project and I own a piece/deliverable/objective that requires me to work with and coordinate people then I end up doing a bit of a mix. I’m not usually a Subject Matter Expert for the work that needs to be done, so it’s not like I get to participate the same way as the leader in the image above, but I’m not just going to tell people what to do and expect results without trying to understand the work they’re doing. I want to work alongside them so I can better assist in the ways I am able to, whether that be in coordination efforts or communications with other people. Whatever it is they need, I try to help.
One of the other things about the image above that I like to point out is that the leader is in front of their people. When I look at that it reminds me that leaders I’ve seen and worked with who stood out are the ones who stand in front to represent and protect the people doing the work. Mind you, one thing that can’t be conveyed in the image is credit. Leaders, in my mind, don’t simply take all the credit for the work that gets down. This is where I like to see myself as a leader (when it’s necessary for me to step into the role) because I fully recognize that if I’m not the one doing the work then I want to lift up the people who ARE.
After all that’s been said, I do want to point out that I’m not the kind of person who enjoys being the center of attention, which is often why I don’t automatically and immediately raise my hand to take on roles of leadership. I’m much more comfortable doing the work because I find it more rewarding and satisfying to learn, understand, and be capable of doing it.
I suppose, after sleeping on this prompt, that I can try to answer, but it’s probably going to be a less inspiring effort. Partly because my favorite word, right now, is probably a bit cliched these days.
Fuck!
Plain and simple. One word that can be used in so many situations with a wide variety of intonations to provide impact and meaning.
I know I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and memes in the last few years or so that cover this. So, I’ll go grab one and drop it here.
Now, to be clear, I don’t use it so frequently that it’s in every sentence I speak (or write, obviously) because I do try to maintain a balance in my vocabulary usage between professionalism and personal. Well, that, and because if I hope to be an okay writer then I need to be able to describe situations in a variety of ways and not use the word “fuck” as some kind of crutch.
The Dragon's Grove 