Throughout the last week I have had time to sit and think. It’s been a different type of experience. Generally, I have not been able to take vacation during the major holiday week at the end of the year. It turns out that it is really nice to just have that time to relax and enjoy a little bit of time off. I have pondered post theory science and considered various elements of quantum computing. It would have been nice if I could bring my whiteboard with me on this trip, but even without the ability to noodle on a blank wall I feel I got to spend some time deeply thinking about things. That was a delightful use of time.

I made a list of things that might get purchased by me at some point. It was exciting. The only thing on the list that got purchased was a Glitty wooden case for my M3 MacBook Air. I ordered the Padauk one. It actually matches one of my favorite guitar necks which is also made out of Padauk. At the moment, I don’t have any positive or negative feedback on the Glitty products, but at some point that will be provided. My MacBook Air got scratched on the top and I did not like that turn of events. I spent some time trying to figure out what to use to prevent minor scratches on the outside of the MacBook and at some point in the next couple of weeks we will find out how that plan works out when it goes into action. 

Switching to using a MacBook has been a major journey. I’m now reasonably good at working within the macOS and I no longer struggle with everything being reversed from my Windows machine. Seriously, like everything is just backward between the two operating systems and it is uncomfortable to switch between the two. It was uncomfortable enough that I broke down and bought this MacBook to avoid having to switch over at the end of the day into a different operating system. I’m now used to using the MacBook keyboard as well. That took a bit to get used to given that the main things that I do with the system are in the Chrome web browser and that is ubiquitous. 

This morning I have been listening to a band called Sleep Token which I don’t really know all that much about. The members are not directly named. It’s an interesting approach to make music and be in a band without being directly named. A few bands of the years have taken this approach, but it is by far a small slice of the overall musical landscape. The music has been passable and so far I would give them a listen again at some point in the future. We will see if they make it into my standard rotation. My musical tastes right now are mostly inline with SiriusXM channel 37 Octane which plays hard rock and metal music. The line for me within the metal spectrum of music is that I want to be able to understand the vocals. The Octane channel typically stays within the range of my musical taste. They play new heavy music, but the songs are not soft rock and the singers are generally understandable. That is where I heard the aforementioned band for the first time and decided to listen to a full album from them this morning.

Oddly, Google Docs’ spell check did not activate this morning. I went to publish this epic prose into WordPress and a bunch of underlined words appeared. My normal practice is just to edit as I go and you dear reader get what you get as a finished product. It’s the churn of normal organic prose written by a single person and published online within the classic weblog setting using one of the all time great blogging systems WordPress. I’ll admit my preference is to deliver solid grammatically correct content. I had to publish some updates today and that was a little bit shocking. Normally the Google Docs proofreading system works well enough. Even right now it says no suggestions or edits when I ask it for proofreading help and I know at least one thing is not spelled correctly in this last paragraph. It will be fixed by the time that you read it, but at the time it was written it was just wrong. 

Dr. Nels Lindahl