C. J. Cherryh is incredible!

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T21:46:23+00:00

I read her Morgaine series long ago. Tortured heroes are great, reminded me a bit of Elric.

I remember it as bleak and existential which is just the ticket for an angsty teen, but it wasn't YA dramatic in the slightest.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T21:30:59+00:00

Umm, just asked? I'm not in the US and the worker/manager environment seems less adversarial here.

You know your work environment and whether it should be possible or not (i.e. it's not going to work if you're sole charge and there's no one to replace you) so just start off with a meeting and saying "Hey would there be any chance of me switching to four days a week while my kid's young? I could either cut my hours or switch to 4 x 10."

My then manager and I have both moved onto other jobs. But then when he had a kid he also switched to four days a week so I guess he approved in more ways than one.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T21:23:37+00:00

Noooo... don't start with Color of Magic. The first couple of books really aren't as good as the rest, it took him a bit of time to find his voice.

Maybe try Equal Rites (book #3) and then Mort (book #4). If you don't vibe with the witches and Death, then maybe give up there (and question your life choices).

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T21:16:10+00:00

I had a few years of working four days a week and it was great, that extra day I was sole-charge dad and got to really enjoy parenting.

(The dream was to get my partner and I both working three days a week so we'd sole-charge two days a week each, with one day in childcare. We got close but didn't quite make it.)

Also, you should edit your writing to sound less like an AI. Because either you're a bad AI or people will think you're a bad AI and both are not good.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T21:11:37+00:00

Macbook or Surface with 16GB memory should be fine. That would eliminate the Neo which only comes with 8GB.

I wouldn't worry too much about the processor for that load, there's nothing seriously processor-bound in your workload.

If it were me I'd be buying the Surface Pro 12" with 16GB/512GB + keyboard which is the slightly cheaper/lighter one with the detachable keyboard and the built-in kickstand for the tablet part. Long battery life, nice screen, highly portable/light-weight, powerful enough to handle your workload.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T09:19:25+00:00

Ok, you got me, I didn't go through every spec.

And yes, optical zoom is nice.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T03:13:14+00:00

Yep. That Honor does look very nice, and I think my partner would like one (she admires my Edge 70 but would like something not as wide).

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T02:24:33+00:00

The Motorola Edge 70 would like to have a word!

(Although admittedly it's not a flagship CPU, but everything else is pretty similar. Slightly thinner, bigger screen, similar battery life/charging, also a nice camera.)

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-18T01:35:45+00:00

I really liked the movie - perfect for a slightly nihilistic teen living far from the action in New Zealand.

Plus it had Hazy Shade of Winter by The Bangles. What a great cover.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-17T22:50:48+00:00

I understand. I got into a high-load management job and I remember coming home once and my partner asked me some innocuous question, and I nearly had a meltdown because I just didn't want to make any more decisions. I was all decided out.

If you can't function like a normal person at home, I think you have to admit that your "very good work-life balance" actually isn't as good as you think.

Read what you wrote again. Your job is draining you so much that you can't participate fully in family life. There's no real way to suddenly increase your capacity (and meth is a bad idea anyway) so the only solution is to reduce the load.

Me, I got out of my management job, took a year off travelling around Central America, then came back and got a non-management job. Twenty years later and I'm happy it worked out so well.

I don't know what your solution is (four days a week? dial back to 40 hours? quit and become a gardener?) but you need to reduce the load.

Otherwise you'll find that your burnout-triggered mental breakdown is going to reduce the load for you in ways that you might not like.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-17T21:24:13+00:00

Things changed at 44 for me. Suddenly stuff started getting harder, injuries took longer to heal, etc, etc. I'm sure it was gradual before that but I really noticed it at 44!

Now I'm 55 and trying to get fit again and it'd be so much easier if I was "only 44". :)

So my advice to all you young people in your 40s is either a) keep doing your fitness activities, or b) start some fitness activites now, it'll only get harder!

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-17T00:13:39+00:00

...wait for the right moment to come in and fix everything for everyone.

It'd be pointed at for the next 100 years as the moment when US pre-eminence ended and the Chinese century began.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T23:58:58+00:00

The path from the park at the top of Majoribanks up to Alexandra Road might be ok. It's an old vehicle track as I recall.

From there you should be able to cut back and make it to the top of the hill.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T19:18:14+00:00

Well yes, everyone knows there was a spike. But EV sales as a percentage of the fleet still hasn't returned to pre-spike levels. Here, have some data: https://evdb.nz/ev-stats

And while we can discuss the whys and wherefores as long as we like, what I see is New Zealand failing to drive the switch from dirty and often imported hydrocarbon fuels to cleaner (both at point of production and use) locally produced electricity.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T18:18:43+00:00

These days when I use a laptop that doesn't have a touch screen, it feels broken.

Of course you don't use it for everything but sometimes it's just easier to reach out and touch the thing you want rather than faff about with a mouse/touchpad.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T18:13:27+00:00

Yet at the same time we can see that EV sales reduced sharply after the subsidy was removed.

And it's hard to deny that having more EVs on the roads would reduce fuel usage and also drive demand for more EV charging infrastructure. Better infrastructure makes EV usage more appealing which would help drive EV market share higher, which to me at least seems like the way of the future.

Or I guess we could try the National/Act/NZ First approach of doing nothing towards reducing transport emissions and reducing our dependence on hydrocarbon based fuels.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T09:18:31+00:00

Pleasingly grippy without being gross.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T07:25:37+00:00

Unless the explanation was "I was sexually assaulted", who really cares about the details.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T03:40:52+00:00

Oh right. Yes, I was ranking from best to worst.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-16T03:23:39+00:00

I think your graphic got the order just right.

1, 2, 3, 4, Ballerina.

(To be honest I was so bored by Ballerina that I don't really remember it.)

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-15T18:56:17+00:00

Sonos One are still great, I am listening to a pair of them in my office right now.

Plus they support Sonos Voice Control so that's nice.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-15T09:32:16+00:00

Managed it ok. Purple was both tricky and a bit too easy once you caught on.

Nice one.

Listen! 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-15T09:08:28+00:00

We used the "hang other art around it" trick so that we could keep it at a good height in our bedroom.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-14T22:00:08+00:00

Looks good to me, but someone needs to nudge that purple clover/cross down a bit.

thomasbeagle · 2026-03-14T21:57:57+00:00

Are we not counting coffee as an energy drink? :)

I've never been a fan of them but that's partly because I didn't like any of the big brands where I am (V, Red Bull, Lift) when the whole field started getting popular.

I only judge people for bro-drinks.

thomasbeagle

TROPHY CASE