Weekly Update 2025-11-14: Agonizing Reappraisal Edition
What happened during the week of November 10th - November 14th:
⚠️ Due to drastic changes with my vacation, I will be amending the weekly update for the next couple entries. I will only cover the days between Monday 11-10 and Friday 11-14, owing to the departure on Saturday 11-15. The subsequent entry will be written after I return from the vacation on Monday 11-24.
🚫 On Wednesday 11-12, I made the sad and depressing decision to call off the vacation to New Mexico and El Paso. The choice came after a long weekend of second-guessing, of fits of anger and depression, and after our actual anniversary on Tuesday 11-11 was ruined by the uncertainty of our plans. Both L. and I have had bad luck trying to travel somewhere for our anniversary, and the flight cutbacks were just another entry on a long list of misfortunes. I spoke with my sister on Tuesday 11-11, as both she and her husband work in the aviation industry--she's a flight dispatcher, he's an air traffic controller--they would have well-educated views regarding all the flight cutbacks. Her take was that our outbound flights would likely be okay, but our inbound flights on the Sunday before Thanksgiving could be dicey, and we should make backup travel plans in case there are problems. Neither L. nor I wanted this uncertainty hanging over our vacation, particularly if the anxiety were unwarranted. We didn't want to worry for nothing, and have what should be an enjoyable vacation ruined by events that didn't come to pass. Of course, if our flights were delayed or canceled, that would be an anxiety of a different sort. All of these uncertainties culminated in us deciding we should give New Mexico a pass. I managed to cancel all reservations with no penalties.
💀 So now what do we do? Well, for the first and only time in my life, I am taking vacation advice from the Grateful Dead and going on an Alabama Getaway. We will drive to Memphis on Saturday 11-15 and stay overnight, then spend three nights in the Mobile/Gulf Shores region. The next two nights will be our first adventure in glamping, courtesy of Marriott at a camp southeast of Birmingham. After that, our final three nights will be in the Huntsville/Decatur region, with our return drive happening on Monday 11-24.
A Couple Two Tree Items To Note From Last Week:
External Actions
- 💡 Create: Greyrock work is now on hold, thanks to the change in travel plans. Uploaded some of the black-and-white photos to the Canonet QL17 GIII Series on Glass.
- ⛑️ Health: Stomach was roiling from some high-fat foods and the stress of our travel plans.
- 👥 Meet: Made one quick visit to Side Project Cellar on Thursday 11-13 as I won't be returning until after Thanksgiving.
Internal Labor
- 🗂️ Organize: Apart from the change in travel plans, I used the Pwned Passwords site to change some of my saved passwords in Bitwarden. One of my older passwords was found in this database, so all affected sites were changed.
- 🔬 Test: Upgraded to Developer Beta 2 for iOS 26.2 and macOS Tahoe 26.2.
Media
- 🔊 Listen: 2025-11-08 | Blue Whirling, A Duck In A Tree; Building an Agentic Temple feat. Dr. Eleanor Janega, Trashfuture
- 📚 Read: Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years, Japan Times; There Are No Weird Blogs Anymore Cause It’s More Fruitful to Drive Them Out of Business, Talking Points Memo
- 🖥️ Watch: Overnight in Japan’s Abandoned Onsen Village like a Ghost Town | Yunoyama Onsen, YouTube, travelgeek; 3 Days Discovering Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, YouTube, Japan Guide
Obligations:
- 💼 Job: I handed over a spreadsheet tracking printers to one of my teammates, who will take over in my absence for a printer IP remapping project. There will be, if my predictions are right, some conflict between the project manager of the printer remap and my actual manager, as the former wants people available for several hours to handle the project and the latter believes this isn't fully realistic. I'm vaguely curious to find out how this resolves itself, but to be honest, I am okay with being out of town when it happens. Beyond that, all folks have been informed of my absence until Tuesday 11-25, and all of my work equipment is powered off in the interim.
- 🎯 Tasks: Usual household duties of cleaning, laundry, and ironing. Prepping clothes for a vacation, now with beach attire thanks to the change in plans.
More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:
This has been an understandably light week for media consumption, as other events have overtaken my life.
A Duck In A Tree is a long-running "zero BPM" podcast of ambient, found sound, spoken word, acoustic, and electronic music. It's not exactly background music, though you can treat it that way. I appreciate how the selected offerings provide intriguing textures of sound. Meanwhile, Trashfuture's episode with long-time favorite guest Dr. Eleanor Janega takes a deep dive into Peter Thiel's chemically enhanced lectures about the Antichirst, with numerous detours about Joyce Carol Oates' continued mastery of owning another tech-based South African on Twitter.
The bear article from Japan Times is rather frightening. Knowledge to keep bears away from you in North America doesn't apply to Japan, and given the rapid depopulation of the Japanese countryside, bears will likely become more bold with their interactions with humans there. As for no more weird blogs, well, I'm doing my part here, but I have no plans to make money off of what I type here. I can't go out of business if I'm not running a business!
Both Japanese videos highlight the cycle of travel. The Seto Inland Sea has become a more popular internal travel destination in Japan, largely due to art festivals and supporting local economies (olive production in Shodoshima, for example). However, what once peaked can become a valley, and what was once popular can be quickly forgotten. The abandoned onsen video would be a great rewatch for next Halloween, or if you are living Halloween every day, you can rewatch it now!