Renaissance Grrrl

This past week I’ve been in Paris for POPL and... it has not been pleasant. Generally I love traveling, and I was looking forward to visiting mainland Europe for the first time, but

I hate Paris.

Like, everything about it. This city is entirely opposed to anything resembling accommodation for disabled folks. And not just the city, but the university venue as well.

As mentioned in my previous, standing in place for a long time fucks with my circulation. There was nowhere to sit in the room where they served coffee. The “lunch” was standing tables only with, again, not even benches around the edges of the room. The one working/meeting room they had (which actually had chairs) was only open on the workshop days and got locked down before the talks finished for the day. And the library, the only other place we found to sit, is entirely closed on weekends.

In addition, the venue for the workshops was on the second floor. Technically they had elevators, but (a) the closest one was out of order, and (b) all the others were unusable because they locked the hallway doors around the workshops, thereby prohibiting access to the venue area from these other elevators. While I myself don’t have issues with stairs (yet), one of my friends here does.

Exacerbating this absurd refusal to accommodate anyone who may need to sit or take a lift, everything is noisy. I have sensory overload issues, and while it’s usually not too onerous to deal with, evidently the Parisians refuse to do any sort of soundproofing or baffling. None of the ceilings use acoustic tile, floors typically aren’t carpeted, walls are thin, and every surface is sound-reflectingly hard. Plus many of the rooms have harsh and noisy lights (yes, I can hear lights). The constant assault is exhausting. I have to wear my noise-cancelling headphones to bed in order to be able to get any sleep. The only quiet places we found were the library (closed on weekends), the working/meeting room (locked most of the time), and one coffeeshop (thankfully decorated with wood).

All the rampant ableism aside, it’s impossible to eat here. Vegetarian-wise it’s about like the early 1990s in the US: often you can get a salad, and if you’re lucky they might have one meat-free entree. Gods have mercy on you if you’re also sensitive to wheat. I’m used to conference lunches being hit-or-miss, but this year was especially bad. Of the days I even tried going, they only had vegetarian food once. And according to folks who went on other days, they mostly only had hors d'oeuvres rather than an actual meal.

Over the last few weeks I was interviewed for the Identity Function. The process was quite nice and got me thinking on a number of things. Some of them I may well flesh out into blog posts once I get the time. Of course, that likely won't be until the autumn given everything else going on the next couple months.

I'll be in New York from 28 June through 10 July. The first couple days are for a PI meeting, then I'll get a four-day weekend before LICS, NLCS, and LOLA. Originally the plan was to take a quick trip to Sacramento that weekend for a friend's wedding. (The wedding's still on, but plans changed.) At least this way I'll get a chance to relax, rather than running all over the place. Of course this also means I'll be spending the 4th in NYC. Historically the 4th has been one of my favorite holidays, because it was one I've always spent with friends. I don't know that any of my readers are in NYC, but if you'll be around drop me a line. Or if you used to live there and know fun things to do that weekend, let me know! (Especially any quiet end-of-Pride things.)

Me and L set the date for our final move to the Bay Area: 20 July. And then I start at Google on the 25th. Between now and then: dissertating!!

Got back from Vancouver a couple days ago. The return flight was hell, but other than that the trip was pretty good. Got to meet a whole bunch of folks who read my blog (hi!), which was super cool. It always gives me warm fuzzies to know people are actually interested in my stuff. (You'd think I'd get used to it after a while, but no, evidently childhood scars still remain years after developing a solid sense of self-esteem. Go fig.) Of course, now I feel bad about not having written much of late. I have a few posts I've been meaning to write —mostly technical ones—, and I'm thinking I might should try to kick those out as a way to get back into the daily writing habit needed for finishing up my dissertation.

Since handing out my card at ICFP, I've been hacking around on my website. I'm still working on getting my publications/presentations to be properly formatted, and the timestamps in the footers on a couple pages are busted, but other than that I think it's in pretty good shape. I also took part in a keysigning party for the purpose of building a WoT as part of the developing story for how we securely deliver packages in Haskell. My key is up on Keybase as well as on my website (along with all my other contact info).

After a week of great talks, too much drinking, and too little sleep, I met up with a dear friend from undergrad. It's been far far too long since we've had a chance to hang out (alas, he couldn't make the wedding last year), but he's one of those friends you can just fall right back into. It's funny how much can change and yet stay the same. In one of our ambling walks I dragged him into a clothing store —something I never would've done pre-transition. He didn't seem to mind. He just went along like it's the sort of thing we've always done. And it felt to me like the sort of thing we could've always done. Recently he's been ref'ing for roller derby up in Victoria, and after talking about it I'm thinking I might try my hand at it. Sounds like a lot of fun. We have a team in Bloomington, and they're doing a training/recruiting thing, though alas I'll miss it since I'll be in Mountain View on the 14th. I'll see if I can't find some other way to get introduced.

These past few weeks I've been hacking up a storm. It's been fun, but I need to take a break. One of the big things I learned last fall is that I really need to take breaks. I was good about it all spring, but this summer I've been slipping into my old ways. Those workaholic ways. And when it gets that way, too often coding begins to feel like ripping out a piece of my soul. Or, not ripping. Purging. Whatever. In any case, not good. I much prefer the euphoric sorts of hacking sprees, where spilling my art out into the world feels more like a blessing, like gift giving, like spilling my heart does. So yeah. If it's not like that, then I need to take a break.

The last couple days I've been watching Sense8, which is amazing. It's been a long time since I've given anything five starts in Netflix. I've been watching some cool stuff, been giving lots of fours, but not fives. So yeah, total five star work. The Wachowskis are amazing. I never got all super into the Matrix like everyone else —I mean the first movie was fun and all— but yeah, between Jupiter Ascending and Sense8, they're just awesome. Should prolly see their rendition of Cloud Atlas; but I dunno if it could really live up to the book.

Speaking of breaks, and furies of activity: I'm flying out to Portland on saturday, will be there for a week. Then, when I get back I'm going to WOLLIC/CoCoNat for a week. And then, towards the end of the following week I start the interview process at Google. Then there's a couple weeks of calm before flying off to ICFP. And after that, I need to dig into the dissertation again. Really, I should be working on it now, but like I said: other coding has been eating at my brain. Really need to get it just squared away and out the door. Can't wait to fly off to Mountain View or wherever else is next in life.

All last week I was in Tokyo to attend ICFP and associated workshops. It was nice to finally meet a bunch of people I've been talking with online for the last few years. And I met up with Ken Shan and Oleg Kiselyov again, which is always a pleasure. Unlike last time I was in Japan, I didn't get too much time to explore and go sightseeing. I got to explore Chiyoda, which I missed last time around, and I made sure to do two of the most important things: (1) eat some okonomiyaki, (2) visit Akihabara to buy some new manga.

My newest acquisition is 銃姫 ("Gun Princess") Phantom Pain, which I'm rather enjoying so far. Anything that starts off with an execution, spell-casting based on Buddhist mantras, and a prolonged diatribe on why one of the characters is a good-for-nothing incompetent layabout, can't be half bad :) Unfortunately, I only got the first two volumes, so I'll finish them all too soon. So far it's proving easier to read than my previous acquisition (Peace Maker 鐵), though I'm not sure if that's due to getting better at Japanese or because 鐵 is written in a particular style. I definitely noticed my deterioration in fluency since five years ago; grammar's fine, but my vocab is abysmal. I need to find a decent way to work on that.