that last post was way too depressing to be my most recent post, mostly because i posted a side project of mine to reddit where i use this same (old) username, so i’ll post some birds here instead

in other bird news, there has been a sharp decline in birds at my feeders. literally went from 10-15 bird visits a day to 0-1. i used to have fill up my feeders up every two days, now it’s been 5 days and it’s still fill to the brim. i wonder if the ground warmed up and they’re all eating larvae now? they’re all sitting on eggs instead of courting? i used to have a possibly-couple pair of house wrenches literally sit on the feeder for 10-15 minutes just having a buffet o__o didn’t realize i’d miss them.

at least i still have these little baby birds to look forward to each day! although since they are there all day, i no longer have the incentive to wake up by 8am every day anymore.

also we have a mushroom kit growing with some ferocity

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also have some sprouts planted, we re-filled the raised bed. 50-50 garden soil and top soil.

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so i’m not sure exactly why i keep accumulating accounts and (user)name. i think part of it is some sort of FU to all the companies and industries who keep collecting data, it’s like well at the least i’ll make it so you have to employ data scientists to have to munge my accounts together lol. the other part is complicated but eh so’s the rest of life, otherwise it’d be boring right?

right? ;__;

other cool finds of the day:

salaries

• Doctoral Outcomes and Salaries | MIT Career Advising & Professional Development

https://career.engin.umich.edu/recruit/annual-salary-report/

oh yea the links came from this talk which was p. good too… there’s the main topic of the talk but also things I never thought about: replacing calculus with linear algebra as the intro university math class !

puzzles

the cause of this “maybe i’ll clean up my blog homepage” is that i helped write a puzzlehunt which accidentally found a lot of signups (i feel bad to have dragged my fellow puzzlewriters in, but in my defense, there are zero comments on most of the posts to that subreddit, and the puzzlehunt calendar is super plain and unassuming also… I thought max ten extra signups of which 5 might show up…)

so if you’re into puzzles (which have been taking up more of my time lately than my MITERS-quality projects??? since when did this become a significant side hobby???)

Inaudible Hunt: this weekend @ mutedpuzzles.com

so there is a bird saga going on where

a few weeks ago I noticed this bird coming and going with leaves into a bag on our deck — like literally a random paper bag, which formerly held flower bulbs, that I fished out of where it had been stewing in warm water for a few days in a pot on the deck

https://blog.nature.org/science/2021/02/09/why-carolina-wrens-have-moved-into-your-neighborhood/

turns out they nest wherever they f*k they want

https://blog.nature.org/science/2021/02/10/carolina-wrens-will-nest-in-just-about-anything/

okay so this is the same deck we do our laundry, let the cat out for a stroll, feed the birds from, it’s right next to our dining table and where we watch TV and feed the cat (and rosie is a talkative cat). also the bag is just out in the open, there is zero waterproofing ??

a few days in we moved the cart around to do laundry, and then my dad put in a security webcam to sit and watch the nest and accidentally let our cat out on the deck for a while and didn’t notice. so we were convinced we scared the bird away.

but they kept coming, and we were wondering.. the nest looked like it was built sideways?? wouldn’t the eggs just fall out?

then one day we noticed there were two birds coming and going! like swapping duty almost. they actually went inside the nest

then it rained and we put up an umbrella, but overall it seemed like they kinda disappeared after that

in fact my dad went out with a snake inspection cam (which i yelled at him about over) and reported that there were no birds nor eggs. so we were sure it was abandoned. the last few days we went about doing laundry etc. totally as normal

but every day once or twice a bird would come and sing loudly in font of the bag

and then once i let the cat out on the deck and boy did a bird come and scream at the top of its lungs at us

i actually was wondering if maybe like, the guy who built the nest was coming and being sad about breaking up with his gf who left because we were loud noisy humans

then yesterday… the bird came and my dad saw it sit for a long while.

this afternoon while the bird was gone i went and had a look — and there were three eggs!!

omg

EGGS

i’m not sure why but it makes me really happy

though it’s supposed to raain tomorrow… not sure if we should put up an umbrella 0:

i definitely feel less valuable to not be “employed” right now, and not really speaking about my work (which is pretty sensitive and unrelated to the research of anyone i know). it’s a weird dichotomy since at the same time this is the most a bunch of senior-ly people at well-known places know my name.

taking part in a MIT alumni career change thing I paid cash for. i figure, invest in things that matter to me and cause me happiness/unhappiness. enjoying it so far. one of the assignments asked for feedback from friends. totally scared to read people’s thoughts about me though…

and also paid cash for a duckietown mooc, and it’s inflated over $150 since my . makes me remember our 6.01x work. porting the homework assignments. how terrible i was as an engineer then. hella expensive. but i think worthwhile for a free class. and mostly for the experience — i think it’ll be really fun to go through it with my parents ! and also stimulus check i guess?

i have started investing. these cryptocurrencies are making weird movements, maybe due to people sitting at home and stimulus checks. am i missing out on easy money? maybe.

keep feeling like i need to do cool famous projects to get hired. but wouldn’t it be nice to have a simple 9-to-5 and have time for my free-time projects? can that be found at normal big companies? (as someone said, is it possible to do the research i like without feeling obligated to work weekends?)

haven’t really done technical work in a while. miss CS. should do coding interviews. try to value my time on earth. etc

parents got 2nd shot!! mom made sure to cook lots and get extra hours in at work that evening. today was flat out with a stable 101-102F. dad started felt fine but started feeling tired toward evening. they actually got the date wrong and someone from the pharmacy called them !

wanted to adopt a 2nd black cat. i think i filled out the form wrong or was late. 3 weeks, keep getting these emails every 3 days “there’s someone in line ahead of you”. pretty sure she’s already adopted out *facepalm* (is it fine to combine clawed and declawed cats? my first adoptee came declawed)

wait the cat is back on atlanta humane… ! maybe there is still a chance. my only hesitation is she is 13 y.o. but the more i think about it… i think she may live 3 or 4 years and the medical expenses, it will be manageable i hope. i guess if she has diabetes already, i might hesitate though hmm