infryq | Entries tagged with olin

Yesterday I topstitched both sides of the zipper, and attached the side panels.

I attended a webinar on Olin’s enrollment/recruitment strategies, which was good. They’re making progress on improving racial and economic diversity by partnering with CBOs, organizations that work with low-income and first-generation students to help them get into college. Financial aid is still a sore spot, and disproportionately affects disabled and lgbtq+ students. But, hey, continual improvement requires knowing what you have to fix next.

At work I made an editing pass on the soft unification paper; F is planning on putting it up on arXiv. I finished reading the Nelson white paper, and skimmed a paper studying Inform7’s accessibility to non-programmers (spoiler alert: it’s not). I checked in on a purchasing request ticket, and fiddled with the IF demo.

Home, dinner, crossword (wretched lower left corner), Elementary, snack, sleep.

Yesterday I finished sewing the long piped seam on the second chair back cushion. Somehow I still don’t have the pattern quite right, as I had to ease the fuck out of it after the first curve, and managed to sew the second curve sufficiently shorter to successfully pre-empt that issue. Whatever, though: no more chair backs to do. Next is chair seats.

I finished Oath of Gold and started another sister trilogy about Paksenarrion’s servicemates. The first one is called Oath of Fealty. Lotta oaths. Good so far.

At work I got the pytheo docs and demo back up to date for the JPM folks, then returned to the dev walkthrough. One of the commands is sufficiently ambiguous that I gave up on wordsmithing and implemented the read/write feature in the lexicon I’ve been thinking about for ages. Retrained, and it seems to work! Hooray. At 5 we had our first lab meeting of the semester, and heard a visiting research group from Slovenia talk on event-based information extraction. It was good.

P had the car on campus so drove us home. Late dinner but that was fine; what wasn’t fine was the surprise patchouli in one of the soap samples that arrived from my favorite vendor in MI. I’ve developed some kind of sensitivity, and just smelling it over and over and over was irritating.

Crossword, Elementary, snack, sleep.

Olin trans news: I got a nice response from PM but I get the idea they’re not going to send out a public clarification.

Also got email back from OXO; they’re happy to send replacement dishes if I send them a photo. Can do.

Yesterday I finished the pattern adjustments, then laid out, traced, and cut out the second chair back pieces. I finished Divided Allegiance (can we have ONE BOOK in this series without a sexual assault, please) and started Oath of Gold. I ironed a linen remnant and traced out a grid for sleep sachets. I went to my doctors appointment, even though my Zoloft refill arrived (fast!) already with the intended new dosage. A nice surprise. Anyway everything is very typical for me health wise. Not ideal, but typical for the time of year. Things will start getting better again in February. Worked on thread-tracing the grid in the waiting room, as the chalk will rub off soon enough.

P walked home after work, and I hung out with him and did more stitching while he decompressed. Dinner, crossword, Elementary, snack, sleep.

Olin trans update: better but not yet good. Not transphobic per se, but a failure to understand the fragility of the space:

( Read more... )

Yesterday I packed the dried snow-crisp apples into a jar. I had an early meeting on campus so caught the 10:15 shuttle with P. Teleconference with JPM went fine; I still have some follow ups to do in the google doc but otherwise pleased. Went to Resnik for lunch with qualified success; there was surprise garlic in the potatoes but aside from a slightly raised anxiety floor I did okay the rest of the day. Finished going through a paper from 2008 study of administrative assistants, and started in on the LIA walkthrough. I’m marking minor bugs as I go, and fixing more major ones.

Divided Allegiance continues well, though I am super judging a religious order that would coerce people to join through dishonest behavior.

Home, dinner, crossword, Elementary, then I read updates on the Open Letter news. I am livid. CN:transphobia follows.( Read more... )

Snack. Sleep. Renewed ire has burned away the dreams.

Yesterday I finished the placket. We went to the farmers market and got blueberries, plums, peaches, green beans, mystery other stuff from who-cooks, and a sourdough cookie and muffin for me. I popped in to geagle for portobellos and also picked up an Asian pear. Monster/Closet continues, with some sneaky misogyny I could do without. Lunch, laundry, then I made a salad of green beans, lentils, smashed salt potatoes, parsley, and Asian pear to take to the Olin party later in the afternoon. Snack. I went out to the garden and cleared away the snow peas and planted pole beans in their place. Quick shower and change and then we went over to N&E’s. We brought them some pots too; a couple of tumblers by P and a pitcher by me. Met some folks from more recent years, talked about restoring cars, care and feeding of small children and old houses, Pittsburgh directions, autonomous cars, autonomous hovering jet engines, and the materials science in play when you repeatedly heat metals vs ceramics to incandescence. I cooked my mushroom in a foil packet in the ashes of the bonfire and it was delicious. Everybody else had hot dogs cooked on sticks. Great party. Home, dishes, crossword, sleep.

Yesterday I made a pattern for the front of the shirt, cut out a new yoke
and front, and stay-stitched the bias edges. After lunch I signed on to a
zoom meeting from the Olin President search committee, which turned out to
be less a presentation and more a call for input and lively discussion
about what alumni want for Olin in the future and how the next president
should serve that. Interesting disagreement on whether the next president
should or need not be an engineer—I happen to be in the need-not-be camp;
we had 20 years of excellent connections from R in the engineering world,
and I firmly believe we should spend the next 20 on what was left out.

At work I picked LIA back up and got a rough web interface for
categories/concepts in place.

We had dinner with A at Pino’s; they didn’t have the tempura veg I was
hoping for but they were able to to beans&greens without garlic so I was
happy. A was unexpectedly tempted by one of the specials, a fish roulade
with roasted vegetables that made for an absolutely gorgeous plate.
Excellent conversation as always.

Afterwards we walked around Mellon Park, too early for the starlights in
the lawn but the herb garden made up for it. Also encountered an amazing
scented flowering tree called a Japanese Snowbell that I’m now lusting for
a bit. We caught the sunset from a bench in Schenley, then dropped me at
home so I could bedtime routine while P put A on campus where she and her
luggage were to catch a taxi to the airport hotel for an early morning
flight.

Yesterday I finished plying the alpaca, and decided it might instead be
llama. That would explain the coarseness and the guard hairs, anyway. I
started another project which is definitely alpaca, 8 ounces of a beautiful
red-brown from a farm in New York. Soft soft soft.

I met with students, signed off on my performance review, and had a
glorious chat with a visiting hs student trying to decide between CMU and
Olin. Any day I get to talk to folks about Olin is a good day.

After dinner I cooked up more rice and knit a good chunk of decreases in
the hat lining. The end is in sight! I watched a beautifully produced
animated film called Breadwinner, about a family struggling against taliban
control in Kabul, Afghanistan. Highly recommend. Normally I can’t do mortal
danger, but the animation softens the edges a bit, and no corpses are shown.