Weeknotes #187

It continues to be disgustingly hot. Temperatures have moderated slightly from where they were about two weeks ago but not by much.

So two weeks later and I’m still in the hospital. Unfortunately, the wound became infected during the week and I needed further surgery on Thursday. The surgery the week before had been with a general anaesthetic and so passed me largely by. The second surgery used local anaesthetic and I was awake for all three hours of it. Obviously the doctor was the one doing all the work but still, try lying in place for three hours without anything to read or watch.

I’m not sure if there’s been a whole lot of progress since Thursday. I’m expecting the entirety of week to be spent in the hospital, too. This was always my major concern with undergoing another operation: not a complication as such, merely a further failure to heal. I understand the doctors are somewhat at the whims of my body but the lack of a clear timeline for how long I’ll be here is compounding my frustration.

As disappointing as my recovery is going, I was relieved to finally be at the point where I have tests added to the Jeep codebase. Jeep itself hasn’t really progressed much—arguably it’s lost functionality—but having tests makes me feel like there’s a much stronger foundation on which to build. The most significant decision I’ve made is to remove the pass-through functionality to JPM. I’m still a little torn about whether this is the correct path to take but the implementation I had to get it to work was so hacky, I couldn’t bear to look at it.

I felt a strong affinity with this essay by Freddie deBoer about a nascent anti-affirmation… vibe.

After spending the first week watching a lot of movies, I’ve spent this second week watching more television. I caught up on all of the episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and enjoyed all the episodes immensely. Maybe it’s what keeps the quality high, but the only thing I dislike is that each season is a mere ten episodes. A third season is fortunately on the way but is unfortunately being delayed by the writers’ and actors’ strikes.

I’ve also watched a lot of Seinfeld. I’m in the midst of season 5 and it’s just a complete banger. One of the slightly concerning aspects that I’ve noticed is the extent to which I think the show shaped my sensibilities about certain things. It sometimes makes me wonder if I’m laughing because the jokes are universally funny or that I’ve become inculcated to the style of humour of the show. A good example is this bit by Jerry about the tragedy of t-shirts (YouTube). This is exactly how I think about washing t-shirts but is that because I watched this during my formative years?

Speaking of formative years, one of the most important bands in Australia during my youth was Regurgitator. They’re still putting out albums but at the risk of admitting I like their old stuff better than their new stuff, I was reminded of their 2004 song ‘My Friend Robot’ (Apple Music) earlier today and played it on repeat a few times to perk myself up. Pure energy.