Happy things thread!

[Ares Land]

We did it! We won the election to form a bargaining unit at my library!

There's still a lot more to fight for. (I'm still not included in the bargaining unit, for instance, due to a conflict of interpretations about the responsibilities of my position. And there's a contract to negotiate!) But we won this battle and we won it overwhelmingly--70-28, which is much better than I hoped for. I'm am so very thankful for my colleagues right now and I feel privileged to work with them.

That's great! Congrats.

[Travis B.]

Congratulations!

[hwhatting]

Glückwunsch!

[Raphael]

There was basically no queue at the Corona test center this morning. OK, the guy in front of me took some time, but when I think of how long the queue was the last time I went there, and how much I dreaded the queue before getting there today, it's really great that there was no queue.

[fusijui]

We did it! We won the election to form a bargaining unit at my library!

A little late, but really big congratulations! That's nothing to sneeze at. Let us know how it goes from here, please, would you?

[Travis B.]

Got a new release out, zeptoforth 0.22.2 which includes some fixes and optimizations in addition to the multicore support formally introduced (after a couple of betas) in zeptoforth 0.22.0. I'm quite happy with things at this point, but I will likely add what I'd call reply-channels (rchannels) next, to have messages that are immediately paired with a reply message.

[Travis B.]

I got reply channels working with little effort at all, and they are as fast as rendezvous channels (or maybe even a bit faster, for some reason), and certainly much faster than using a pair of rendezvous channels to communicate back and forth between two tasks.

[Travis B.]

Got another new release out, zeptoforth 0.23.0, which now includes synchronous bidirectional reply channels ("rchannels"), separates out packaging small units of data into and extracting them out of buffers from intertask communication constructs, and revamps the module system some.

[bradrn]

Today I finished (what should be) the last exam of my undergraduate degree! There’s still some practical classes left which were delayed due to lockdown, but even so, it’s nice having no more exams.

…and now I’ve finished (what should be) the last assignment! All that’s left is to wait for the final marks.

[doctor shark]

Today's high here in North Carolina was 22ºC and very sunny. After the total lack of summer we seemed to have in the Netherlands, it's nice to have some nice weather good for wearing more summer-appropriate clothing.

[Vardelm]

Today's high here in North Carolina was 22ºC and very sunny. After the total lack of summer we seemed to have in the Netherlands, it's nice to have some nice weather good for wearing more summer-appropriate clothing.

Glad you get to enjoy it and good luck getting the testing, etc. taken care of for your eventual return!

[Rounin Ryuuji]

It's a little disconcerting having it this warm in winter, though.

(Also, small world, eh?)

[Man in Space]

Had a very good Christmas, including the part where my letter to the distant relatives in Poland whom I’ve never met ended up garnering a response! It was really nice to meet my distant cousin and see pictures of that side of the family.

My grandmother’s niece, to whom I addressed the letter, is my first cousin once removed. The person who contacted me is her granddaughter (my second cousin once removed).

[doctor shark]

Happy things of different kinds:
(1) Kitten playtime goes well. All three of the cats have such different personalities, and it's quite interesting to see how different the two younger ones are from when I saw them two years ago. (They're also all loving and super cuddly, so bonus.)
(2) I got an invitation to present at a Rank Prize symposium in the UK in June (in the Lake District), with all expenses covered (except the transport to/from the venue, but some sum will be given to cover that). I hope the situation clears up enough to allow me to go there, and I'm quite excited for the prospect of visiting (plus also combining it with a visit to some friends and maybe some labs I know: there's a collaborator of my previous boss in Lancaster and one of my Ph.D. thesis jury members is in Leeds).

[Raphael]

Congratulations!

[Ares Land]

Congratulations!

[Travis B.]

zeptoforth is getting closer to really supporting symmetric multprocessing; at the present multitasking across multiple cores on the Raspberry Pi Pico (which is based around the RP2040) appears to work correctly (it is in the devel branch), but I am still going to be doing more testing before I unleash it upon the world.

[Travis B.]

Now zeptoforth 0.25.0 is out! Finally there is an official release which includes true symmetric multiprocessing support for the Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040).

[Travis B.]

I've fixed some significant bugs in my multitasking code for zeptoforth which were a major nuisance. (Now I just need to make another release including the fixes...)

[Linguoboy]

The external reviewers' report on our organisation was shared with staff today and they gave the committee we're on a really lovely shout-out, praising our hard work and our ideas. Even though we had less than an hour to talk to them, it seems they really listened and heard us. That doesn't mean the administration will listen to them, but it's at least something.