Zompist Bboard Again

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 1:24 pm Ugh. That sucks. Thankfully it's over now, though.

Well, yes and no. The sensor is still in my body. It's supposed to detach on its own sometime today or tomorrow.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 1:26 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 1:24 pm Ugh. That sucks. Thankfully it's over now, though.

Well, yes and no. The sensor is still in my body. It's supposed to detach on its own sometime today or tomorrow.

Hopefully it detaches sooner rather than later. At least now you don't have to hold off on that Gaviscon.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 12:53 pm I just finished a four-day test of my oesophageal pH. This required having me go off all acid reducers (I'm on a prescription PPI which I supplement with antacids and such) and wearing a sensor inside of my oesophagus which broadcast to a recorder I had to carry with me at all times.

It sucked. I basically had some kind of discomfort--heartburn, stomachache, nausea, all three--the entire time. But the worst part was the sensor. The instructions blandly warn of a "foreign body sensation". Well, the sensation was akin to having a piece of jagged glass under my breastbone that twisted around whenever I swallowed anything more substantial than water. Even hot tea was enough to make it hurt. I ended up having to take an extra day off work and basically spent my whole Saturday too exhausted to do anything.

That sounds really rough. The idea of having a tube down my throat for a few days seems deeply unpleasant to me.

quinterbeck wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 9:10 am

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 12:53 pm I just finished a four-day test of my oesophageal pH. This required having me go off all acid reducers (I'm on a prescription PPI which I supplement with antacids and such) and wearing a sensor inside of my oesophagus which broadcast to a recorder I had to carry with me at all times.

It sucked. I basically had some kind of discomfort--heartburn, stomachache, nausea, all three--the entire time. But the worst part was the sensor. The instructions blandly warn of a "foreign body sensation". Well, the sensation was akin to having a piece of jagged glass under my breastbone that twisted around whenever I swallowed anything more substantial than water. Even hot tea was enough to make it hurt. I ended up having to take an extra day off work and basically spent my whole Saturday too exhausted to do anything.

That sounds really rough. The idea of having a tube down my throat for a few days seems deeply unpleasant to me.

I took Linguoboy as referring to a tiny electronic device, not a tube.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 10:16 amI took Linguoboy as referring to a tiny electronic device, not a tube.

Yeah. Essentially they pinched or pierced the lining of my oesophagus and attached a small device which transmitted pH data to a fist-sized recorder which had to remain within about half a meter to receive its signal. It's called a "Bravo™ pH monitoring test" and you can read more about it here: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/d ... al-ph-test. (Note that that page describes a 48-hour test which kind of pisses me off now.)

Oh, that's what I initially imagined actually, then I googled esophageal ph monitor and saw the tubed ones. Those wireless capsules are pretty scifi...

I hope Linguoboy's has dropped off by now.

The Good: zeptoforth itself finally seems to work overall on the RP2040. I can bring it up, compile code into flash, and run it without any obvious issues (provided I am not using interrupts, see below).
The Bad: SysTicks on the RP2040 don't seem to work; they cause random crashes when I try to do anything using them, and it is not clear if it is zeptoforth's fault, because I am using the same SysTick code I used for the Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M7 without a problem, and the Cortex-M0+ core, which the RP2040 uses, has the same binary interface for SysTicks as the Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M7. I had problems (not as major but still bad) with interrupts on the Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M7, and while I had workarounds on those for said issues, I cannot apply those workarounds to the Cortex-M0+.

I'm due to go to Luxembourg in a week and change for a friend's Ph.D. defense; will be there for about 5 days.

Very excited for a number of reasons (seeing friends, buying lots of food-related things), but getting usual pre-travel anxiety in addition to other assorted anxiety associated with the fact that (a) I'm driving (for practical reasons); (b) I need to finally settle a few paperwork things (such as paying for/checking out my old work laptop, getting my Ph.D. certificate, and returning my old hard disks after 18 months), and I'm hoping for minimal drama (if any) from the university people; (c) the current travel restrictions make me very jittery about going there, also given what happened the last time I planned a trip (it got cancelled because Belgium and Luxembourg kept jumping back and forth between the quarantine and no-quarantine lists for the relevant countries I'd be passing through); and (d) I promised my current boss a draft of the article I'm working on, but that's going quite slowly.

On one hand I want to be in a relationship (and Mom expects me to marry and get her grandkids) but at the same time I’m not only Aspergic (which statistically reduces the rates) and do not want to interact as a way of avoiding being creepy partly due to my stupid fetish, and from my parents’ often fraught marriage find the idea of living with the same person 20 to 50 years intolerable.

Also not keeping my first college relationship because of fear of mom mocking it meant I missed the r-window of the first year or so. Mom thinks men who marry later, like my dad, are weird

Nachtswalbe wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 11:59 am ... find the idea of living with the same person 20 to 50 years intolerable.

Perhaps you can take some comfort from the observation that at the time of marriage, "She hopes he will change: he hopes she will never change. Both will be disappointed."

Nachtswalbe wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 11:59 am On one hand I want to be in a relationship (and Mom expects me to marry and get her grandkids) but at the same time I’m not only Aspergic (which statistically reduces the rates) and do not want to interact as a way of avoiding being creepy partly due to my stupid fetish, and from my parents’ often fraught marriage find the idea of living with the same person 20 to 50 years intolerable.

Also not keeping my first college relationship because of fear of mom mocking it meant I missed the r-window of the first year or so. Mom thinks men who marry later, like my dad, are weird

Just do what you want. This is too important a thing to be decided by your parents. Or anyone else.

(Also , lots of people marry later in life. It's an entirely unremarkable.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 2:55 am (Also , lots of people marry later in life. It's an entirely unremarkable.

Don't know how old Nachtswalbe is and what he considers late, but as a case in point, I married when I was 31. My brother married when he was 40.
@Nachtswalbe:
(1) As Ares said, it's your own decision whether you want to be in a long-term relationship and whether you want to have children. If you don't live with your parents, it should be easy to tune out their nagging and grumbling and to decide how often you want to be exposed to it; if you do, try to get out.
(2) It's never to late to get into a relatonship. If you want to, the one thing you need to do is to go and try actively, The chances that you'll meet someone somehow are near zero if you don't try actively yourself. and the later in life, the more that applies. Go out to single bars, get a dating app, join activities that interest you and where you have a chance to meet people who are looking for dates. If you have a weird fetish, look for people who are into that - in this time and age, this is very much possible, there are apps for that.
(3) There's never a guarantee that a relationship will hold, and marriage doesn't mean eternity either. There's always divorce as a way out. But that's anyway putting the cart before the horse - first get into the dating pool, and if you find someone, see how it goes.

The process of finding a life partner is like making a delicious steak, but you're forced to eat raw meat the whole time you're cooking.

If dating were in any way a useful preview of marriage, no one would marry. Dating is objectively society's worst insitution, and enjoying it is a one question psychopathy test. Luckily, marriage so far is delightful, and I would recommend it to all my friends.

Unfortunately my vacation to Kaua'i will be over after tomorrow, not counting two days of flights back to Wisconsin, and then it will be back to work. At the same time I'm anxious to fix some bugs and make a major optimization to flash dictionary lookup in zeptoforth for the RP2040, which have been on hold for almost a week so far due to not having room in my carry-on luggage for a (rather large) laptop and a Raspberry Pi Pico board.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:36 pm If dating were in any way a useful preview of marriage, no one would marry. Dating is objectively society's worst insitution, and enjoying it is a one question psychopathy test. Luckily, marriage so far is delightful, and I would recommend it to all my friends.

So, how did you find your partner?

That does sound like an interesting story, if you wouldn't mind sharing.

On another note, last weekend I got excited to resume studying for an IT certification that I promised my boss to take, but now the year is coming to a close and I have gotten the new textbook in the mail, I have been completely disheartened. I find it very hard to imagine myself using the little spare time I have to study that monstrosity of a book, also since it will probably take me the entirety of this calendar year (if not more). The choice now has become between having a hobby, i.e. conlanging, and probably not get the bonus payout. Or I sacrifice my me-time to serve the Mammon...

(Mind you I am a programmer and not an IT person by profession.) To be completely honest I have never seen the value or point in such "certifications", and I have never worked anywhere which required me to get them. If a job were to try to require me to get one, I would probably just find a new job. My free time is too valuable to spend on doing things unpaid for work outside of work. (I would much rather be working on zeptoforth.)

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:21 pmIf a job were to try to require me to get one, I would probably just find a new job.

That's a rather privileged position. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a decent amount of money (and it sounds like this certification is paid, given Raholeun's mention of a bonus)