Casual Conversation

As a general rule, I tend to steer away from slogans and from black or white definitions (things like ‘either you’re with us or you’re against us’) type of definitions.

The phrase you are looking for in English here is dichotomous logic.

I've not been a big reader. It was more of a challenge to read some a couple of series just to say that I have. The vast majority of my books are reference material. I am a Maker; a crafts person. Physical disability from a car crashing into me while riding a bicycle to work 11 years ago has pushed me somewhat into books.

As they say, books about fantasy are for those that regret the past. Books about nonfiction are for those that regret the present. And science fiction is for those that regret the future. Barely surviving a broken neck and back has consequences in the long term that make life much harder and shorter. I know my regrets and what I enjoy reading to escape.

Work is a funny thing. When it is gone from your life suddenly, at a young age, the loss of purpose that work brings is felt very acutely. That is the biggest challenge, or it was for me in the 3-5 year range after the crash.

I owned my own business with employees twice, both times I was painting cars. The hardest lesson to learn with automotive paint and refinishing is how to defeat yourself and your emotions. The perfect standard of automotive paint does not care how many times it takes spraying primer and sanding it down, or prying on some metal, or applying layers of filler. Perfection is a result. It is hard and thankless work because one's greatest triumph is to go completely unnoticed.

I have done many other jobs too. I'm very adaptable. In my opinion, in business, the person that can infer how something works without needing a reference, or learn from watching someone else do a thing once - is a most valuable skill.

I have always been curious about the lowest level processes I can achieve. I don't want to go buy a thing I can go make myself. I liked cars and when I was young I read that, of all the skills that car enthusiasts generally possessed, paint was the rare black art that few people dared to learn or try themselves. So the first thing I learned was how to paint. I built motors and worked in a machine shop porting heads for awhile – another rare art. Before the crash that got me, I was working on my car and many projects that were coming together. One of those was building a small home foundry setup to do my own metal castings.

After the crash, I got into programming microcontrollers and etching my own circuit boards. While everyone was sending board designs to China, I was still making my own at home. With programming I am curious about the lowest levels of compute. I like to build my own little circuits and sensors.

I'm into 3d printing and design. I design all my own stuff from scratch in CAD. I've learned the geometry and figured out the topological naming issue to make proper designs.

I also like reverse engineering circuits in KiCAD and making documentation graphics in Inkscape. I've learned Linux at a reasonably advanced level too. I've scratched the surface of astronomy and building my own eyepieces with lens stacks using surplus lenses and junk.

In all of these things, the common thread is finding purpose in doing whatever thing. It is a seeking of an internal sense of accomplishment. It's all endorphins really. I don't get a sense of satisfaction from politics in general. I often feel frustration and injustice. It is a dangerous feeling for a capable but disabled Maker; to feel such a frustration; to feel like one is not in control of one's destiny. So I avoid it for now, because worrying about things I cannot change is a waste of energy.