Mortgages, Europe, etc.
Jun. 21st, 2019 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipAs a sign of a combination of good luck, a co-operative effort, a Bohemian lifestyle with professional employment, and maybe a hint of effective adulting, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya and I paid off our mortgages today. If you had told me in my youth that I would be in the situation I am now, I probably would have responded with the old adage of the real path to wealth being "inherit it, marry it, or steal it", which is largely true in nearly all circumstances, Stakhanovite claims notwithstanding. The main thing that this does leave out is luck, which is actually the most significant factor, and is no wonder that on occasion people refer to "good fortune". Anyway, the practical upshot is that banks no longer own half our home which generates a nice sense of independence on one's mental state.
Last journal entry I mentioned that I had a somewhat distant Europe trip planned, centered on Zurich, as a residency requirement for my MSc in Information Systems. Well, since then the college has decided to extend the spots in the October residency, so I'll be going then instead. Hooray to completing this a couple of months earlier, because one really needs a fifth degree for the practical purpose of arguing on the Internet. It's a living example of the public sphere, you know. Be this as it may, I'm currently trying to plan an extensive loop of the following form: Zurich to Venice to Vienna, to Bratislava to Prague, then through Germany (probably Dresden, Leipzig, and through to Bremman), then on to Delft, and then Ghent, Paris, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Freiburg and finally Zurich again. Anyway, that's the current plan, and there's a bit of time before I climb into the big silver bird.
In the meantime have engaged in the usual activities of work, study, and gaming. For the former, second half of the course, Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC was taught at the Peter Doherty Institute. I get the impression they were pretty happy with their new found knowledge of RegEx and the power of a useful shell loop when combined with a here-doc. For studies I have an MSc assignment to complete this weekend, primarily comparing different environment scanning approaches according to the proximity of activity. Finally, in the gaming hobby,funontheupfield introduced us to the rules-light Kids on Bikes, based on the pre-mobile 'phone era of which all players were familiar with. The building of the setting and character relationships is a cooperative venture, and we picked up from a previous setting a couple of years back, a not-quite Wonthaggi, for our rather fun game of Cats Against Cthulhu. That was somewhat light-hearted; this one went quite grim real quick. Yet, we've also retained the unknowably sapient cats and the eldritch horrors, which probably means it's going to end up being quite the surreal horror. I'm rather looking forward to it.
caseopaya and I paid off our mortgages today. If you had told me in my youth that I would be in the situation I am now, I probably would have responded with the old adage of the real path to wealth being "inherit it, marry it, or steal it", which is largely true in nearly all circumstances, Stakhanovite claims notwithstanding. The main thing that this does leave out is luck, which is actually the most significant factor, and is no wonder that on occasion people refer to "good fortune". Anyway, the practical upshot is that banks no longer own half our home which generates a nice sense of independence on one's mental state.Last journal entry I mentioned that I had a somewhat distant Europe trip planned, centered on Zurich, as a residency requirement for my MSc in Information Systems. Well, since then the college has decided to extend the spots in the October residency, so I'll be going then instead. Hooray to completing this a couple of months earlier, because one really needs a fifth degree for the practical purpose of arguing on the Internet. It's a living example of the public sphere, you know. Be this as it may, I'm currently trying to plan an extensive loop of the following form: Zurich to Venice to Vienna, to Bratislava to Prague, then through Germany (probably Dresden, Leipzig, and through to Bremman), then on to Delft, and then Ghent, Paris, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Freiburg and finally Zurich again. Anyway, that's the current plan, and there's a bit of time before I climb into the big silver bird.
In the meantime have engaged in the usual activities of work, study, and gaming. For the former, second half of the course, Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC was taught at the Peter Doherty Institute. I get the impression they were pretty happy with their new found knowledge of RegEx and the power of a useful shell loop when combined with a here-doc. For studies I have an MSc assignment to complete this weekend, primarily comparing different environment scanning approaches according to the proximity of activity. Finally, in the gaming hobby,
funontheupfield introduced us to the rules-light Kids on Bikes, based on the pre-mobile 'phone era of which all players were familiar with. The building of the setting and character relationships is a cooperative venture, and we picked up from a previous setting a couple of years back, a not-quite Wonthaggi, for our rather fun game of Cats Against Cthulhu. That was somewhat light-hearted; this one went quite grim real quick. Yet, we've also retained the unknowably sapient cats and the eldritch horrors, which probably means it's going to end up being quite the surreal horror. I'm rather looking forward to it.
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Date: 2019-06-21 03:19 pm (UTC)I'm going to have to save that link.
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Date: 2019-06-21 10:27 pm (UTC)I am very tempted to ask for a copy of their simulation code.
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Date: 2019-06-21 07:09 pm (UTC)Cats Against Cthulhu sounds really cute!
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Date: 2019-06-21 10:34 pm (UTC)Cats Against Cthulhu was rather fun. We took the FATE game The Secrets of Cats and merged it with Call of Cthulhu scenarios. Which basically meant we had to convince our human servants to do a lot of the work for us :)
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Date: 2019-06-22 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-23 02:16 am (UTC)I have resisted the suggestion from a workmate that I can now get another mortgage. :)
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Date: 2019-06-23 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-23 08:10 am (UTC)