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I'm running two day-workshops later this week, including one for those transitioning from Spartan (our UniMelb HPC) to Gadi (the NCI flagship system, #24 most powerful in the world). This will be the first time I've run this workshop. The day after that is a course on regular expressions, the awesome tool for discovering patterns buried deep in text. This is one I've done before, albeit once. The latter has a degree of appropriateness given an article I power-produced this morning entitled "Process Locally, Backup Remotely" inspired by the use of perhaps the most trivial regex tool; grep.

I feel even more productive than usual, and I know that this is because of an on-going bout of driven dysthymia. I have attended two counseling sessions in the past week to discuss associated matters related to the topic, one organised through work which was less than useful as it was more about burnout and pitched at a high level. Still, others got something out of it. The other was a one-to-one session which was just the sort of thing that I needed. I know that I haven't been in a very good place for some weeks now, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Using the old Victorian method of not naming names, but rather providing initialisation, I would like to really reach out to "the kindness of women" (and they have all been women) who have really been there for me over the past several weeks, including EH, LG, AH, PA, and most recently JW.

Which does lead me to consider the life choices taken by people. Of course, my libertarian side deeply respects the right of people to make their own choices in life, even completely wrong choices, and even destructive choices, and long as they have ownership of them. But I do shake my head in some wry despair when people seem to forget that life is a one-shot adventure, and when excellent opportunities present themselves, they're worth taking! But of course, that does require the ability to recognise such things for what they are; and if when one has a tendency to think in the short-term, to decide on feelings rather than reasons, to consistently fail by not completing one's own goals or promises made to others, etc., well, they're going to find themselves in the same sort of place in five years time that they're in now, or worse. And maybe wonder then what they missed out on.

Whilst on the topic of commitments and adventures (even if imagined), I have been doing a lot of RPG related activity over the past several days, including games of RuneQuest, D&D5th, and Cyberpunk 2020. In addition, RPG Review 47 has been released with the special topic of "In Sickness and In Health", which includes my formal resignation as President of the Association and Editor of the journal, pending for the end of the year. The opportunity is there for someone to take up the role of what has been a fairly successful group and publication. But there has to be change with growth, and that goes with the organisation - and myself.

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