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Packing A Month Into A Week
May. 21st, 2024 11:59 pmI really feel like I've outdone myself this week, looking at the range and quantity of activities. Of note includes two meetings of the National Tertiary Education Union, one on the future of public education and the budget (with a very good guest speaker, Prof Dr Julian Garrizmann, from the Goethe University Frankfurt, who was steadfastly evidence-based), and the second on Gaza and the student encampments (three motions passed with 1% opposed, demanding disclosure of UniMelb's links to the war, supporting academic freedom to speak on the issue etc). Matters on the former perspective were followed up with a long night with the local ALP branch on the Federal budget and then continuing discussions well into the night with several of the younger branch members. Most people think the budget was pretty good, and it was, with the glaring exception of that enormous bugbear expense, the AUKUS submarines, whose scale I believe is incomprehensible to most.
On Sunday a number of people (myself, Rodney, Andrew, Charmaine, and Penny) from the RPG Review Cooperative ventured out to the outer suburbs to visit our friend Michael who is currently in convalescence. He is in good spirits and seems to recovering well, but tiredness is a factor. In related news, Erica and I visited David and Angela recently who are in the midst of moving from their long-term abode. David kindly gifted us a veritable mountain of roleplaying games and comics (about two bookshelves worth), and Erica and I took great wide-eyed delight fossicking through them over dinner. Speaking of such things, Friday night's south-western Chinese feast with Liana, Julie, and James was an absolute joy and we even managed to finish a game of Trivial Pursuit, which has dated quite significantly. Of another culinary adventure, Ruby's visit came with the impromptu invention of a (spinach and blue-cheese based) béchamel senfsauce verte, in my apparently never-ended attempt to combine French and German cuisines.
All play and no work is, of course, implausible and whilst most of my work is invariably going through some difficult optimised scientific software installs, I have been very impressed with one recent workflow that involves the automatic generation of array job scripts which themselves have job dependencies, which in turn call another set of job arrays. The fact that there have been several support requests this week that are of unusual levels of complexity has been challenging and rewarding, as has a review of the workplace's "five-year plan" with which I hope I have made some reasonable suggestions for clarification, elaboration, and improvement.
With time running out for continuing registration, I have quickly put together an annual general meeting for the Isocracy Network next Saturday with yours truly speaking on "Climate Change and International Politics", which I believe I might know something about. I've scurried to get everything ready for that day, including the annual report, and getting formatting for articles on the website correct; the most recent being "The Case for Opposing the AUKUS Agreement" by Labor Against War, "Cash is an Anachronistic King" by yours truly, and "Reviewing 'At Work in the Ruins'" by Robert Barker. There is also one on the recent events in Gaza forthcoming and, of course, notes from Saturday's presentation will also be included.
On Sunday a number of people (myself, Rodney, Andrew, Charmaine, and Penny) from the RPG Review Cooperative ventured out to the outer suburbs to visit our friend Michael who is currently in convalescence. He is in good spirits and seems to recovering well, but tiredness is a factor. In related news, Erica and I visited David and Angela recently who are in the midst of moving from their long-term abode. David kindly gifted us a veritable mountain of roleplaying games and comics (about two bookshelves worth), and Erica and I took great wide-eyed delight fossicking through them over dinner. Speaking of such things, Friday night's south-western Chinese feast with Liana, Julie, and James was an absolute joy and we even managed to finish a game of Trivial Pursuit, which has dated quite significantly. Of another culinary adventure, Ruby's visit came with the impromptu invention of a (spinach and blue-cheese based) béchamel senfsauce verte, in my apparently never-ended attempt to combine French and German cuisines.
All play and no work is, of course, implausible and whilst most of my work is invariably going through some difficult optimised scientific software installs, I have been very impressed with one recent workflow that involves the automatic generation of array job scripts which themselves have job dependencies, which in turn call another set of job arrays. The fact that there have been several support requests this week that are of unusual levels of complexity has been challenging and rewarding, as has a review of the workplace's "five-year plan" with which I hope I have made some reasonable suggestions for clarification, elaboration, and improvement.
With time running out for continuing registration, I have quickly put together an annual general meeting for the Isocracy Network next Saturday with yours truly speaking on "Climate Change and International Politics", which I believe I might know something about. I've scurried to get everything ready for that day, including the annual report, and getting formatting for articles on the website correct; the most recent being "The Case for Opposing the AUKUS Agreement" by Labor Against War, "Cash is an Anachronistic King" by yours truly, and "Reviewing 'At Work in the Ruins'" by Robert Barker. There is also one on the recent events in Gaza forthcoming and, of course, notes from Saturday's presentation will also be included.
