In my job, I work with a ton of unit vectors. While tracking things in three dimensions can be tricky, it helps to start breaking down as many aspects of the dimensions to their base components. I’m sure we’re all familiar with common spatial axis labeling. You get X, Y, and Z. Their application isn’t uniform. Some machine uses X for the vertical axis, some might use Z. What you might not yet be familiar with would be the orientations of objects in space. Yes, you can track the cartesian coordinates rather handily with XYZ, but that will only tell you the position of those objects. It won’t tell you the direction they’re facing, and for that we use unit vectors labeled IJK. They’re typically values between -1 and 1, and they can define rotation completely.

Right now I feel really stalled. I haven’t done jack shit with any hobby outside revamping this blog, and I haven’t picked up any new hobbies either. I also don’t seem to be going anywhere at work. I do the same things day in and day out, and that’s usually a red flag when you’re an engineer. Typically problems come in all shapes and sizes, and for a long time there people were throwing everything and the kitchen sink at me. Now it seems like the problems I’m tasked with fixing are repetitive. It’s almost always the same thing. Repetitiveness is usually the thing that kills it for me. I can’t do repetitive. I guess everything becomes repetitive eventually, over time, no matter how complex it is. The better you get at it, the more the finer details appear mundane and unspectacular.

It’s finally getting to me. Six years of traveling for work and I’m ready to find a place and stay put for a while. It’s getting old, living out of suitcases and hotels. Shitty continental breakfasts, awful Wi-Fi, constant bad meals. And those are the perks. The worst of it is not being able to spend time with my loved ones. It’s getting old real fast, and I honestly don’t know what to do about it. I could get another job with another company, but I really doubt they’d be able to match the perks my company offers. It would take a lot for me to be able to afford “stepping down” when it comes to moving companies. I’m just tired of it. It was convenient when I didn’t want to be home, but now it’s just an awful burden looming large every Monday, wondering if they’re going to send me to some god forsaken shithole in the midwest.

I swear to god, I think I’ve just come back from the weirdest experience I’ve ever had outdoors. First of all, I’ll just say right now that the culture of people who do this shit frequently is weird as fuck. I don’t honestly understand it, and I suppose the onus isn’t on me to do so, since I’m not exactly itching to become one of these loony people.

Immediately upon arriving at the camp site, it’s just pure chaos. People are walking around everywhere. It’s nearly impossible to avoid hitting someone while driving through these winding dirt paths. They aren’t exactly robust enough to be designated as roads, so we’ll stick to referring to them as paths. These paths are also not well marked and wind around everywhere. It’s ridiculously easy to get lost, despite the fact that they give you a map, and draw lines and immediately visible sights for reference. It’s not as helpful as you’d think, especially since the areas aren’t well lit after nightfall.

I’m not “becoming one with nature” any time soon, that’s for damn sure. The title is mostly clickbait, but I think I see it more as a joke than anything else. The reality is that you can’t get offensively drunk in a large group in public, at least not without risk of being hassled by “the man”, but you certainly can get offensively drunk in large groups in the woods! Nature don’t give a shit about your antics. I’m not saying bad things don’t happen in nature, I’m just saying they’re a different sort of bad thing than getting kicked out of an establishment for being loud and vulgar. Either way, I guess we’re going to smoke weed, drink, and float down a river this weekend. It should be fairly fun, and a good precursor to the “up north” bash that my love and I typically throw. It’s normally a family event, but we do drink a little and we smoke a little and there’s a lot of floating and parking boats on sand bars, you know, the good stuff.

I’m on the road for work this week. I have my work backpack, with all my tools and my work laptop, my Sony WH-1000XM4’s, all the cables I’ll ever need, and some other random work equipment. Then I have my secondary laptop bag with my personal laptop, a bunch of weed stuff, charger cables for everything, my Nintendo Switch, my water bottle, and my personal toys to occupy me.

Not gonna lie, I could bring my entire house and it wouldn’t really curb the homesickness I feel. I just miss my person a lot. She couldn’t come visit me for this trip, and I’ve been away for work a lot lately. It’s making me sad, to be honest.

Oh man, the shit that I’m sitting in on right now. These dudes are something else. I literally heard a dude talking about how a drunk man and a drunk woman can constitute rape because apparently only women can’t consent while drunk, and then he details how that should preclude a woman from serving as president. This guy is a real piece of work. He’s the one that’s been espousing the most virulently conservative rhetoric I’ve seen, and I think he’s gonna end up causing a scrap with this shit.

I put my order in, and it shipped. Awesome. If you check the Schiit website, you might see that a number of products they sell are on back order, and at the time of this writing the Freya S was listed on back order by about a month. This component is the piece I need to have a well-rounded stack, because I feel like my Vidar isn’t being “encouraged” enough by my Topping DX3 Pro+. It’s more of a source than a preamp, I feel. But the Freya, though. That thing is supposed to be a powerhouse, with the discrete Nexus gain stage. Apparently it’ll wrestle an extra 19dB out of your line in without distorting the hell out of it.