When my aunt and I stayed over at the house of Iain's parents (thank you!) for Linuxfest Northwest, though... I have 8 more days before I'm allowed to hunt for a permanent job.) As much as I enjoy being a transient, there are advantages to being able to sleep on a really good bed consistently - something you're not treated to often when you alternate between the couches of friends, a futon, the hammock, on the floor in a sleeping bag... wherever there's 24 square feet of empty floorspace.

A rice cooker would also be nice, the kind that makes lugaw (congee, rice porridge, call it what you will, it's tasty). When did I get so materialistic? Is hankering for a mattress and a rice cooker and a nice teacup materialistic?

I've decided that in addition to (and sometimes coinciding with) my Mentat Wiki Month adventures (tonight: learn Teeline shorthand!) I will try to learn/do (they're the same thing, right?) one technical thing per day. No excuses. My internship is basically grassroots. Don't get me wrong; I love grassroots. I'm getting better at doing it. I think I'm pretty decent at it now.

I also, somewhat masochistically, want to get better at engineering. I miss it, I love it, and I'm not very good at it, and I can fix that. I don't want to become the best engineer in the world; I probably never will be. I do want to be able to speak the language fluently and be able to make things. Working output is the language of engineers - solutions to problems make up our grammar.

Engineering as a hobby, grassroots as a "career"? Works for me right now.