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Surprise success

On June 2, I saw that Nikki Glaser would be playing at the stadium in Everett and asked Garrett if he'd like to go to a surprise show. The last time I asked him that was when we saw Michael Carbonaro in Seattle, and he didn't know who it would be until we drove up to the hotel and saw his name on the marquee of the venue kittycorner from the hotel. I was sure he'd hear about the Nikki Glaser show since she's definitely one of the top names in comedy to ever perform here, maybe even the biggest one yet.

Whoever promoted the show clearly didn't pay for much targeted advertising. I never saw an ad for it and neither did Garrett, and we managed to make it all the way to the stairs leading to our seats before he saw the graphic on the screen.

We saw someone he knows from the neighborhood bar as we got in line and he said, "Ready for some laughs?" and I told him not to say any more because Garrett had no idea what the show was yet. That was close.

I'd bought us the cheapest seats on the second level, and when we got there they said everyone with 200 level seats should stop by a table where they were upgrading everyone's tickets to floor level. I guess they just didn't sell enough of the floor and didn't want Nikki and her two openers looking out at an empty floor. I wouldn't say the view was that much better since we'd be watching her on the screen anyway, but there was so much more leg room on the floor, and there was a restroom nearby.

I do wish they'd used the ticketmaster app to take care of the reseating process, though. They probably never thought of how it'd be so much better to get an alert that you could select better seats and be ready with the app instead of dealing with a person who had huge piles of paper tickets to hand out. Thankfully we were among the first people to stop at that table and complete that process.

Our arena is nice and we walked all the way around the concessions level to check it out. The first place we stopped had no wine at all and the stand they sent us to just had one red wine option. I told the guy to prepare for a riot if Nikki Glaser was playing and there was no chardonnay available. He was bummed that the venue hadn't prepared better.

It was such a fun show and I honestly can't believe how good she is at weaving together a nonstop train of thought that works so well. Toward the end she mentioned that lots of doctors and teachers over the years hinted that she might have autism, and that made me realize more autistic people should probably pursue comedy.

Much like with the casino amphitheater, I have a good parking trick for our arena. We decided after it took half an hour to get out of a parking garage when we saw Sarah Colonna that we'd just street park for big shows in downtown Everett from now on. From my recent experience at a new tattoo shop, I knew exactly where we'd find plenty of parking. We ate at home, but next time we have a show there, there are plenty of fantastic dinner choices nearby, too.

Unfortunately that's not the case with the next concert we have planned on 9/27 but that's a problem for another day.

three days in Chicago

I went to Chicago last week for a work conference. The conference is basically (but not officially) run by the Journal of the American Medical Association, which perhaps explains the swanky location: the only Swissotel in North America. There are reminders of Switzerland everywhere: the conference rooms are named after Swiss cities, the bath products tout Swiss herbs, etc. I half expected a Lindt truffle on the bed pillow.

The hotel was shaped like a triangle. Here's the floor plan:

It was like a Toblerone bar set on one short end. Here's what it looked like from the outside:

I got really lucky with the weather and the room, which was on the 37th floor. The view:

The highlights of the trip were seeing friends for dinner each night. The conference was fine, a bit intense (8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for two days and then 8 to 5 the last day). Lots and lots of stuff about AI in scientific publishing, only some of which was interesting. One thing that was nice is that we're starting with a new vendor, and the CEO himself (for some reason) was at the booth in the exhibitor hall. We've been on some Zoom calls together, but I introduced myself anyway. We had a really nice chat, talking a little bit about ourselves and how we ended up where we are. It occurred to me that I have worked for three CEOs in the 20+ years I've worked for my organization, and never have I had a one-to-one conversation with any of the CEOs, let alone a casual little chat about places I've lived and would like to visit. [Yes, I suspect that the CEO was very bored to invite me to sit with him for a spell; let me have my moment.]

August reading

I started off strong but then got bogged down in a book, Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste, which has more philosophy than I was expecting. I should have finished it during the week off, because it's too much to read after work.

The Life of Herod the Great, Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston was working on this book when she died, so it has the roughness you might expect from an unfinished work. Hurston portrays Herod as a nearly perfect person: an exemplary athlete, soldier, scholar, and king. She wanted to correct the Christian narrative of Herod as a mentally unstable tyrant (e.g., there is no evidence for the so-called massacre of innocents during his reign). Hurston did a lot of research to write this novel, and the best parts of the book were about life in Judea in this period (Herod, as written, was dull in the way that perfection often is). I'll have to read her other historical fiction, Moses, Man of the Mountain.

Babylonia, Costanza Casati
Another historical fiction, this one about a queen, Semiramis, the only female ruler of Assyria. It was another good escape from reality, although the battle scenes were gruesome and the love triangle between Semiramis and two half-brothers, Onnes and Ninus, seemed a bit far-fetched. Still, it was an absorbing story with a strong female lead and a change of pace from more common Greek mythology. [There seems to be no end to the retellings of The Odyssey etc.; Casati's first book was Clytemnestra]

The Black Swan Mystery, Tetsuya Ayukawa (translated by Bryan Karetnyk)
I don't know whether it counts as noir, but there was definitely a bleak undercurrent in this murder mystery set in postwar Japan. I enjoyed it but was surprised that it ends abruptly. The detectives offer their theory of who did it and why, the story briefly switches back to the alleged killer meeting someone for lunch, and the end.

Interesting timing

It's Labor Day in the US and we spent it with Garrett's mom at a combination driving range and mini golf place. I thought they also had a golf course, but saw once we were playing that I was wrong. We had lunch in the clubhouse first, and it was good and I liked the menu and would definitely not say no to going back. The mini golf course is pretty hard, though.

I'm glad we ate first because once we started playing, the next group behind us happened to be someone we know and his girlfriend. We haven't seen him since we held a Friendsgiving party at our place in 2023. We had them join us rather than be one hole behind us the whole time, and it was a fun way to catch up. His girlfriend was nice, which is a bonus.

If today wasn't Labor Day, it'd be the day my new job goes from part time to full. So, starting tomorrow I'll finally be getting back into that routine. Wake up, work a little, shower, teach a class, shower again, work some more. I don't have a class on Wednesday and sometimes I'll go to one, sometimes I'll walk instead, and I'm sure sometimes I'll just work and be done early. It's a relief to finally be going full time, financially speaking. Of course, it won't matter if we win the $1.1 billion Powerball jackpot tonight.

I can't remember if I posted about it when I matched all but one number on Lotto. That got me $1000 which isn't bad it kinda seems like it should be more? The jackpot for that drawing would have been $2.9 million and I've since decided I won't play unless it's more. $200 million is the new threshold. Keep in mind you instantly lose a great deal of it to taxes, so when you think of an amount you'd like to win, you should double it.

Code deploy happening shortly

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.