Watching the scene in Season 2 of Quintessential Quintuplets where their classmates can’t tell them apart because they have the same face (even though they have different hair) reminded me of being in school.

I’m a fraternal twin (i.e., definitely don’t have the same face, body type, or even hair type as my sister) and yet people would confuse us all the time. Despite looking like regular siblings (and not even the type of siblings that look scarily alike despite being years apart).

It was always so frustrating because people clearly did it because they didn’t give a single shit. Not because it was actually hard to tell us apart. Makes a bit more sense for identical but we’re not identical.

The other day @rudescience and I went to a Yelp Elite event that was essentially a free cocktail happy hour. Met some cool people and learned a few things about what makes a good cocktail (including ice temperature and preparation). Neither of us really drink but it was interesting!

After that, we walked to a restaurant downtown for Spanish-style tapas. And it was incredible. Good food and even better dessert (it was just sweet enough, very flavorful… something that’s usually hard to come by in the US).

A proper date night. We had a really good time!

I was listening to this lo-fi radio on YouTube thinking my cat was calling for me… Turns out, I didn’t notice part of the lo-fi is the cat sounds lmao

Sigh

I haven’t used ThredUp in years, in part because I generally don’t like the platform for shopping, let alone selling. But I figured I’d give it a shot for selling once again, particularly for things that have been stagnant on places like Poshmark, Mercari, and Depop. Stuff that is technically “too old” for places like Plato’s Closet despite being perfectly good quality for thrifting. Basically, things I would have donated anyway at this point.

I sent in the box some time in early February. And apparently, the estimated processing time is in… end of May. 11 weeks processing time.

Would have been nice to know when their policies require items for a particular season. The season they asked for clothing for will be pretty much over by the time they even open the box I sent them.

If I can at least recover the processing fee, that’d be the bare minimum. But if I can’t even do that I’ll consider clothes recycling options instead in the future.

I don’t actually buy that much clothing nowadays. But people like to gift me clothing (either my family during Christmas or my husband’s family whenever we come to visit once a year) and so I unintentionally start to collect more of it against my will.

Overall, though, I’d really like to get to a point where laundry is not a battle. I’m experimenting with wearing only lilac clothing for professional events (may seem extreme, but it has worked to make people remember me) and I like that my professional event wardrobe is so simple.

I don’t think I’ll want to go full lilac for everything, as I still want to be somewhat anonymous in normal life. But it’s been a cool experiment.

I’m not in the best place right now. Generally negative thoughts because of career stress.

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That awkward moment when you get an electric/gas meter reading because your energy bill was more than 2x higher than usual. And the lady on the phone says the estimate was too low…

:s

Apparently the Clean Energy™ we purchase has been getting more expensive each month. Sigh

“thanks for nothing :)”

how my esl mentee signed off on his latest message

Apparently a former olympian tried to connect with me on LinkedIn?

Their heading was like “Knowledge - Research Engineer 5x Former Olympian” or something.

“Knowledge.” Great start. People trying to be vaguely philosophical on their LinkedIn heading is a red flag to me.

I once, regrettably, ended up connecting with a dude I used to work with and at some point he changed his headline to, “Engineer, Scholar, Gentleman.” Cringe

People who have to tell you they’re scholarly or gentlemanly are probably not. I’ve met so many brilliant people who don’t need to talk about themselves like that. Because it shows in their actions and achievements.

Ok next. Research Engineer in what? This is LinkedIn, why would I care that you were an olympian? Trying to rope people in who want to be connected with someone “famous”? I get enough spam on LinkedIn, no thanks.

Reminds me of some resumes I’ve seen from students who put a bunch of detail about their sport on their resume. Which is 100% irrelevant to the job they’re applying to. They can just list a leadership position without all the detail (especially if that detail is, again, completely irrelevant).

Imo, resumes and LinkedIn should start with the (relevant) facts. It’s a professional setting.

Anyway I declined without looking at their profile. Cold connections who have mostly irrelevant backgrounds and don’t have a connection message are instant “no"s from me. I never understood why people try to collect connections in the first place.

I’ve never once had a connection I don’t know turn into something useful, for either of our careers.

For example, someone in my local tech scene connected with me and then asked me to write a recommendation. Um… I’ve never worked with this person, nor have I seen their work. How would I possibly do that?

I like making new connections, but LinkedIn is more often than not, not the place to do it. Just the place to collect the actual connections you’ve made and keep up with what they’re up to.

I tried using this random Python library I found in a literature paper but omg the documentation is awful. I have no idea what is happening.

I might… try to do the analysis by myself. It might be harder, but at least I would know wtf is happening. Idk. Maybe I’ll try again another day when I’m less tired.

Ehh. 👉🏻👈🏻

Sucks to do this in a vacuum with no colleagues

thicc data

the combination of big data and qualitative insights; a collaboration between qualitative UX researchers and data scientists

I’m co-authoring a patent application in my department and holy fuck it is really boring for such a simple concept

Analyzing my current research data, all by myself, is currently both frightening and exciting.

Frightening because it’s a type of data and analysis technique I’m not well-versed in. And because I don’t really have colleagues in the subject matter area it applies to lean on for advice.

Exciting because there’s a lot to learn about it, so it’s really a great opportunity to grow. But even more than that… it’s reblossoming my data science techniques, which makes me feel amazing.

UX/HF research has a different focus than data science, but there’s enough overlap that I’m quite satisfied. It gives me a sense of accomplishment that I, in fact, did not waste my time meandering career options!

I’m really excited to see where this takes me.