Dance and action #9
Mar. 2nd, 2026 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujI spent the weekend at the Tech Squares annual square dance weekend, where I had a blast. There was dancing on ice skates, dancing to pre-recorded stuff from the 1950s, dancing to silly hacks that people invented, just regular plus dancing, higher level dancing, board gaming, jigsaw puzzles, chatting with people I only see once a year, chatting with people I see more often than that, decent food, and not enough sleep.
Somebody had brought a Rubik's 4x4 cube, and I learned that I have forgotten everything I knew about what to do with the centers. At some point I had edges and corners solved and was making progress on the centers, but slowly, because the thing I was doing did more than I wanted it to, so I tried to figure out what I needed to do to be more restrictive in what changes my moves made, and of course ended up messing it up completely. Then I repeated that situation, and then I got into a mess where I couldn't solve the edges, and the centers were still a mess. Then I gave the cube back. Maybe I will get mine out and spend some of my retirement re-deriving how to do this.
The new car went 220 miles and returned with 24% left in the batteries. It's "guess-o-meter" is moderately accurate.
I found out about the whole bombing Iran thing while I was away, but mostly was not looking at any news sources and stuck my head in the sand about it til I got home. Today I clicked around for protests, and I found one, this evening in Boston. I would say there were 200-300 people there. This one was also put on by the socialists, like a previous one. Some decent speakers. The MC was pretty good at getting everybody to cheer at the right times and he led us in a number of chants. After an hour of rallying we started marching. I don't know what the destination was, because after 40 minutes of walking, it seemed we were getting further away from the train station, and when it was 15 minutes away and there was a train in 20 minutes, I got my phone to give me walking directions and, like a dork, I just stuck it in my pocket and had it announce things like "your next turn is in 1000 feet". Walking is often faster than taking public transit, and more reliable (assuming your feet work, which surprisingly, after dancing them off all weekend, mine did). I'm sure I would've missed the train if I'd taken transit, even though I walked past a couple of T stations.
Somebody had brought a Rubik's 4x4 cube, and I learned that I have forgotten everything I knew about what to do with the centers. At some point I had edges and corners solved and was making progress on the centers, but slowly, because the thing I was doing did more than I wanted it to, so I tried to figure out what I needed to do to be more restrictive in what changes my moves made, and of course ended up messing it up completely. Then I repeated that situation, and then I got into a mess where I couldn't solve the edges, and the centers were still a mess. Then I gave the cube back. Maybe I will get mine out and spend some of my retirement re-deriving how to do this.
The new car went 220 miles and returned with 24% left in the batteries. It's "guess-o-meter" is moderately accurate.
I found out about the whole bombing Iran thing while I was away, but mostly was not looking at any news sources and stuck my head in the sand about it til I got home. Today I clicked around for protests, and I found one, this evening in Boston. I would say there were 200-300 people there. This one was also put on by the socialists, like a previous one. Some decent speakers. The MC was pretty good at getting everybody to cheer at the right times and he led us in a number of chants. After an hour of rallying we started marching. I don't know what the destination was, because after 40 minutes of walking, it seemed we were getting further away from the train station, and when it was 15 minutes away and there was a train in 20 minutes, I got my phone to give me walking directions and, like a dork, I just stuck it in my pocket and had it announce things like "your next turn is in 1000 feet". Walking is often faster than taking public transit, and more reliable (assuming your feet work, which surprisingly, after dancing them off all weekend, mine did). I'm sure I would've missed the train if I'd taken transit, even though I walked past a couple of T stations.
