Morning Pages: August 11th, 2020

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, I've been locking myself down until I think it's safe to go out again. To alleviate fear and stress, my writer's group has put together a daily "morning pages" get-together on Zoom in order to touch base before starting the day. Here's some of my brief thoughts.

The famous catdog goes for a walk!

catdog

Maybe it should be the kittendog :)

I bit the bullet recently and purchased two different books on formal reasoning, "Practical TLA+" by Hillel Wayne (covering TLA+), and "Software Abstractions" by Daniel Jackson (which covers Alloy). I guess it's kind of weird to purchase these books since I don't have too much background and little interest in pursuing formal methods / formal reasoning professionally full-time. But I keep thinking about my database-backed spreadsheet for QA teams idea, and I keep thinking about the "rules engine" or formal model I'd be checking into the program as part of working on that idea, and I think investing in the future helps me believe I have one.

I think this pandemic turned me into a T.V. aficionado. This is one thing I didn't expect from the pandemic. I think it's a healthy thing overall, because it is a form of relaxation, and it does give me some chuckles I otherwise wouldn't have gotten, but man I've been binging pretty hard. I'm not sure whether to be mad at myself for not being productive during evenings + weekends, or happy that I'm not being productive during evenings + weekends. I am pretty happy that given my newfound T.V. addiction, I stick to mockumentary office comedies.

(By the way I love Rashida Jones!! Ann Perkins AND Karen Filippelli!! I kind of get celebrity worship now...which is probably not a good thing, but I think comes with the territory.)