From the Mind of Trevor Stone

I hope you all continue to have a wonderful end of the year.

What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before?

Major bicycle crash. Cross the equator. Live in the mountains. Spend an extra week in the desert.

Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I continue to resolve to not make resolutions.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

A bunch of the folks who sit next to me at work are married to people who gave birth. And some of my friends in khaki produced junior rangers. But there weren't any exploding vaginæ in my vicinity this year.

Did anyone close to you die?

I don't remember attending any funerals this year.

What countries did you visit?

Australia. And Puerto Rico, which is technically part of the U.S. And Washington state. And New York City.

What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?

Better task focus.

What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory?

I think my crash was on January 25th. It'll be hard to forget 12/21/12, the apocalypse that wasn't.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

My immediate team launched a file viewing service. My larger team launched Google Drive. I led a project to gather statistics on usage which has proved invaluable for team decisions. These achievements were recognized and I got promoted.

What was your biggest failure?

The breaks on my bike.

Did you suffer illness or injury?

I sprained my wrist and got a concussion when I crashed into a truck making an illegal right turn. I spent a couple weeks in a splint and with a mild headache followed by a couple months of occupational therapy to realign the median nerve in my left arm. Given the consequences of a few feet difference, I think I came out pretty well.
I also spent a few months with impacted earwax inducing a ringing in my ears.

What was the best thing you bought?

The best thing about crashing my bike is it gave me an excuse to get a new one. And it's a lot of fun to ride.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Not sure. I'm not very good at accolades.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The political and media establishment in the U.S. has gotten pretty dysfunctional. Narratives and intimations are given much more weight than fact.

Where did most of your money go?

My bank account.

What did you do that gave you a sense of completion?

I led the off- and on-playa tech team for the Rangers at Burning Man.

What song will always remind you of 2012?

I'll probably remember that Gangnam Style was the big hit of 2012. I also listened to a lot of Grateful Dead and got to know several Brent Mydland songs.

Compared to this time last year, you are:

Happier or sadder:
Probably happier. Living with my great girlfriend helps.
Thinner or fatter:
Like last year, I weigh about what I did in high school.
Richer or poorer:
I've got a good paying job which exceeds my expensive, which is my way of getting "rich."

What do you wish you'd done more of?

Programming. Dancing.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Being distracted.

How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent it eating, playing cards and joking around with my girlfriend's mom and sisters.

What was your favorite month of 2012?

August->September, with almost three weeks of Burning Man adventure, was pretty sweet.

Did you fall in love in 2012?

That's an unresolved question.

How many one-night stands?

My girlfriend and I always stick around.

What was your favorite TV program?

Vi Hart's YouTube channel is the closest thing to a TV series as I came this year.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

I find hate to be a waste of energy.

What was the best book you read?

After nearly a decade of checking the L shelf of the Sci-Fi section of every bookstore I entered, I finally found a copy of Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad. I'm almost finished, I'll post a review when I do. I also read Neuromancer for the first time, which was mighty fine.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

I figured out where Bart's CD Shack moved. I also got some good finds in Seattle and Manhattan.

What did you want and get?

Lots of snuggle time with my girlfriend.

What did you want and not get?

Reasonable political discourse.

What was your favorite film of this year?

The night of Oscar-nominated documentary shorts was amazingly intense. Incident in New Baghdad about civilian deaths in the fog of war followed by cover-up and PTSD, followed by Saving Face about women in Pakistan whose husbands and brothers throw acid on their faces, followed by The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom about the Japanese tsunami. Whoa, heavy. Fortunately, it ended with the uplifting The Barber of Birmingham about a barber who'd been at the heart of the civil rights movement.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I went to work, then stopped by my parents house. They were wowed that I'd soon be thirty three and a third. Time to put me on a record player.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

I missed out on two great months of bike riding.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?

Due to my hampered arm and some mega road rash, I wore a variety of skirts to work for a while. Unfortunately, it's a warm, moveable, pockets–pick at most two kind of garment.

What kept you sane?

Having an employer that understands that happy employees in the long term are worth much more than meeting quarterly analyst expectations.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I give props to the folks, including my own House representative, who took a stand for a free Internet this year.

What political issue stirred you the most?

I've done a fair share of arguing in favor of Obama's signature health care bill. It's not perfect, but it's better than the status quo.

Who did you miss?

I haven't seen mollybzz in a couple years. We sent each other some very clever care packages, though. I was glad to see the inimitable slyviolet twice during her Colorado visit and hope to see her again.

Who were the best new people you met?

I made some good Ranger connections, including Chyral (who I'd met briefly before), my driving partner across the desert and back.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012:

Make sure your vehicle is capable of coming to a stop as quickly as possible.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Dressed myself in green
I went down to the sea
Try to see what's going down
Maybe read between the lines
Had a feeling I was falling, falling, falling
Turned around to see
Heard a voice calling, calling, calling
You was comin after me
Back to me
–Grateful Dead, Bertha

vvvexation

prime rib

I'm not particularly picky about which part of the animal my meat comes from. I usually cook sausage and stir fry when I make dinner for myself. Lengua plus onions and cilantro is my favorite taco filling. I enjoy ordering pho with bible tripe, partly because the name sounds funny.

prime numbers

I remember reading that 37 was the "most random" number. It's prime, it's not a number that turns up naturally very often, it's bigger than ten but less than a hundred, and it kind of rolls off the tongue. In other words, it seems like a great choice when people are asked to "pick a random number."
Really big prime numbers are cool too. They're a crucial part of digital encryption. They can also have questionable legal status.

primary colors

At lunch one day, some of us observed that Google is kind of like preschool: there are lots of toys around, you can have a snack in the middle of the afternoon if your blood sugar is low, you're free to take a nap, and everyone eats lunch together in a cafeteria in primary-colored chairs.
I like primary colors and other colors that are easy to express in the RGB color space. Partly this is because I'm much more of a symbol-processing geek than an artist. I'm aware that using more subtle colors provides a more appealing visual experience, which is why I let other people be in charge of how things look.

primal scream therapy

It can be very cathartic to yell when you're as mad as hell. I'm not sure it would be a good practice for a 50-minute therapy session, since after the first two minutes or so you typically run out of things to be mad about or you've gone horse. 50 minutes staring at a Munch painting might be pretty therapeutic, though.

lexical priming

Lexical priming is the effect of word and grammar associations such that when we hear or read a particular word, we expect another word or grammatical construct. Conversely, if one is present but the other is missing, the phrase may sound weird. For instance, if a maw were described as anything but gaping would seem off.
I suppose lexical priming might help explain why most people have trouble understanding legalese. They don't have much priming for the words and structures used, so understanding the text is a bit like reading in a foreign language, even though you know the meaning of most of the words.

the genus Primula

I'm not a big fan of flowers (he said, sitting naked in the back yard enjoying the smell of dandelions, bluebells, and columbines). As noted on my LJ profile, I'm the only user interested in genus allium. Perhaps the layers of onion, garlic, leek, shallot, chive, and scallion appeal to my software engineering side. Among eudicots, I'm a big fan of family Cactaceae and other succulents. (He says, sitting naked in the sun.)

Optimus Prime

I haven't watched more than a couple minutes of Transformers since I was four or five, but I remember enjoying the show, particularly the noise they made when they switched form. The action figures (of which I owned none) were pretty cool too. Four years ago, I mused that a Transformers RPG could be pretty fun. And now that self driving cars are a real thing, it wouldn't have to seem too futuristic.