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mysterious economic model in Midtown, Kingston
Saturday, January 31 2026
Over the past few days, the "tumor" under Neville's snout seemed to shrink, which gave us hope that it was an infection and not cancer and thus responding to the course of antibiotics he was on. Today we got a call from the vet with his lab results, and indeed, it was just an infection. This is good to know; the next time this happens we can put him on a course of antibiotics and save $400.
This afternoon I made what felt like excellent progress on my now long-running I2C bootloader project. The key to this was a better understanding of its state machine, less reliance on ChatGPT, and better comprehension of what some the unfamiliar code (written in C) means. Lots of C makes sense to me, but once the code starts doing shifts and binary operations, my eyes tend to glaze over. And it's precisely when it is doing those things that I need to start paying closer attention. Of course, I was also hampered by some ChatGPT code introduced along the way that did things I would never do, such as completing an entire if statement in a single line instead of using curly brackets around an indented block. (My brain is so well-trained on my own coding style that I tend to miss operations happening in single-line if statements.)
Later in the afternoon, though, my little development environment, sprawled out around my keyboard as it was, started behaving non-deterministically. I'd a new version of the bootloader and sketch onto the Atmega328, and then it would stop reporting its version number to my ESP8266 master. Sometimes this meant the janky jumper cable connections had wiggled loose and maybe the pull-up resistors were disconnected, but in this case it really was some logical problem with the slave. Sometimes I would have to burn the Arduino bootloader onto it, upload the sketch with the Arduino IDE, and the start over, and then it would start working again. Or perhaps not. This can get highly frustrating.
This evening Gretchen had another cultural event planned for us, this time in Midtown Kingston. An organization called the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) now has a large space in a refurbished factory in Kingston, and tonight was the opening of a show containing numerous photographs by Ocean Vυong, a writer whom Gretchen knew before he became famous. We arrived in the continued bitter cold, and we could tell it was a big production because there was a guy standing out in the cold directing traffic. He directed us to a lot that was already full, so Gretchen ended up parking at a business that was likely closed. Inside, the the CPW was packed with people. It was youngish crowd and Gretchen remarked at some point how photogenic everyone was. I don't know what CPW's business model is other than to receive and spend grant money, as this opening was a lavish affair, with multiple tables dispensing free alcohol and finger food. As I put it to Gretchen, "I feel like I am the beneficiary of socialism right now." As for the photography, it didn't do anything for me at all. Much of it seemed unnecessarily pretentious. But it is unusual for me to be moved by a photograph, especially one that is trying to be something it clearly is not.
After spending about an hour at the CPW, we drove to Uptown, with me drinking the last of my third red wine along the way. In Uptown is a new pan-Asian fast-casual place called Lucky Catskills. We looked over the menu and were put-off to see that we could order something with pork in it that would cost the same even if there was no pork added to it. (As I pointed out to Gretchen later, when they do the numbers on their dishes, the vegans who ordered it without pork will almost certainly count as people who ordered a meat dish, thereby undercounting them.) The guy at the register telegraphed just enough hostility about Gretchen attitude on this matter for us to note, though it was not a deal breaker. We ended up getting pretty much everything that was inherently vegan, such as the steamed bun, the sprouts, the radish cake, and, what he'd mostly come here for, the cabbage dumplings. Gretchen was so impressed by the dumplings (which were indeed amazing) that raved about them both to the cashier who had given her attitude about veganizing food and the woman in the back who made them. Meanwhile, I was perplexed to notice that all the little boys in the restaurant (and there were at least four of them belonging to two entirely different families) all had mullets. Gretchen noted that Lucky Catskills seemed authentic, not just in terms of flavor, but also in terms customers, which included a number of Asians while we were there.
We weren't yet done with tonight's outing. On the drive home on Hurley Avenue, Gretchen pulled in at a newish brewpub that had just popped up called Blue Duck Brewing, whose food was provided by franchise of the Phoenicia Diner. Not everything seemed to be worked out there yet, though. They had two big screens above the bar, one of which was playing tonight's episode of Jeopardy!, which we had to ignore (since we are a day or so behind on that). But the other screen was much worse; it was some infomercial for an organization that fixes harelips and cleft palates in the third world, and featured lots of video that nobody wants to see when they're paying restaurant prices for food and beverages (first world problem, I know!). At some point Gretchen had our bartender change the channel, and it ended up being college basketball. But the JPEG compression on it was so high that every time the camera pulled back any distance, the faces turned monstrous, as if painted by a cubist having a bad acid trip.
As for drinks, I ordered the house hazy IPA, which came with entirely too much head. But then I saw that that was just the way our bartender pulled beers from the tap. The beer was okay, but not great. Gretchen tried a few samples but liked none of them.
I'd eaten more of the food at Lucky Catskills than Gretchen had, so her intentions at Blue Duck were to order a beet-based vegan sandwich there. When it came out, it looked good with the battered fries and such, but Gretchen found it was keyed a bit sweet for her, a problem exacerbated by a layer of thin apple slices. When staffer came by and asked about our food, Gretchen gave her candid assessment, which led to her getting a different meal, this one a chana masala served with tater tots, which I thought rather good.
I should mention that the demographics at Blue Duck Brewing were very different from the photogenic Manhattanite scene at the photography opening. At the brewpub, the clientele looked to be comprised of recent graduates from state schools known mostly for their football teams.
Back at the house, we watched another hysterical episode of Nathan for You and then an episode of a new The Office spinoff called the Paper that I found tiresome, to be honest. (In fairness, in this period of media saturation, it takes a lot to impress me.)
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