{"id":5114,"date":"2022-03-03T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/updates.xephalon.net\/?p=5114"},"modified":"2022-03-27T17:06:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-27T17:06:03","slug":"love-death-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/2022\/03\/03\/love-death-robots\/","title":{"rendered":"Love, Death, & Robots"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>We showed some Westley love for his 6th birthday by waking him up to a copy of Spiderman: Miles Morales<\/a> and leading him downstairs to our new PS5<\/a> system. After months of following forum threads<\/a> and restock trackers<\/a>, I finally scored a golden ticket invite<\/a> from Sony for their popular console. The ray tracing and 4K graphics were a step up from the prior Spiderman<\/a> installation, but Westley was more drawn to Astro’s Playroom<\/a> – the included free 3D platformer that made creative use of the DualSense<\/a> controller and lots of Sony branding. At his behest, we had his birthday brunch at My Burma<\/a> with grandparents, although our homemade birthday cake did not achieve Chinese-bakery-level fluffiness. The following weekend, we watched his cousin Ellie’s orchestra performance at DHS<\/a>, then broke out our binoculars and telezoom lens for birdwatching with the veterinary graduate group at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area<\/a>. Back home, we solicited quotes for a backyard shade for sun-blocking and outdoor movies, and also learned the difference between window replacements and repairs from glass vendors. Our pet spider Aphider 2 reached his end of life and was replaced by a much younger Aphider 3. On TV, we watched drama unfold on the ice over doping scandals and teenage outbursts during the 2022 Winter Olympics<\/a> in Beijing. The Russian ice skating controversy<\/a> was quickly overshadowed, however, by the country’s invasion of Ukraine<\/a>, as the geopolitical and humanitarian crises sent shockwaves through the world economy. On President’s Day weekend, we learned about water conservation, solar systems, and snowflake crafting at the\u00a0<\/span>SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity<\/a>. We continued the theme at home by assembling a hydraulic robotic arm<\/a> and erupting a volcano kit with coke and Mentos from among his birthday gifts. At work, I completed BMCDB<\/a> & GGIP<\/a> interviews and NEI<\/a> grant reviews, but my stress levels surged when I was drawn into planning the NEI Director’s<\/a> campus visit after my colleague suffered a last-minute medical issue. Fortunately, the event went smoothly, and I was able to restore my emotional state ahead of my upcoming travels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We showed some Westley love for his 6th birthday by waking him up to a copy of Spiderman: Miles Morales and leading him downstairs to our new PS5 system. After months of following forum threads and restock trackers, I finally … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5114"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5196,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions\/5196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}