Hihi! Sorry for taking so long to write my next post, I have been quite busy!

Summer 2026

This summer I handled three things: I took a summer class, I moved apartments (without the help of movers, that was brutal), I went to and paneled at Anthrocon 2026, I worked on realtime transit arrival signage for my university, and I worked on a patch for clang! I did many of these concurrently, giving me many days where I had very little time to think of anything other than working. Despite this, Anthrocon 2026 was by far my favorite: it surpassed even last year’s where I paneled for the first time.

Moving out put me in an apartment entirely on my own for the first time in my life. I have always had at least one roommate while living not with family, so this is a huge change! It has come with both positives and negatives. To start, I don’t have to share a bathroom or shower!!!! I can be as tidy and organized as I would like and have complete control over the interior layout and appearance of my apartment. There are many framed commissions on the wall as well as art that I or people in my family have made.

For the downsides, obviously it is more expensive. In addition, I have found myself being alone for long stretches of time that have occasionally had a negative effect on my mental health, though this is much less pronounced than it has been during previous points in my life. The laundry situation is crazy. (sorry…) It is out of the way from inside my apartment, requires walking down quite a few stairs, and the dryer is really bad. It also doesn’t help that it is coin-operated, which is difficult because I do not have a debit card at any local bank (and I have not once actually gone to an Federal Credit Union network ATM). I am setting a goal for myself to do sufficiently well in the next 2 years of my life that I can have in-unit laundry that requires no stairs at all to use. I don’t care how small the machines are, if I don’t need to use stairs to get to them and they are clean, I will be immensely happy.

Right Now

I am completing my final semester at university which is exciting and nerve-wracking! By the end of December 2026 I will officially have a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences, complete with the paper certificate! Not to be outdone though, life won’t let me savor the moment. I will have to scramble to apply to as many jobs as I can and hope that I end up with something decent right after I graduate (so I can pay rent). I am not really expecting to be very successful (which is sad, I guess) so it is unclear if I will end up moving out of Pittsburgh at this point. It remains to be seen with how the job search goes. I am still working on clang but am awaiting responses to several comments I submitted on the issues I was assigned.

I have been workshopping ideas for a programming blog post for my professional site. So far, the ideas I have are (1) an explainer of iterators and inductive types, (2) object oriented programming, design patterns, and their existence as a result of poor language design, and (3) an explainer of -fbounds-safety, the work I did over the summer, some basics about the design of clang, and how memory safety is handled by a C compiler. If you know me, feel free to suggest whichever one you like the most!

I have been trying to read some small amount per week to ease myself back into the habit of doing so! I recently got through a few more chapters of Robert Caro’s fantastic book The Power Broker, which is about Robert Moses. Every chapter I get through leaves me in awe at his incredible proficieny at both performing the work necessary for him to shape New York City to his will and the instinct to navigate around an environment of people who covet power.

I got to be with my dog, Ozzy, for this weekend! Since I moved out I have not spent any time with him and it made me incredibly happy to be able to do so again. I will also get to see my dad again (I haven’t seen him since December 2024) and show him around Pittsburgh. He hasn’t been here for more than a day in a very long time. I am so looking forward to showing him around the city! I hope that this fall break will give me a chance to experience genuine happiness again and reconnect with my family after so long on my own.

On a less pleasing note, I am finding it difficult to have resolve and enthusiasm about getting up in the morning these days. I don’t know if it is the stress of having no guaranteed source of income upon graduation and pressing financial worries, or if it is seasonal, or if it is because I do not socialize enough with my friends, but I am just lacking joy and focus. I find myself drifting through a sea of interests and distractions, but I have not felt like I have truly gotten to bury myself in something or that anything I have done has made much of a difference. I should try to structure my life more and set goals for myself. I think it would help if I started writing here more regularly, or even if not here, somewhere private where I can at least get thoughts about my life off my chest and therefore feel better about them. I hope that through reflecting on what interests me and what has been keeping me from feeling joy, that I am able to start and adhere to a routine that helps me feel better. If you know me and have any suggestions for how to manage this, please reach out!

What Lies Ahead

I have ideas for this site too! You may notice that sometime this summer I changed the styling quite a bit. This is part of an extensive rewrite I conducted in my downtime. Initially, this site was built with the static site generator Hugo (written in Go). It has since changed to be built with my own static site generator aurssg which I have not released the code for (but may in the future.) I continue to stir restlessly with thoughts of modifying this site to be even more pleasant and full of little details that make it more pleasant to visit; I would be curious to hear which of them you would like to see.

• I would like to add tags to my posts alongside a search feature. This would let people use their favorite HOFs to reach posts they are most interested in. This will be especially useful for my technical/professional website (another thing I set up recently!) where I intend to write about programming languages, compilers, mathematics, and other technical subjects that interest me.
• I would like to modify the styling to be cleaner. I am not sure if I would like to do another rewrite of the styling so that it can be Frutiger Aero/ Windows Aero-esque, but it has been on my mind. I like my site’s appearance now but there are a few things I have been thinking about tweaking. The font could be better and the spacing between words needs some adjustment.
• I have been considering modifying my static site generator to cache builds. A friend of mine blogged about this within the year, so I have been giving it some thought. I have yet to encounter in practice the benefits it would provide since my site is so small, but perhaps I will find out the benefits in practice when I try. I did want to include metadata about the build data of my site in the footer of pages, including a little note about whether the page was edited or updated at any point.
• I really want to add a gallery of fursona art. I do not know what design I would like for my gallery, though. This involves making a lot of decisions that I do not think I am ready for yet; I want to get back to this later.

BTW: If you are or know anyone who is in a position to hire someone for a software role and need a motivated junior engineer to hire, please tell them to reach out to me :) I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks for reading!

• Aured