It's too hot for late October

It's the final full-week of October, we are knee-deep into fall season, yet the mercury today read upwards of 96 degrees. What the French is going on?

One month into official autumn and I've yet to break out any sort of middle garments or heavy outerwear. This is San Francisco we're talking about; we pay out the nose in housing cost for foggy and cool weather and by god aren't we a cranky bunch when we don't get it. 

I sure hope this week's tiny heat-wave is the last of it and we can all enjoy proper San Francisco weather for the next eight months. 

Thankfully this weather did not occur two weeks back while the north-bay wildfires were raging on. It would've been a national emergency indeed if the unrelenting sun were mixed in with the smoke and ashes. Unimaginable. 

Due to the amount of destruction, we all either know or transitively know someone who has lost a home to the Napa fires. I was sad to find out an ex-coworker lost her newly rented home to the fire. I urge everyone to donate to our neighbors in need.

I find your perspective lacking

It's important to keep the proper perspective on things.

We get so caught up with what's going on with our own lives, and how every slight or misfortune seem monumental and woe-is-me. That sort of tunnel vision is an easy trap to fall into, myself included. 

Take one moment out of your own sphere to look at a bigger picture, any bigger picture. Doesn't have to world news, simply take a look around. Right now entire counties north of San Francisco is raging with wild fire. Homes are destroyed, lives lost, and many hundreds displaced. I don't deserve to be angry at the guy that cut me off on the road when there are people huddling in shelters because they've lost literally everything. I still have my bed to go to at the end of the night. 

It's too easy to complain, and extremely difficult to stop and think about will it achieve anything positive. In the same vein of Dave Chappelle's famous "when keeping it real goes wrong" sketch, sometimes things can get worst in protest.

On campus our student assistants were given a memo recently reminding them to be professional at all times and put the work first. Some of them took this as an immoral imposition (how dare our superiors tell us what do do!) and escalated the situation. The end result is they used to be able to do homework during any downtime, but now homework is completely banned. 

Way to go.