Wednesday What’s Up

June 6, 2018

What I’m Contemplating

A Primer on Military Rank and Insignia – As an Air Force guy, I still find myself making mistakes as I see (mainly enlisted) Army folks while strolling around West Point. This article helped.
GMT Website Update – My favorite game publisher is in the middle of significant back-office and website changes, hopefully for the better.
10 Strikes and You’re Out – the iOS Feature You’re Probably Not Using But Should – Good reminder. I’m using this feature (now).

I’m in the middle of the Ranger’s Apprentice series, having finished The Ruins of Gorlan in less than a week. That’s fast for me. This is young adult fantasy but perfect for summer reading.
Julie and I listened to Talking God, part of a series of books by Tony Hillerman about a pair of native American lawmen. OK but not great, I still want to read A Thief of Time which is tied closer to some of the ruins and sites we saw in southern Utah last month.
The book The Power of Zero: How to Get to the 0% Tax Bracket and Transform Your Retirement over-promises a bit though I learned some tips. If nothing else it encouraged me to dig deeper into the specifics of required minimum distributions from qualified accounts.
Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind was better than I expected. It is a marketing piece and a conglomeration of what read like blog articles, but good value of some great writers involved.

I found Exploding Kittens in a Target on our way to West Point and picked it up. Julie and I played a couple of times with Matthew over beers and enjoyed it. Very light game and will be even better with a larger group.

Julie and I played Lanterns: The Harvest Festival while enjoying a beer last week at Steuben Brewing just up the hill from us. Big fan of this for two or three players.
Julie and I played our staple Five Crowns last weekend. Julie won and is creeping back towards a 50/50 split lifetime.

First Listen: Sugarland, ‘Bigger’ – Pretty country.
Spotify – What? I shut Spotify down about a year ago and switched to Amazon Music, mainly to see how it is and if the Echo integration was significantly better. Echo: better. Music: not better. I miss the social sharing, release radar, discover weekly, etc. Found a deal for returning members ($9.99 for 3 months) so I’m back in and shut down Amazon Music.