Category: General

What I’m Contemplating

• Rands Information Practices – Great tips on managing your information diet as well as stealing precious seconds (that add up to minutes then hours) in your daily workflows.
• Our Roth Regrets // The Roth IRA Strategy We Wish We’d Built – I still follow the financial independence / early retirement (FIRE) community closely. Some good tips here for those of you in the earlier stages.
• Why Cheap Beer Is Still Awesome (And 5 You Should Enjoy This Summer) – Put me down for PBR. Important omission: Yuengling.
• Tom Russell on Hollandspiele plans – I’m starting to really like this company and their creativity (and their prolific publishing schedule). Confession: I haven’t played any of their games yet, so all I know is from reading reviews.
• “I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets – I understand his points but I’m not sure a new software package or platform is going to solve the problems.

What I’m Coding

• I continue to enhance our Keuka Komplishments app. Fun to have a sandbox like this that people are actually using.
• I’m building a lightweight Reddit clone for my upcoming Microservice Architecture class at Western Oregon. I’m building a monolithic app as a starting point for the class from which we will go through a series of refactorings into microservice architecture.
• Python Idioms: Multiline Strings – I’m dialed in deeply to the Python community (podcasts, blogs, etc.) in the hopes of dramatically improving my inherent understanding and memory of the language and APIs.

What I’m Listening To

• First Listen: Lera Lynn, ‘Plays Well With Others’ – This is a collection of collaborations. Easy listening country, and not the pop kind.
• Even On ‘Passwords,’ Dawes Can’t Hide Its Big, Bleeding Heart – I’m enjoying this one a lot.

What I’m Playing

With guests that are gamers hanging around the last two weeks, a lot was played. Rather than bullet list each, here’s the scoop: Dominion, Fort Sumter, Wits & Wagers, A Handful of Stars, Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, 18NEB, Dixit, Jump Drive, Codenames, Jaipur, Ninety-Nine, Villages of Valeria, and Rummikub.

Speaking of Fort Sumter, there’s a nice overview of the game at The Player’s Aid.

Look at the dude up in the tree.

What I’m Contemplating

• Visitor’s Guide to Summer Fun at Keuka Lake – Julie did a big update to help folks plan for visiting us at the lake!
• Say the Hard Thing – I’ve struggled with this sort of directness in my career as a manager. I got better at it and always saw positive results when I did.
• Management books in review – Good list here to review.
• Becoming a 10x Developer – A very different take on the 10x developer idea, this one focused on magnifying yourself and teammates by being an awesome team member. Love it.
• Why Doing Nothing Is One of the Most Important Things You Can Do – I’ve gotten better at this in my semi-retirement.
• Understanding the ‘Beautiful Game’ – World Cup soccer is upon us and I’ll be watching some games soon. Never hurts to understand a bit more, though I doubt I’ll read the book.

What I’m Watching

• CWS notes: How a doctor, a sheriff and the Mafia helped Oregon State stay loose during delay – I’m hooked on the College World Series right now, of course greatly influenced by Oregon State’s current brilliant run through the loser bracket. This article talks about how they played Mafia (aka Werewolf) during the long rain delay vs. UW. True story – Julie and I have fond memories of Matthew’s baseball team playing Werewolf during breaks in baseball tournaments when he was a young teen. And two of his teammates from then are current starters for the Beavers!
• After listening to the audio book, Julie and I watched Lonesome Dove with her dad. It probably isn’t as great as the 8.8 rating on IMDB, but it is very good and I think the best performance of Robert Duvall’s career.

What I’m Playing

• Since my last update, just lots of Advanced Squad Leader.
• Face to face gaming will ramp up significantly as gamers start joining us at the cottages here starting on Saturday.

What I’m Reading

• I’m still loving (in a cheap escape sort of way) the Ranger’s Apprentice series and finished #2 The Burning Bridge.
• I read about one third of The Genius of Birds before abandoning it. Great insight into bird intelligence but it didn’t hold me past the first few excursions.
• A colleague I know wrote Going It Alone: Essential Tips for the Independent Consultant and it was a good read. I wish there had been more content about ramping up a consulting business using modern marketing techniques.
• I was disappointed in The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business but I might be to blame. The book is more about how sales and marketing professionals can use the power of habit to influence buyer behaviors. I was looking for more personal advice on habit forming and breaking.

What I’m Listening To

• ‘God’s Favorite Customer’ Is Father John Misty’s Darkest And Most Heartbroken Album – Best new album I’ve listened to in several years. On nearly constant rotation for me.
• First Listen: River Whyless, ‘Kindness, A Rebel’ – I’m not sure about this one yet but will give it a few more listens. Pretty mellow rock but not resonating yet.

What I’m Learning

• How to rig an E Scow Spinnaker – Julie and I joined an E Scow team as part of the fleet at Keuka Yacht Club this summer. We are not new to sailing but very new to this boat so much to learn.
• 10 common security gotchas in Python and how to avoid them – For the second straight summer I’m rekindling my original passion that started my career: programming. Python is such a beautiful language and I enjoy waking up facing a day when I get to experience the joy of programming.

Julie and I are having fun this summer as ad hoc crew on an E Scow racing sailboat at the Keuka Yacht Club.

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).

What I’m Reading

• 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.

What I’m Playing

• 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.

What I’m Listening To

• 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.