Saturday, January 16, 2021

January 2021 Reading List

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Saturday, December 05, 2020

December 2020 Reading

  • 12/31/2020: Shorefall: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett

  • 12/30/2020: Shorefall: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/29/2020: Shorefall: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/28/2020: Shorefall: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/27/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/26/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/25/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/24/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/23/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/22/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/21/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/20/2020: LinkedIn Microservices Overview - kind of basic.  [60:00]
  • 12/19/2020: Testing overview [work related, 15:00]
  • 12/18/2020: Arch overview [work related, 57:37]
  • 12/17/2020: Enrollment overview [work related, 25:00]
  • 12/16/2020: AWS This week [33:00 inc re:Invent]

  • 12/15/2020: Admin site overview [work related, 34:41]
  • 12/14/2020: Admin site overview [work related, 20:00]
  • 12/13/2020: Arch overview [work related, 18:14]
  • 12/12/2020: Arch overview, team specific [work related, 60:00]
  • 12/11/2020: Arch overview [work related, 30:00]
  • 12/10/2020: Arch overview [work related, 30:00]
  • 12/9/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/8/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/7/2020: Foundryside: A Novel [The Founders Trilogy] by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • 12/6/2020: AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate 2020, IAM [25:00]
  • 12/5/2020: AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate 2020, IAM [25:00]
  • 12/4/2020: AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate 2020, IAM [25:00]
  • 12/3/2020: Funkin on the Northside, Minnesota Historical Society [60:00]
  • 12/2/2020:  AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate 2020, IAM [25:00]
  • 12/1/2020: AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate 2020, Overview [25:00]
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Sleeping and Brick Gollums

I think I've been sleeping too much.  I know, if you sleep, then it's probably not too much, but it's considerably more than pre-covid.  Doom scrolling and other behaviors seem to have an impact on my hours of shut eye.  I noticed the difference this week when I got up at my old commute time for several days and had several hours of pre-work time to myself to...well, work, and read, and watch some television, and walk...I definitely felt more productive.

This morning I overslept - imo - but I got to enjoy a weird dream on the tail end of those hours.  In some run down factory that had been semi-gentrified, I was hosting a D and D game.  But I'd lost all my notes from previous games and had fifteen players participating I couldn't remember a thing about.  So I looked out the window, took note of all the broken brick and trash in the neighborhood where they/we were trying to repurpose an old factory, and decided I'd have to do a hack and slash that was challenging regardless of the number of players and/or their level.  The result...a brick and garbage gollum the size of a factory that had fists, hands, mouth, but could also form tree sized pseudo appendages that would slam into a player, enveloping them, suffusing their lungs and stomach - unless they made their save - and possessing them as a gollum zombie under the gollum's control that would start to ooze and collect trash, ala the Japanese movie Tetsuo, the Iron Man.  I remember thinking in my dream that it was clever to have a gollum, traditionally under control, be the one controlling.  It's less clever when I'm awake because gollums don't work that way, so it was likely more of an elemental, or the zombie players were under the control of the gollum's owner.

I suspect all that is related to helping E with D and D lately, as well as playing it myself with my old crew.  When E and I were talking I pointed out I have a few standard scenarios I pull out when I need to buy some time for future ideation, or want the party to enjoy a bit more hack and slash than usual.  Crippled beholder with fewer stalks, weird spells, and a tribe off worshippers, like bullywugs or kobalds, plus associated pets [maybe the beholder has a tame spell it uses on behalf of it's worshippers, so anything is fair game].  I also like rando nemesis.  Maybe you trespass, maybe you find a small abandoned temple and loot it, maybe you ruin something that seems innocuous like a nest or a colony of bugs, and the local wood demon/deity decides to make an example out of you and keeps upping the challenge until something "works".

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Friday, November 13, 2020

Not a Reading Post

Every once in a while I feel like getting back into not-reading posts.  Bare with me.  Hmm...I bet it's bear with me.  Otherwise we're going to have to shed some clothes, right?

So what did I do for my birthday this year?  Celebrated it a day early for one.  We headed up to the cabin to see my folks and took a bunch of steak, porkchops, and potatoes with us.  And some games.  My wife and kid took crokinole.  We learned to play it at a gaming day with friends last weekend and they loved it.  Then discovered that the board I'd had forever because it was the same board I'd had as a kid in the old farmstead home when I farmed in the summers, was a crokinole board on the flip side.  So there was a bunch of cribbage and crokinole pre-steak.  

You can tell we're in heavy covid concern because of the masks.  I literally used my mask between bites of dinner.  I was pretty sure we were all safe, but my kid bags groceries, and we talked to the neighbor to get Luna - the dog - watched, and the meat store in Osseo was off the hook with people.  Better safe than sick with all the hospital beds pretty much full.


I got a cool pillow case from my mother that means I'll never have to guess which pillow is mine again, and I'll know if my wife is stealing my pillow to use as a reading pillow in the living room.  Reminds me that I need to get mounting bolts for the bars to hang my cycling quilt she made me.

And I got a cycling game.  I told my wife Flamme Rouge was on my short list of potential gifts.  She got the expansion as well so I can play solo.  I'm worried that it's sort of pathetic if I sit around drinking and playing cycling games all by my lonesome, but I'm willing to deal with the shame.
I got this game
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Tuesday, November 03, 2020

November 2020 Reading

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Saturday, October 03, 2020

October 2020 Reading

  • 10/31/2020:
  • 10/30/2020: 
  • 10/29/2020: 
  • 10/28/2020: What if AI could manage better than your manager?
    • Ugh, new strategies and mentoring employees is < 20 percent of the average manager's time?
    • ego depletion / decision fatigue.
    • leadership: extroversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness.
  • 10/27/2020: Learn How to Accurate Forecast Demand with Amazon Forecast [60:00]
  • 10/26/2020: Demystifying Data Lakes for Healthcare and Life Sciences [60:00]
    • Really good section on deploy stack for Glue frameworks.  Shared it with one of my coworkers so she can ponder implementing it for quick POC / spike work.
  • 10/25/2020: Podcast 279: Making Kubernetes Work Like it's 1999 with Kelsey Hightower [30:00].
    • Discussed the issues with trying to run everything with each team when you own microservices.
  • 10/24/2020: Steve: A Company’s Workforce Is Its Most Strategic Asset. Investors Deserve Clarity About It. [Human Capital] 
  • 10/23/2020: Anxiety, Calm - Over/Under Function Brene Brown podcast for article  lunch and learn at work. [30:00 plus an hour of discussion]
    • Enjoyed this.  Could see the context of good attention/bad attention that were discussed in terms of characters in books.
    • These were recommended
      • Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead – both by Brene Brown
      • The Call to Courage – Brene’s Netflix special
      • Why Won’t You Apologize by Harriet Lerner
  • 10/22/2020:  Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "My Ex-Husband is Still an Asshole"
  • 10/21/2020:  Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "Complete Me"
  • 10/20/2020: 
    • Chester County History Center in PA: Dark History.  [60:00] - all sorts of fun stories about the use of bodies in medicine/etc.  The online nature of events during Covid is a nice side-effect.
    • Create a QnA Bot with Amazon Lex and Amazon Kendra [60:00] - I'd like to try this if I ever get the time.
    • Accelerating Microservice-based Application Delivery with AWS [60:00] - focus on containers.
  • 10/19/2020:  Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "The Woman with the Comb"
  • 10/18/2020:  Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "Moonshine"
  • 10/17/2020: How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally May Have Spread Coronavirus Across the Upper Midwest - Washington Post.
    • Good read as we bypassed SD entirely on our way back from Yellowstone given the map of the hotspots and the fact that Sturgis had happened regardless of health concerns.
  • 10/16/2020: A Radical New Technique Lets AI Learn with Practically No Data - MIT Technology Review
    • Less Than One shot learning.
    • Basically blending images so that the computer can intuit multiple items from a single image with many tags.
    • Two points, ten thousand separate classes and up to a million.  Still have to go from huge dataset to distilled data set.
    • Has implications for data privacy.
  • 10/15/2020: Ten Best Science Fiction Podcasts by Polygon
    • Try A World Where, Murmurs, Null/Void, The Great Chameleon War.  Added to my list.
  • 10/14/2020:
    • Raised by Wolves Podcast: Can Robots Make Moral Decisions - September 3, 2020 [47 min]
    • Raised by Wolves Podcast: Should We Start Over On Another Planet - September 10, 2020 [42 min]
    • Raised by Wolves Podcast: Can Artificial Intelligence Have Emotions? - September 17, 2020 [47 min]
  • 10/13/2020: Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "Curios and More"
  • 10/12/2020: Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "The Miracle of Life"
  • 10/11/2020: Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "Dear Jane"
  • 10/10/2020: Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "Aggressive Mimicry"
  • 10/9/2020: Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "Daddy's Girl"
  • 10/8/2020: Black Rainbow Vol 1: LGBTQIA Horror - "My Ex-Husband is Still an Asshole"
  • 10/7/2020: Raised by Wolves: The Podcast
    • Can Robots Make More Decisions? [47:00] - September 3, 2020
    • Should We Start Over on Another Planet [42:00] - September 10, 2020
    • Can Artificial Intelligence Have Emotions? [46:00] - September 17, 2020
  • 10/6/2020: David Tennant Does a Podcast With...Elisabeth Moss [54:00] -  5 October 2020
  • 10/5/2020: Two Tools Every Data Scientist Should Use for Their Next ML Project
    • Weights and Biases and Manifold.  Both for visualizing your models.
  • 10/4/2020:
    • Trust me, there is reading going on as well, but I'm getting in a LOT of walking, so now that I've really figured out podcasts and have the headphones working right, I'm getting in a lot of listening.  Added Savage Love Podcast as well, although I haven't listened to any yet to be sure.  And I listened to three Lore podcast episodes, but I'm not including those because I'm not going to add them.  I really prefer the multi-person conversational style. Rabbit Hole wasn't quite like that, but there were two interviewers/reporters involved and a lot of back and forth discussion.
    • David Tennant Does a Podcast With...Brian Cox [45:00] -  28 September 2020
    • The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - the Popular Science Podcast - Debunking Hymen Myths, Moving Corpses, Birth Control to Please the Pope [41:07] - 2 October 2019
    • The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - the Popular Science Podcast - Exploding Underwater Mountains, Board Sex and Celery [51:41] - 30 September 2020
    • The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - the Popular Science Podcast - Hot Dog Sports, Sexy Pseudoscience, Intestinal Power Walking [41:06] - 16 September 2020
    • The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - the Popular Science Podcast - Giant Sloths, Caged Babies, Spicy Horse Butts [38:07] - 2 May 2018
  • 10/3/2020:
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  Seven: Where We Go One. [30:00]
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  Eight: We Go All. [36:00]
  • 10/2/2020:
    • Your First Day With Notion - A Beginner's Guide [14:01] - personal wiki, knowledge management system.
    • Roam Research: Our First Look [11:07] - newer personal wiki/research tool.  Interesting as it leverages nodes, which is why I was looking at Neo4j, but eventually overkill for almost anything I do unless I'm building a complete universe and there are writing specific tools for that.
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  Four: Headquarters. [40:00]
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  Five: The Accidental Emperor. [36:00]
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  Six: Impasse. [25:00]
  • 10/1/2020: 
    • Lady Eboshi is Wrong - Lessons We Learned from Anime [9:40]
    • SAFe meetup meeting on kinds of large scale agile including SAFe, DaD, LeSS, Nexus, and Scrum at Scale.  Good meeting [90:00].  
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  One: Wonderland. [28:00]
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  Two: Looking Down. [38:00]
    • New York Times, Rabbit Hole podcast - about internet radicalization and recommendations and conspiracy.  Three: Mirror Image. [29:00]
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Friday, September 04, 2020

September 2020 Reading

I need to get better at more of a day-by-day entry system, because dang was this a lot of stuff to track.  I feel weirdly underread this month despite what is obviously a LOT of reading.  I didn't even include starting Little, Big right at the end of the month and some of Dying of Whiteness that may become a co-bedside book with The English.  And Lovecraft Country doesn't include that I'm going to watch the series on HBO because I don't do television here.  Argh...see, I can already tell I missed the Tim Minchin podcast with David Tennant and that was one of my favorites.  Drove me down a whole musical aside.  Or Cush Jumbo.  Sigh...  I bolded the four Tennant podcasts episodes I liked best, but they were all really, really good.   I think Levy's was the one I like least, because I haven't watched his series, although I loved the stories with his dad and his experience in the industry and life.
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Tuesday, September 01, 2020

Postcards in the Coronavirus Days - Part VI

Justinian: Mount Vernon, small dining room


Katie, from Tom Hardy.  Gettysburg, the Weikert Farm.

KatieK from Tom Hardy.  Three postcards on thick posterboard sent individually.  He signed them all 2020 with hearts.

Larry and Janine, Mt Rushmore National Memorial, Black Hills.  Folding Line on the back to append another president into the mountain.  Big ugly.


Kyle: Shrine of Democracy, Black Hills, SD....note, I put a folding line in the back to layer another president into the mountain.  So sad.



Matt Z, Spruce Tree Ruin, Mesa Verde National Park

 

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Postcard Puzzle

 J and E have been sending me a postcard puzzle.  I don't think they cut it correctly.

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Sunday, August 23, 2020

Banning State Park Ride

On Friday I pedaled from Eagan up to Banning State Park near Sandstone, MN.  Good trip, although not particularly exciting.

It was mostly on trails: from Eagan into St. Paul, catch the Gateway/Vento, Sunrise, Willard Munger, and a spur.  Total was 107.55 miles.

It was more overgrown (on the sides) then when we were up there 10 years ago or so, so a bit more shade.  But still pretty flat with a slight grade because you're headed north in Minnesota (there's a reason most folks go north to south), and lots of sun.  I started at 6:00 a.m. to avoid the bulk of the heat, but I still stopped twice to buy more water, three 16+ oz bottles each time. The second time I panicked a bit as the gas station was locked up tight due to an electrical outage, but there was another not too far down the road also out of electricity, but taking cash.  Still, it was still almost not enough. 

I did not like the shoulders on 61 where they simply fell apart and hadn't been cleaned in....ever?  I hit a small spot of gravel at one point and there was a loud twang as a sizable chunk of metal went flying.  I thought I had avoided a flat....for about another 60 seconds.  Fortunately, it was easy to fix and despite the size of the shard of metal, hadn't shredded my actual tire.  Simple puncture.  After that I trended more toward the road despite the cars.

Other highlights?  An idiot in a truck with a large Confederate Flag flying high above several US flags.  Hampton Umbrella rides.  Pictured below.  Sort of sketchy looking in this context.  I didn't get a picture of the Scooter ride entrance which was pretty terrifying; a tunnel full of pieces of metal sticking into the center.  It was like it was beckoning specifically to me with my nickname.


A dam on the way there.  I think this is just north of Hinckley, where I really should have stopped for a piece of pie at the Whistle Stop Cafe, even though it would have been outside on the cement.  I've certainly done that many times before on RAGBRAI.

My wife met me at Banning State Park with the convertible for a picnic (abbreviated because of the mosquitoes, but still appreciated - I'd had mostly nuts and fruit snacks and goldfish crackers at that point) and for a tour of the park (abbreviated; we saw the rapids, but the falls were a four mile round trip that she wasn't up for).  Here are a number of pictures of the  rapids.  Pretty area, particularly if you want to hike.  I heard on the news that in Taylors Falls, 50 miles from us, a guy fell off the cliffs and landed on the rocks while we were at Banning.  This didn't seem to get as high over the river as that, but there were some bouldering type areas that went higher than we were willing to hike.



Poot working on her own photo.  She's got a selfie of us somewhere on her camera.



All in all, a great ride, although I'm feeling it in the saddle some today.  I keep thinking my modifications to my bike seat will pan out, but I can find the right level.  Still, close enough and getting new brake pads on is priority one.

Closing with the soothing sounds of the rapids.

Banning State Park Rapids

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Postcards in the Coronavirus Days - Part V

Postcard to KatieK on 8/20/2020 from Tom Hardy where Tom inserts himself into all the airplanes at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

 

This particular postcard was so very many postcards...


So many...

Bit of duplication there with the photos, but I wanted to catch them all...


Two left!!!  It was difficult to think of things to say for every plane.

Aw....taking a Koala back to Australia that was healing up in the US. 

To Aunt Sue on 8/18/2020: Clock Tower, Great Court, Trinity College, Cambridge

On 8/18/2020 to Katie prior to the airplanes postcard.  From Tom Hardy pontificating on what a manly eruption it seems to be.

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Thursday, August 20, 2020

The Incident

My wife and I watched The Incident the other night.  I really enjoyed it.  My take is that it's about tragedy and how someone reacts to (maybe dwells upon, or dwells within is a better turn of phrase) tragedy whether they're old or young and whether they persevere in the face of that tragedy or succumb to it emotionally.  In the case of The Incident whether one thrives or shrivels seems to be based on age.  

For a while I really hoped it was a dystopia in the vein of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.  e.g. the noise was a machine of some sort splitting off a very bad dimension/possibility and screwing over some version of yourself, so that an individual could enjoy a probable good turn in the timeline that had the technology.  Personally, I think that's a creepier take on the whole thing.  Confining some version of yourself to hell so that you can enjoy a less painful reality.  How many alternate yous would you be willing to banish to hell to be happy?  Would you justify it with "it's me, so they'd be happy for the happy me?"

Inventive and well worth watching and I agree with Variety, that it's got a smattering of Borges, enough so that when it tries to explain things at the end, it almost screws up the movie.

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Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Postcards in the Coronavirus Days - Part IV

Sent to the Boss on 8/11: Geocaching Whitehouse. 



Sent to AnneT on 8/11: House of the Seven Gables

Sent to ChristineC on 8/11/2020: Arizona Desert in Bloom


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Monday, August 17, 2020

Hot Summer Nights

 My new neighbor trades beer with me.  Between him and Kyle and myself, I may never have to drink the same beer more than twice unless I really want to.  I've taken to buying warm beer and storing it under the steps and I'm developing quite the esoteric collection.

This was one of the incoming trades.  I had it while playing D&D on Sunday.  I'm generally against fruity beer, but this had a seriously light taste (and light alcohol at 4.4%).  The lower alcohol level was a bonus because anything above 6% tends to make me a bit fuzzy for playing my character.

Speaking of Warbear the Invincible, Warlock, here's his character sheet.  https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/Dexter_Scootarus_I/characters/27038034.  E, Kyle, Chris, his son, and I have been playing for about two months on most weekends with a few skips.  Last time I played consistently was in the Richfield house maybe 25 years ago.  We're having a good time, although I have a theme.  Fire my biggest spell, Scorching Ray.  Take a hit, and "blow up" with Hellish Rebuke.  Either go down, or get in an Eldritch Blast and then go down.  It's not 100%, but I think it's at least a 60% go to strategy.  Mostly I'm waiting for my patron (a fiend, in this case Demogorgon) to decide he's going to chew on my brain and spit it back into my skull.  I hear that's how he makes friends.


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Sunday, August 16, 2020

Finnish Bistro Bike Ride

Yesterday I pedaled up to the Finnish Bistro in the Como neighborhood of St. Paul.  Very close to the State Fair.  Given the Fair is going to be shut down this year due to Covid concerns (rightly so), it's about as close to my bike ride to an Americano at the Farmer's Union there that I'm going to get.  Kind of a bummer - I'm usually there earlier enough to see some interesting sights.  Last year it was Governor Walz stopping by my table to say hello.  I'm still getting a little bit of rub on the back tire even after my deep cleaning during a streaming Sarah Morris concert  We'll see if new brake pads will take care of it.  I may have to bite the bullet and do a little bit of truing.  I did take a trip later in the day to find tires for the other bicycle (which has a bald back wheel), but Gateway and Strauss didn't have anything with tread due to Coronavirus stocking issues.  The wait is like 4 weeks at the moment.  I bit the bullet and ordered a pair of tires off Amazon.  They seem upscale compared to what's on the bike after a bit of research.

Some cool animal sightings as I was out at 6:00 a.m.  A bunch of turkeys wandering around near the river.  And when I went past Fort Snelling a deer in the parking lot was close enough for petting for a thirty seconds.  Not that I'd pet him.  Deer ticks make me nervous (after two rounds of Lyme's).

Here's my bike nearby (the old one) while I eat Oat Cakes with cardamom, reindeer sausage, and an Americano on the bus bench. I think my biggest issue was lack of a metal fork.  I should put one in my pack so I always have one.  It would have made the meal much better.  Not that it wasn't delicious, albeit a bit too much.

 

Part of the reason I was up there was to drop a book off for Alex.  No one answered, but with Covid I've been wrapping drop offs in quart bags, so I was able to leave it hidden in the weeds behind a pitcher and send him a photo.  Although it's a Cthulhu book, so hopefully it doesn't leave an evil, otherworldly essence behind to infuse his plants.

As I neared home, I pedaled past a bunch of guys packing up their bicycles after a morning ride near Hwy 13.  I was amused that there one guy explaining that his bicycle was "not a road bike" and he could move to a road bike if he wanted to in order to be more efficient.  His definition of "not a road bike" had treadless, razor thin tires, and a light frame.  I wanted to yell, "THIS IS NOT A ROAD BIKE." But I refrained.  

Overall, it reminded me of the Craft Beer Drinkers Be Like series that Kyle forwarded me:


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