Reviews

As I sit here, it’s 8:51 pm and I’m tired. I haven’t spoken to my father in over a week. I spent the better part of 4 hours yesterday mowing when it was over 95 outside. I was up last night until midnight waiting for my daughter to come home from a concert. Who cares? It’s a FORMULA ONE WEEKEND!! F1 This year, sparked from the Brad Pitt “F1” from last fall, I bit the bullet and subscribed to “Apple TV+”. I’ve missed watching racing, and it’s apparent that F1 hit a new level of global popularity in the 2 decades since I watched regularly. ...

It’s “Summit” season. My employer is a sprawling concern, with people working in sites all across the world. The home office is in Seattle (the one true timezone–Pacific Time), but we also encamp in Silicon Valley (multiple sites), Austin, Denver, Nashville, Greater D.C., NYC, and Greater Boston. And that’s just the “big” sites–other smaller enclaves dot the country, and that doesn’t scratch the surface of our worldwide presence in Corporate. ...

Contrary to popular opinion, I do go on vacation. This is a narrative of what happened and what I liked and didn’t like. Introduction: Universal Orlando & TLDR I haven’t had a family vacation since June 2019. We haven’t taken a Florida vacation since 2016, two weeks before I joined Amazon. It’s telling I have blog entires about neither. Both were PM (Pre-meds) and I went kicking-and-screaming. With my wife and I finally on the same page about finances, we agreed to take a trip to Orlando before Maria was out of our house. ...

From time to time, I like to pause and update what’s going on with our car fleet. As of last May, we’re a 100% “Toyota” Family so it’s interesting. For 2 of the 3 I have long-term fuel economy I track via the excellent Fuelly app, so I can represent long-term ownership costs As an aside, I really wish I had a license plate this cool: The Hanger Queen – 2016 Lexus GX460 Seems like yesterday we went to San Antonio and picked-up this 2016 Lexus GX460 CPO, then immediately took it on a 3000 mile round trip to Estes park colorado with a Stowaway hanging from the rear hitch and a Thule bag strapped to the top. ...

So, on the advice of @QuinnyPig on Twitter, I’ve started listening to “The Phoenix Project” on Audible. In overview, this is a narrative allegory of an IT project gone wrong. I’m up through Chapter 5 as I write this and I’d like to posit a couple things the protagonist is doing wrong. This is one of those books that managers, CIOs, CTOs, and directors will read and treat as Holy Writ, so some perspective seems an order. ...

I’ve grown remarkably tired of some things recently. Podcasts I have a favorite podcast application: Overcast. For the past 12+ years, I’ve listened to podcasts galore. My family/friends have come to loathe subjects I begin with “I was listening to a podcast the other day and…” Yeah, not anymore. I’ve dropped several podcasts and been selective with many more, and there’s been a general theme. The Improv Comic Problem This all began when I started listening to the NSFW (NSFL?) podcast Why Won’t You Date Me? from Stitcher. I like @nicolebyer’s manic personality. I like things of the genre “dating horror stories” in that voyeuristic “Glad I don’t have to do that anymore” sort of way. Heck, I even like getting that coastal, entertainment-industry perspective, because God knows, that’s now how it is in Texas. ...

Roland Emmerich is famous for blowing things up. He started small enough, just destroying the Whitehouse and several notable monuments He got a bit more ambitious, destroying: New York (Godzilla) Colonial America (The Patriot) New York…again (The Day After Tomorrow), along with most of the Northern Hemisphere The entire SURFACE OF THE EARTH (2012) Where do you go after you basically bring about the Apocalypse? Do you weep, for there are no more lands left to conquer? ...

It’s been tough to be a Whovian in the past few years. First there was the Clara denouement, in which show-runner Steven Moffat demonstrated he cannot write for women. Then, there was no Dr. Who in 2016, period, and we suffered through the rather uneven Series 10 and Bill the social justice warrior. Last, we’re in another break, as we wait for almost another year (October 2018) to see the first female doctor, Jodie Whittaker. ...

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a video review of this car. If you’d like one, leave a comment So, I’ve had a 10th Generation 2018 Honda Civic since April 24th. I had a little car trouble and found myself in need of a car. Crap. Nothing like buying a car in the middle of Spring, when everyone else is buying a car thanks to Tax Refunds. Middle of the model year. No incentives. Yaaaaay. ...

So yeah, let’s spend 20 minutes flying around Pandora from Avatar but let’s leave off the part that makes the plot work… “There is such a thing as a tesseract” – Miss WhatsIt I’ll never forget the day I read Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time for the first (and thus far only) time. I was in 4th grade–11 years old–and I was in my Aunt Norie’s house in Highway 205. My mom dropped me off, and I was alone for hours. I can’t remember the occasion exactly, and especially the reason for my solitude, but it didn’t matter. ...

So, after the dirge that was series nine–Clara’s gone, yay!–we waited. We waited since DECEMBER 25, 2015. We noticed there’d be a new companion and she’d be “cool and different”. We heard Moffat was leaving. We noted Capaldi was bowing-out. None of these were good signs. This sounded much like Poochie had come to the Whoniverse Thus far, it would seem that’s entirely wrong. Bill’s a (slightly unintelligible) delight, and Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor is now….well….spry. Wiping his memory clean of dour Clara seems like it made him whole again, like he’s once again the madman in the box, with all of Time and Space. ...

SPOILERS!! Dinosaurs in London. Well, that was awkward. Capaldi off to a poor start, but honestly, so was Tennant in “Christmas Invasion” New Opening looks like the opening to Amazing Stories in 1985… “People are apes. MEN are monkeys.” Nice, Mdm Vastra Clara dealing with the change. Not well. Metaphor for all relationships–people change. Are we big enough to see through the veil? Parallels: Doctor and the Dinosaur, “I am alone…” ...

I’m muddling through Thinking Fast and Slow. Much of it sounds like a the Wah-wah sound from a Charlie Brown teacher. Or, if you like, Unikitty talking business However, about once in a chapter, there’s a revelation that’s obvious yet profound. Here is a summary of one: “Extreme outcomes (both high and low) are more likely to be found in small than in large samples” Zzzzzzzz…wait, what? Okay, let’s have an example: ...

A couple of things hit me tonight: First, I’ve never written anything about my experience in Cebu last October, which is a travesty. Second, I’ve never written anything about Dr. Who, which is near an unforgivable sin. (Above: Billie Piper and David Tennant, the 10th Doctor) As I was about to leave for Cebu, October 2nd 2012, I noted my wife wasn’t speaking to me. I was about to fly halfway around the world (12 hour time difference) and leave her holding the bag: Three kids. New house with a mold problem. New middle schooler. ...

The laying-down of the phone continues to bear fruit, except at my waistline which seems to be expanding in direct proportion to my distance from having a woobie smartphone. First up, Neal Stephenson’s tome Cryptonomicon. While written in 2002, this epic work (1168 pages paperback, though I read the kindle edition) presaged much of headlines circa 2013: Cryptography, the emergence of ’technocrats’ who seem to be running the world, and the importance of finding one’s humanity amid it all. ...

So, since the first of the year, I’ve been a happy LastPass user, using the browser integrations in Chrome and Firefox. It’s great: I never need to type a password –> Especially handy if you’re projecting on screen. I never reuse a password across sites –> Even salted, hashed password files can get compromised. The ‘Generate Password’ feature lets me generate an arbitrary length password of arbitrary complexity–> Not vulnerable to dictionary attacks. You can use a neat 2-factor authentication system. I’ve also enabled 2-factor auth wherever I can (Google Profile, Twitter, etc.). ...

“Are these your kids?!” the 50-ish man leaned over and asked me. Despite the din of 100+ decibel music, he seemed calm and his voice was clear. We were second row back on the center stage, and Jamie Grace just got done strumming her guitar in a duet with Toby Mac. My son Joey was star struck, and Caleb looked like he’d just wet his pants when TobyMac strolled casually in on his part of the song, Hold Me. ...

Ah yes, John Carter, aka “John Carter of Mars,” aka “A Princess of Mars.” You single handedly assured that Andrew Stanton of Pixar will never, ever be granted final cut again. You lost something like a quarter of a billion dollars for your parent company, Disney. You know I’ve seen many bad films in my life (current nadir being “Tristan and Isolde”), and John Carter isn’t one of them. It isn’t a great film. Comparison to other alien epics like Cameron’s Avatar inevitably come, and Carter does poorly. We don’t truly care about our hero until well into the second act. Worse, the framework of the story–that John Carter has died suddenly on earth and his nephew Edgar Rice Burroughs (get it?) is reading his fantastic account of his Barsoon Exploits–just feels like faux epic claptrap right up to the end. ...

So, Buzz Out Loud ended this past week, which sucks considering I only discovered it last month when I started using Doggcatcher as my go-to podcast reader (I’m aware of the term ‘podcatcher’ and its symmetry with ‘podcaster,’ I just think it’s a terrible word.) So, I had to go in and remove BoL from my subscription list. While I was in there, I the following subscriptions for the following reasons: Mintcast – This is actually a really good Linux podcast; they do news around new Linux distros, the latest in the Gnome/Cinnamon schism from the Linux Mint team, and general sys-admin-y stuff. Nothing wrong with the cast itself, other than it’s middle age sys-admin guys talking about linux Linux Outlaws – This one hurt. I’ve listened to Linux Outlaws for almost a year now–started right after I got my Atrix. The issue I have is the main creative force behind the show–Fabian Scherchel–has moved on. He’s acting like he hasn’t, but he’s really been phoning-in the podcasts lately. His co-host, Dan Lynch, is the ever-present straight-man and I still subscribe to his RatholeRadio podcast, but LO is don’t for me. NPR Culturtopia – Once I discovered that Pop Culture Happy Hour had its own podcast link, random stories from Netta Ulabe (sp?) became superfluous. PCHH is my favorite podcast–bar none–and it’s a welcome change from my normal diet of tech, tech, programming, nerd, tech stuff. Current subscriptions remaining: ...

You know how you go out looking for the right car, with a checklist and a list of requirements? I’ve been doing that for the better part of two years. I’ve driven every small car known to man at intervals, trying to find some reasonable personal transportation when the Camry of Doom goes kaput. What I’m *really* looking to do is duplicate the love I had for the 1998 Impreza 2.5RS, a car with All-Wheel Drive, a sweet 5-speed manual transmission and the turn-in responses of a B13 Sentra SE-R. I still remember the test drive I took at the now-defunct Oldhan’s Subaru in Nicholasville Kentucky back in college, and whoo boy, was it FUN. Pity I had no job at the time. :-) ...