Update for 3/18/2018

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Andy

Board games

😎

Sunday to reward myself for surviving 40 years, I bought a couple of board games I’d had my eye on, a cooperative one called Magic Maze and a solitaire card game called Finished! My coworker wanted to try Magic Maze, so on Friday I brought it to work and played it with the lunch game group. Most of them weren’t there last time we played it, so I introduced them to it, and it went over well.

Futurism

🤔

At the futurism group last week the topic was genetic engineering and CRISPR. One of the people there was actually a biology professor who practiced biohacking, so we got an insider’s perspective, which was very interesting. Our intro question was what we’d want to alter about ourselves via genetic engineering. I picked the ability to function on very little sleep. But I’m a cautious person, so I wouldn’t alter anything until the treatment was well tested.

TV

🤔

I finished season 2 of Stranger Things. I’ve heard people say it wasn’t as exciting as the first season, and I’m not sure I agree. It got pretty intense several times. I wonder if they say that because the show’s concept isn’t new anymore. Being introduced to a premise has a special magic that sequels have to work harder to replicate. I don’t think that means they have to be a letdown. Sometimes the sequel is better. But maybe not in this case.

Movies

🙂

Speaking of sequels, I watched 10 Cloverfield Lane so I could catch up with everyone and watch The Cloverfield Paradox. 10 Cloverfield Lane was good, 5/5. The ending felt satisfying and left me wanting more. Other than its being in the Cloverfield series, I wanted to watch it to be challenged by what looked from the trailer like an imprisonment theme. Along those lines the movie was less intense than I expected, but I think that deepened the theme. I appreciated this article‘s interpretation.

Life maintenance

🙂

I finished my taxes. Usually I do them at the last minute, so I’m proud.

😐

Remember that file cabinet I impulse bought months ago? I finally started putting it together Saturday night. I’m halfway done. Other than my project to fix up my apartment in general, what motivated me was again my unwieldy filing system for worship music. Every time I get ready to perform, I inwardly groan a little louder at having to wrestle with my files. For a new system I need a working cabinet. Once I have that, I’m going to try hanging folders.

Beliefs report

😐

I’d been somewhat procrastinating on my beliefs report, so I decided to take my boss’s advice to write a summary with a limited word count first. I succeeded and added it the beginning of the essay. Having the summary gives me a better idea of the work I need to do. It’ll take a long time to resolve all my issues, but at least I can plan. I’ll try to work on this project through the rest of Lent before putting it on hold again.

Posted in Beliefs report, Board games, Futurism, Housekeeping, Movies, Taxes, TV, Weeknotes | 2 Comments

Update for 3/11/2018

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Andy

Church

😎

Sunday I visited liturgical church #5, an Episcopal one. In contrast with the previous week’s, this was the friendliest church yet. They greeted me as I came in and as I left the service, and they even convinced me to stay for coffee time afterward, where I talked for quite a while with several people. A couple of them even knew my old employers.

They held the service in what looked like a Sunday school room that doubled as a library. Later I learned this was because their sanctuary needed reconstruction. I was struck by how the trappings of liturgy could elevate such an ordinary environment. The sermon was a very helpful one about the meaning of liturgical gestures. The songs were interesting too, especially “Inspired by Love and Anger,” a social justice hymn by John Bell.

Birthday

👴

I am old now. My 40th birthday was Wednesday. For being such a momentous one, it was the most casual birthday I’ve had in quite a while, basically just a normal day. The closest thing to a black balloon I got was a Bitmoji of a coffin from my brother, to which I replied I’d already moved into my coffin to save time later. My sister’s message was a video of her booping my picture. Also a very nice card in which she assured me 40 is the new 30, so I shouldn’t let it hold me back.

Since Wednesday I’ve been slightly more aware of my status as an old person when I’m around young people, but other than that, mentally I still feel like I’m about 20. And my body disagrees less than I expected. Maybe I’d notice my age more if I’d ever been remotely athletic.

“Life begins at forty.” I never understood that saying until I found an addition: “Up until then, you are just doing research.” That’s how I’ve been feeling the past couple of years, that the developments over the course of my life have been coming together and soon I’ll be poised to do something with them.

Having said that, one of my friends told me years ago that when she was young, she thought middle-aged people had it all together, but when she got there, she realized it wasn’t true. They were trying to figure things out like everyone else. And now that I’m there, I definitely agree. So young people, that’s what you have to look forward to, muddling through a life of confusion! But at least it’s not boring.

One nice birthday present I got was an email from my old college friend Cam, wishing me a happy birthday and giving me his phone number so we could catch up. It’d been a few years since we’d talked. So I replied with my number, and we had a good conversation Friday night. The funny thing about Cam is that we were both Christian education majors who ended up programming for a living. For a while we were even both working with the same technology, SharePoint. It’s kinda nice to catch up after a few years and immediately be able to talk shop.

As kind of a late celebration, I’m getting together with friends at Jeremy and Heather’s place on Sunday for board games.

Thinking

😐

I posted an update to my analysis essay. This one is an account of my current hazy, messy process of analysis. There are also links to example analyses and a roadmap of planned updates to the essay.

Beliefs report

😐

I’m sort of at a stopping point in my analysis essay, so I guess I’ll get back to this one. I’m going to try a different approach, at least in my notes for the essay–writing them in dialog form to fit the back-and-forth nature of my thoughts on religion.

Fiction

🙂

I finished Pilot X, written by a tech journalist I follow, Tom Merritt. I appreciated his attention to the logic of time travel. It’s hard to get right, but I think he did pretty well. My only real complaint about the book is that it’s too short. It skips over long time periods and could easily have been a series. But I guess there’s something to be said for pocket-size epics.

I got through Haruki Murakami’s Wind/Pinball. It felt surprisingly Western, like it could’ve been written by an American, except that it was sprinkled with odd statements that reminded me the characters were from another culture with different assumptions and idioms. I also wasn’t sure how much of the novel reflected actual Japanese life in the ’70s and how much was magic realism. The detached, apathetic tone of the stories reminded me of Less Than Zero, though Murakami’s characters were trying to find themselves a little more actively than Ellis’.

Now I’m on the next book in that series, A Wild Sheep Chase. I’m reading the print book because I couldn’t find a convenient audio version and I didn’t feel like buying it on Audible.

For audio I’ve started a new listening project, Ben Bova’s Grand Tour series about colonizing the solar system (see my tracking spreadsheet based on the lists here). I was going to try to piece together a series like that out of multiple authors’ books, but then I found out Bova’s. Convenient! I like Powersat so far, a political thriller about a revolutionary solar energy project.

Life maintenance

🙄

Well, I was all ready to do my taxes (at the last minute Saturday night), but I couldn’t log in to the site that had my W-2. I’ll try again this week.

Posted in Analysis, Beliefs report, Birthdays, Books, Church, Taxes, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Update for 3/4/2018

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Andy

Birthday

👴

On Wednesday I will officially be old. I might try to get some people together for board games.

Church

🤔

Sunday I visited liturgical church #4, this one Anglican. Unlike every other time I visit a church, at this one I actually wanted to talk to people, because they occupy the building of my old church that closed. Plus I’d met the organist and wanted to say hello. However, this one wasn’t very welcoming–not even the priest greeted me, since he was already in conversation with probably some church members–and I didn’t get a good chance to greet the organist. Still, I liked the service, so I’m planning to give it another chance, probably in a few weeks. The need to be more proactive at this one made me generally more open to socializing at the churches I’m visiting, even a little eager.

Life maintenance

😄

Saturday I was getting ready to renew my driver’s license at the DMV, and I happened to notice it’s not expiring till next year. The renewal notice the state had sent me was for another ID I’d gotten six years ago and practically never used. So I’m off the hook. And I got my glasses a year early. Oh well!

😐

I’ve barely started on my taxes, but I did collect some necessary information for them, which took some time. I’ll work on them more this week.

🙄

Last time I tried taking my cans to the recycling place, the drop-off bins were gone. Last week I did some research and found out the whole center had closed. More research told me the closest non-closed drop-off place is half an hour away. I gave up. No more Mr. Good Citizen! I’ll just throw my cans and bottles out. But my apartment building has a paper recycling bin, so at least I can still do that.

Thinking

😐

On my analysis essay, I stumbled on an idea for an update I can finish soon, so I’ll try to post that this week.

Coding project generator

😐

These days my project ideas usually end up involving programming, and my study of analysis is no exception. Thinking about my plans for that project has made my coding project generator feel like a bottleneck again, so last week I got back to working on it. It’s proceeding slowly, but at least it’s proceeding.

Fiction

🤔

I finished Skeleton Crew. I generally liked the rest of the stories, except for “Survivor Type.” I couldn’t wait for that one to end. I couldn’t stand the character. I was also in a bad mood that day. I really liked “Gramma,” though maybe not the ending. “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet” was interesting.

😎

While I was waiting to start Skeleton Crew, I started on another of my shorter ones from Audible, Pilot X by Tom Merritt. After Skeleton Crew I continued it. I think of Tom Merritt as a tech journalist, so I didn’t know how his fiction would be. It turns out I really like it! Pilot X is written very accessibly and has an interesting premise and setting. The reader is really good too, Kevin T. Collins.

🤔

After Pilot X, I have a pair of Haruki Murakami novels lined up–Wind and Pinball. Reading the thoughtful posts of Makoto Murata on some mailing lists I follow has put me in the mood to look into Japanese literature.

Work

🤔

Last week another of my favorite coworkers left the company. She retired. We never actually worked together, and we didn’t speak often. But she’s the kind of person who has a distinct presence. Whenever she was around, I could tell things were getting done and people were feeling appreciated.

Posted in Analysis, Birthdays, Board games, Books, Coding project generator, Life maintenance, Weeknotes, Work | 1 Comment

Update for 2/25/2018

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Andy

Life management

😐

I had a surprise freelance job last week, so no taxes. But this week!

Movies

😎

Tuesday I saw Black Panther with my geek meetup. I rate it 6/5. I’d been looking forward to it as a potentially good example of Afrofuturism, and I was not disappointed. In fact, I found myself thinking about it for days after, which to me is the sign of a good movie. Because of its themes I feel even less qualified to evaluate and comment on it than other movies, but it feels like a complex one that rewards rewatching, so I’ll probably do that. One thing I will say about it is that I’ve never felt so much sympathy for a villain. I was also happy to see Letitia Wright from Black Mirror.

Fiction

🤔

I finished “The Mist” from Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew collection and decided to listen to the rest. It’s a nice collection for getting a sense of the variety in his stories. It’s not all monsters. It’s not even all horror. My favorites so far are “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” “The Jaunt,” and “Word Processor of the Gods.” “The Raft” is probably what I would’ve expected from Stephen King before I read anything by him.

Thinking

😎

Friday I picked up Rethinking the Fifth Discipline by Robert Louis Flood. Even though it’s a critique of another book (The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge), I’m probably going to use it as my introduction to the details of systems thinking. It’s relatively recent, summarizes some major systems theorists, and advances the field with insights from complexity theory. Kind of an obscure book, but it was somehow at a local used bookstore.

Socializing

🙂

Picking up my systems thinking book on Friday took me past Jeremy’s workplace, so we came with me to the bookstore. We discovered there was an Applebee’s nearby, and since the one near us closed years ago, after the bookstore we had dinner there. It wasn’t the best maintained building, but the waitress was friendly and the food was delicious.

Death

🤔

Saturday I went to my friend Rex’s memorial service. Yet again I was surprised by how much I learned from the eulogies. I knew he’d been in the army but not that he’d jumped out of airplanes, and I didn’t know he went on mission trips to Uganda. And I didn’t know just how much he was loved. His church was interesting, a Messianic Anglican church with a charismatic flavor. There was a sprinkling of Hebrew, and I learned of the Tree of Life Bible translation.

Posted in Books, Death, Life management, Movies, People, Systems theory, Weeknotes | 1 Comment

Update for 2/18/2018

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Andy

Thinking

🙂

My analysis essay is trundling along. I’m hoping to post the rest of it in the next couple of weeks.

Life management

😤

I’m going to do my taxes this week. Don’t let me put it off!

Beliefs report

🤔

I’m planning on returning to my beliefs report as a Lenten project. But I want to finish the current phase of my analysis project first. And then I’ll probably keep working on the beliefs report till I’m at a good stopping point. So really its timing won’t strictly coincide with Lent but will overlap it instead.

Futurism

🤔

Last week’s futurism meetup was about futurism itself. The organizer also invited us to suggest topics for future meetings, and it just so happened that I have one. But I wanted to have videos to recommend before I gave him the topic, so since then I’ve been researching them.

TV

🤔

I caught up on Black Mirror (I rate it 5/5), and now I’m on The End of the F***ing World (that’s literally the title, including the asterisks), which has one of the actors from Black Mirror, Alex Lawther. He seems to play vulnerable characters with secrets, which is intriguing. Otherwise the show wouldn’t interest me. So far I like it better than I expected.

Death

😕

Sunday I played the piano at the funeral of a church friend, Marilyn. The organizers had asked me to play a couple of weeks before. It’s good that they did, because I was in Texas when she died, and I hadn’t heard the news, though it was clear she’d been declining. I knew her from a couple of ministries we’d been involved with together. As usual, it was good to hear people’s recollections, especially since I didn’t know her that well.

This Saturday I’m attending the funeral of another ministry friend, Rex. He’d had a few bouts with brain cancer, and this last time it was very aggressive.

I wouldn’t have heard about Rex either except that I happened to check Facebook at the right time. That was also true of Ray’s cancer about a year ago. I need a better way to keep up with that site. I rarely visit it because it distracts me so easily.

Correspondence

🤔

I’ve been getting nice letters and notes the past few months. My sister sent me a very nice thank you/appreciation card after Christmas. My brother has sent me a few letters and postcards. His latest letter was a very long answer to a question I’d asked him over email. So now I need to write some replies. I also told another old friend I’d write her a letter, if I can get her address.

Posted in Analysis, Beliefs report, Correspondence, Death, Futurism, Life management, TV, Weeknotes | 4 Comments

Update for 2/11/2018

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Andy

Church

🤔

After being sidetracked from my liturgy hunting project for a few weeks by music duties at church, last Sunday I visited Lutheran church #1. It definitely had the feel I was going for, but I spent the whole service in confusion. I got there late, only by 15 minutes, but they were already at the sermon, as if they’d started half an hour earlier than the time they listed everywhere. And then I couldn’t see where they kept the printed liturgies, if there were any left, so I couldn’t even sing along most of the time. It was also closed communion, but at that point I was relieved not to feel the need to participate. Interestingly when the priest greeted me as I left, we recognized each other. We concluded it was from college. I want to go back for a proper experience of their service, but that’ll be after I’ve visited the other places.

Thinking

😎

I posted another section of my analysis essay. That’s it for the preliminaries, and now I’m digging into the heart of my method. It might take a while to sort things out enough to post more. But this is the fun part. The hard kind of fun.

I can already tell the trajectory of my analysis project is taking me straight into the realm of systems theory. So prepare yourselves to have systems thinking foisted upon you at every opportunity! Once I learn enough. You can begin by perusing these inspiring tweets. The world’s had a long break from being bludgeoned by me with a blunt framework. It’s been long enough. It certainly bludgeons me enough with complaints about the pit it’s falling into. Systems thinking can possibly offer some handholds.

Fiction

😎

I finished Red Mars. It was very good, and I’ll listen to the rest of the trilogy at some point. I was reminded that my other favorite character besides John was Nadia, a very sensible, determined, and competent person. She inspired people to follow when she was in her element. Overall the story demonstrated to me that fleeing to Mars won’t solve humanity’s problems. The last few hours of the book were rather stressful.

While I was waiting for my next audiobook to be available, I listened to short stories by some Internet acquaintances. One was a set on Audible by Jeffrey Koval. They’re all paranormal fiction with some interesting twists. The other was a story by James Troughton, “The Mothgate,” on the Escape Artists podcast for young adult sff, Cast of Wonders. It also has an interesting twist.

The audiobook I was waiting for was Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, a collection that has the next story in my Dark Tower listening project, “The Mist.” It arrived at the library late in the week, so I trekked there on Saturday to retrieve it. I’ll probably listen to the whole collection. After that is the first actual Dark Tower book, The Gunslinger.

While format shifting Skeleton Crew to listen from my phone, I started on another short one I picked up from Audible, The Oedipus Plays. It’s a full-cast production of a very listenable translation, and it’s so good I haven’t even finished and I’m ready to give it 5 stars. I wish this cast would do an audio Bible. You can listen to a sample on the product page. It makes me want to listen to more classics.

Video games

🙂

I’ve been missing Minecraft, so I’ve returned to my single-player world where I’m building homes in a bunch of different biomes. I’d built paths through the Nether to all the locations, but actually building the homes was stalling me. When you don’t know what you’re doing, designing nice homes is too much work. So now I’m stealing other people’s designs. Last week I built this one at my main base in a plains village. Next will be an adobe house in the neighboring mesa biome.

Social life

🙂

My longtime friend Alpana is back home from her latest Navy assignment, and we caught up over the phone. She pointed me to a potentially interesting collaborative sf franchise, Imperial Odyssey. Collaborative writing projects intrigue me, and now I’m thinking a list of them might make its way to the wiki.

Side note, Minecraft is a great way to pass the time when you’re on the phone. 😉

Photography

🙂

On my way back from the library on Saturday, I passed one of the lakes where I take pictures, and even though I’m usually not interested in trying to photograph winter, I liked the sky that day and decided to try it. The trip reminded me that walking through deep snow is a workout. Afterward I had to lie back in my car for a while to recover. I think the pictures turned out pretty well.

One of my usual photo spots, now with added winter. #snowscape

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

A bristly hill. #snowscape

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Posted in Analysis, Books, Church, People, Photography, Systems theory, Video games, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Update for 2/4/2018

Posted on February 4, 2018 by Andy

Work

🙂

I decided to do my 5-year service award, which meant my boss and I had to write statements for the CEO to read in chapel. We made it through the ordeal, and it turned out well. In my comments I shouted out the lunchtime board game group for getting me to connect with people outside my department.

Health

🙂

I picked up my glasses on Monday, and since then I’ve even put them on a few times to get used to them. I feel like I’m looking through some kind of strange microscope, but it’s nice to be able to see tree branches clearly again after 15 years.

Take that, DMV! #glasses

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Thinking

🤔

I posted another section of my analysis essay. It’s going more slowly than I’d hoped.

One reason it’s going slowly is that I decided I needed a systems theory book. The field of systems theory is, a little ironically, a mess. So a lot of last week’s project time went into researching that. I settled on Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, a detailed and somewhat up-to-date overview with application methods by a prominent systems researcher, Peter Checkland.

My next book hunt will be on design thinking.

Posted in Analysis, Health, Thinking, Weeknotes, Work | 2 Comments

Update for 1/28/2018

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Andy

Life management

🙂

My new coat came in the mail. It’s certainly warm. It’s also longer than my old one, so I’ll have to get used to that. My pants pockets are harder to get into, and I have to reach down farther to zip it up. Fortunately it’s only somewhat like sitting in a tube. Overall I’m glad I have it, so thank you to my parents for my early birthday present.

Health

Last week was an eventful one in the medical department.

Guts

😐

Monday I had another Remicade infusion. An IV at the hospital once every eight weeks. It basically takes up my afternoon. Something in the meds they give me, maybe the Benadryl, puts me to sleep. Even a large coffee doesn’t keep me awake, so now I just plan for a nap an hour into the visit. Then I blearily drive home and continue my nap there.

Eyes

🤓

A couple of weeks ago I got a notice in the mail that my driver’s license was expiring. I didn’t see a way to renew it online, so it seems I’ll have to go in person. Which usually means a vision test. My distance vision declined in my early twenties, but I was always able to pass those tests. Barely. It’s annoying and embarrassing enough that last time I told myself next time I’d just give in and get glasses. Well, this is next time.

Last week I finally got around to making an appointment with an eye doctor, and I went in Thursday. I was actually kind of looking forward to it, not only because it would take care of a long-standing problem, but also because I was curious if I’d feel like I was in an ASMR video.

The answer was no. The exam went a lot faster than one of those roleplays, and the optometrist was a lot chattier. Plus I had to actually expend mental effort and interact. So while it wasn’t exactly stressful, it wasn’t relaxing. Those videos did give me an idea of what to expect though, so I was grateful for them. But the real optometrist was much higher tech, so the ASMRtists need to step things up.

My vision problems are only slight, and the optometrist said my vision is “20/20 with some help,” whatever that means exactly. The problem is astigmatism, which I always thought had something to do with crossed eyes, but it’s just a deformation of the cornea. So we picked out some glasses, and they’ll probably have them ready Monday. Jeremy was so fascinated to hear I’m getting glasses that he’s coming with me to pick them up.

Thinking

😎

I’ve posted the beginnings of my analysis article. I’m just roughing it out right now to get down the essential points. I’m not worrying too much about making it interesting or even particularly understandable to people who aren’t me. That’ll come later.

Writing the article has reminded me that in analysis I try to think in terms of systems, so I’m going to stop putting off my study of systems theory. I’ve also learned that the linguistic field of semantics is directly relevant.

Fiction

🙂

I’m halfway through Red Mars. The Mars globe is being very helpful, since they’re trekking all over the planet instead of staying in a small region like I expected. The characters are all interesting, but I find myself relating most to John Boone. He’s more energetic and outgoing than I am, but I recognize some of my ways of thinking in his attempts to grasp the present and future of Mars society. And his eyes-on-the-ground approach is one I’d want to take, even if I wouldn’t pursue it nearly as vigorously.

Movies

🙂

On Saturday Tim and I made last minute plans to watch Murder on the Orient Express at a second-run theater. To our surprise it was packed. We had to sit separately. I knew practically nothing about the movie. I didn’t even know it was a Poirot story till he gave his name. I liked it, especially the cinematography. And it was fun to see a star-studded cast in a movie that was actually good. Usually I assume they’re doing that to prop up a bad one.

Posted in Analysis, Books, Clothes, Health, Movies, Weeknotes | 4 Comments

Update for 1/21/2018

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Andy

Life management

🙂

My productivity finally picked up and gained some momentum last week. As a result my apartment is looking a lot tidier, even though some of that is just that I’ve moved things out of sight. I’ll organize them at a later stage in the process.

My parents generously offered to buy me a new winter coat, because that’s the kind of people they are. I was going to say no, but the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like a mistake. So I’ve ordered the updated version of the coat I already have, and I’ve offered to split the cost with them however they want.

Project generator

😐

The coding project generator is still feeling like a bottleneck for my future coding projects, even though I have a basically working version. So I’m going to try to get back to this one, if I can manage to make time for it.

Thinking

😐

Last week I started jotting some thoughts on my typical method of analyzing things. This week I’ll post a reworked version on the wiki as the seed of a (much) longer article.

Like I mentioned last week, these thinking projects are my most important right now, and I see this analysis essay as the most important of those. I don’t think many people will understand that, because it seems not many people have the systematizing impulse. But this project is my attempt to resolve a major shortcoming and paradox of my life.

On the one hand, I feel that analysis is my most significant potential contribution to the world and one of my most powerful tools for my own living. On the other hand, I’ve been so distracted most of my life that I’ve fit all my actual analysis into my spare moments or random, incidental projects. So I’ve barely done any that has any lasting value. I also feel that my method has significant gaps and that I apply it inconsistently. And in its half-articulated form, it isn’t very teachable. Still, when I do use these techniques, even in their truncated form, I get a lot of mileage out of them.

If I had my principles and practices laid out in one place, I could apply my method more purposefully and regularly, and I could pass it on to others who could make use of it. And I have a lot of topics in mind to analyze, so writing out my method feels like another bottleneck I’d like to eliminate as soon as possible. Honestly I think I would’ve achieved a lot more in my life if I hadn’t waited so long to work this stuff out.

Fiction

😎

I finished listening to the recorded part of Unsong, an online novel about the invasion of tangible Kabbalistic magic into everyday society. The audio is very well done but also very incomplete, and its release schedule is very irregular. So instead of waiting on the audio I’ll probably just read the rest of it … sometime. I do love it though. It’s like a cross between a couple of my favorites, Charles Stross’s Laundry Files and Ted Chiang’s “Hell Is the Absence of God.” It’s also really funny.

Unsong got me wondering about other online fiction, since it’s apparently not just bad fanfiction out there. I found a few places to find more: the TV Tropes pages for Web Original Fiction and Web Serial Novels and the list of sources at t4nky’s site.

My hold on the The Stand came up again, so I finished the last few hours. It was good, but I was kind of disappointed with the climax. I would rather have had a more constructive solution. But I can see good reasons for choosing the one he did.

The next in my Dark Tower project is “The Mist,” which I’ll hopefully get to in a few weeks when the CDs are back at the library. After that is the first actual Dark Tower book.

After The Stand I decided to stop procrastinating and start Red Mars. Judging by the first couple of hours, I’d say the past year or so of futurism and politics have prepared me to engage with the topics it explores, both social and scientific. I like it so far. My Mars globe from Christmas is helping me with the geography. I made it portable by taking pictures of it with my phone–eight around the equator and then one of each pole.

Work

🙂

After 18 years at the company, my boss’s boss has left to take an opportunity at one of our suppliers. He got a heartfelt send-off at our last team meeting. We gave him the department’s service award and read him appreciative messages as our “nominations” for the award. They were the kinds of messages I like listening to, living eulogies that give me character traits to learn from.

😈

For my current ebook work I’m waiting on other people. So this week, after months of getting other tasks out of the way, I’m beginning my evil software development plans. Evil because if they succeed, I’ll be making substantial changes to our ebook production tools and maybe even to our development processes. And the way we do things, I don’t need approval or permission. My poor, poor coworker. He does have an idea it’s coming though.

Posted in Analysis, Books, Clothes, Coding project generator, Life management, Programming, Weeknotes, Work | Leave a comment

Update for 1/14/2018

Posted on January 16, 2018 by Andy

Productivity

🙄

My laziness at home is being stubborn, so I’m going to start using my productivity tricks, like microtasks (just do one small thing to get started) and implementation intentions (like “When I get home, I will immediately start making dinner.”).

Church

🙂

Sunday I continued my quest for an occasional old-feeling liturgical church. I visited liturgical church #2, another Episcopal one. It was in a beautiful old building I’d driven by a few times before. The congregation was small, about 50 people, with many grey heads, and I worried it was a tired and dying church. But as the service progressed, I saw that it had a lot of energy and affection. There were several children who mingled among the adults, which made it feel like a big family.

The head priest chased me down afterward to talk to me, and we had a brief but nice conversation where he told me a little about the church’s history and showed me their outdoor labyrinth, which was visible as curvy mounds of snow. I don’t know if I’ll choose this church, but I’m glad it’s around.

Futurism

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Tuesday was the futurism meetup again. This time the topic was Big Data, one I’m more familiar with because it’s closely tied to AI, so I had more to say than usual. Of course, in keeping with the tone of the group, some of us were rather worried about Big Data. I don’t feel it’s a huge threat, but the TED talk we watched did bring up some ways it could be abused I hadn’t heard of.

Thinking

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I didn’t say much about this topic last week because I’d procrastinated on the post enough already, but at the moment I see this as my most important set of projects for the year, so at some point I want to expound on my reasons and agenda.

To give you the short version now, the whole range of skills involved in thinking are fundamental to the kind of work I want to do, and it’s about time I brought them from the background of my thoughts to the foreground and studied them properly and put my views in order. I’ve pondered this stuff for years in my spare moments, so there’s a lot to organize and articulate.

I finished Theory and Reality. I gave it 4/5. It’s an overview of a field I’m less familiar with, the philosophy of science, so I can’t evaluate its completeness or fairness. Sometimes I wished he’d gone into a little more depth, but it did leave me feeling I had a really good starting point for exploring further.

Fiction

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Now that Theory and Reality is done, I’m taking a side trip to Scott Alexander’s Unsong (the audio version), and then unless I think of another short one I just have to listen to now, I’m going to dive into Red Mars. I’m expecting that one to be a little hard to follow.

TV

😎

I’ve had a hard time in the past few months finding shows I want to keep watching. Then The Orville came along, but I quickly ran out of episodes. But now Black Mirror seems to have stuck, and that has a few more episodes to keep me occupied.

Work

🙂

Friday I finished the big commentary series I’ve been working on for the past couple of years. Thanks to my improved planning, I was able to basically coast to the end (plus I didn’t have a real deadline), so it wasn’t as big a relief as some of my past projects. But I am glad that finishing that has put me much closer to being able to work on the programming projects I have in mind. It was also nice to be able to spring the surprise on the people who’ve been waiting for those ebooks. They weren’t expecting them for at least a couple more months.

🙄

In other news, my 5-year anniversary at the company has come upon me, and that means I have to write something to be read for the service award they’ll be giving me in chapel. For the past year I’ve kind of been dreading trying to come up with something for that, but I’ve been reconciling myself to the idea, and in any case I’m finding myself less resistant to harder tasks these days. I think it’s a combination of better habits at work and feeling a little empowered by my analysis project. It also helps that they’ve given me a few weeks.

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