Saturday was a great night, besides the head wound. We had a nice group of people join us at Redwood Coast Cidery in San Carlos. Adam, Tina, Amit, Riley, and Rong were there. The cidery was lively, and we got to have some good conversations with the bartenders/brewers. We then went back to beachhead where we played a bit of codenames. I did really badly since I wasn’t sober, and then on the way out I banged my head on the security system that was sticking off the wall a bit. It turned out fine, and now I know that the cider is a bit stronger than one would expect.
Rocket had a happy hour on Friday and we went to a neat brewery called Black Hammer Brewery. It was really good beer, and really good food. Bo was able to join me and we got to chat a good bit. There were a few stragglers, myself among them. We chatted, had a few more beers, then things at the brewery shifted to the burner crowd and I decided to try to catch the next train. I missed it but caught the one an hour later, and got some work done in the meantime.
This book was very light, and the story itself wasn’t that involved. The major concept of the book ‘the practice effect’ was fun to think about.
Stephanie had some really good points in the discussion, mainly that any civilization that has such a strong value of man-hours would have incredibly large families. They would also have spread out and settled pretty much all the land in order to have the most number of people possible.
I thought that there wasn’t nearly enough sharing and offering of services to keep tools practiced.
The discussion was really great and the food was taken pretty well (it disappeared pretty quickly). I made some of the Vegetable Kofta, which was a lot more involved from the start than I was expecting. The prep that the teaching chef had done was a good deal of the time that was needed, even if it wasn’t the skill part of the cooking.
I’m really enjoying this series. It’s reading level and story complexity is clearly for a much younger group, but I still really like it. The book has an amazing mix of humor, magic, and light science. The political environment, and the people in charge being foiled over and over is written so well.
This book was nice, but a little too anecdotal. The points she makes about happiness are good, but the backing she gives to them isn’t all that great. I understand that this book was meant for a different audience from myself, and it does point in a great direction for getting more information. I just wish there were a book or paper on happiness that was deeply involved, and well backed by scientific studies.
This book was great. The second book was good as well.
The story is really interesting in that the augmented reality is helping people become more potent as individuals. They can be good or bad, but they become more potent. They can also choose to be less involved in things that they do, or more involved. The whole thing being run by a millionaire game developer was pretty cool as well.
I really enjoyed getting back to games night this past Thursday. We didn’t play any really intense games. Just one round of Roll for the Galaxy, and three games of something new: Codewords. We had a great time playing this new game that has a ton of possible optimizations, and meanings. We were able to get a few really good rounds that had people giving 5 and 4 clues. I’m pretty sure we’re going to get it for more social things around the apartment and at Andrew’s.
Stephanie and I went to Whistler in Canada for a weekend of Snowboarding (me) and Skiing (her). We met up with a group of people including Rong, Riley, Emily, and Emily’s family. It was a pretty good time, and we stayed at a rather nice vacation rental.
We took a gondola there that stretches between the two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb. It was an amazing view, and once we got the glass bottom gondola. Looking down was pretty interesting, and we couldn’t actually stand on the glass.
Stephanie wasn’t terribly comfortable until near the end, and I was pretty rusty myself. There were a lot of points I would have liked to go a bit steeper, but the paths that Steph chose were challenging enough for me. The others were pretty good at the skiing part. The only thing I would really liked to have done is go up to the glacier and snowboard down that. It sounded like the kind of thing I’d really enjoy: huge area that is decently steep. There are a lot more videos that we took with the go pro on my youtube.
Pretty much the entire way there and the entire way back I was using my phone for the Gear VR. It was a really nice way to pass the time while travelling. The only strange part is when the vehicle turns the screen registers it as turning. It might actually be good for motion sick people since the screen responds exactly to the motion.
We had dinner at Andrew’s place Friday night, and it was really good. Debby made a pasta sauce and a green bean dish, both of which were really tasty. Kevin also joined us, and he seemed to be doing much better. Steph and I took our own pasta because she is trying to do the whole 30 diet again. After dinner we played some Exploding Kittens, and I think I figured out the optimal strategy, it is just really hard to hold to when the randomness of the deck is right there.
It's an Exciting World 