This book was pretty good, the action picks up and is still building up at the end of the book. I really like the cloud that they run across, but I don’t understand how it would work. I will have to look that one up since I really like the idea of the sphere. I was a little disappointed by the tiny amount of info they give on the empire, but I understand the need to not let anything out.
Stephanie got to give Archer Kitty lots of belly rubs. As you can tell from the pictures and this video archer was really enjoying it. Lana really likes the paper that has been coming with the Amazon packages lately. They like burrowing into the paper and just sitting there while looking outward.
Iliya, Chris, Erik and I played a game of Cyclades. It went a lot longer than expected, because we were very good at blocking victory in several conditions. Towards the end there was very little mobility, and I was able to take over half the map. This made it just a matter of time until I was able to win. I also took the liberty of wiping Chris off the map before winning. Chris was very close for a few turns with just a single move to victory, but we were able to block him.
I had a good time with the M15 sealed deck. Andrew help me redesign my deck. A few times in a row I got terrible draws of no land. This made it frustrating, but overall it was fun. I still much prefer drafting.
This book as it’s main point said that you need to understand where the other party is coming from in a negotiation. The secondary points were that negotiation starts with research and building up leverage, along with that you should continually negotiate for information. I really like the lessons that it puts forth and need to remember then when I next am going to be negotiating.
This book has a lot of good insights in how to think strategically, and I’m not doing too many of them. I’ll try to incorporate it more into my life. However, it does put one of the primary goals that it talks about as money and not happiness, so I’ll change that around.
This is a really good book, that has a wonderful mix of action, cross cultural interaction, and well done scientific explanations. The book’s focus and drive are lovely, especially when there are those wow moments of how old the civilization they contact is, and how new the ship humans are flying is. I want to read more of this series, but they aren’t part of the amazon unlimited whispersync.
This was a fantastic book, but I’ve heard most of the information in other articles and lecture series that I’ve listened to. There were a few nuggets that I hadn’t heard before. The exercising self control seemed to be an interesting concept, and one that I’ll take up soon. The idea is to sit down at the end of the day and more or less meditate. The purpose of the meditation is to do something that requires a lot of self control, like not thinking of a purple elephant. When that is the purpose of the meditation it makes it quite hard to do anything else but think of a purple elephant. Doing this early in the day can make your self control worse throughout the day, so doing it before bed is one of the best ways of going about it.
This book was pretty good at explaining how to go about learning to interact with other cultures. the most interesting part however was the grouping that the lecturer goes through at the end of the book. I found the outliers the most interesting, like Ireland and Israel. Some of the aspects of the groupings surprised me, like the Nordic countries not wanting to stand out, but still being very individualistic.
It's an Exciting World 