Weeknotes 26 Jul 2019

This one will be a quick update since I'm behind and I'm about to head off for a vacation over the next few weeks.

First, there's this happy sloth from a recent visit to the Dallas Aquarium.

Work

Since I got back from my work trip, it's been relatively straightforward. The best thing is that the work I've been doing to upgrade our MySQL server cluster at work is at the tail end and things should be done there soon.

Movies

• Dragged Across Concrete is the latest film from a writer/director that's caught my attention in the past few years, S. Craig Zahler. I've read a few of his books, and watched his films. They all are great character studies scattered with scenes of ultra-violence. I'll continue to look forward to everything he comes out with.
• The Girl in the Spider's Web is one I missed when it came out theatrically. I watched the original trilogy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films that came out originally in Sweden. They were really good. I've not seen the American re-make by David Fincher, but I'd like to one day. This film was definitely entertaining, but felt more like it should have been a super-hero film as that's what it's basically turned main character Lisbeth Salander into.

• White Line Fever was the latest Alamo Drafthouse Secret Screening which celebrated the birthday of star Jan Michael Vincent who passed away earlier this year. While still entertaining, it's also an example of one of those older films that in today's world makes you wince because of the policitally incorrect, racist, and sexist dialog.

Books

I am typically in the middle of two books at any one time. Reading one and listening to the audio version of another. I recently finished two.

• The Trilisk Ruins is the first book in the Parker Interstellar Travels series by Michael McCloskey. It follows the adventures of a xenoarchaeologist in the future where we've found alien artifacts but haven't encountered any live aliens. I breezed through this one and will be reading the next book in the series soon.
• The Good Spy Dies Twice by Mark Hosack is also the first in a series, called The Bullseye. Jake Boxer is an investigative journalist and host of a news show called Bullseye. After his soundman is murdered while investigating something, Jake's show is cancelled and he's left humiliated and outcast. Years later, he gets a clue as to what really happened and has to pursue the truth. Overall, the book is fine, but I'm not going to continue with the series. Mostly because I really didn't like the main character. I felt like half the book was just him being paranoid about his wife, who he was on his honeymoon with, was cheating on him.

Dungeonquest

I hadn't had a board game on my table in a while, so I decide to get one out that I could play quickly and be done with. Dungeonquest is such a game and I was able to play three or four times. Partly because it's easy to die in the game, but also because it is a really fast game to play solo.

The goal of the game is to sneak into the Dragon's chamber, steal as much treasure as possible and then exit the dungeon.

Decently fun game to play. I've won it at least once or twice in the past, but this time around I was having no luck at all. Only made it to the dragon's chamber to steal treasure once but didn't make it out.