Weeknotes 4 Oct 2019

Well, it's really Monthnotes for September since it's been a whole month since my last post. The primary reason is due to being away for most of it in Philadelphia around two work events.

Work

Had a few events to attend a few weeks apart at my company's HQ in Philly so rather than fly back and forth over the week between I decided to just stay the entire time spanning both events.

Women's Summit 2019

First up was the Women's Summit. This annual event was started four years ago but this was the first time I was invited to attend.

This is one of those things Power does that I'm truly proud of. The remodeling industry and even in our own organization, is heavily male dominated. Power is trying to change that by intentionally focusing on making it a great place to work for women of all kinds. Not only are women, who are already working for us, kicking butt by outperforming men almost across the board, they are true inspirations for everyone.

This summit put a spotlight on the fact that although we've focused on women in general, we need to keep in mind that we have to keep racial and gender diversity in mind, as well. The goal for next year is basically more women, in all departments, including the executive level.

The week between

Franklin joined me on this trip and he helped out quite a bit. He was really involved in a lot, even helping me with some power cables at one point.

Create 2019.9

The second event was our third development meetup of the year. This one was a bit different since we did it almost like a conference. 5 days, 5 groups of developers, 5 tracks. I taught one of the tracks, which was on GraphQL.

Movies

• What We Do In The Shadows was just turned into a TV series which some friends of mine are liking. So we decided to watch the original movie that series is based on. Like all things that Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, I really liked the movie. I'm not sure how they can be as consistently good as they are.
• Ad Astra looked really different as far as science fiction goes. Scenes in the credits made me think of how space still looked to folks in the 1950's. I really liked most of the space and action scenes, those happen in the first half of the film. The second half turns into one more symbolic of daddy issues. I would have been fine with watching this at home to fast forward through the boring parts.
• Dark Phoenix is the latest film based on the X-men comics. As consistently good as most of the other Marvel films have been, the X-men films have simply gotten worse and worse. I liked the first few films and, in particular, X-Men: First Class, but since, it seems like they are all more interested in showing special effects than investing in any coherent story.

Books

I finished up two books last month.

Seal Team 666, by Weston Ochse, is the story of Cadet Jack Walker who is taken out of his final days of Navy Seal training to join the ultra secret Seal Team 666 who perform special ops missions involving the occult, demons, ghosts, and whatever otherworldly things exist in the world. A really fun, fast read. I forget the last time I breezed through a book that quickly, probably was the books in the Void Witch series. I'll definitely be following up with Walker's exploits in the second book.

Brotherhood of the Wheel, by R.S. Belcher, is set in the same universe as his Nightwise novel, which I finished last month. It took a little time to get into this one but it got better as it went along. A modern-day offshoot of the Knights Templar, the Brotherhood of the Wheel live on the roadways which all happen to have been built over ley lines of magical energy. Jimmy Aussapile is a knight who is looking into a mystery around mysterious black-eyed kids who've been kidnapping people.

Board games

Clank! In! Space! is a really fun game about sneaking onto Lord Eradikus' star ship, hacking into its command module, stealing artifacts and then escaping in an escape pod. All this in a race against your opponents.

While the game starts out a bit slow, you definitely feel the pressure as turns progress and someone decides to make their exit which brings dire results.

I'm a fan of deck-building games to begin with. Along with being a deck-builder, the mechanic of making noise via clanks which are added to a draw back adding risk to movement adds a lot to the gameplay. Definitely interested in playing this one again.

Most Wanted is a quick, fun game that's main mechanic is poker with a western theme.  You win by gaining points earned in successful bank robbers and having duels with your opponents. More fun with more players and easy to teach. Rounds are fast enough that after a few rounds seeing what's up, you'll be putting on your poker face and bluffing with the best of them.