What I’m Doing Right Now
Family
Annie and I are consumed with putting the house back together after a massive remodel. The new furniture arrived in July which brings us closer to the end.
Alec (29) and Taylor – and all the rest of us – are awaiting the birth of their son (our first grandson) in November.
Gabrielle (22) started work as a nurse in the NICU of Sanford Hospital this month. Her first “real” job.
Isabella (20) is working for the summer before starting her junior year at the University of Sioux Falls.
My Dad and I saw the New Zealand All Blacks play an exhibition game in San Diego in July (we’re from New Zealand originally). The All Blacks absolutely mauled Fiji, 46 to 5, to the point where we rooting for Fiji in the end, just to score some more points. The game prompted me to do some research on the New Zealand National Anthem.
Professional
I have started a position with Valtech as the Vice-President of DXP Consulting. They wrote a nice press release.
I’m speaking at both the Universal CMS Summit and CMS Connect, both in Montreal in August
I’m still teaching in the Content Strategy program at a university in Austria. My co-instructor, Carrie Hane, and I will teach both the basic and advanced courses from December through February.
Some colleagues and I are slowly working on a plan for an industry organization for content management professionals.
I’ve gotten weirdly interested in copy-and-paste as an integration vector. I wrote about it some.
I have also published a more lengthy resume, which includes several areas of research I’m interested in.
Reading
Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food was good, if a little repetitive and preachy. A couple months ago, I started eliminated so-called “ultra-processed food” from my diet, and it’s made moderating my food intake so much easier.
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity seemed mean-spirited, but then I discovered it’s been around since 1976 and has quite a bit of intellectual thought behind it.
I’m slowly working through Questlove’s Hip-Hop Is History. I got it on audio, which I normally listen to while I’m driving. But this one is hard because I need to stop all the time and listen to the tracks he’s talking about (see below), so I’m listening to it in my recliner in the evening, which I’ve never actually done before.
Superspy Science was really fun
Here’s my complete reading list with reviews.
Watching
I watched a lot of stuff this month. I had a week off between jobs and I resolved to watch something long-form (two hours or more) every day that week.
If you had explained the plot of Mortal Engines to me, I would have said you were insane, but it was spectacular. I cannot understand how this film bombed at the box office. I feel like we were all cheated out of a fantastic movie franchise (not to mention the Disney park attraction that could have been…)
The Accountant with Ben Affleck was a solid action movie – kind of like John Wick, but twistier. (Don’t watch with subtitles on, because they annoyingly reveal an important spoiler.)
The Veil is a tense espionage thriller with Elizabeth Moss really turning in a great peformance. Six episodes, and it was great for five of them. The last one got a little weird.
I finished Derry Girls. What a great show. Very low-commitment – you could binge it a weekend, honestly. The last season (and episode) is actually a decent history lesson in relationship of Ireland and the U.K.
The Chernobyl miniseries was incredible. I binged it in five straight hours, and it prompted me to so some reflection on how organizations handle blame.
I loved this short video about the teamwork of the San Antonio Spurs
Listening
I have a Spotify playlist called “The Single Greatest Song Ever Written.” It has one song on it.
I’m compiling a Spotify playlist of the songs mentioned in Hip-Hop Is History. (Warning: you might offended by the lyrics of some of those songs.)
From the playlist above, the one song I’m absolutely obssessed with is Don’t Sweat the Technique by Erik B. and Rakim. (I was really disappointed with the video, though. The song was spectaculary different from anything else in 1992, but the video is just a boring collection of rap tropes.)
Gadgets and Gear
A friend bought me an Author Clock. It’s an e-ink display which changes every minute to show a new literary quote which includes the current time. It’s absolutely amazing.
We drove an electric car for a full week when Dad and I went to the rugby game – a Kia EV6. We drove it from Santa Barbara to San Diego and back again (just over 200 miles each way). It was amazing, and now I want an EV.
Valtech sent me a Dell XPS laptop. I’m normally a ThinkPad snob, because I love their keyboards, but this is also quite nice. It also has the most amazing sound quality for a laptop – the bass actually vibrates the surface it’s sitting on. I went through two Surface Laptops at Optimizely, and I will not miss them. Dreadful keyboards on those things.
I’ve mostly abandoned a roller bag for a carry-on/overnight bag. I’ve done up to four nights out of it. It works so much better.
Other Stuff
My fitness goal for the summer is to break my personal best for the 1,000m row, which is currently 3:22. I can hold a record-breaking pace through almost 800m right now, so I’m getting closer, but it’s getting harder. Getting the right pace from 600m to 700m took about 10 days. Going to 800m is taking a lot longer.
While training for my rowing PR, I’ve gotten some wild strength PRs lately: I got a back squat at 345#, and a strict overhead press at 225#.
I coached a CrossFit class with my daughter Isabella in July. We’re both L1 Certified CrossFit coaches. She had never coached before, so it was fun to do that together.
Have created a new website – Nyquistian – in honor of my hero Harry Nyquist. I have no idea what I’m going to do there yet. (Prior discussions of Nyquist here and here.)
Random Thoughts and Trivia
You can always tell when the two romantic leads are about to kiss, because their gaze drops from their partner’s eyes to their lips. It’s uncanny.
North Dakota has one of both the hottest and coldest temperatures ever recorded in the United States. Both were recorded in 1936, just five months apart: -60F in February and 121F in July.
In the original Star Wars, the lower half of C-3PO’s right leg is silver, not gold. This is never explained.
Other monthly updates: