Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Thirty-Four Years Ago Today

Thirty-four years ago today, on April 24, 1990, I was a 10-year-old sixth grader on my first overnight field trip.

Since our city had a junior high school instead of a middle school, sixth grade was the highest grade in elementary school. Someone at Polk School decided it would be a good idea to trust the sixth grade class with a stay at Hemlock Overlook Regional Park. A surprising number of students from the 3 classes attended, although I believe there were still few enough people to fit in a large whitewashed double-roomed cabin (boys and girls separated).

We did the usual assortment of nature activities, like 300 reminders about what poison ivy looked like and what kind of tracks were on the trails (hint: most of them were trail dogs). Of course, we were really only interested in riding the zipline over and over again.

There were no overnight shenanigans in the cabin that night, although I have to give props to whichever brave parents volunteered to chaperone and sleep in the same rooms as the students!

List Day: Labelled Years

The value of labels is twofold:

1. They provide a temporal anchor for organizing my memories, especially in the recent years where the skeleton of school grades is unavailable and everything blurs together.
2. They act as episode titles when my life is picked up as a Netflix Original (1 year per 22 minute episode) although this means that they will likely cancel me after Season 3.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith:
This limited series remake is a misfire that's barely worth watching. The spy aspects of the show are just a throwaway canvas for the lead actors to argue and be miserable in their marriage (it sometimes reminded me of Fleishman is in Trouble in that regard). There are some sparks of creativity in the last few episodes, but it takes way too long to get there. This might have been better with a different title -- the one selected misleads you into thinking you'll be getting something completely different. On Amazon Video.

Final Grade: C

Untitled Goose Game (Switch):
A pleasant, indie game where you play a goose and you have to be as annoying as possible in an English village. Think scaring children, stealing food, tricking the gardener into getting soaked in the sprinkler. It has a novel concept and slightly offputting repetitive controls, especially when you fail at a task and have to start all over again. Good for a brief distraction.

Final Grade: B-

5-Minute Dungeon:
This cooperative card game combines the frantic chaos of multiplayer solitaire with a fun dungeon romp. Each game lasts 5 minutes although it takes slightly longer than that to sort all the cards for the next round. Very easy to pick up (Maia plays it flawlessly) and very fun. We haven't delved deeply into the dungeon yet, but we've gotten pretty good at beating the first boss in round one. The difficulty increases in each 5-minute round (similar to the way you can raise the starting tide level in Forbidden Island).

Final Grade: B+

Petition by Delilah Waan:
This debut fantasy novel is a solid foundation with a few rough edges. The author effectively depicts a sympathetic, determined protagonist clawing her way out of poverty and an interesting magic system. The secondary characters and setting both feel fairly shallow, as if they only exist to support the main character. Where this book shines is in its pacing -- the steady build towards successively more intense situations blended with moments of introspection and catharsis worked really well for me and kept me reading to the end.

Final Grade: B-

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken 25 years ago today, on April 17, 1999.

I was at Busch Gardens with my band friends: Rosie & Jason (not pictured), Doug & Becky, Jen, and myself. This picture was taken with one of the very first Canon Powershot digital cameras, which my dad had given me the day before.

1999 was the final year in my 20th century style: 1/4" buzzcut, glasses too big for my face, a Members Only jacket, and a Casio wristwatch.

20th Work Anniversary Day

Last Friday was my 20th work anniversary. I've worked at one company (through renamings and acquisitions) for my entire career apart from a brief experiment at a commercial startup followed by some stay-at-home-dadding back in 2017.

Career highlights include:

• 2000: As an intern, optimized a database load process by over 200% by creating a SQL-to-Java conversion language.
• 2008: Accidentally deleted all the rows in a production table but figured out a way to regenerate the data from other tables before anyone noticed or was affected.
• 2011: Convinced two diametrically-opposed ontologists to compromise on the definition of "Physical Entity" by inserting six extra words.
• 2015: Conceived, developed, and taught a six-session training designed to help our engineers earn the AWS Solutions Architect and Developer associate certs simultaneously.
• 2019: Was the sole proposal writer for a 30-page past performance volume that led to a win on a $950M IDIQ.