Advent of Code Day

It's that time of year again!

I feel like I started out much slower this year, owing to the fact that I'm now in my forties and near death. However, the cobwebs are slowly clearing from my brain and I'm managing to stay competitive each night at midnight.

You can keep up with my daily progress on my company's competition leaderboard (which I also run). The best hour of coding I spent in 2021 was automating updates to the board so I wasn't sitting up at 2 AM waiting for the last stragglers to finish a coding puzzle.

Data Day: Puzzle Boat Contributions

Our work team finally finished Puzzle Boat 8 at the end of November, 38 days after starting it. Here is a graph of puzzles solved by each teammate, starting with Puzzle Boat 6 where I had no idea what I was doing. I joined the team thinking "I like crossword puzzles, sure!" and then spent the next three months itemizing cats.

As I've said before, I wholeheartedly recommend the puzzles from P&A Magazine -- they're definitely worth the money if you find your typical newspaper puzzles a little too easy.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Squid Game:
This show had an intriguing premise but poor execution. The conceit of desperate people willing to do things and the divide between super-rich and poor has been done before, and the importance of these themes faded into the background after just a couple episodes (3% did it all better). Squid Game might have been more successful as a tight miniseries with 4 or 5 episodes -- by the penultimate episode, I was watching at 1.25x speed to skip through the lingering camera shots that mistook "wasting time" for "building tension". Character development is pretty muddled although there are a few nice moments throughout. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: C+

Best of Standup 2020:
This special allowed us to skip the often-draggy bits of hour-long standup specials and enjoy the best parts. There are a few great laughs to be found (we plan on watching the Michael McIntyre special as a result) but most of the jokes are just chuckles. This is great, though, because by the time we realized a comedian wasn't amazing, the special had already moved on. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B-

Arcane:
This fantasy show based on the lore of a computer game (League of Legends) took me by surprise. I've never played the game and rarely like serious animated shows but this show stands strongly on its own. The style is moody and well-animated, and the plot is pushed forward by characters doing what they think is best, rather than contrived situations. You don't need to know anything about the associated game going in -- even Rebecca liked this. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: A

Arcane League of Legends (Soundtrack from the Animated Series):
(This refers to the album containing original songs by contributing artists, not the three similarly-named albums with the original score). The music for Arcane includes songs written just for this show by artists as varied as Imagine Dragons and Fantastic Negrito. Each is a pretty catchy listen and worth the purchase of the 30 minute album. (The original score, spread across three albums, is also good, but not as worthwhile without the visuals to accompany it).

Final Grade: B+

Ian Week #31 Battle Report

Ian became 7 months old on Thanksgiving Day and currently weighs over 18 pounds (Maia was 16 at the same time). He wears size 3 diapers and 6-9M clothing and can vocalize "da" and "ma".

Ian is rolling over now and usually travels 1 - 3 Ianlengths (Imperial measurement) from his original position. He uses rolling more as a method of getting things than transporation, but seems eager to start crawling as soon as possible. There is still a little patch of missing hair on the back of his head where he wiggles his head vigorously against the carpet when excited.

He eats solids in the form of mixed pastes and loves eating more than many adults. However, each meal usually ends in crying when he wants to desperately keep eating but has no room in his stomach for more food.

• Things he loves: Amber the cat, eating, drool, trying to watch TV
• Things he dislikes: people cleaning off his face, naps, being alone for four seconds while we leave the room to get something

He is on an iffy nap schedule, sometimes taking a 90 minute nap in the morning and an hour nap in the afternoon, or only catnapping while in a carrier or the car. Each nap is accompanied by 5 - 10 minutes of outraged crying before immediate silence, like an old phone that drops from 55% to 2% in a blink. His nights are pretty consistent, sleeping from 8 PM to 6 or 7 AM.

We are all good in orbit around him. I'm starting to get free time back in my schedule again and Rebecca is planning to go back to work in January!

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2021 album.

• Events
  • Braved the throng of CRTers to vote for governor on T 11/2.
  
  
  • Maia caught a cold and stayed home from preschool on F 11/5 - T 11/9.
  
  
  • Rebecca taught anatomy at an IPY Yoga Teacher Training session on S 11/7.
  
  
  • Maia went to my parents' for the weekend, F 11/12 - S 11/14.
  
  
  • We had a Friendsgiving with Tammy on S 11/13.
  
  
  • We had early Thanksgiving dinner with my parents on S 11/14.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to Taylorstown for the day while I stayed home working on puzzles on S 11/21.
  
  
  • Rebecca got her COVID booster shot on W 11/24.
  • Thanksgiving lunch with Char on H 11/25.
  
  
  • Thanksgiving take-out with Tom on S 11/27.
  
  
  • Attended Justin's virtual bar Mitzvah on S 11/28.
  
  
  • Got my COVID booster shot on M 11/29.


• Projects
  • Engaged in an ongoing, unfulfilled battle to eliminate a mouse in the house.
  
  
  • Drilled through walls to move the router and printer out of Ian's room.
  
  
  • Put up our Christmas stuff starting the day after Thanksgiving.
  
  
  • Finished all 151 puzzles in Puzzle Boat 8 on T 11/30, just in time for Advent of Code.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoyed watching Arcane and listening to its soundtrack this month.
  
  
  • No new movies or games this month.

November's Final Grade: A-, Ian is getting easier and the holidays are fun!