Advent of Code, the annual midnight coding competition has started! You can follow my daily progress on my company's Fastest Solve Times page. It's kind of nice that, ever since I moved my office down to the basement, I have a guest bed to crash in before and after. I no longer have to worry about waking up the light sleepers of the household.
Schitt's Creek, Season Four: A pleasant enough season, although I'm sick of the Moira character who I feel should have gained way more self-awareness after three seasons. Free on Netflix.
Final Grade: B
The Much Much How How and I by Cosmo Sheldrake: Come Along came up on one of my Amazon stations and took me down the rabbit hole of this aurally unique album. It's a mix of whimsical lyrics, wind orchestrations, and soundscapes like the ones I might have tried to write with MIDI as an undergrad.
Final Grade: B+
Pieces of April (PG-13): This was our "Thanksgiving Movie" fare, starring Katie Holmes as someone struggling to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for a reunion with a judgemental mother. It feels a lot like a road trip movie for most of its running time, and the wrap-up requires a very abrupt "change of heart" scene. Free on Amazon Prime.
Final Grade: B-
Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox: Not a review of the pictured album specifically, but more of their entire body of work which might take years to wade through. The Postmodern Jukebox project creates vintage arrangements of vapid pop songs using a revolving selection of talented musicians. Great examples include Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, Tears for Fears' Mad World and George Michael's Careless Whisper. The music videos add an extra layer to the production with their simplicity and humorous touches.
As an update to my last attempt, here are the years of my life with summary labels.
1979: The Year I Was Born
1980: The Year I Came to America
1981: The Year I Lived Next Door to the Fishers
1982: The Year I Was Naturalized
1983: The Year Rosa Started Babysitting Us
1984: The Year I Started Kindergarten
1985: The Year I Started First Grade
1986: The Year I Started Second Grade / Skipped a Grade
1987: The Year I Started Fourth Grade
1988: The Year I Started Fifth Grade / Was a Lunchtime Dungeon Master / Played the Cornet
1989: The Year I Started Sixth Grade / Joined the Boy Scouts
1990: The Year I Went to Nevada / Started Seventh Grade / Was the Only Trumpeter in Band
1991: The Year I Started Eighth Grade
1992: The Year I Got Glasses / Started Crew / Started Ninth Grade / Went to My First Dance
1993: The Year I Got Eagle Scout / Started Tenth Grade / Started Indoor Track
1994: The Year I Started Eleventh Grade / Got into Jazz
1995: The Year I Started Twelfth Grade / Programmed Games on my TI-85 / Was Drum Major
1996: The Year I Went to Tech and Moved in with Andy / Joined the Marching Band
1997: The Year I Had Many Online Friends / Moved in with Beavis
1998: The Year I Moved in with Nathan / Wrote Olio
1999: The Year I Moved in with Kelley / Got Contacts and a New Hair Style / Went to the Sugar Bowl
2000: The Year I Started Using Photoshop / Got an internship at FGM / Moved in with Rosie and Anna
2001: The Year I Had a 5th Year Recital / Graduated from Tech / Moved to Florida
2002: The Year I Was a Grad Student / Taught Music Classes
2003: The Year I Defend My Masters Thesis / Lived in Centreville / Started full-time at FGM
2004: The Year I Bought a House / Lived with Anna and sometimes Eric, Ben, or Kathy / Started playing World of Warcraft
2005: The Year We Built a Sidewalk around the House / Anna Got Married
2006: The Year I Went to the Bachelder Retirement Concert / Kathy Got Married
2007: The Year I Met Rebecca / Dressed Up as Dick-in-a-Box for Halloween
2008: The Year We Went to Europe the First Time / Got Engaged
2009: The Year We Got Married / Went to Hawaii
2010: The Year There Was a Massive Blizzard / We Went to the Puerto Rico, Spokane, Santa Cruz, and Emerald Isle / I Released DDMSence 1.0
2011: The Year We Renovated the Kitchen / Went to Arkansas and Charlotte / I Started Playing Skyrim
2012: The Year I Tried to Be a Semantic Ontologist / We Went to Quebec & Montreal / Rebecca Was in PT School
2013: The Year Rebecca Became a PTA / We Started Hiking at Harpers Ferry
2014: The Year We Went to the Greenbier / Vacationed in Seattle / Played D&D
2015: The Year We Built a Shed / Went Back to Europe / Housed Sydney
2016: The Year We Went to Colorado and Hiked a 14er / I Left Novetta
2017: The Year Maia Was Born / Kitty and Booty Died / I Returned to Novetta
2018: The Year We Went to LA for a Wedding / I Started Advent of Code
2019: The Year I Turned 40 with Poker / We Did A Lot of Puzzles
2020: The Year We Stayed Home for COVID
The value of labels is twofold:
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.
They act as episode titles when my life is picked up as a Netflix Original (1 year per 22 minute episode). Who would you like to portray you in my show?
I had fun in the snow. I and my sister made 2 snowmen. What fun it was! And I through a snowball at my sister's face. And made a little hollow fort. And throuh snow in the air. I went out two times. Ellen went two times too.
It snowed hard yester day. I did not know where the animals were hibernating. I went inside then I had hot dogs and Potato rounds inside. I walked on ice with out slipping there.
Another 2nd place finish ($200) for me this year! I was actually in 3rd place on the night before the final puzzle and only inched into 2nd through luck and competitor exhaustion.
The competition for Advent of Code this year was ridiculous, partially due to COVID-19 keeping everyone at home with nothing better to do. In fact while Novetta usually gets a huge number of people in the Global Top 100 throughout the month, I had the only global record this year, and it was only because I was persistent with hitting F5 during the first day's server outage (due to the competition's unexpected popularity). Here is a reenactment of the insane technical skill I needed to get this record.
As this rancid mayonnaise jar of a year ends, you might feel aghast at the behaviors or beliefs of other American citizens or hopeless about your ability to make things better. Please remember that none of what we're seeing came out of thin air. The siege lines between political factions, the man wearing his mask under his nose, and the innate fear of "the other side" -- all of these are just symptoms of deeper issues.
One reason we've gotten here is our smartphone-induced need to boil everything down to a sound bite without nuance. This has lowered the prestige of education, science, and journalism, resulting in a chaotic, fragmented news environment where disinformation is amplified. When every story is framed with exactly two sides, one "side" has to lose for the other to win and it becomes easier to dehumanize others while safe inside an echo chamber.
We need to fix causes, not symptoms. We cannot repair the divisions in this country without first repairing or reinventing the influential sources that shape peoples' beliefs and understanding of the world.
I don't have a sound bite solution that will fix everything, but here are some simple things I'll be doing in 2021.
I'll continue to support traditional journalism and make it a point to read past the headlines of newspapers with differing viewpoints (allsides.com makes this easier).
I'll try to look past peoples' behavior or bumper stickers and remember that it's dangerously easy to reduce someone to a false caricature when I don't know anything else about them.
I'll try to be the best example of the type of person I'd want around me in my local community and professional network.