Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Kindle Oasis:
I was perfectly happy with my 9-year-old Kindle Paperwhite, but the Oasis was my prize for coming in 2nd place in our company's Advent of Code competition (The Meta Quest 3 was already claimed and I didn't really want a Playstation 5). In terms of features, Oasis has two dedicated forward / back buttons (in addition to its touch screen) which I end up using maybe half the time. It also flips from left-to-right-handedness by turning it upside which I really like. The last new feature is that it's supposed to be submersible in the bathtub which I obviously don't plan on testing. The reading experience is as good as the Paperwhite. If you're reading with the Kindle on a flat table, the uneven back turns into an annoying rattly seesaw every time you turn a page. Overall, some good things and some bad things that don't make this a must-have device if you like your previous generation Kindle.

Update (2024-08-11): The battery life of the Oasis is... not great. I could trust my Paperwhite to last for weeks, but even in Airplane Mode, the Oasis is at 50% within just a couple weeks of minimal-to-moderate use.

Final Grade: B

Penith (The Dave Soundtrack) by Lil Dicky:
This album mainly stands upon the novelty of hearing full-versions of the song excerpts from the FX show, Dave. However, you probably won't want to listen to it after the novelty has worn off.

Final Grade: C+

Fargo, Season 5:
We really wanted to like this season as Juno Temple fans, but it's just not good. It lacks all of flourishes that made seasons 1 - 3 of Fargo so engrossing and comes off as just another dark crime show. We went back to watch Season One after this and the differences were striking.

Final Grade: C-

I'm a Virgo:
I love that Amazon is funding weird stuff, but this limited series was a complete miss. It's about a giant teen who has been hidden by his parents all his life. It never quite figures out its tone, starting as a coming-of-age story and devolving into a muddy, boring diatribe about communism. I liked the fantastic elements, which reminded me of the movie Big Fish, but only one or two episodes retained my interest. Walton Goggins was criminally underused. On Amazon Video.

Final Grade: D

List Day: Currently...

• Currently listening to... Formentera II by Metric.


• Currently reading... Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky.


• Currently playing... nothing since last November.


• Currently considering buying... a new couch.


• Currently creating... an online art print shop using OpenCart.


• Currently planning... a permanent migration away from GoDaddy webhosting to AWS for parts of the modest web empire I manage.


• Currently watching... Shogun and (rewatching) Fargo, Season Two, both on Hulu.


• Currently anticipating... spring break at the beach with the Smiths.


• Currently exercising... about 3.75 hours per week.


• Currently weighing... 138 pounds.

This update was sponsored in part by LiveJournal.

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken 9 years ago today, on March 6, 2015.

Fresh off an extended weekend spent working overnight to analyze Weblogic memory crashes, and nonstop studying for my very first AWS cloud certification, Rebecca and I headed out of town for the weekend to Hopkins Ordinary B&B in Sperryville. We stayed in the smallest room ("Oregano") and enjoyed complimentary beers from the basement brewery. The next day, we hiked White Oak Canyon because recent snow had made an Old Rag hike untenable.

We enjoyed our experience so much that we went back 3 more times in the next 10 months, and then twice more in the coming years (once with Maia during the very first weeks of the pandemic).

Review Day: A Lion's Pride by P.L. Stuart

There are no major spoilers in this review.

A Lion's Pride is the fourth book in The Drowned Kingdom saga by P.L. Stuart. I absolutely love where the story takes us in this book, the midpoint of the series. However, I found myself frustrated by aspects of the writing that stalled the momentum.

King Othrun of Eastrealm seems to have attained a period of stability for his fledgling kingdom. He has acquired considerable political capital from his past strategies and hard-earned reputation as a warlord, but still can't always resist the urge to step straight into trouble (especially when it involves a pretty face). Othrun's growth as a character continues to be a compelling thread -- he faces hard truths about his destiny to spread the faith of the Single God in spite of the incongruous mysticism he has experienced during his time in Eltnia.

The previous book, Lord and King, acts as a fulcrum point and springboard, allowing the first part of Book 4 to fly out of the gate with wonderfully intense showdowns, unexpected reveals, and a deepening of the interesting lore around the witches and druids. There is a fair amount of repetition in this first part, but I appreciated that these asides jogged my memory about far-flung events from earlier books.

The second part of Book 4 is where the pacing stumbled for me. There's an overwhelming amount of introspection and recapping -- the constant reminders about who the characters are and how Othrun feels about them arrests the forward motion of the plot and left me feeling like one of Othrun's warhorses moving timidly across muddy terrain. I felt like I was sitting in on a D&D session where every player was constantly reciting the top traits from their character sheets before taking an action.

I generally enjoy reading from Othrun's perspective and hearing his inner monologues but I felt that there was just too much introspection that didn't provide any deeper knowledge than I already had. If Othrun's opinions of characters had changed over time or (even better), if Othrun's opinions changed the way I felt about the characters, the amount of introspection might have been more successful. And that definitely happens in a few key scenes! Outside of those rare examples, though, I felt like the supporting characters had become a little flatter from over-repeating their most well-known qualities.

The ending is satisfying: exciting, triumphant, and tragic all at once. The final scene involving menacing alliances in the north definitely gave me "big screen adaptation" vibes and I'm still very excited to see where the story goes in the next release, A Pack of Wolves.

Final Grade: B-

• Book 1: A Drowned Kingdom review
• Book 2: The Last of the Atalanteans review
• Book 3: Lord and King review
• Book 4: A Lion's Pride review

Easy Photos Day

Guys on the Silver Line, heading to Ballston and back.

Ian mixes and matches some vehicles.

Maia goes to the Baltimore Aquarium with the grandparents.

Maia's new bud, Dolphinita.

New playground in Alexandria #5 of 7000.

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

5:28 AM: Early morning Beat Saber workout.

6:13 AM: Showered and ready for the day.

6:37 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

7:00 AM: Getting shoes on to go to the bus stop.

7:49 AM: Arriving at the old Tysons office for work.

12:57 PM: Home, and hearing voices outside my home office window.

3:57 PM: Rookie positioning during car washing.

4:19 PM: Inspecting my latest Eagle project: preventing all of my purchased woodchips from washing out of the common area and onto the sidewalk.

4:32 PM: Breezy enough for cheap kites.

5:22 PM: Reading Maia's scrolls about Pokemon.

5:46 PM: Chicken cordon bleu for dinner.

8:08 PM: Time for taxes.

Review Day: Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

There are no major spoilers in this review.

Children of Memory is the final book in the Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky (although the author might revisit this world if ideas lead him there in the future). The book works very well as a capstone on the series, taking the ideas from the earlier books and then stretching, weaving, and elevating them to logical conclusions.

The story begins in a familiar way, with the convergence across time and space of ancient human terraformers seeking to build a new Earth and the modern, uplifted species traveling across the galaxy in search of life. This recognizable setting effectively toys with your expectations while the author gradually introduces discrepancies which suggest that things are not as they seem and, in fact, something may have gone horribly wrong.

The tone and style of writing are different than before. It's a mix of innocence, sardonic wit, and wry pessimism that often feels more like a fantastic fairy tale (with a little Douglas Adams thrown in) than a sci-fi novel about evolution and intelligence. Reading still requires exacting attention though -- because one of the major themes is what constitutes identity and "self-hood", there are passages that are almost infinitely recursive in the way that they present big ideas and bounce those ideas across characters with different origins, and within physical or virtual spaces. I found the exploration of themes to be very successful, and if the language had been any less dense, it would have made the arguments on the page more shallow and less thought-provoking.

I felt like the concepts overwhelmed the plot in the second book, Children of Ruin, so I was very happy to see this book end on a strong, emotional note. The penultimate reveal of the story's mysteries truly moved me in a way that nothing earlier in the series had done. The subsequent finale hit just the right mix of maudlin and hopeful and felt like "the only way" it could have ended. Most impressive to me is that the author was able to draw these emotions out of me using characters outside of a human frame of reference. To oversimplify: Adrian Tchaikovsky was able to introduce me to a single-celled organism and then, hundreds of pages and generations later, convince me to care about its feelings -- masterful!

Final Grade: A

• Book 1: Children of Time review
• Book 2: Children of Ruin review
• Book 3: Children of Memory review

Project Day: Studio Shop Overhaul

I'm charging through my 2024 side-project plans like randy sailor on shore leave. My latest project completion is the overhaul of the Maitz & Wurts Studio Shop.

The old Studio Shop was running on Zen Cart, THE open source shop software of choice in... 2011. When I originally signed on as webmaster during the pandemic, the Studio Shop was one of the pieces where I knew right away, "If I touch that before I understand it, it'll disintegrate before my eyes." I added a little duct tape in October 2020 -- making the pages actually resize on cell phones and adding catalog pages in front to guide people to the artwork they desired. After that, the pandemic kept going and going and I lost focus on projects for quite a while.

The bulk of the actual rework took place in February 2024. I downloaded and customized the open source platform, OpenCart, held my nose while engaging with the prickly developer community, and got a working demo site together pretty easily. I then used Kotlin to write a repeatable import/export process that grabbed the inventory of art prints (over 200) from the old shop and loaded them into the new shop.

The trickiest part of the project is that the owners are actually artists who care about the visual presentation of their works -- the site is less a commercial store and more of an online version of a studio you might walk through at the Torpedo Factory or other hippie institute. So the out-of-the-box style of OpenCart might be great for selling phones, but doesn't lend itself well to the appreciation of art.

We went live successfully early on Friday morning. Now that I've wrapped this up, I'm thinking about moving my makeover of the URI! Zone up in the queue and tackling that this summer!

Maia's 12 of 12

Maia's perspective on life (pictures taken between June 2023 and January 2024)

Other posts in this series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XI | Part XII |

Review Day: FreeTaxUSA

After too many years of piggybacking off of the family TurboTax purchase, we finally took the plunge and used FreeTaxUSA.com this year. It took the same amount of time as TurboTax and was a pleasant experience.

The base product is free (you just need an email to make an account). You can e-file Federal for free and pay $14.99 for state e-files. It handled our investments just fine. We did W-2s, 1098, 1099-INT, 1099-DIV, 1099-B with the base product.

It can import a PDF of last year's taxes to use as a roadmap. We found that it imported the official Returns just fine but overlooked a few details from Worksheets. However, it didn't cause any errors of omission as a result, it just said "We don't have data from last year" in those places and let us fill it in. Next year it will have everything it needs since our data is now in the system.

What we liked better than TurboTax: Info tooltips are more helpful and clearer. Sometimes it felt like TurboTax's info tooltips were intentionally verbose to reinforce that you NEED TurboTax to figure everything out. I also liked that you can view a PDF of how the returns/worksheets will look as you are filling out a section, so you can see where the values end up and how they affect other values.

What wasn't as good: You cannot import your W-2s or 1099s directly from the companies. (There is a beta feature where you can upload PDFs of these docs, but we just typed in the numbers by hand).

What was the same:: You can go step-by-step through the tax categories or just get the bird's eye view and open the categories that you needed last year. They do bug you to upgrade a lot, which is more reasonable since it's a free product.

Final Grade: B+

Ian Year 2 Month 11 Battle Report

Ian is just 1 month shy of turning 3 and, jokes about "half his life" aside, it feels like he's been 2 for longer than 50% of the dynasties in imperial China.

Ian is full of big emotions and very aware of how he feels, but struggles to adapt when things don't go exactly as expected. We can be having a perfect afternoon and then he'll fixate on something that isn't quite right and have a tantrum. He averages 1-2 tantrums per day at the moment. We're working through it patiently and we hope it improves in year 3.

He naps well and sleeps well. As soon as he's up, he runs to the living room to recite scenes from his tractor DVDs while driving trucks around. He likes to play by himself until he realizes he's playing by himself at which point he'll come find me or Rebecca and tell us he misses us.

He is rigid in his routines, from asking us, "What's after that?", for each phase of the day to always wanting to watch his John Deere tractor DVDs before nap time. He wants to read the same books over and over again (I once read Berenstain Bears Learn about Strangers 10 times in 6 days) and wants the Duplos positioned exactly as he left them (even if he doesn't want to play with them anymore).

He's got a great arm for throwing things and a great sense of pitch for singing his favourite songs, the John Deere theme song and Tractor, Tractor. He's also a whiz at identifying car makes based on the company logos, and loves taking the stroller to preschool (instead of the car) so he can identify myriad parked cars along the way.

He's figuring out how to mash up the English language to convey ideas -- when he wanted more water out of the faucet, he asked me to "turn it louder", and when he tasted a plain yogurt instead of his preferred mixed berry, he said, "I can't feel this yogurt, I want another one".

Here is Ian at preschool. He's learning to wave for the camera gradually.

Maia's Story Day

We've had enough art for a while. How about the written word? Maia has started writing stories (although she rarely finishes them).

Amber the Cat
for Brian Uri
by Maia Uri

It all started when I was six. Amber was snoozing on the couch. I looked at her again. She was stretching her paw.

What woke her up? Suddenly dad sat next to me. I bet it was dad walking toward me. It was time for bed. (I was learning about time in school).

That night, I dreamt of 100 cats in our house and I couldn't find Amber.

The Mystery of the Missing Wand by Maia Uri

Once upon a time some fairies lost a very important wand. One of the fairies was named Calley. One day, she woke up, it was 12:50! The wand cast a spell to make her sleep in. "Oh my," said Calley!

Introduction: There are pokemon everywhere! Outside, at home, everywhere! Turn the page to catch information.

Mudbray: The Wild Area 2

Gyms: Gyms are found in the regions. Fire, ice, grass, and water are all gyms.

Battles: When two pokemon bump into each other, they have a battle. They have different attacks.

Scorbunny and Grookey

Pokeballs: Pokeballs are used to catch pokemon. When you throw a pokeball it opens and catches the pokemon.

Greatball: A greatball has a higher chance of catching pokemon than a pokeball. A pokeball does not have blue on it.

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2024 album.

• Events
  • Date Night at Local Provisions on F 3/1.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to see a middle school production of Seussical Jr., while Ian and I went to Wegmans to watch the train run around the ceiling on S 3/2.
  
  
  • Our old neighbors (Vanessa and Chloe) came for a visit in the afternoon on S 3/3.
  
  
  • Maia spent a weekend with the grandparents (and went to the Aquarium), F 3/8 - S 3/10.
  
  
  • Ian and I rode the Metro from Innovation Center to Ballston and back on S 3/9.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Local Provisions on W 3/13.
  
  
  • Family trip to the Algonkian playground and dinner at Bungalow Lakehouse on H 3/14.
  
  
  • Day trip out to Dirt Farm Brewing with the family on S 3/16.
  
  
  • Open House St. Patricks Day with Jack, Larry, Janice, MJ, Taje, and kids, Annie, Justin, Jessica, and Tobias on S 3/17.
  
  
  • Went out to the Whitmers on S 3/23 because Abby was in town.
  
  
  • Spring Break in Bethany Beach with the Smiths, T 3/26 - S 3/30.


• Projects
  • Sheared back the encroaching wilderness in the HOA common grounds on H 3/7.
  
  
  • Did the annual woodchip spread on our homegrown trail through the forest behind our house on F 3/8.
  
  
  • Did our taxes on T 3/12.
  
  
  • Migrated a 12-year old online store to a new platform on F 3/15.
  
  
  • Got an EV Charger installed on the side of the house on M 3/18.


• Consumerism
  • Bought a new phone, a Samsung S23, after the previous 5-year-old model ended up cracked in the washing machine. (It still worked, but I didn't want to take chances!)
  
  
  • Enjoyed reading Children of Memory this month. No amazing new shows, movies, or music to report.
  
  
  • Not playing any games at the moment.

March's Final Grade: A, continued productivity balanced with fun family times