Posts from 05/2024
Ian has finally made it to the age of 3!
Primary stats:
For scale, he is as tall as 6.042 standard hot dogs end-to-end, and weighs as much as 284 standard hot dogs.
Not much has changed developmentally since the year 2 month 11 update. He knows his shapes, months, colors, and other trivia, reads the weather report in our Sunday paper, and recites books and songs from memory. He always wants a book at dinnertime but feels like he cannot make the choice himself.
His favourite catchphrase right now is "LET'S PLAY!" -- he doesn't always want to play Duplos by himself, although he also usually doesn't accept our input on how to play when we sit down with him.
He loves Maia and Maia takes good care of him. For his 3rd birthday, they got to have a sleepover in his room -- Ian went to bed first then Maia snuck in with a sleeping bag after he had fallen asleep. In the morning, they sat quietly in the room for awhile as Maia read some stories to him.
He's coming towards the end of his first year at preschool (with two more to go, based on where his birthday falls in the year) and greatly enjoys it. He especially likes that the playground is littered with construction trucks to play with. On the occasions that I pick him up from school midday, he's always playing alone with the trucks, lost in his own little world.
Happy Birthday Ian!
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There are no major spoilers in this review.
We purchased this game almost a year ago, and haven't played it in at least 4 months, so I think it's safe to say that we'll never finish it.
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the sequel to Breath of the Wild which I gave a solid C- to. Looking past the hype, the first game was a tedious grind only made bearable by the fact that Maia loved watching me play it and there was nothing else to do during the pandemic.
This game reuses the same engine and takes place in the same world (although the world is so altered that it felt very different right off the bat). Though it has some newness injected, it does very little to fix the underlying flaws that plagued the first game.
First, the good:
Now, the bad:
One day last year, Maia and I felt like we were close to the end and finally decided to beat the game. We had beaten the four main dungeons and traveled to the endgame to defeat the final boss. Only, it turns out there was a fifth leg of the game to deal with and what felt like "95% complete" actually turned out to be "75% complete". This deflated a lot of my urge to finish the game (and I'm a completionist!), and we never picked the game back up seriously after that. With so many other more fun activities to do, the incentive to go the rest of the way just isn't there. Also, Maia has moved on to Pokemon in the interim.
Final Grade: C
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Time
Ingredients
Directions
After taking the picture for this recipe, Ian and Maia insisted on becoming foodgrammers too:
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In the first third of the year, I exercised every day (even when sick). At a minimum, I forced myself to do 20 minutes of Beat Saber VR cardio, jog 1.5 miles, or perform at least 20 minutes of an outdoor continuous activity like picking up trash quickly or mowing the lawn.
As of the end of April, I have spent 50 hours and 10 minutes doing Beat Saber, jogged 30.5 miles, and did 9 hours and 40 minutes of outdoor activity.
I started January out mostly jogging, but quickly ran out of good treadmill shows to watch. In February I switched to mostly Beat Saber, gradually extending the time spent and the speed at which I played the maps. This was great for cardio but not so great for my shoulder sockets. I'm now back to jogging again so my shoulders can have time to recover.
I'm currently holding steady at my pre-pandemic weight, 136 pounds, down 10 pounds from my intra-pandemic high of 146 pounds.
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There are no major spoilers in these reviews.
Key & Peele, Season Two:
The second season of this show feels a little more experimental so more of the skits fell flat for me. Good for a few laughs at the end of the evening, but not as great as the first season. On Netflix.
Final Grade: B-
Shogun:
This limited series started strong and remained strong, but I personally lost interest towards the last few episodes. The acting and set design were all great, but I no longer felt invested in where the story was going and I can't really explain why. Perhaps it was one of the later episodes that fixated too heavily on a "will he / won't he" type of plotline when it was pretty obvious that there was no doubt about the answer. On Hulu.
Final Grade: B
Fallout, Season One:
This series perfectly captures the weird, absurd, violent tone of the Fallout universe and how it feels to play the video game (you don't need any familiarity with Fallout to enjoy the show though). On top of that, it feels like there's a pretty compelling original story taking shape (although a few spots feel too familiar, like something that might have been on Jonathan Nolan's other show, Westworld). The plot moves quickly and the final episode is full of great reveals, although I really felt like we were just warming up when the final episode rolled around. Walton Goggins is wonderful as always -- his character sometimes comes across as an undead version of Boyd Crowder from Justified but this isn't a bad thing at all. On Prime Video.
Final Grade: A
Modern JavaScript for the Impatient by Cay S. Horstmann:
The bulk of my early technical career was spent abusing JavaScript and working around its historical baggage in the quest for cross-browser compatibility. This book is a great look at how the language functions NOW, with only minor diversions into the historical WHYs. It's a great reference and helped me get up to speed on what's changed in the past 10 years.
Final Grade: B+
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12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month
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Maia started a car dealership in February after Rebecca bought her new Kia Niro. The jeeps are so cheap because "we have too many and no one wants them!"
A silly robot.
This is what adorns Maia's bedroom wall at the moment. Charizard is her favourite Pokemon.
Ice skating.
If I had $100, I would buy some more cat stuffed animals.
An all-inclusive sketch of Maia's elementary school, from the bus circle and flagpole in front to the basketball court and playground in the back.
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There are no explicit plot spoilers in these reviews.
Empire in Black and Gold is Adrian Tchaikovsky's very first published book and kicks off the ambitious, ten-volume Shadows of the Apt series in high form. It took me a while to begin, as I'd heard it blandly described as "insect people fighting each other", but the book is so much deeper and more imaginative than that false encapsulation.
In a world of industrial city-states and provincial rivalries, mankind has taken on traits of different arthropods, like the Ant-kinden who can communicate telepathically with each other or the Spider-kinden who can charm or manipulate and are masters of political intrigue. Stenwold Maker returns from a distant land to warn his people that the Wasp Empire is expanding through invasion and slavery, but struggles to get through to others content with the status quo.
The book reads very easily with just enough world building information planted along the way to deepen the experience without slowing the frenetic pace. It's particularly intriguing when the story takes us to a new locale and we learn about a new "kinden" trait. And unlike Children of Time which was the last series I'd read, the story doesn't exist just to revolve around the cool ideas -- Tchaikovsky introduces very memorable characters with believable motivations here, and having those characters to root for makes the cool ideas less abstract.
It feels like there's a lot of unexplored complexity buried just below the surface, with themes of magic vs. technology and innate prejudices raised but not (yet) deeply explored. I'm looking forward to continuing on with Book 2!
Final Grade: B
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New bathroom color.
Happy and full of popcorn shrimp after Ford's Fish Shack.
Walking in Claude Moore Park.
Amber, 19 years 7 months, just after a mandatory bath.
Maia goes to the American History Museum with the grandparents.
Maia tours the latest in playground technology in Alexandria.
Newest gift from the grandparents, a mixed sand + water table with a valuable theme.
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Amber passed away yesterday at the amazing age of 19 years 7 months.
Anna and I adopted Amber on March 1, 2005 from a crazy cat lady we found on Craigslist. She and her sister, Sydney, joined forces in the house with Booty and Kitty. Months later, Anna moved out with Kitty and Sydney, while Booty and Amber remained behind.
Amber was always Booty's punching bag -- Booty would deign to let Amber sleep next to her, but got very territorial if Amber tried for the affection of Booty's humans. Once Booty died in 2017, Amber became much happier as the lone cat. (Kitty and Sydney died in the intervening years as well, so Amber TRULY was the last one standing).
Amber was not a fan of kids until around 2019 when she became absolutely deaf. Then she would peacefully lie on the couch as children bounced from cushion to cushion or the vacuum cleaner drove by below her. She was always a sucker for a warm blanket and spent almost every afternoon napping on the couch with Rebecca.
The osteoarthritis in her back legs made it difficult to get around on a good day and last week, she finally got to the point where her front legs weren't working all that well either. We suspect that she may have had a mini-stroke of some kind because by the weekend, she wouldn't use her legs and couldn't focus her eyesight on any movement. We gave her a final bath (she couldn't clean the litter off her paws anymore) and kept her comfortable for the remainder of her days, holding the water bowl right up under her face to get her to drink.
Amber died peacefully overnight on one of her favourite wool blankets. Rest in peace, kitty!
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There are no explicit plot spoilers, although I describe aspects of character development and the flow of the book in broad generalities.
The Wars of Light and Shadow series is a massive geoglyph, painstakingly shaped by hand across miles and years. We may not have had the authorial bird's-eye view to see what it would become, but this final volume perfectly completes the image and vindicates the author's efforts. Song of the Mysteries works as a culmination and callback to the entire 11-book series, resolving and reshaping everything that I've fervently read and reread over the past 30 years. It weaves the vast, abstract planetary perspective back together with the intimate, introspective character moments I love.
The plot continues to move in unpredictable directions while painting new layers onto events from earlier books (especially Curse of the Mistwraith and Fugitive Prince). This volume isn't just about tying up loose ends though -- it raises new moral conundrums and contextualizes current events in the weighty Paravian lore of the First and Second Ages. Any one of these historical asides is intriguing enough to be the germ for another novella in this universe, like The Gallant.
Be ready to take time off work for your first readthrough because good stopping points are rare (Chapter XIV is a decent saddle ridge to catch your breath before tackling the summit). The pacing forgoes any sort of slow burn and rarely lets up in intensity, with climactic events happening in almost every chapter. Every time I thought the book's language had reached a plateau in its ability to convey the tension, danger, and beauty of different scenes, the next chapter would prove to be even stronger. The tired joke about volume controls that go to 11 doesn't quite apply here because Song of the Mysteries starts at 11 and peaks around 16.
More than plot, pace, or prose, the character development is what I appreciate most about this volume. The characters I met as a teenager have matured through the lens of my own adulthood, and they all reap their earned conclusions -- some tragic, some triumphant, and often a mix of both. Most rewarding for me was Tarens, the loyal crofter whose involvement in the plot didn't satisfy me when I first read Initiate's Trial. His development here completely dispels my indifference and he has become one of my favourite characters in the series.
Song of the Mysteries is the ending that the series deserves. It should simultaneously satisfy long-time fans while elevating the now-complete series to "classic" status for future readers to discover and appreciate. This series is absolutely worth trying if you're a patient fan of rewarding, intricate complexity.
Final Grade: A+
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In the automatic tongue-out phase of picture taking.
Enjoying a lollipop while playing dress-up with Maia and her friend.
Fell asleep on the 10 minute drive to Chuy's.
Ian sings "Yon Yonson" but replaces random words with "raccoon"
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This picture was taken thirty years ago, on August 16, 1994.
This was the summer between 10th and 11th grade (my sister was about to head off to UVa for college). We were at Universal Studios Florida and you can tell from my beautific expression how I felt about being on a family vacation as a high schooler and having to take pictures in front of all of the props.
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New photos have been added to the Life, 2024 album.
May's Final Grade: B-, lots of logistical churn and loss of a kitty
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