Chris Brooks Newsletter 008
Happy December! Just finished our driving to the east coast. A month ago I reported 12,500 miles on the Tesla; at a few hundred miles from our destination in Florida and we were at 16,400 miles. My prediction is that we won’t reach 30,000 miles on the car until sometime in 2024 or 2025.
Here’s a haiku, courtesy of ChatGPT, about our recent adventures:
Roads stretch on forever
Holiday Inn Express in sight
Journey never ends
I’m late this month because it has been a busy week. I took an interim CTO gig with Payscale and my calendar has been a wee bit packed. I knew it was coming and could have had this finished in time, but then again we were driving 10+ hour days up through Sunday.
1. 🚘 Where I’ve been traveling
My last update had us leaving the eastern Sierras and making our way to the central California coast.
- We had three magical days in Morro Bay where I played some golf, we did some paddling, and did some hiking in the local hills.
- Next we moved up to the Monterey peninsula where I (haha) played some more golf, we hiked some of the beautiful coastal trails, and concluded with the 17 Mile Drive.
- We were ready for a travel break and settled down in Napa for over two weeks, staying with Jacob and Kaitlin in their nicely appointed guest room. In addition to welcoming their new kitty Toast to their home, we did some more paddling, played some golf, went hunting for the first (and perhaps last?) time, and did some more hiking.
- The Saturday after Thanksgiving we started our trek to Florida, with a short stay in southern Arizona to see friends and family.
2. 📖 What I’ve been reading
Some juicy articles!
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Julie and I hit MoviePass early and hard back in 2018, seeing 27 movies in five months and even working a 50% refund on the MoviePass from Costco as they started seriously restricting the service during the summer of 2018. Well, they’re back (sorry, might be paywalled), and under indictment:
This is important. If you are a startup and you go to venture capitalists to raise money and you tell them “we lose money on every customer, but we double our customer base every month, and eventually that has to be worth something,” and they say “sure does!” and give you a billion dollars, then that is between you and them and God. But if you do that with public investors, then the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice might start asking questions, questions like “well _does_ it have to be worth something?” and “why?”
…
They were totally wrong, as it turns out, and prosecutors allege that they never believed it themselves. But it was the sort of thing that everyone was saying. They were just doing what they were supposed to do, selling a product below its marginal cost in order to get lots of subscribers quickly. It worked really well, and they got a lot of subscribers quickly and lost money on all of them, and then they went bankrupt. It was not a good idea. But it was kind of what the market demanded. -
First, do me a favor and go watch a live performance of The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald. Now, for some trivia:
There are a slew of inaccuracies in The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald. Fitz was not “fully loaded for Cleveland” but Zug Island. The ceremony for the departed took place at the Mariners’ Church of Detroit, not the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral.
…
To me, this is one of the best examples I’ve encountered of when it’s important to be truthful in art. If Gordon had determined to make no factual error, we very well may never have heard this soul-wrenching ballad. Overwhelmed with accuracy, he may never have produced this art. -
Julie and I love the utility of recreation.gov. May of the National Park Service facilities use it and we like knowing in advance that we have a reservation for a tour, entry to a park, or a place to park our van overnight. But is it a profit scheme for a big beltway contractor? Julie and I have long desired to visit The Wave, a hiking and slot canyon area near the Utah and Arizona border. Permits are nearly unobtainable and we haven’t even bothered (yet) to try and get one.
To apply requires going to Recreation.gov, the site set up to manage national parks, public cultural landmarks, and public lands, and paying $9 for a “Lottery Application Fee.” If you win, you get a permit, and pay a recreation fee of $7. The success rate for the lottery is between 4–10%, and some people spend upwards of $500 before securing an actual permit.
But while the recreation fee of $7 goes to maintaining the park - which is what Henry George would appreciate - the money for the “Lottery Application Fee” is pure Plunkitt. That money goes to the giant D.C. consulting firm, Booz Allen and Company.
Also read a few books:
- Currently reading Shadows of Self, some great Wax & Wayne Mistborn fun from Brandon Sanderson.
- In anticipation of some Europe travel and a visit to Prague next spring, I read Madeleine Albright’s Prague Winter. Part memoir, part history book, it is focused on pre-WWII to post-WWII in Prague and includes her own family story. Very worthwhile.
- I just finished Michael Bamberger’s 30 year old classic To the Linksland, one of a trilogy of physical books about golf that are relatively hard to find. This one is about Bamberger’s “drop it all and head to Europe to caddy and play golf” adventure back in 1991. So good and so timeless.
3. 🍿 What I’ve been watching
Some quality TV this month (does TV just mean episodic now?) as we finally watched the wonderful Andor over on Disney+. There are no Jedi, no Darths, just great human stories and action (a heist!).
With Jacob and Kaitlin we watched the magical RRR and the possibly new Christmas classic Spirited. In preparation for a birthday NYC trip with my sister we watched the evergreen August Rush. Holds up so well. And evil Robin Williams 👿!
4. 🎶 What I’ve been listening too
Apple Music launched their Replay feature about a week ago, mimicking capabilities Spotify has had for a while. I was at first a bit annoyed that the Apple Music app on my phone took me to a website, but that was just to review my tops of the year. If you scroll all the way to the bottom you can find an option to create a playlist from your top songs.
Anyone who has spent time with me this year won’t be surprised by my top 2 artists:
A lot of the top songs and artists read like a setlist mix from our year in concerts (Lumineers, Jason Isbell, Wilco, Todd Rundgren, Badfinger, Caamp).
You probably heard that Christian McVie died about a week ago. She was never my favorite Fleetwood Mac member (I guess she makes my top 4) but we may have never had Rumours without her holding the band together. I leave you with a great ad-hoc cover of “Little Lies” by Jeff Tweedy.
5. 🎲 What I’ve been playing
Not much, but some!
- While in Napa we played Ticket to Ride: Europe, So Clover!, Kingdomino, and the surprisingly good Werewords.
- I played Combat Commander: Europe with my friend John during a stopover in Green Valley AZ.
- Just last night Julie and I played TRAILS, the newish game by the designer of PARKS.
- Allen and I have an ongoing game of Crossing the Line: Aachen 1944 in VASSAL, and we both love it.
6. 🦣 Joining Mastodon and the Fediverse
In my family I’m better known for rage quitting social networks than for participating in them. That said, I was a very early Twitter user (early 2007) and after deleting that account in 2016, I brought it back a few years ago to use in a mostly read-only form. With the “challenges” ahem that platform is facing I turned to Mastodon. I blogged about it in case you want to follow me.
There are roughly three sub-communities I care about following on Twitter:
- Python programming
- Boardgames, mainly wargames
- Golf
I’ll give you one guess as to which of those three is going to be slower to move to an open source federated platform like Mastodon.
If you are a technology muggle, learning how to join and participate is not trivial. You don’t just go to mastodon.org and click signup (like you would on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc). You have to choose an instance (aka server) first, and it needs to be one that is open to registration and one that ostensibly is aligned with your interests. The second part isn’t strictly required, just helpful.
A lot of folks are writing about this very topic, and if this interests you at all you should read Stephen O’Grady’s take.
This is probably a good time to remind y’all to own your words (and images). Don’t rely on a corporate social network to safeguard your life story. If you need help, go here to learn how to get blogging!.
See you next month!
-Chris