Category: Writing

I picked up all of the supplies to make peanut brittle but the weather refuses to cooperate. The secret family recipe doesn’t really work right without either very expensive equipment in a commercial kitchen (which I obviously don’t have) or the right weather outside. In other words, it needs to be cold out.

This has been one of the warmer Winters of my life, with temperatures for Christmas forecast up into the 50s. It’s to a point I’m considering reopening my woodworking for a week or two, if only because it’s too nice to keep the garage in indoor parking mode for no good reason.

What I read

The latest in John Scalzi’s December Comfort Watches series, on A Knight’s Tale. Scalzi is the reason I started blogging in the first place, and the impetus behind the naming convention I went with. I’ve been reading Scalzi’s work since he started out and his voice, and his journey, have been an inspiration to me as a fledgling writer.

A Knight’s Tale is a common favorite for me as well, in that it’s a movie that refuses to take itself seriously while taking itself seriously. It puts effort into the action, the movement, the sets and costumes, and yet is happy to throw David Bowie tunes into the middle of a period dancing scene. It’s filled with actors that appear to be enjoying their work, including the Czech extras who mostly have no idea what’s being said but fervently cheer at the saying.

It’s a damn fun movie, as are most of the movies Scalzi has highlit¹Per longtime friend Justin Freiberg, one of the perks of gaining a degree in English is that you are officially permitted to make up words. You’ll find I exercise this right at my whim. in his series. Give it a read!

What I watched

Caught up on the latest episode of Slow Horses. The series came out firing from the first episode and continues apace, with characters as fully fledged as the books they emerged from. Gary Oldman fully becomes another character in a history of incredible characters he’s generated throughout his career. While not as jarring as a Drexel or as historically bound as a Churchill, Jackson Lamb is Oldman owning every scene with as much presence as either, or any other of his roles.

Past Oldman, Jack Lowden’s work as River Cartwright shows fantastic capacity to play to the small screen with as much aplomb as he carried in his origins on the stage. For a man constantly being beaten, tied up, shot at, and thrown around as he chases or is chased through the landscape of southern England, he’s still got all the presence of a man under a spotlight, speaking out to an audience beyond the orchestra.

Two full seasons and a third in progress on Apple TV, and hopefully many more to come (the source material, Mick Herron’s Slough House series, has 12 books in it at present).

What I listened to

Caught the last of the final appearance of Charlie Munger, on the Invest Like the Best podcast alongside Stripe’s John Collison. Collison is already an interest of mine, given he and his brother’s work to democratize online payment systems by caring about things that don’t scale individually, but do scale if done on behalf of others. Payment systems are vital infrastructure for the internet and Stripe is a business that’s way out in front in a number of fronts.

Munger recently rereleased his book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack on Stripe Press, thus the interview, and he’s not lost any of his wit even unto his final days on Earth. While he can get a little old-man mumbly at times, he’s got interesting insights to share, much of which are consolidations of his writings and other speeches, and others which are insights Collison pulls out of him on topics of interest.

Projects In Progress

Webapp: Working through a tutorial on Node.js at present, to try and run the backend on this thing. Also mocked up some more wireframes for UI, mostly to help me consider all of the various interactions that will need to be respected in the configuration. The big part I need to get my head around will be related to communicating with third-party APIs, key exchanges, and storage/retrieval from databases. Some of the fun stuff that people fuck up regularly and which I would prefer not to.

Notes:

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  Per longtime friend Justin Freiberg, one of the perks of gaining a degree in English is that you are officially permitted to make up words. You’ll find I exercise this right at my whim.

Weird one today, in that interstitial week before Christmas, especially when it falls on a Monday. Felt unrooted, drifting. One of those days.

What I read

Re-read/re-watched the Joshua Weissman recipe video for Beef Wellington before hitting the store. I made this last year to considerable delight from the family, so gonna take another whack at it this year. Takes a few days of prep, but well worth the effort, and wasn’t, in the end, all that difficult.

What I watched

Caught up on the SNL Weekend Update between Che and Jost. The pre-Christmas joke-off is always delightful, but this year they feel like they’re really investing. A guest star for reaction shots was a masterstroke by Michael Che. Worth catching, if only to laugh groan with your whole body.

What I listened to

Mostly grocery store Christmas muzak, as I wandered around collecting bits for Monday’s dinner. I did queue up the new episode of Script Notes, the podcast by John August and Craig Mazin, with their guest Christopher Nolan and do a deeper dive on the Oppenheimer screenplay. Will probably have finished it by the time this posts (barring unexpected events).

Projects In Progress

Not a ton of progress on anything so far today. Going to take the post-dinner period and try to lock back in and move things forward. And if not? Well, then that’s how it went. Trying to also learn some self-forgiveness here, which I’m not historically very good at. Some days are just gonna be like that.

Long one today in the Input sections, so I’ll keep it short up here. We’re into Bowl Season, which I both love and regret, as the culmination and conclusion of the college football season. It’s great to see teams get the chance to celebrate a season and play one final game for joy, but it, to me, marks the true beginning of the darkest part of Winter. Here’s to the kids, and the games (and #GoBulls! 🤘).

What I read

This article in the Washington Post, “Pilots hide mental health problems so they don’t ‘lose their wings’”

My father was an airline pilot. He started out flying as an officer in the Air Force, then took a job at Republic Airlines, which was bought by Northwest, which was later merged with Delta. As such, I’ve heard many, many stories about the business from the flight deck. And everything in here tracks.

I remember stories about pilots he worked with with hidden drinking problems, with mental health issues, and one very memorable one about a pilot who would, he told me, claim to “float outside his body to examine the plane” like some sort of transcendental out of body experience.

My father flew wide-body jets much of his career. 747-400s, with hundreds of passengers on board. He used to tell me that his biggest fear was making a mistake that hurt people. That there was a persistent worry about “bending one.”

Towards the end of his career, and then his life, he went on a medical leave, for mental health issues.

At first I thought it was some sort of ploy. He was an expert at flying the contract, finding all of the advantageous rules and policies to maximize his earnings. Picking up trips at the last moment that the airline was desperate to staff, finding the right patterns of back-to-back flights where it was likely they’d have to replace him for delays and pay for his whole trip. He was a good pilot, but he went to school for computer science. He knew how to work a logical system like a pro.

But, in talking with him more, I learned that he was getting to a point where the stress and the mental weight of the job were catching up to him. Delta was retiring the 400, and he’d have to retrain on an entirely new airframe after a decade of experience, and didn’t know if he could do it. If he still had it in him.

More than anything, he was worried about doing something stupid in the sky. Hurting people. Hurting himself.

He took leave for the last few years of the job, then took a buyout rather than retrain. And then he died, not a year later. It was a heart attack, but I’m certain no small part of it was the stress of the responsibility, the pressure of the job raising the pressure inside him, until it finally gave out.

I sincerely hope this article can be a wakeup call for the FAA and the industry, especially as a massive chunk of their workforce ages out of the job. It’s time to make the changes needed to ensure the continued safety of the industry, the crews, and everyone that flies. The industry has adopted Just Culture as a way to improve procedures and mechanisms without the fear of hiding from blame. I hope they can extend the same to the role mental health plays in the lives of their employees, see it as an opportunity to treat the issue without judgment, and renew the faith of all in a system meant to keep everyone safe.

What I watched

Caught the first two episodes of World War II: From the Frontlines on Netflix. It’s incredible seeing some of this footage from theaters of the war that get short shrift in America.

From the invasion of Poland to the defense of the Russian frontier, to movement in North Africa, most of the American cultural experience is tangential at best. Our media and Hollywood love to focus on Europe from D-Day to VE Day, ignoring much of the African front, Italy, and the Allied experience in the East.

Hearing participants, from both sides of the war, discuss their personal experiences, alongside footage embedded within the conflict, is a sight to behold. Highly recommended.

What I listened to

Listened to albums from Blondshell and Sincere Engineer on the recommendation of Patrick Hicks, who I follow on TikTok. Patrick is a music historian and fan, and tells amazing stories about interesting backgrounds and crossovers and emergences in music.

A favorite is his story about how three fundamental components of black culture in the 90s all came through the same call center: https://www.tiktok.com/@patrickhicks82/video/7292817678169869610?lang=en

Projects In Progress

Webapp: Put some work into defining the classes and, thus, all the collected information I’d need defined to display data to users.