Week of August 5, 2019

It was a pretty tame week at 53.5° north, at least for matters outside of work. Probably the best metric for how focused the week was on work is that there are no new words to share this week.

​As of today (August 11), we are 85 days - a mere 2040 hours - until we launch the first wave of our new clinical information system. There is no time, budget, or oxygen for anything beyond that deployment. The first meeting of the day is regularly starting at 07:00, and for some of my co-workers the start of the day is 06:00. The fact that I finished anything beyond work items is a fairly significant accomplishment this week. But even so, there were still a few things worth sharing. 

New Beers:
Three new beers this week, and three badges on Untappd. The first was a local beer, the Session Ale from Sea Change Brewing. Good stuff but seemed stronger than 4.0% ABV, which makes it hard to see as a Session. Stil, well worth searching it out if you can get it in your area. Second was a forgettable pale ale from Wildrose, the Industrial Park Ale. Quite a shame, since I really like Wild Rose and was hoping for more from this beer. Third was a collaboration between Parallel 49 and Luppolo. The We've Got it Going On saison was fermented with wine yeast, which was a new experience for me. The beer had a nice sweetness that I assume was from the wine yeast. That one gave me the Middle of the Road (Level 56), Beer Together (Level 2), and The Great White North (Level 84) badges on Untappd. 

Reading Pile and Podcasts:
I didn't finish any books this week, and only listened to one podcast. That was the Planet Money episode, "Twins". The key point from that episode is understanding what can be learned from studying twins to gain a better understanding of the nature versus nurture influences which can then influence and guide public policy. However, the episode does caution about how easy it is to slip into the morally bankrupt investigation of eugenics. This episode had limited hooks into economics, but was still a good use of 22 minutes. 

Movie - Blackkklansman
I watched the trailer for Blackkklansman and seriously thought it was going to be a light, easy-going move. My first hint that I was mistaken was seconds in when "A Spike Lee Joint" popped on the screen. I also didn't realize it was based on a true story (or at least based on a book that was based on a true story). 

This was a serious movie, and was filled with intense scenes. The resurgence of neo-Nazi groups across the US and Canada makes this movie incredibly relevant. Violence, real and threatened, pulsed through most scenes fueled by open racism and hatred. 

If I ever get a chance to talk to Spike Lee, I want to ask him about the scene near the end of the movie where Harry Belafonte relays a horrific incident from his youth that is interposed with scenes from a Klan baptism. "Black Power" chants echo from one scene, followed by chants of "White Power" in the next. I would ask Lee if he was trying to show how any group grasping for power is bad, or whether the point was to remind the viewer of how few years ago the black power chants were relegated to the fringes of society while the white power chants are becoming more common. 

BYDTWD:
(Reminder: BYDTWD = Bring Your Dice To Work Day)  Even though the work week is remarkably intense and getting longer each week, we still find time to play D&D over the lunch hour each Wednesday. Our DM is throwing a bevy of Gelatinous Cubes at us, which we have managed to escape so far through a combination of luck and strategy. However, some garbage-pile-looking brute (no idea what the creature it was) hammered our cleric, who promptly rolled a Natural 1 on his first death save, so we are one turn away from losing a player and our healer. 

If you are so inclined, here is a link to my character, and my first attempt at creating a homebrew item on D&D Beyond. The cloak is something that our DM provided each of our characters and in order to make sure we all got the +3 AC bonus, I thought I would create and share a homebrew item. 

I have to say that D&D Beyond has a lot of really great features. The homebrew items are great, as is the ability for one person to share access to resources such as the Dungeon Master's Guide or Player's Handbook. However, the PDF export functionality of the player character sheet sucks. The output is ugly, the text in the boxes is truncated, and there is no ability to customize what gets exported. Nothing is perfect, but for those of us that still want to have a paper character sheet while we play, the PDF export is a real problem. 

​That's it for this week. Hopefully this upcoming week will provide some opportunity for interesting notes to share.