Book Info Title: The Calculating Stars Author: Mary Robinette Kowal ISBN: 9780765378385 Pages: 421 Summary An alternate post WWII history where an extinction level meteor wipes out Washington DC and most of the US government. The main character is a “computer”, a women who calculates mathematical problems for engineers in the fledgling space program. Elma is a Jew from the south, was a WASP during the war and has dreams of becoming an astronaut.

After missing my reading goal last year I attempted to set a more realistic goal this year of 40 books. Considering I read 45 books last year I thought hitting 40 would be easy. I completed the challenge just under the wire finishing book number 40 with two days to spare. I hit a similar wall this year in the November time frame, although I don’t have the excuse of being tripped up by a Brandon Sanderson tome.

For as long as I can remember I’ve loved to read. Much to my Mom’s annoyance I had a started book in every room of the house. But at some point I developed the habit of re-reading the same books over and over. If I found myself bored I would grab a random pulp fiction book, open to a random page and start reading. I wanted to do better and start attacking the growing list of books on my reading wish list.

My college days coincided with the rise of linux. I loved Having a “server” operating system at my fingertips and having access to a shell has been part of my workflow for almost two decades. When I graduated from college I needed to replace my school shell account with something else. I wanted my own website and mail using a custom domain. Many of the service providers we now take for granted were years from existence.

One year ago I resolved to begin producing on the internet. So I started an Instagram account to chronicle my attempts at making cocktails. Now one year and 83 cocktails later I’ve grown my bar and my skills. But being a nerd I also had to pull some stats. I’ve made 83 different cocktails The most commonly used ingredient in Lemon Juice (31) The most commonly used alcohol ingredient is Gin (23) I’ve used 33 unique ingredients not including bitters The smallest cocktail had three ingredients The largest cocktail had eight ingredients I’ve sourced the most cocktails from Cocktail Virgin Blog (23) with Common Man Cocktails coming in second (13) I owe much of my inspiration to those two sources.

I remember watching a documentary (or maybe it was Pushing Tin) about air traffic controllers who passed around small pieces of paper with flight information. As an aircraft would transition from approach to ground control to departure the triangles would be passed from person to person. Last night my team moved 27 critical pieces of equipment that run our entire business It took us countless hours of prep and five hours of execution.

Warbreaker Brandon Sanderson But he’d found that imaginary things were often the only items of real substance in people’s lives. pg. 159 Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity. pg. 311 After all anyone with a strong faith different from your own must either be a crazy zealot or a laying manipulator. pg. 543

The Goal Eliyahu M Goldratt “A bottleneck, Jonah continues, is any resource whose capacity is equal to or less than the demand placed upon it. And a non-bottleneck is any resource whose capacity is greater than the demand placed on it.” pg. 138 “…when I was a physicist, people would come to me from time to time with problems in mathematics they couldn’t solve. they wanted me to check their numbers for the, But after a while I learned not to waste my time checking the numbers – because the numbers were almost always right.

Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson Steve wasn’t much of an engineer himself, but he was very good at assessing people’s answers. He could tell whether the engineers were defensive or unsure of themselves. Pg 100 “Steve had a tendency to look at vulnerabilities and neuroses and turn them into spiritual attributes.” Joanna Hoffman pg. 263

What Do You Care What Other People Think Richard P. Feynman “That story was probably incorrect in detail, but what he was telling me was right in principle.” pg. 15 “Your situation is just an accident of life.” pg. 51 “They got all excited and began to describe the problem to me. I’m sure they were delighted, because technical people love to discuss technical problems with technical people who might have an opinion or suggestion that could be useful.