All's well here at The Dispatch. The snails are getting really into crystals and meditation. Some of them tried to do a silent meditation for the whole week. But after about twenty minutes they broke for lunch and then didn't really pick it back up. They watched some zen, vibey videos on Youtube and drank a bunch of herbal tea though. With all the low-energy activity and the time change, most of them are asleep now.

Game Boy 👾

• Dungeons and Dragons
  • Still playing most weeks with the group at The Gathering Place bar in Chapel Hill
  • Finding a good groove with the characters and the actual people too
• Call of Cthulhu
  • Played for a second time with the boys online
  • Really like the focus on investigation and conversation with others
  • Easier to goof off and not get stuck in long combat
• Still playing a lot of Magic Arena, but starting to feel a lull

Coding Corner 👨🏻‍💻

• airalo
  • My boss recommended me this service for cell service when we're overseas
  • Will need to dig into it more but seems promising
• Emotions at work
  • Was talking with friends about their work environments over the weekend and people were complaining about managers that were tone-deaf to people's feelings
  • Too often it's just assumed that work-life balance means a separation and not an integration, especially with software development or engineering work where "work items" are imagined to be concrete and discrete
  • As a leader/manager you have to account for the emotions of the people who work with you because working together is emotional and if you're ignoring that, then it's additional work for others (and gets magnified the more people work under you)
  • Being a good software developer doesn't correspond directly to being a good manager or team lead

Albums 🎧

• "Black Messiah" by D'Angelo
  • "Back in Richmond"; feels homey even though it also doesn't feel like a musical tradition I'm used to; in the pocket
• "Burn Your Fire For No Witness" by Angel Olsen
  • Needed to get me through an afternoon of work; calm, focused sonic space
• "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac
  • Had been waking up singing "Dreams"; easy to sing along to; becoming more familiar and embedded
• "Radical Romantics" by Fever Ray
  • Advertised as "electronic", but was more vocals-forward than I would have thought; some reminded me of Animal Collective; want to listen to it again more deeply

TV Shows & Movies🍿

• The Last of Us
  • Still great; excited for the season finale tonight
• Attack on Titan
  • Getting deeper into some weird lore and revealing more about the world; still engaged
• National Lampoon's Vacation
  • Wow, some of it is funny, but the bulk of it did not age well
  • Not sure if it makes me feel better or worse about Christmas Vacation