Jamie Todd Rubin's Blog, page 29

Unsolved Mysteries: Why the Car Sometimes Won’t Start

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We recently paid off our car, and so naturally, trouble began. It was intermittent at first. I’d go to start the car in the morning, all of the systems would come on, but the engine wouldn’t start. Eventually, I’d get the car started, either by jumping it, or trying again and again to get it started. At first this happened maybe once every other month. Then once every few weeks. More recenly, it happened 4 times in one week. I recorded it when it happened because our service people have told me that the video sometimes helps them diagnose the problem.

Now, I am troubleshooter at heart. I started at my job at the helpdesk (way back in 1994, before “I.T.” was a term) and I had an intuitive feel for troubleshooting. So I was methodical about documenting what happened when the car wouldn’t start and how I eventually got it to start. I noticed, for instance, that if I turned it and the engine didn’t start, if I waited 10 seconds, the engine would start. I had video showing this. Eventually, I took the car to the dealer, where I’ve known the service people for 12 years now.

They ran a full diagnostic and couldn’t find anything wrong. They suggested that they keep the car overnight so that they could start it cold in the morning. I agreed to this, but the next morning, when they started the car, it started fine, and all of the diagnostics checked out: battery, alternator, everything they tested was fine. It was frustrating. It reminded me of when people would ask me for help with some technical issue with their computer and then as soon as I showed up, it magically worked. It’s not that I wanted there to be something wrong with the car; it’s that I don’t want to end up stuck somewhere because the car won’t start.

As I said, we’ve worked with our service people for a long time. They don’t want to fix something that isn’t broken just to make a sale. Still, I wish I knew what was cauing the problem.

The car was fine when I started it this morning. Also, once the car is started, the problem doesn’t happen again for the rest of the day. So maybe it is a fluke. Still, my gut tells me that after having the car for five-and-a-half years without a problem, and for this suddenly to be a problem, that something has changed. We just don’t know what it is.

For now, we are just winging it. We are heading on our first ever ski trip in early March–just a weekend so the kids can experience skiing and see if they like it–and I was hoping to have this issue fixed before then. If it happens when we’re at home, it’s nothing for me to jump the car from our other car. Jumping the car always seems to get the car started instantly, even though the battery in the car passed all of its tests. But if we are at the ski resort and the car doesn’t start, it means a call to AAA to get it started.

Ah, well. We’ve been lucky with our cars overall. Our other car (which we only drive locally when our kids have to be at different places at the same time) is a 2003 model with more than 150,000 miles and is running just fine. So I probably shouldn’t complain. I just don’t like not knowing why something isn’t working. And what’s worse, all of my experimenting has not led to any clear conclusion onto why the car starts some mornings, but not others.

It’s a mystery. And I don’t like unsolved mysteries.

ETA: Since writing this post, the car has started every day. The folks at the dealer suggested that maybe I wasn’t stepping on the brake hard enough when starting the car. That didn’t make too much sense to me since I’ve been stepping on the break the same way for 5-1/2 years, but I think maybe they are onto something. I’ve stepped on the brake hard when starting the car each day, and no matter how cold it has been, it has started right away. To me that says there is a loose or frayed electronic connection somewhere, but it least the car starts normally now.

Written on February 16, 2022.

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Published on February 25, 2022 05:00

Baseball Is a Game Played in History

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This season1 Major League Baseball will institute a universal designated hitter rule. For readers who are not familiar with baseball, until 1973 pitchers had to come to bat at their turn in the lineup. In 1973, in the American League, a designated hitter was instituted. Pitchers would no longer come to bat. Instead, a player could be designed a batter in the lineup without having to play in the field. There are a variety of reasons for doing this, the most talked about one being that it makes the game more exciting because of the likelihood of more hits.

I don’t like the DH rule, even in the American League. Joe Posnanski makes a good case, however, for the general ridiculousness of pitchers attempting to hit. There is a trade off between those extra hits generated by a designated hitter, and the strategy of situation that often requires bunting, double-switches, and other tactics. For me, it feels like a dumbing down of the game in order to appeal to a wider audience.

What I have come to realize, however, is that baseball is a game played in history. We might experience it in the moment, if we catch a broadcast, or better yet, attend a game in person. But it is afterward that the game solidifies in our memory. It is after the game that we talk about it. Box scores and sports columns are the written historical records of the game. Even sitting in a ball park, watching a game, a bang-bang play often triggers a memory of another game we saw with a similar (or even better) play. A baseball game that unfold live before us is just the tip of the iceberg. The vast hidden remainder of that iceberg is what we think and say and write about the game once it is part of baseball history.

I find this comforting. I used to fret at every inexplicable change that was made to the game, often in the weak attempt at speeding up the pace of the game. But I have come to realize that baseball really is a game played in history. If want to watch a game without a designated hitter, I can find and old replay on TV or the Internet. Better yet, an old radio broadcast. Or a book on the game. Sportswriting, and baseball writing specifically, is among the finest of the American arts.

Baseball is also a game that seems more and more likely to be played in history going forward. As I write this the owners have locked out the players in a dispute over money. The owners want more. The players want more. In locking out the players, the owners have also locked out the fans. Baseball’s commissioner has said, “Simply put, we believe that an offseason lockout is the best mechanism to protect the 2022 season.” I think checking greed on both sides is probably a better mechanism. It seems utterly ridiculous to fans (at least this one) that billionaire owners and mulit-millionaire players are complaining about how much money they make.

For long-time fans, this is nothing new. In past labor negotiations, I’ve been completely behind the players. History shows how poorly the players were treated for the vast majority of the game. Now, however, it seems ridiculous. The players have given up most of what they were asking for, jettisoning those things that might have helped to improve the game in favor of going for the most important goal: money.

This time around, I’m diappointed with both the players and the owners. Let’s call this lockout what it: a shakedown. Let’s frame this lockout in a way that reflects reality, one that both the players and owners don’t want us to think of it: This is a fan lock-out. The players will be fine. The owners will be fine. They both seem to be under the misapprehension that fans are powerless in all of this. But, of course, we are not.

Fans can take action, too. After many years as a subscriber to MLB TV, I canceled my subscription before this season started as a protest. If there is a lockout, if spring training is delayed, if the season is likely to be delayed, why pay for it? And what if there is a season? No fan of the game can be happy with this situation. Players and owners expect that we will all come happily back. So do the networks that broadcast the games. I’m not sure I will, at least, not right away. As I said at the beginning, baseball is a game played in history. There are thousands of games I watch without watching the current season. There are thousands of books and articles I can read about the game without watching the current season. The only way real change will happen is if fans decide to lock out the owners and players: canceled subscriptions, season tickets. Tune out the broadcasts and read the papers instead, read the sportswriters, watch old games, find comfort in the joy of the game without the frustration that greed forces upon us.

Written on February 18, 2022.

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If there is a season. ↩

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Published on February 24, 2022 05:00

Rereading Books

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I was reading the new Ken Follett novel, Never recently and while it was interesting, it was moving too slowly for me. When a book isn’t working for me, I don’t hesitate, I set it aside. I set the Follett novel aside and began reading a book on the history of Ireland. We are planning a trip to Ireland this summer and I felt I needed to know something of the history of the place I am visiting. Still, the Follett novel had me wanting to read some spy novel just for fun.

Coincidentally, I introduced the boy to the film The Hunt for Red October not too long ago, and through that film, Jack Ryan and his exploits. I remember when I first read Tom Clancy back in the late 1990s. I found a tattered copy of Debt of Honor at the Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood and I tore through that book faster than I had any book in quite some time. It ends in a cliff-hanger so I immediately read Executive Orders. Once I finished that, I went back to the beginning and red the other Jack Ryan novels.

It occurred to me that maybe I could re-read the Jack Ryan novels–at least the first 8 that Clancy wrote himself–to satisfy my spy novel craving. It got me thinking about re-reading books in general.

I wrote about this several years ago, giving the reasons why I occasionally re-read books. Looking at that post, my reasons still hold up. I re-read a book when I’ve really enjoyed it. I sometimes re-read when I don’t remember much from the first time around. Then, too, re-reading often brings out additional context because I’ve read more widely since the previous reading. Re-reading a book because I enjoyed it is often the case with fiction; re-reading for memory or context I do mostly with nonfiction.

The book that I have re-read most is Isaac Asimov’s memoir, I. Asimov, which I have read 15 times. I used to read all 3 of Asimov’s autobiography volumes each April, starting with this one. It has been nearly 12 years since I last read that book, however. I re-read less than I used to.

I’ve re-read the complete Foundation series at least 5 times. I’ve read my current favorite novel, Stephen King’s 11/22/63, seven times, most recently in 2018. I’ve read my favorite presidential biography, John Adams by David McCullough, three times.

I’ve read Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle twice, and I would read the books again, if I saw an official announcement that book 3, The Doors of Stone had a release date.

I’ve read my favorite essay collection, One Man’s Meat by E. B. White, five times. That is my go-to book when I get stuck and can’t figure out what to read next.

Only once have I read a book and then immediately re-read it. That was Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run. I read it while on vacation in Florida in December 2016, and when I finished it, I went right back and read it again.

As for Tom Clancy, I have read the first three Jack Ryan books twice. So if I do end up reading them again, it will make for a third time.

Sometimes I feel guilty about re-reading books. The time I spent re-reading a book is the time I could be spending seeking new territory, so to speak. But then I remember that I generally re-read something I enjoyed, and I can’t complain about doing something that I enjoy now, can it?

Written on February 15, 2022.

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Published on February 23, 2022 05:00

Practically Paperless with Obsidian, Episode 19: Archiving Notes

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Welcome to my blog series, “Practically Paperless with Obsidian.” For an overview of this series, please see Episode 0: Series Overview.

Why bother archiving notes?

During the years I used Evernote, I accumulated more than 12,000 notes, most of them still sitting in my Evernote notesbooks to this day. My goal then was to see if a paperless lifestyle was really possible, so everything went into Evernote. Over time, this resulted in some interesting observations:

Of the 12,000 notes I put into Evernote, between 100-200 were notes that I used on a regular basis (that’s about 0.8 – 1.6%)Another 100-200 notes were notes that I used periodically, usually annually, but sometimes more frequently.The rest of the notes I almost never touched or even looked at. That means I collected around 11,500 notes (96% of all the notes) that I never put to any use.

This created some unexpected problems:

It takes time to get a note into Evernote, whether dragging a PDF onto a note, scanning a document, or setting up some automation to get a note into the system. I was scanning in documents that I was never looking at again. That’s a waste of time.I had a process for processing a note — tagging it, updating its create date to reflect the document date, etc. I did this for every note I put in Evernote. But again, since I actually only used less than 2% of the notes I put in, this was also a waste of time.The notes, having been captured in Evernote, and parsed by Evernote’s search system to make the notes searchable, added a lot of noise to my searches. That is, these notes that I never used and never looked at would show up in search results because of some keyword in the document or note somewhere. This impeded the process of finding notes that I was looking for.

Evernote did not have a particularly good mechanism for identifying notes to archive. Ideally, what I would have liked to do is a search for all notes that were not viewed in a given period of time. Alas, while Evernote has the concept of a “create date” and an “updated date” for a note, it does not have a concept for “last viewed on” date. That made archiving tricky–too tricky for me to waste time trying it on the volume that I had to deal with.

As I began to migrate from Evernote to Obsidian, I had these problems in mind, and I was determined not to fall into the same trap with Obsidian.

One way to do this was to reframe my original goal with Evernote. There, I was experimenting to see if completely paperless lifestyle was possible. It was, but it generated a lot of unnecessary notes and noise. When I began using Obsidian, I asked myself, what would a paperless lifestyle look like in a practical sense, as opposed to an extreme? A few ideas came to mind:

my notes would be working notes in that they contributed in some practical way to my day-to-day work and life.some of these notes might be part of an historical record, even though they might not be used every day (think: older daily notes, journals, etc.)some of these notes would be “permanent notes” in the Zettelkasten way, and while I might not access them everyday, they would become part of a useful personal knowledge system.

Perhaps most important: I needed a mechanism for keeping my notes “working notes.” I needed a way to review my notes and archive ones that are no longer active.

Retiring notes

First, what does it mean to archive? For me, archiving a note is a way of taking it out of active duty without losing it entirely. I think of it as “retiring” a note. A note or set of notes contains accumulated knowledge. That knowledge may no longer been needed on a day-to-day basis. It woudl be useful to have a way of archiving those notes so that they didn’t clutter up searches.

The framework I’ve evolved (through much trial and error) for organizing my notes provided a clue for how I might retire notes, and get them out of the way without losing them. Recall from Episode 18, that within Obsidian, the vast majority of my notes end up in one of three folders: _attachments, _documents, and _slipbox. The rest of my organization is hierarchy to maps of content (MOC) notes that provide context and links to the notes in those three folders

To that framework, I have added a new folder, which I call _archive. Notes that are ready to be retired can be moved into this folder. By having all of my retired notes in a single folder, I can use Obsidian’s query language to exclude anything in that folder from a search. For instance, if I was searching for all notes tagged with “taxes” and only wanted my “active” notes (that is, notes that are not retired), I could run the following query:

The first part of the query is important. As you can see in the search explanation, I am deliberately excluding anything in the _archive folder. This takes care of the noise problem I had in Evernote. For common searches, you can imagine setting up saved searches each of which is prefaced with that exclusion pattern.

This nice thing about this is that the notes don’t really go away:

They are right there in the _archive folder should I happen to need them.I can still surface them in searches them by leaving off the path exclusion.Because I move them into the _archive folder, any links to the notes are automatically updated by Obsidian.Identifying notes to retireUnopened notes

For me, this is the tricky part. I’d prefer a hard-and-fast rule. MacOS and Linux, for instance, can track when a file was last opened, which is different from when it was last updated. This is an important distinction. Once a note is in place, it often doesn’t change. The only empirical way I can tell if I looked at is to look at the last opened date on the file.

Example of a search for files last opened more than a year ago.

The problem is that Obsidian (on MacOS, at least) does not seem to update the last opened date of a note when the note is opened in Obsidian. I think this is worth a feature request and I made such a request on the forums recently. Other MacOS apps will update the “last opened” date when the file is opened. For instance, a PDF opened in the Preview app will update the last opened date on a note, but viewing that same PDF in Obsidian does not update that date.

The reason that date is important is because it would allow me to setup a query, at the very least at the OS level, to find all notes that have not been opened in more than, say, one year. These would be good candidates for retirement.

Of course, that is first cut, and fairly liberal. A more conservative search might be all notes that are not in my _slipbox folder that have not been opened in more than one year. Over time, that query could be refined. Periodically, I could move any matches to the _archive folder.

Manual review

Short of that, a manual review would be required. Fortunately, because my goal for Obsidian is different than Evernote (practically paperless, remember?) I don’t put nearly as many notes into Obsidian as I do Evernote. I keep the practical stuff in Obsidian. That means in the first 14 months that I’ve been using Obsidian, I’ve accumulated just 900 notes — and even some of those are probably worthy of review and culling.

There are a few things that can help this manual review. One is look for notes that haven’t been updated in more than a year. That provides something to look at, but it is not as good as being able to look at notes that haven’t been opened in more than a year.

Regardless of how I end up identifying notes to retire, the process, once identified is pretty simple:

Add a YAML frontmatter key to the note to indicate which folder the note was originally located. This extra step makes it easy to put the note back in the right place if it ever needs to come out of retirement.Move the note into the _archive folder.

Not everyone needs to, or wants to archive their notes. My experience shows that, for me, this is useful to keep my notes in working order, and to avoid clutter. It was something I thought about as I began bringing my notes over from Evernote. I haven’t yet started to archive notes in Obsidian, but I have a framework in place for when I am ready to do so.

Next time, in Episode 20, I’ll discuss how I’ve been experimenting and making use of the Dataview plug-in. See you back here in a week!

Prev: Episode 18: How I Organize My Notes
Next: Episode 20: How I’ve Been Using the Dataview Plugin

Written on February 21, 2022.

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Published on February 22, 2022 05:00

A Statistically Impossible Stoplight and Other Mundane Mysteries

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There is a statstically impossible stoplight about three miles west of my house. The stoplight is an anamoly, a discontinuity in the spacetime continuum. In the 13 years that I have lived in the area, driving west toward the light, I have never approached it when it was green. It is always red when I approach it.

How is this possible? The law of averages should give me a better than 0% chance of approaching this light while it is still green instead of red. Even if the timing of the light gives preference to the traffic flowing north-south in a 2-to-1 ratio, then I should still approach it with it is green at least a third of the time.

And yet, as I drove toward it once again this morning to take a car for service, it was red. It is always red when I approach. No other light in the 34 years I have been driving has been as red as this one. I just don’t understand it.

Sometimes the light teases me. I see it in the distance, glowing green, and when I get close enough to think I might actually make it through, it turns yellow and I screech to a halt. I can never seem to get the timing right. The light always defeats me. You’d think that at least once I could make it through the light when it was green, but in 13 years it has not happened.

There is a sink in our master bath that takes a really long time for hot water to flow. I can put on the hot water, walk away, and a minute later, it will be tepid. Another minute and it will be warm. Give it one more minute and it is finally hot. I don’t understand it. When I wash dishes, the hot water in the kitchen seems to be instantaneous. There is a bathroom downstairs for which the hot water is also very quick. All of the showers in the house heat up quickly. It is just this one sink that takes its time. I can’t explain it.

It is annoying because it is the bathroom I use most frequently. In the summer I don’t mind so much, and will often luxuriate in the feeling of the ice cold water when I wash my hands. In the winter, it is almost unbearable. It hurts to wash my hands in water that cold. Sometimes, I will walk to the kitchen and wash my hands there because I know the water will be warm quickly.

Strange as it may seem, when I wake up in the middle of the night and look at the clock, chances are 10-to-1 that the clock will read 12:34 am. For some reason, I always seem to wake up at 12:34 am. I can’t explain it. It is an strange time to wake up given the coincidence of the time making up the first four of the counting numbers. I sometimes think that if I could see the seconds, they would read :56. Sometimes I will wake up and deliberately not look at the clock. I figure if I wait a minute or two before I look at the clock, it will be at leaste 12:35 when I finally break down and look. When I do this, the clock always seems to read: 12:34. It’s like I am stuck in some kind of time warp.

These are just of few of the mundane mysteries I deal with on a daily basis. Do you have any mundate mysteries that you can’t explain? Let me hear about them in the comments.

Written on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2022.

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Published on February 21, 2022 05:00

Blog Quality Assurance

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I am frequently reminded just how kind and understanding my readers are when they write, politely, to point out typos and other infelicities in my posts. There is never any sense of annoyance with these typos. Indeed, the feeling I get from these readers is the same feel I recall getting from teachers who wanted me to succeed. I try to respond to these readers quickly by thanking them, and fixing the problems that they have pointed out.

Of course, it isn’t my readers’ responsibility to ensure that my posts are typo-free. That burden rests with me. I have excuses for this. I have often borrowed Isaac Asimov’s excuse for having typos in his manuscripts: I willingly trade accuracy for speed. I have limited time during the day and I write these posts quickly, and I don’t always re-read them after I write them, even though I always intend to. But I can and should do better.

Interestingly, I am fastidious about bugs in code I write. I take extra pains to handle exceptions, and I work closely with our quality assurance team to make sure that they uncover anything I’ve missed before the actual users of the software find them. It seems only fair that I treat my readers the same way.

In traditional publications, this quality assurance often happens at the editorial level, with editors and proofreaders going through a piece to make sure no such errors exist–or to minimize them to the best of their ability. With a standalone blog, I am writer, editor, and proofreader. I’m pretty good at about one-third of that job.

But I am trying to do better–for the sake of those readers who stick around, and are kind enough to politely point out my mistakes. And I think I’ve hit on a way to do this. For the last month or so, I have been aiming to write two posts each day, which allows me to build up a scheduled backlog of posts, and gives me breathing room for particularly busy days when I can’t get any writing done, or when I am too mentally drained to write. This post, for instance, is being written on February 11, 2022, but it is likely that you won’t be reading it until at least a week later.

It occurred to me that this delay has some advantages. In the past, I’d write a post and publish it almost within the same breath. Now, with a delay between writing and publishing of a week or more, I can get some distance between myself and the post. I’ve often found that distance helps me see what I’ve written more clearly. In addition, I’ve started a process whereby I review the next day’s schedule post the night before it is due to be published. This review allows me to re-read the post with some distance, and provides me with an opportunity to catch typos, correct errors in logic, and sometimes even, completely rewrite a post1.

I’m not saying that this new process will eliminate all of the typos that end up in my posts. But it is my attempt to do better. Readers deserve that effort.

Written on February 11, 2022.

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As happened with my recent post on book banning which, in its original form was a completely different approach than the one I ended up going with. ↩

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Published on February 20, 2022 05:00

Reading for the Week of 2/13/2022

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Here is what I read this week. Some of the articles/posts may require a subscription to read them. I also share my recommended reads on Pocket for anyone who wants to follow along there.

BooksGave up Never by Ken Follett. These days, when I read fiction, I am looking to be entertained. I was in the mood for a spy-thriller, and I liked the sound of this book, but it started a little too slowly for me. Maybe I’ll go back to it someday.Finished Reading The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy (re-read). Not long ago, I introduced the boy to the film version of The Hunt for Red October and with that in mind, and still wanting to read a spy-thriller, I decided to re-read the book. I forgot how good the book was. It was Clancy’s first, and possibly his best. I say possibly because my memory of his other books (which I first read in the 1990s) is a little fuzzy.In Progress Patriot Games by Tom Clancy (re-read). Since I enjoyed re-reading the first Jack Ryan book so much, I figured why stop? A Short History of Ireland, 1500-2000 by John Gibney. We have a family trip to Ireland planned for later in the year. I figure I need to bone-up on my Irish history beforehand.Articles/posts Why Small Towns Are Attracting More Newcomers by Eduardo Porter and Stacy Kranitz (NY times, 2/12/22) #economyThe Ottawa Trucker Protests Are a Test of Democracy by The Editorial Board (NY Times, 2/10/22)The Inceedible Vanishing Trump Presidency by David A. Graham (Atlantic, 2/9/22) #politicsHow McConnell Hopes to Thwart Trump in the Midterms by Jonathan Martin (NY Times, 2/13/22) #politicsThe two sides of Youngkin: Virginia’s new governor calls for unity but keeps stoking volatile issu by Gregory Schneider and Laura Vozzella (Washington Post, 2/13/22) #politicsA Designated Hitter for All by Joe Posnanski (Substack, 2/11/22). As always, Joe has sensible things to say about the DH. As a baseball purist, I lean toward no DH, but Joe has some convincing arguments for its value today. #baseballHappy Movies by Joe Posnanski (Substack, 1/27/22). This was a wonderful post where Joe listed out his 10 favorite “happy” movies of all time. When I finished reading the post, I immediately went and re-watched That Thing You Do, which I hadn’t seen since it was first released in theaters. #filmIgnorance Is Bliss – Melanie Novak (blog, 2/13/22). We were at the Presque Isle Lighthouse on our roadtrip this summer, so it was nice to see what the place looked like in the depth of winter. #travelUse Obsidian’s Plugin Responsibly · Davide Aversa #notesAccounting Firm Cuts Ties With Trump and Retracts Financial Statements by Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum (NY Times, 2/14/22)Travel in the Pandemic Can Be Liberating by Andrew McCarthy (NY Times, 2/14/22). I enjoy travel writing, and of course, remember McCarthy from his brat-pack days. I had no idea he was a travel writer today. #travel50 Before 50 by Kate Jones (Writer In Residence, 1/24/2022). I will turn 50 this year, so this post caught my eye. #readingFlat Earth Beliefs by Mike Dariano (The Waiter’s Pad, 2/14/22). Mike always has interesting posts and this is one of them.Come and Get It (1936): Bad Adaptation, Great Film – Melanie Novak by Melanie Novak (blog, 2/16/22) #filmBram Stoker, Dracula, and Progress Studies by Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution, 2/14/22). I recently re-read Dracula and so it was still fresh in my mind when I read this piece. #literatureHey, Larry David, Your Super Bowl Commercial Was Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Bad by Timothy Noah ( New Republic, 2/15/22) #personal-financeJournaling with txt files (raffy1’s Blog, 2/16/22). Some interesting thoughts on journaling with text files and the pros and cons and tools involved. #journal

The Value of Consistent Naming Conventions by Eleanor Konik (Obsidian Roundup, 2/17/22) #theme/theory-of-notesOur Country is Filled with Problems; Reading Too Many Books Isn’t One of Them by Ryan Holiday (blog, 2/17/22). A must-read on book-banning in the U.S. #theme/value-of-readingPitchers and Catchers by Joe Posnanski (JoeBlogs, 2/17/22) #sports/baseballThat broken tech/content culture cycle by Anil Dash (blog, 2/9/22)

Any recommendations for books, articles or posts I should read? Let me know in the comments?

Written on February 19, 2022.

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Published on February 19, 2022 13:00

Details Matter

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There have been some improvements to the paperwork involved in doctor’s visits. In the past I have complained about filling out countless forms with the same information again and again, and how wasteful that seemed. It made me reluctant to even schedule a routine appointment for fear of the paperwork under which I would be buried. A year or two ago, however, my doctors’ office switched to an app that handles most of this for you. The app has all of my current information. I can schedule appointments through it, can get lab results, communicate with my doctor, see my prescriptions. All-in-all, as a patient, I’ve been pretty impressed by it.

As a software developer and one who manages software projects, however, there is at least one thing that bothers me about it: a lack of attention to certain details in the process–and details matter.

I scheduled my annual physical late last year using the app. My physical was scheduled for early in February. On the day of the appointment, I got up, had breakfast, and headed to the doctor. I used the app to check in, saw my doctor, and everything seemed quick and efficient. But by the time I’d finished chatting with the doctor at the end, and realized he was sending me home, I said, “Am I supposed to get blood drawn for the blood work?”

He said that he’d ordered the labs, had anyone told me about it?

They hadn’t.

Had I eaten in the last 8 hours?

I had.

He seemed puzzled. I explained that I made my appointment through the app. I told him that in the past, when I called for an appointment, they told me that there would be blood work. That was followed by a reminder email the day before, telling me I should not eat after midnight of the day of my appointment.

The doctor considered this and then said that this would explain why some patients weren’t getting this notice. Apparently, if you made your appointment through the app, this reminder wasn’t happening. Details matter.

When I checked out, I made a follow-up appointment (not through the app) to have the blood work done a few days later. It meant having to trek back to the doctor’s office, paying for parking again, fasting until the appointment was over, but I did it.

Later that afternoon, the results of my blood work arrived in my app. Everything was normal. But I wonder if anyone has reported this oversight with the app scheduler that I uncovered. And I wonder for next year: should I use the app to make my appointment, or just call?

Also, later that afternoon, I got a survey to see how well my blood work appointment went.

Written on February 10, 2022.

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Published on February 19, 2022 05:00

Some Notes on The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro

I am fascinated by presidential biographies. Part of the fascination stems from a love of history, and part from an interest in the mechanics of a job that no one is ever qualified for, until they’ve held it. I’m particularly fond of in-depth, multivolume biographies. I thoroughly enjoyed Edmund Morris’s 3-volumes on Theodore Roosevelt. And I was also impressed by Dumas Malone’s 6-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson and His Time. In 2019 I began tackling Robert A. Caro’s mutltivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson, and today, I finsihed reading the fourth and most recent volume, The Passage of Power.

This book was the best of the lot so far, and it was so good, I could hardly bear to put it down. That says a lot when it comes to Caro, not because his books are so long, but because his subjects frequently infuriate me to such an extent that I sometimes have to set the books aside for a time to allow me to cool off. This happened to me in 2018 when I read The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. It happened to me again while reading volume 3 of his Johnson bio, Master of the Senate. Johnson (and Moses) are complex characters (Johnson seems more complex than Moses) and I found myself cheering for Johnson at times and furious with him at other times while reading Master of the Senate.

The Passage of Power covers the time period beginning with the 1960 election campaign, where Johnson runs-but-doesn’t-run for president and is ultimately picked as Kennedy’s vice president, and continues through the assassination to the beginning of the 1964 election campaign, a period of about four years. In that time, Johnson is completely taken down and then built up again, and it made for a fascinating read.

I appreciate how deep Caro goes in these biographies. They not just about Johnson but about his times and those around him. There was a mini-biography of Richard Russel in an earlier volume that could have been a stand-alone. In this latest volume, there was a similar dive into John F. Kennedy, and to a lesser extent, Bobby Kennedy. You can’t understand Johnson’s presidency without understand those two men, and it made for fascinating reading.

I finished the book wanting more, and therein lies the rub. Because as I write this, Caro is 86 years old and still deep into the research of the 5th and final book, which won’t be just a biography of Johnson, but also a history of the Vietnam War. In several placs in the present volume Caro mentions a subject that will be covered in the final volume–an investigation into Johnson’s finances; Johnson’s reelection campaign; his term from 1964-68, and Vietnam are just some examples. But I worry: will he finish in time?

It is not unprecedented for an author not to finish such a vast work. William Mancheter died before completing the final volume of his biography of Winston Churchill and had picked someone to finish it for him. I hope Caro has this kind of succession planning in mind because I really want to read that second volume now. When I first started reading the Johnson biography, he was among the presidents I was least interested in. Caro’s four volumes have changed that and I can’t wait to read more.

Written on February 7, 2022.

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Published on February 18, 2022 05:00

Reacher on Amazon Prime Is Amazing

I read my first Jack Reacher book, The Killing Floor by Lee Child, in 2015. I enjoyed it. It was fun. I read a second one in late 2016. Again, it was fun and I enjoyed the book. Then in February 2018, I was down for more than a week with the flu (it was one of those years when the vaccine wasn’t very effective) and I went on a Reacher binge. I read 4 Jack Reacher novels in that week. I read three more in the week that followed, and four more the week after that. By April 1, 2018 I’d made it through 21 Jack Reacher novel. These were light reading. They were fun: Reacher is a fantasy character, the tough guy who isn’t intimidated by anyone. Since then, I’ve kept up with the Reacher books, and while the most recent book, Better Off Dead was not nearly as good, the core of those first 21 books were solid, enjoyable, entertaining reads.

I’ve seen the two Jack Reacher movies starring Tom Cruise, and like many Reacher fans, I puzzled over the casting of Cruise as Reacher. Reacher is huge: 6′ 5″. Cruise is not huge. Reacher hold himself in a certain way that Cruise just couldn’t match on the screen.

A while back Lee Child hinted that there might be a Reacher series in the future, and on February 4, the new Reacher series debuted on Amazon Prime. I’d been looking forward to it for a while, and I have to say that I was not disappointed. In fact, I was blown away by it. Alan Ritchson is the perfect Jack Reacher — I say this as someone who has read all of the books (and short stories). Not only is he the right size, but the way he carries himself, his bearing, his expressions, his attitude is perfect Reacher.

Fans of the books know the typical Reacher refrain: “Reacher said nothing.” Ritchson conveys this through expressions alone many times throughout the first season, something that I think is harder than it sounds. His face shows what he is thinking while he says nothing.

The books have detailed fight scenes that kind of happen in slow motion so that every punch and kick can be described. Reacher comes across as a powerful fighter. Watching Ritchson in the new series, and contrasting his style of fighting to Tom Cruise in the movies, Ritchson is that powerful fighter that Reacher is supposed to be.

There were other gems in the first season, which covers the very first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor, not altering too much, except the timeframe (a few years later than the books). One gem was the appearance of Frances Neagley, one of my favorite recurring characters from the books. I can’t be certain, but I don’t htink Neagley appeared in the first Reacher novel. She appears in the series and I was so excited to see her there.

Another little (spoiler-free) gem was a scene in the final episode of the season when Reacher walks into a diner and kind of bumps shoulder with a patron walking out. The patron, about as tall as Ritchson, although lanky, excuses himself, and walks out. Fans will recognize that patron as none other than Lee Child.

The only downside I found in the new series was that it was too short for me. I burned through the eight epiodes in two days, and now, will likely have to wait a year or more before I get to see Ritchson playing Reacher again. I wonder which novel they will be this time. Already I can’t wait.

Written on February 4, 2022.

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Published on February 17, 2022 05:00