Con of the North 2026: Sunday - Day 3

 Yeah. This is a lot of board gaming. But I’m down to the last two. My first Sunday game was Salvage: Deep Space, a 2023 Kickstarter. Although there are an awful lot of games you can apply the Kickstarter label to now. I have a suspicion I own more Kickstarter-backed games and extensions than I do non-socially funded ones, taking a cursory glance at my shelf. I really enjoyed this one. You’re part of a group of collaborative mechs, big mechs you pilot, but not kaiju-fighting sized mechs, trying to salvage post-peak Earth gear and equipment and resources while worrying about alien bugs. e.g. you’re in old labs and mining facilities doing a bit of Stalker/Roadside Picnic.

An interesting aspect of the game is that to avoid the collaborative player dictator that so often happens in that time of game, Salvage has you play your two proposed actions with no discussion at the beginning of the turn to mimic a sort of soft telepathy between players as a plot point. To force individuals to make their own decisions but telegraph the likely play as a collaborative mechanic. If you do your proposed actions, or they’re completed as a side effect of someone else doing the same action, like a bug kill, then those successes play into players being able to recharge their systems faster and act together better with some perks. At any time you can just go off script, although it affects the overall perks you work to accumulate. Different mechs have different specialties, focusing on resource accumulation, tank, speed, and balanced play.

I played Al (not A.I., AL) the balanced mech pilot, but channeled a healthy dose of Leroy Jenkins. While everyone was in an area doing cleanup, even before the fighting was complete, I’d just charge ahead to the next area. My plan wasn’t specifically about staying in character, but rather was with the hope it might allow us to finish within our 4 hour block. It did! Barely. I think the team was surprised when I charged ahead, looking like I was setting myself up for disaster, and then my character was able to power sword two of the last bugs at the same time for a double kill and step back and let the last one charge me resulting in a stun. My other goal was to try all my perks and the sword and stun were last on my list. Mission accomplished. It’s not a cheap game. About $159-199 depending on the version: minis or no minis (and you’ll want the minis). But if you had a scifi-centric group of consistent players, it’d be a good one to play through the series and you’d get better value than going to movies or maybe even one of the standard streaming subs.

A big thanks to Ben, a different Ben than the zombies Ben and yet, afterwards I find out, both apparently software managers. He did an excellent job walking us through the basics and giving us some course correction when we were confused. Pretty seamless and included lots of detail about the mechs, the story line, and the interactions.

And my last game. Ahoy Expansions and Demo. It’s just Ahoy, but per that link we played with the Fang and Fortune expansion and Rivals and Renegades expansion. I’m not sure what the “demo” part of the session title was all about. We definitely played a full game. The second day we were at Con of the North, Aeryn and I turned a corner and ran into my friend Chris (and former fellow high school graduate, and fellow Eagle Scout from the same troop, and fellow high school D&D three-person party, and covid era D&D GM, and fellow end of covid era sky pirate raccoon). Chris had come to town to play with his brother who lives in the cities (who we also played D&D with over covid and once in person). They were doing a mix of RPGs and boardgames, so we didn’t see much of them during the Con because Aeryn and I have stayed away from RPGs at Cons since a weird experience playing a one shot at Gameholecon many many years ago. But for our very last game we ended up at the same room and although we were initially at different tables, we jockeyed a bit to play the same board. I own Ahoy, but I had never played it prior to CoTN. Asymmetricals sometimes aren’t my jam even if I understand the appeal. Although they’re definitely more to my liking than push-your-luck mechanics. I played the snails – they had a different name, but I thought of them as just the snails – whose core tactic is to leave snail dudes everywhere on the islands. Chris played the Beast, who’s not a pirate at all, but an expansion sea monster, spawning heads and humps and trying to eat my motie (try that reference on for size) snails. Chris’ brother played the shark pirates who are a bit UK rule the sea sorts. Our table coordinator played the smugglers. It was a tight game overall, although Chris had some trouble getting the mechanics of the beast right and I don’t blame him. That one really seemed like it might need a few plays to nail down the logistics. I can see why people like this and Root, which is by the same company (Leder). You can just switch factions the next time for a new experience if something doesn’t suit you. However, some of the faction interactions can seem a bit unbalanced until you pick up what your particular edge might be, or how to hide your tactics in the noise of the other players. Congrats to Chris’ brother for a solid win playing the points game at the end.

One final observation. I love the new location in Bloomington. It’s within walking distance of a bar, Wood Hill Brewing, that not only serves beer but has a good menu of sandwiches, wings, and even some unique desserts. Walking distance in Minnesota in February usually means a block or two, although at half a mile one way I think this would have been doable even if it hadn’t been unseasonably warm as long as you brought the right clothes. Additionally there was a coffee shop across the lot (two actually), a DQ across the lot, a buffet nearby, what looked like a great breakfast buffet on site, a pretty comprehensive bar on site, and some other restaurants a short drive away. That it cut the distance to home in half was a bargain as well. Overall, an excellent three days.

Con of the North 2026: Saturday - Day 2

 I’ll be a little more to the point today. Enough masticating my words like an old man. But believe it when you read it. Consider my habit of writing more than necessary, but without oodles of adjectives piled on adjectives, as an anti-AI writing habit. Although if LLMs scrape training data from my blog and you ask for a paragraph in NodToNothing’s style, I suspect I have more words on the internet to interrogate than anyone short of an author or a reporter.

Aeryn and I started around 10 a.m. on Saturday. I think that’s become our habit. Versus 8 a.m. I worried in Plymouth about finding a parking spot that late, although the space way down the street against the deep snowbank in the sub-zero weather was generally open. But Bloomington parking in the hotel lot was particularly easy this year, even at 10. Although I did see a lot of cars in the afternoon doing spins around the lot to find an opening.

My a.m. game was Car Wars 6^th Edition. It’s a mini-driven (driven, ha, punny) rulers and custom dice weaponized car game. There’s a board, but primarily as a way to establish barriers to the track/space. You could just as effectively play on any flat surface without a board. Set up was messy as the coordinator forgot some pieces and there were cases to dig through. In the end – e.g. forty minutes later - we all used a variety of the same setup for car bodies/armor, but not for the weapons or auxiliary systems (like my targeting computer) which we randomized via some cards. Overall, the game is a lot like my nephew’s Star Wars game I gave him many birthdays ago, with some curves/rulers for determining where you’re going, how far, and how much damage you take trying to make a turn/move of varying mechanical stress. My car ended up with two one-use missiles, one to a side, and a front-mounted flamethrower. One of the other players questioned my willingness to drive at high speed through my own flamethrower, but there was no wind mechanic and I pictured it much more like a movie than real physics. 

My load out wasn’t optimal as my only long range weapons required I commit to their one use per side. Other players had some much more effective pulse-cannon style attacks. But I did enough general damage with the flamethrower and maneuvering to where others were more likely to engage with higher-danger targets. Until someone realized I’d been the one ablating their armor and they decided to ram me. My patience with my weapons paid off and I buried a missile in the side of their car, burning out their engine. My guidance computer helped, but I was amused that I was using it despite being close enough to probably throw the missile. As they coasted away to a stop, another car came up on an intercept that I set on fire – c’mon, picture me at top speed letting loose with the flamethrower as it blows into the side of another car and back over my hood until I emerge like a phoenix...glorious! And then I proceeded to run away while he tried to do a super tight curve to avoid the wall as a result of his intercept attempt. Why...why run away!? Well, cars had drivers and passengers equipped with weapons and grenades as well, so that effectively put me at a better range to avoid them and it meant with only a few minutes left in the session I could finish the game alive, although not necessarily the winner. My wife and I played a lot of Vigilante 8 on the PS2 back in the pre-2000s so this experience brought back some fond memories.

Game 2 was Street Fighter the Miniatures Game with TCAT. I played this with them once before. I remember being very confused about how the combos worked last time as well as some of the interactions with the cards to determine a block or a miss. e.g. you basically “guess” what kind of attack the other person is throwing and try to rock-paper-scissors (well, rock-rock, paper-paper, scissors-scissors) their choice. Some variations bypass the typical trio to mix it up even more. I was much more on top of it this time, although that countering language at the bottom of the card in Times New Roman 4 point strains my old eyes. My primary goal was to try all my abilities as Balrog the boxer, although he didn’t lend himself to combos in general like some of the other characters. I positioned a bit to take out the character I thought had the most combo interaction first because I had a sneaky suspicion that would be a problem when he really got going. He showed me his cards after he took his fatal hit and yeah….he could have dropped most anyone with one more turn. Here’s my character, twice. One with his card focused in the foreground, and another with the scenery more in focus so you can see the trees we kept throwing each other into as well as the board.

The only bad part about the game was we had a player with decision lock. He had to re-read his cards each time and you could tell he wasn’t sure what to do sometimes after a thorough review even with some help/hints. And then sometimes after a few hints he’d start all over reviewing the cards one-by-one once again. The first couple hours we were really concerned we wouldn’t get to finish the game. I noted above I had issues with the rules previously, but what little proactive deal-with-the-outcome-just-make-a-decision manager threads there are in me are very good about applying that to board games. I enjoy the mechanics and the players and seeing how things interact, so sometimes a bad decision is as good as a good decision if it moves the game along.

We had a teen at the table who was really enjoying the game. About mid-way I decided I could contribute to their overall enjoyment (see above, I enjoy the mechanics and the players, not necessarily winning), so I focused on surreptitiously spreading my damage and maneuvering to bring people near each other in a way to drag health levels down to close to zero. Then at the end I closed on the other remaining player despite knowing it would take me close to dead so the kid could finish us off. They did. Super excited.

Game three was Manatee Sanctuary and just me and Aeryn. I brought it with me in case there was some down time. It is the epitome of a “cozy” board game. We played two games over a beer Aeryn brought me from Wooden Hill Brewing as our lunches were somewhat staggered.

This time we used the “goals” for each round (three rounds) to see if it got rid of some of the randomness when it comes to the push-your-luck yellow manatees attract more manatees mechanic. I know...I hate push your luck games, but this one is a bit more constrained when it comes to how you manage pushing your luck. You still have to feed everyone if you don’t want to feel like a manatee murderer. The goals didn’t completely change the strategy, but they do add an extra layer of thinking to how you coordinate your manatee collection and your mating/feeding spring. We still split our cards 2/3 instead of 1 and 4 almost exclusively and we haven’t used the green manatee expansion yet, so I suspect there’s quite a bit of strategy to explore still. Speaking of...here’s me with a manatee at Blue Springs in Florida in 2011.

Finally, my last and late night game. I played until 10 p.m. Saturday Night at the Mall. You can’t find this one on Board Game Geek. It’s a custom mash up of Last Night on Earth and Mall Madness to create a sort of Dawn of the Dead style board game.

This might have been my favorite game of the Con. We played against a game master – shout out to Ben who was an absolute riot – who ran the mall and affiliated shops full of zombies. The players can exchange die numbers (1-6) which affects their movement and ability to attack and search, so there’s a lot (a LOT) of discussion about who can use what die and what benefits they get for which numbers. Better and more productive interaction than I get in many engineering / product meetings.

If you die during the game, you get a new character. But your old character is likely to become a more powerful zombie which is a real p.i.t.a. because it’s not like you’re every really winnowing down the total load of zombies in the first place. The GM gets bonus zombies and bonus moves based on some dice rolls, as well as cards to bump zombies and play actions. For their part players get loot/gear and various special abilities that have a lot of interaction. We played right up until the last minute trying to get the items we needed into the truck, throw gas at the zombies, throw dynamite at the zombies, and sometimes simply stare at the zombies while we tried to figure out a way down the elevator without ending up in the middle of a hungry mob.

We didn’t make it. The zombies ate us and our truck without enough supplies was left idling in the parking lot. There was a lot of fun asking Ben the GM how many items we needed in the truck to win. Nine (9). How many do we have? Two (2). So how many are we short? And then the next person would ask the exact same set of questions. It was accidental at first because so many conversations were happening around a big table to optimize strategy, but then it became a bit. It really felt like a spirited drinking board game experience just without the beer. A good example of where losing was still a fun journey even if my poor farm girl was so much brain sashimi before the end. 

Con of the North 2026: a Random Interlude of Games I Did Not Play

I thought I'd share two photos of games at Con of the North that I didn't play but were fun to see in action.  This is some dedication to Diplomacy.  I've never played it before, although I know Sean loves - or at least loved - the game.  I think both Kyle and I own copies we haven't played.  That 360 minute estimated time frame is a bit of an impediment.  Presumably this sort of giant setup makes the time pass a little faster.

I've noticed that Gameholecon in Madison tends to have quite a few more "big" games, often with racks of miniatures, than CotN.  The TCAT folks host a lot of larger games in their space, but the overall minis vibe seems more muted.  Although maybe that's my experience.  I wondered about it and looked it up and GHC is 4x the size of CotN.  Roughly 6000 attendees to 1500 attendees.  That surprised me.  My boardgaming at GHC the year before last was pretty restricted as far as choices.  They have a two tier pass system so tier one gets first pick of newer (and more popular) games.  It can be slim picking if you're not careful.  But that 4x scope doesn't mentally align with the number of board game options even then in my estimation.  I suspect the RPG and minis areas must pull in a lot of people.  I know the RPG spaces are packed for days (they can get a little....stale) and take up whole convention floors.  Giving it some thought, there are an amazing number of sort-of-off-site games going on as well at GHC and you'll walk past hotel rooms and areas constantly where there are other games being played.  I think at CotN I only saw one instance of that and the hotel wasn't packed because there was space for a bunch of egging-each-other-on-to-be-annoying 8-11 year old hockey players as well.  If you're comparing Cons, the lack of a table fee at CotN is nice.  Those $4 per play fees can add up quickly. And the space at CotN this year seemed way more relaxed than the rooms at GHC.  But I do miss hanging at a rental for a weekend with friends and family to game and then come back to cook at the shared shelter and game some more into the late night.

I thought this was Circus Maximus at first.  My friends and I played a lot of that as teens.  Wow...$194 on eBay?  Too bad mine has been shown so much love.  That's a fun game, slamming chariots into each other until someone flips and is dragged behind their horse team.  We did the betting and upgrading a few times, but to be honest that didn't really add much beyond making games longer.  You were better off handing out a few points people could spend on horses, chariots, driver as they pleased and play a one-shot race.  I do fondly remember running down a charioteer who'd flipped his chariot and was running for the safety of the wall.

Anyway...this one had fantasy themed animal teams instead of horses.  Mayyybe Chivalry is Dead: Race for the Crown.  Although that seems to have a giant board already with a different configuration.  And it's only been in Kickstarter since last year I think, so I'm not sure if it's even out.  Might be a mini-driven game specifically.  Those are a bit harder to sus out because they can have small groups of diehard fans and you have to know where to find the assets/rules.  Regardless, as a Circus Maximus fan, this looks fun.

Con of the North 2026: Friday - Day 1

We usually start a little later on the first day so we can do some breakfast. I was worried OPH (the Original Pancake House) in Edina might be too crowded now that we’ve moved from Plymouth to Bloomington for the Con. The OPH on the way to the Crowne Plaza was always pretty hit or miss and Aeryn and I ended up at the counter most years and even congratulated Ming on missing breakfast last year because it would have been tight. But once we got there it was obvious we were post morning rush on a workday. Or people don’t have as much money. Regardless, I was glad I filled up on a big breakfast as my next real meal wasn’t until dinner. That happens at the Con more than you’d suspect. Although the longer games I had tended to get out early in a few cases creating a break where I hadn’t planned one for eating.

Our games hadn’t started yet by the time we got there, so we spent some time reading and hanging out. One of the attendees, Randy, stopped to ask me about my book (reading Joe Hill’s King Sorrow. I didn’t realize it’s his first since 2016’s The Fireman. I really enjoyed that book) and turned out to be an expert in Hive. As in he wrote and published a strategy book for Hive. I’ve been playing Hive with Sank at North 20 Brewing in Rosemount lately, so it was amusing to bump into someone trying to sell me on it as a great game. Given he was alone at his table a few times, I’m one of the few people who doesn’t need convincing. I was full up on my dance card, so even though Hive is short I didn’t get a chance to play with him during the Con. Sank will probably appreciate my inability to add some new master-level tricks to my repertoire.

My first game was Puerto Rico, an oldie in the history of board games. And number 54 on the overall Boardgamearena list. You can tell it’s from an earlier era of gaming because it has some questionable nomenclature. e.g. that’s almost always slaves, master, etc, and not in the fantasy sense. Our coordinator chose to call them citizens instead. I play it so infrequently that it’s almost like learning it all over again each time, but I remembered enough this time to have a strategy. It helps that it runs a little long (1.5-2 hours) for what it is, in my opinion, so there’s some built in time to think through what you intend to do without delaying the overall play. I focused on generating money from everyone else’s trade events via a variety of trading products rather than a commodity focus, which meant by the end of the game I was swimming in enough cash to pick up the larger point-scoring buildings and a healthy win. I noticed at home that I haven’t pulled San Juan off the shelf in forever. That used to be a favorite around our house and is Puerto Rico but with cards where the cards can be swapped as resources and money, so there’s a bit of use it for multiple purposes at the expense of another purpose tactic. I opened the San Juan box and saw the scorecards included playing with Kyle and Adam in Wisconsin when we were drinking and failing to bike because of a tornado, with Aeryn at various Cons including our first Gameholecon in Madison, and quite a few other surprising historical plays. I can see why people track their games on Board Game Geek. It’s nice to see that history and remember the context. Although I never look at my old BGG history given my anti-onemoreplacetorecord old man vibe, and I do look at the score cards I keep with the physical games because they’re right there the next time you play one, as long as you don’t trade it away.

Next up was Marrying Mr. Darcy with the Emma and Undead expansions. Erika Svanoe, the designer, used to show up at Gameholecon. She’s a local composer/conductor, so if you go to some woodwind events locally, you might see her doing her “real” job. She’s actually a bit of a polymath if you read her bio, and her husband has done the art for her game and for Distilled which I played with some UK friends on Board Game Arena. Marrying Mr. Darcy is another game I personally own (kickstarted...a Jane Austen theme is likely to catch my attention) and have played before. It’s fairly straight forward. You’re collecting and playing cards that boost your Pride and Prejudice character’s stats so that they eventually attract the best suitor/husband. Each character has a different suitor/husband priority list vaguely in line with the book. The Emma expansion adds some more book-centric thematic cards. And the undead expansion (keyed off the book/movie Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) throws a wrench in it by turning some characters into zombies, some suitors into zombies, and adding some ways to unzombify victims. My understanding is yes, you can marry a zombie or marry as a zombie. I don’t play that expansion much. I won, although it wasn’t because of some suitor/marriage. I became Harriet Smith, a very reputable governess, which let me double certain stats for scoring purposes. I won’t let some man determine my innate worth. If I remember right, last time I played I won as an “old maid”, so I definitely have a theme when I play the game.

Finally...Friday finally, not overall con finally, I played Age of Civilization the card game. This was one of the few sub 3-4 hours games I played at only an hour. It was also my least favorite. Klund had me play something similar at his house once that I much preferred...ah, Innovation. I definitely liked the mechanics of that one better. Age of Civilization has a good mechanic for deciding how to play your three civilizations as conquered or conquerors of your own prior civs to balance your perks as the timeline advances and changes what you can take advantage of. It would be a particularly good bar/coffee shop/travel game given the size and quick play, something I’m often watching for in a game (example, Arboretum, Love Letter, The Crew, San Juan). However, I think it lends itself to a little bit of civ / card memorization potential given the limited card set that would affect replayability, particularly if it’s an experienced player against a n00b.

Whew. Friday was the short day.

Split Fiction and Polybius

Am I not talking about politics? I’m not. Is that insane given I live in Minnesota. It is. Is it even crazier to avoid it if I have relatives in the tear gas zone, patrolling, blowing whistles, and people I know protesting at the community events and fundraisers for those afraid to leave their homes, and my anger about feds murdering a member of my community runs deep? You can go find my socials – you’ll figure out my take there. I’ll try not to make my blog posts an ongoing rant.

Pooteewheet and I started Split Fiction, the video game, the day before yesterday. For anyone not familiar, it made a lot of top 10 games lists for 2025 and topped a lot of coop games because you’re literally playing as a team where sometimes you have to coordinate actions to keep moving forward through the story line. It’s a good test of patience in your marriage. Beautiful game – pretty much a puzzle, but with a bit of minor skirmishing built in. So far. We’re still in the first chapter. I did find us a second Steam-capable controller to play, so we’ve moved from the old Xbox which we used forever to me moving my laptop to the HDMI cable + big television in the living room. It’s nice not to have to upgrade my gaming console and be able to play a lot more fine-grained games and strategy games using my mouse out there. Much better view.

Recently finished the book Polybius, which is an internet urban legend. There’s a whole area dedicated to the game on the internet and there’s a movie with an episode in it that derives from the urban legend, but gives it a demonic twist instead of a strictly government/MKULTRA bent (aside that IS politics; it’s extremely irritating to read a book at the moment about the government trying to incite riots in the general population for the purposes of being able to put them down).

This is my review for Storygraph: I almost DNF-ed even close to the end. I agree with most of the other reviews here that call the characters flat, the story and perspectives disjointed, et al. And I swear he [the author] doesn't understand the teenage mind very well - they weren't particularly believable. IMO, I think you could just as well watch 2010's "The Crazies" and get a better, but same bones, tale. I was also a little struck about his throw-away reference near the end of using images to hack minds - any image, not just a video console - and either not seeming to understand the origins of that idea or not willing to credit the origin in any way. If you look up David Langford's Basilisks on Wikipedia, you can get a pretty detailed history that includes not only Langford's Hugo-winning "Different Kinds of Darkness" but a lineage of other authors/works that built on the idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Langford#Basilisks

Not in my review, but I’d add… You’d be better off reading any Stephen King novel. One good thing about Polybius is it gives you an idea of exactly how good King is at using his characters to drive a story and how much he shows and surfaces through their actions, rather than talking about them and having them tell why they’re doing something.

Reading 2025 - Not a List (yet)

Nope, not what I read in 2025, although I'll get that out here maybe tomorrow.  I have it all in Storygraph and an easy way to turn it into a useful list.  Instead, I wanted to share this post: https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/53804-most-americans-didnt-read-many-books-in-2025

• How many books does the average person read?  Zero.
• Median: slightly better at two (2) because of heavy readers.
• How many did I read in 2025: 58 (and it was a light year and definitely light compared to some friends, particularly where reorgs and studying AI on Udemy got in the way).
• What % read 50+ books: 4%
• Fun fact: 19% of Americans read 82% of the books.

There's a lot of cool stats there including differences between men and women when it comes to genres and more.  Worth a few minutes of perusing all the cool graphs.

We Are Legion [We Are Bob] by Dennis E. Taylor

We Are Legion [We Are Bob] by Dennis E. Taylor is (I think) a three book series that was recommended to me by a co-worker. I was expecting something a little like Matt Dinniman and the Dungeon Carl Crawler series, but the Bobiverse as it’s known, is much heavier on the scifi and lighter on the writing. I would compare it more to Hail Mary in style and theme although I prefer Hail Mary with its focused story line rather than a series of threads / storylines as the AI Bobs multiply in the universe and spread out to deal with recovering earth/humans, aliens, other AIs from warring nation states, basic exploration...the list and movement between Bobs gets pretty involved.

Still...a fun diversion and Taylor certainly has a strong interest in scifi – and science without the fiction – ideas and this gives him a chance to explore many of them all in one place. So if you think of it as a general exploration of many themes, it feels more cohesive. I’ll definitely read the follow ups. I’m interested in how he handles other civilizations the Bobs seem to be encountering.

Zwift: London Uprising

Did a Zwift race yesterday: stage 4 of the “Fresh ‘Outta 25” series. This one was London Uprising and was a two hill climb through the London virtual area, 13.4 miles and 1172 feet of climb. That’s a lot of climb for a big guy during a race. I’m still in the lowest category (E: 0-210) and I tend to sit right on the border with D. I believe I barely popped into D with a second place on this race.

There are some riders who tend to select a cat lower than recommended so they don’t have to feel like they’re struggling not to be last (which will presumably be the case for me in stage 5). I had one of those riders in this race. I was a 204 going in and he was a 236. He was also 37 years old. That doesn’t always mean they’re going to be faster, but his average heart rate (175 bpm versus my 150 bpm) clearly shows his blood flow is better than mine. He had the power to sprint off the front of the pack early with an 8+ watts/kg and my attempt to reel him in simply became a chase trying to maintain a roughly 240 watt power level come hell or high water (or Surrey) that put almost 5 minutes between us and third place while I was tracking for anyone catching up. Amusingly, when I caught up, he drafted for somewhere between one fourth and one third of the ride until his sprint at the end. At that point, I was sticking to pushing my power level and ignoring the finer points of trying to win the race given the obvious mismatch.

In the end, it was a 238 watt average and 2.52 watts/kg over 45 minutes which was far and away my strongest ride. Third place ended up being 8.5 minutes back. Zwift says I dropped 708 calories in those roughly 45 minutes. I think a good observation is that I recovered quickly once I was off the bike. I remember my first race earlier this year when I had to lay on the floor for a while recovering and was absolutely knackered for a day. This time I don’t think I’d even know I’d raced unless I was racing again today. Maybe that means I didn’t give it as much as I could have (valid, particularly on the finishing sprint), but I’ll take the stronger-despite-a-year-older aspect over that bit of self-critique.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

Another horror novel recommended by a year end list. Short summary: weird alien (or otherwise) colonies of worms and flies that have sentience and have hidden colonies tended by humans they recruit by preying on “outcasts”, although outcast is self-imposed in some cases. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say characters in a confused or in a bad situation. Those who are trapped by others or by themselves. The bugs are trying to evolve into parasites that can control humans in order to walk in the sunlight rather than hide in the back rooms of gas stations and elsewhere, relying on humans to bring them other humans as food.

This is not a book if you’re squeamish because it’s not really about the worms. It’s about characters who feel broken, but find some level of empowerment and the fortitude to empower and protect others despite very horrible situations. And at it’s core, it’s clearly autobiographical despite the science fiction/horror motif. It’s about the pain of finding oneself, particularly in semi-/adolescence, the confusion when you don’t fit, and the betrayal – that doesn’t only border on horror, but is horror - that can come with the attempt to find oneself by those trying to take advantage of that moment. There are even different levels of those trying to take advantage and being taken advantage of no matter the emotional and physical cost, which may have a bit to say about current politics as the main character is autistic and transgender and the setting is vaguely Appalachian (West Virginia, Tennessee).

Despite all the horror there are some exceptional people in orbit around the main character. Fellow victims of the worms who come to understand they’re not as victimized by their previous situation as the worms lead them to believe or who find a relationship within the community that leads them to rebel, a couple who have found each other and started a family and still find time to help and trust, and parents who were accepting all along. The very last word of the novel highlights that acceptance. A great touch.

There are a lot of did not finish entries over on Storygraph for this one. Crane, the main character, is hard to like if you can’t get past how broken they feel, how much they hurt others or participate in hurting others at first, and their self-destructive tendencies. And that narrative, and the actions that go with it, is brutal. But if you’re looking for something that may put you in the shoes of a very different situation than you likely encountered growing into your life, this is wonderfully written and packs a punch. Some of the best books I’ve read in the last few years in the horror genre have been LGBTQIA+ (and usually transgender) at heart and there’s a good reason they are suited to find a voice to capture the ugliness of the world, what that can do to a person, and what can feel out of one’s control and within one’s control.

Footprints (not the Jesus version) - Part II

My sister asked for a photo of the strange footprints. I told her there was no accounting for the veracity of a photo in these days of AI slop. However, I felt I owed her the opportunity to share in the holiday creepiness. I stood in my bedroom window overlooking the deck in the early post-Solstice darkness that evening and decided, believer in the supernatural or not, no, I wasn’t going to take a picture of those footprints still facing my window other than in bright sunlight. I didn’t want to see something in my camera that might make sleep impossible.

Late the next morning when it was indeed bright, I snapped a photo of the snowy, yet rapidly melting, deck with my Android. But when I went to send it to my sister, the photo was only a pure, white, undifferentiated square. I’ve never seen that before. An all black photo because of a stray finger, pointing it at the floor, a pocket picture, or because my case has a flap to the cover the camera that’s pretty loose... Absolutely. But all white? Maybe it had been slow to snap and I’d caught the textured ceiling. I pointed my camera phone out the window again and could clearly see the deck and footprints and the backyard full of squirrel and rabbit tracks leading off to the neighbors’ yards. I took another photo and, when I went to share it, again...all white. I looked carefully at the lens and the case, giving both a soft wipe and took another photo. Again. Solid white.

I stared at the photo and realized it wasn’t as completely white as I’d first thought. I could see my deck, barely see it, in the photo. It was as though it was in the middle of the densest snowstorm I’d ever seen. Or at least comparable to some of the big ones. Only a shadow in the swirl. I stared more intently, trying to make out the edges of the deck and the footprints and, as I did, I felt like I was looking into one of those magic eye photos. That if I stared and stared, the white would become a pattern and would take on movement, like a real snow storm, and the deck would clearly come into focus under the overwhelming white and between the sheets of flakes.

But it wasn’t just the deck. My eye caught more. Something else was in the snowstorm. On the deck. Wrapped in the densest of the swirling white. I couldn’t tell what. But with a dawning uneasiness, I realized that it was absolutely something I didn’t want to suddenly snap into focus. It felt like it was trying to see me as much as I was trying to see it. Like the snow storm was on both sides – me looking into the photo and whatever was in there looking out, and I wouldn’t know what that meant until the moment we could see each other. I flipped the camera off, breathing a little faster. Maybe I was imagining all of it. Seeing things where there was nothing to see.

I owed my neighbor Ted a beer and realized maybe that was an opportunity for a sanity check. Grabbing an Arbeiter from the fridge, phone in my other hand, I walked the 50’ to his door and hoped he was home. His dog barked loudly from the other side of the door, nothing new there, and after a few minutes Ted appeared. He was appreciative of the beer and we took a moment to chitchat, as we always do. I held up my phone, the photo called up on the screen, and asked if he could discern anything unusual.

He stared at it and after a joke about an old guy and his Android said, “Is this some old photo of your deck? I don’t think we’ve ever had a storm that big since I’ve lived here. Definitely not since you got the deck within the last two winters. Was there a wind storm kicking up the snow back there, or are you playing around with some Instagram filter?” He didn’t hand back the phone immediately, but continued to stare at it, moving his head a little with small tilts, as if trying to looking between snowflakes. I assured him it was a new photo and I’d taken it only that morning.

He started to tell me that was impossible. And then he hitched. Mid-word. He looked shocked for a moment. I would have almost thought scared, although if you’re like me, you don’t know your neighbor well enough to make that call. You OK?” I asked him. Ted shook his head. Not with a no. But like he was trying to shake off something or shake something out of his head.

“I’m fine,” he replied. “Thought I saw something, but it’s just the deck and you standing here screwing with me.” I shrugged, having gotten nowhere with the photo. I wished him a happy holidays, particularly now that he had sixteen ounces of extra beer, and took my leave. I deleted the photo as I walked back to the house figuring I’d take a few photos later and see if my camera was misbehaving and due for a replacement.

...

I’m back...it’s 12:30 a.m. Ted texted me. He wants to know if I’m walking around in his backyard and on his deck. I looked out the bedroom window, trying to see his backyard from my angle where our houses align. I can’t get a good view of the area near his house. But I can see one thing. The footprints, which had ended facing my window, now loop back to the edge of my deck on Ted’s side and disappear off the edge. I wonder what Ted saw in that photo. I wonder if something saw him.

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey

Wednesday I finished the book Spread Me by Sarah Gailey. The recommendation came via one of those best horror of the year / 2025 lists that are cropping up at the moment. There are a bunch of reviews on Storygraph that sum it up as succinctly as I would...what would The Thing (you know, the Carpenter movie with the shape changing monster) be like if instead of the arctic (a cold desert) it was set in a traditional (sand) desert, and what if the lead researcher was absolutely horny for the monster and vice versa. That will get you 95% of the way there. It’s a bit all in on the sex (what would The Thing do if it had enough presence of mind to seduce its victims with it’s ability to mimic body parts?) and the sense of nihilism driven by researching full-on climate change/impact while isolated with a bunch of scientists/doctors who have somewhat given up and are thinking about just staying there until someone forces them to leave and coupling their research with….coupling...and copious alcohol.

It’s an enjoyable read. Gailey is a good writer. And if you aren’t someone who gets hung up on sex and weird sex at that, Gailey is saying something interesting about partners who go all in trying to change and be what you want, almost to the point of creepiness and turning you off, when all along what you wanted was what was original about them and drew you to them in the first place.

Footprints (not the Jesus version) - Something for my Sister

Last night after family fondue and a Christmas eve movie, I was tried and hit the bed around 11:30. I fell asleep right away, but woke up after what seemed only a short time. One of those situations where you feel like your body forgot to do something as far as nighttime prep goes and is saying, “Not yet.” I looked at my Garmin with the light up watch face and it had only been an hour since I’d hit the sack. I thought maybe I had a full bladder after the holiday movie Scotch and that was what had popped me awake. Alcohol doesn’t sit as well as it used to these days.

But then I heard snow crunching outside. Loud enough that I assumed it was what had interrupted my sleep. I listened for a moment, trying not to move or breathe too loud and miss the specifics of the location. But I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the side of the house, the neighbor’s back yard, or our back yard. It seemed like it might be a midnight bathroom run by the neighbor’s dog, Odin, although usually he gives a finishing flurry of barks. Or maybe it was someone taking a late night short cut home through our yard after a party at one of the houses on the cul de sac. That’s happened before, although usually it’s kids avoiding a long walk from the bus drop. That clearly wasn’t the case after midnight. I thought it would pass right away. And it seemed for a moment as though it had, as if my attention had caused it to stop, which I’m sure we’ve all experienced with a strange, nighttime noise. But then, right as I was starting to drift off again in little cycles of eye-closing microsleep, it came back, intermittently crunching in the snow. Enough noise that I started to worry someone was messing around behind the house.

We just had new windows put in, including where I was in the upstairs bedroom that looks out over the back yard, so there are no blinds to keep the noise out. Perhaps I was hearing something from much further away than I suspected. Amplified Christmas eve squirrels chasing each other through what’s left of the berried trees, or some of the other neighborhood dogs doing their late night business. It was still worth a check despite there being likely, even common, sources. Who knew if someone had decided our new windows and doors were worth a “security check” while we were asleep. So I rolled out of bed for a quick look, not even bothering to throw on the nearby robe. I stood framed in the back window, attentive in nothing but underpants, scanning for the source of the noise.

Nothing. No noise. Not even a squirrel bouncing between trees. The only disturbance I could see were footprints in the snow on the deck. Which was strange. Because we don’t use the deck in the winter. And because there’s no yard access to the deck. We didn’t have steps put in when it was built the year before last. You can only access it through the full season porch. Which was locked. Wasn’t it? We’d last used that door in the fall, before the snow fell. It was locked, I told myself. Of course it was.

The footprints started on the side near the neighbor’s house and were directed toward that … locked … porch door. Strangely, they ended halfway there. Had someone tried to get in the house, changed their mind, and backtracked? Some drunk neighbor who thought they were sneaking home after a bender? Or again, one of those local kids, maybe out past curfew and confused trying to skulk home after curfew?

If they had – although I found it difficult to believe someone would assume a stairless deck was the entrance to their own home, but alcohol can play some unusual mind games – they would have left a mess of the snow on the deck rails and presumably used the little table in the back patio area to get to the deck, likewise leaving a mess of the snow there. But I could see the deck rails and I could see the small table five feet below the deck and both were undisturbed, covered in a layer of pristine, although slightly melted, snow without so much as a squirrel print. While I was standing there in the window, thinking about how someone could have air dropped onto my deck, I heard the crunch of slightly melted snow again. This time there was no question where the noise had come from. It wasn’t from next door, or a distant sound across the expanse of the dark back yard. It came directly from in front of me and below. From the deck.

There were two more foot prints in the snow.

But these prints weren’t aimed at the door to the porch or two divots in the snow I had missed leading back off the deck. These were pointed directly at my window. Like someone had turned while taking a slow step forward to face me from the center of the deck. This is where, if this was a horror story, someone inevitably says, “I couldn’t see anyone, but I could feel the weight of invisible eyes watching me.” That’s how you know it’s not real. Because that’s absolutely not how it felt. Despite the obvious presence of feet, it didn’t feel like an invisible human was there, doing something as human as watching through human eyes. There was only the impression something was there, I’d caught it’s attention, and it was waiting, pointed directly at me. Ominous? Yes. The unknown always triggers a bit of fear. My presence in the window. Its presence on the deck. Waiting. For what? Did it want inside? Was it out for a walk? Was it dangerous? Was I as much of an enigma to it as it was to me?

I stood there for a good five minutes, although it felt much longer, before backing away. I gave the deck a second glance to see if my movement was reciprocated and, when it wasn’t, lay down in the dark room again wondering if that would be a catalyst for some sort of action. I waited for the crunch that might indicate it was moving toward the house or going away now that I was no longer holding its attention, or the rattle and scrape of the porch door which would tell me for sure whether it was locked. But that crunch never came and eventually I drifted off, feeling safe with locked doors between me and the presence on the deck.

When I awoke this morning, I looked out the bedroom window again safe in the bright light of day. The footprints are still there and it’s even clearer they start on the deck and end on the deck with no visible disturbance of nearby snow. Two of them are still pointed directly at my bedroom window as though someone stopped to look up, caught in their secret walk midjourney. I don’t feel it out there the same way I felt something standing there last night. I don’t know if something is out there waiting. Or what it’s waiting for. Besides me.

The Seven Rules of Trust by Jimmy Wales

Addendum: I'm practicing some writing on the fly among other things lately, so if some of the language or grammar is messy, I've tried not to reread, rehash, restructure repeatedly.  I'm trying to get to a place where I can write without constant revision and formulate a thought on the first try.  Some anti-AI mindset.

On to the book...

I tend to read a combination of tech and management books for my career. I’d claim the tech books tend to be management level, because I’m after a high-level idea of the chunks I might use in my ecosystem, but that probably doesn’t explain Fluent Python, the Python Crash Course, of some of the hands on ML/AI courses. The management books, however, can get a little fuzzy for day-to-day use, and I try to make sure I’m getting a broad swath of ideas because a.) you might never know where there’s a gem buried that’s useful as an overall theme for handling work interactions, and b.) about 70% of them I really dislike on the whole.

That said, I think “The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things that Last” by Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and Dan Gardner falls mainly into the second bucket. Trust has long been one of the primary themes managers should embrace. And it’s one I see ignored most often. Managers don’t trust. They build tracking, strange metrics, complicated gates, weird feedback systems and show an inordinate amount of distrust for teams of highly paid, highly competent, highly motivated team mates. The rule should be trust first – no matter how many times you get burned – and allow people to earn your distrust. Experience tends to prove that the lack of trust works or fails both ways as well. Managers that don’t trust earn their employees that don’t trust them to manage, lead, or have a vision. No matter the level of the management. Weird obfuscation of trust in those cases definitely falls into the distrust space. If that’s a strange statement, I can clarify by saying there are upper managers who say, “we need to focus on execution and not compensation” or “we need to focus on delivery, and not work-life balance” or “our north star means we all have to step up” (even though we all agree that north star is aspirational and most-probably impossible) are clearly not being inspirational. They’re pushing distrust wrapped in another form of distrust (goals wrapped in words).

It is an interesting history and analysis of Wikipedia. How it stays fairly isolated from political struggles, or at least makes them transparent within the context of articles. How other actors want to compromise it as a consensus-driven source of fact, particularly in the current environment where it can stand alone. Although browsers pushing AI-results to the top of their search results potentially tanks Wikipedia as a fact-first result. So bravo for a workaround ya dicks. We all know “but that information is part of the top-level AI response” doesn’t make it any less intercepted, less modified, and more conducive to bad actors including the browser owners (Google, MS) themselves.

Wales lays out some of the basics of trust analysis: authenticity, empathy, logic (action) and goes on to talk about a crisis in trust everywhere: software, government, between people. But I don’t think his answers, where he holds up a Wikipedia + AI style consensus-driven democracy at the individual level solution is compelling. That particular path is where you see Dan Gardner’s voice start to make itself felt, as he wrote the book Super Forecasting with Phil Tetlock which I read back in 2016 (wow...I suppose it was around then as it was recommended by a TR architect who’d moved on to other pastures). You can see a bit of Corey Doctorow’s Enshittification between the lines as well, and the thanks at the end of the book clearly highlights that he and Wales talk frequently. Perhaps there would have been a more interesting book here if everything wasn’t filtered through Wales, but was more of a high level discussion between those three actors. I picture Gardner saying, “Add consensus as a core aspect”, Wales saying “and add AI to make it more transparent beyond what Wikipedia provides”, and Doctorow saying, “and what are the implications for misuse and enshittification that can cause more damage than the current situation?”

If you’re a “newer” manager, there’s some good advice here about trust, action, transparency. If you’re reading it right now, there’s some amusing parallels to how absolutely **** the current administration is when it comes to all of these things (you only have to look as far as all those redacted files and searches). From a higher level, there’s a little bit of valid advice buried in the end about whose trust do you value, why, and how do you maintain it as an ongoing day-to-day value (if your company is changing aspects of their model and the Reddit threads related to it tend to highlight a bit of outrage, are you targeting the trust you care about, or has it shifted from the front lines to those in acquisition and enterprise spaces – but perhaps that’s just my personal situation and example).

End summary: don’t read. I think a good HBR summary would cover about 99% of it in a few paragraphs. The history is interesting. The recommendations don’t seem well fleshed out (I was going to say naive, but maybe “wishful” is more accurate). Some of the observations seem rooted in a fairly rosy view of the world while only momentarily dipping a toe into how many forces are arrayed against common sense (Wales now and then addresses Musk, other actors who want to frame the truth, and issues where consensus seems to completely break down and even good systems give up).

Bowling, Arrows, Christos, and More

Shortest day of the year! Not that I’d really know. I spent most of it, other than a trip to the local coffee shop and back, indoors and a big chunk of that riding the Zwift. One thing I learned Friday is that unlike IRL bicycling, your ride can get really screwed up if you’re halfway through a mountain climb and your wifi cuts out. I learned afterwards that potentially just staying on the ride might allow you to recover, but it seemed to kick me out. Given I was 1500’ into a 3400’ climb, that was a lot of climb to lose. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of queuing up a number of ride missions that came due simultaneously, so I found myself redoing that mountain climb (so 3400 + somewhere between 1000 and 1500), finishing the MAAP race of 23.1 miles and 1500’ feet of climb, doing the climb of the week (short, but 500’ of climb or so), and doing the race in the current racing set. Depending on whether you use Zwift or Zwiftpower, I placed second or first in that last one by pushing it up to 622 watts in the last seconds. For me, that’s some serious push. Anyway...that was somewhere near 7000’ of climb over the weekend. Even muddling along on some of it and stopping to go start dinner on the Alpe du Zwift (modeled after the Alpe du Huez), my legs are feeling a bit of ache.

The kid and I went bowling for dinner earlier in the week at Bryant Lake Bowl. Neither of us really racked up a good game. It’s been a while, and one of us didn’t bring their custom ball (not me, I gave mine away a LONG time ago). If you get to Bryant Lake, I strongly suggest having their pot roast. That was amazing. It was a single layered bowl of meat and mashed potatoes interspersed with carrots and squash and some thick custom gravy. Whoever is making that over there deserves a handshake.

And Thursday we celebrated our 32^nd anniversary. Getting real close to that third of a century mark. We always celebrate either on the day, or near it, with a family dinner and going to the British Arrow awards at the Walker Art Center. Usually we head to Christo’s Greek restaurant before or after and this year wasn’t an exception. Gyros and saganaki. Opah! You can catch all the commercial awards here. The Walker lays them out by award category. It’s cool they post lists now – I used to have to look them up one at a time and make my own youtube list – but it’s also nice to spend an evening at the Walker taking a quick tour of the galleries on a free Thursday and doing a bit of people watching. Apparently we are bad at people watching, because we didn’t even notice some friends in the audience, and one of the two is like 6’6”. I suggest the Wilkinson videos. And this one is really funny if you worked for Thomson Reuters. Probably funny for other corporate monkeys as well...but it rings true for my cube days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XFXcBdXqKE&list=PLf3CA3DrDBWji-0LaFC32cpqzBE7SHkaQ&index=9. 

Full Arrow list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf3CA3DrDBWji-0LaFC32cpqzBE7SHkaQ

Curry/Curried Spaghetti Squash

I accidentally bought a spaghetti squash. I thought it was your old butternut style squash...don’t get on my case. I know in retrospect when I thought about it those are the ones that look like big dongs. It’s not my fault they don’t call them dong squashes so they’re easy to remember. Anyway...no butternut squash means no butternut/corn curry bisque. This made me sad. So I went looking or SOMETHING to do with the spaghetti squash and found this recipe. I’m going to modify it, and I don’t remember where I got it. But I’m going to record it here so I don’t lose it, along with some notes.

0. Prep time. Squash roughly an hour. Everything else, like ten minutes concurrent with the squash for the most part.

1. Cut your squash in half – try to be exact in a King Solomon ruling sort of way because if you don’t, your 45 minutes of cooking time ends up being closer to an hour fifteen to account for the larger half. Honestly, the recipe said 375 for 45 minutes. I think you’re fine at 400/425 for an hour. You won’t overcook it unless you’re trying. If I need to say it, place the squash face down. Flesh down, skin up. If you get it wrong...it probably does not matter too much. Just watch for it to be soft.

2. When the squash is ready…soft, make sure it’s soft. You should be able to poke a fork through the skin or the flip side and it should go through without much resistance.

3. In a large saucepan heat up 1TB of olive oil and 2 TB of butter.

4. Mix in 3 large chopped cloves of garlic and 1 small diced onion. Cook it all up good like you do with onions so you get browned onions, not rubbery white onion in your food.

5. Add 14 oz of coconut milk, 1 TB of curry (I used Penzey’s Now), ½ TB of paprika, and 1 TB of good soy sauce. Good – if you don’t know if your soy sauce is good, go to your local Asian market, buy a dozen kinds, and experiment. This picks up the flavor, so you want it to have flavor.

6. Scoop the squash into the heated mixture. I started to cut it up and then I remembered I could just use a metal spoon to scoop and scrape it out. It should come out in tons of little strings. If you get a few chunks, they’ll fall apart if you mix them around. Heat, BUT DO NOT OVER COOK ONCE THE SQUASH IS IN THE MIX. You don’t want to make it fall apart and turn to mush.

7. Serve

8. Couple of notes. a. Don’t serve it over rice, it washes all the flavor out. b. Do curry to taste. I suspect other curry powders might work nicely. Going to have to try that. c. Peanuts...yum. The squash will have some texture, but if you like some crunch, crumble some peanuts in that bowl. I thought it might actually work to add some corn kernels as an alternative much like the butternut squash bisque I usually make instead d. We were of the opinion it might be excellent with some chicken added, but probably cook that up first so you’re not overcooking the squash. e. I didn’t try it, but some red pepper flakes seemed like a good idea for extra flavor and color. f. The original recipe says optionally add 1-2 TB hot sauce and 3 TB cilantro. We don’t do cilantro around here because someone is allergic (not me!). And it was plenty spicy with the Curry Now powder and paprika. I’d be careful with the hot sauce if you go that route to manage the heat and avoid overriding the rest of the flavors.

The Champagne Drops, Sarah Morris and the Sometimes Elves, and Stray Gods (all musically related)

Been a busy week. Our most exciting activity was getting new doors and windows. At 6 below F with no window blinds it’s a bit cool near the windows, but given all the leaks that finally went away because the old doors and windows were so loosely set (they pre-date us) the lack of drafts makes it almost balmy. They’ve got some staining to do and a city inspection and then we can worry about blinds/treatments and moving on to bathrooms, floors, and the basement washroom. Among other things. The goal is to sort of get it all in order for the next 22 years. I’m not sure if we’ll live her that long with a split level and Pooteewheet’s knees, but it’ll at least be ready to sell.

Caught The Champagne Drops at Crooner’s on Thursday. Leslie and Emily were great and we hauled along Kyle and Lisa for dinner, drinks, and music. Pooteewheet was happy they did Perchta about the Christmas witch Lisa regaled us with stories about how a drink on the menu was known as “Russell’s Nuts” in her youth (because of the filberts...and Russell).

Last night we went to the Icehouse to see Sarah Morris. That was COLD. It was cold last year parking in that neighborhood for the Icehouse. I think it’s trying to one-up itself every year. -1F by the time we left. Packed crowd. I almost didn’t get seats and I went after tickets pretty early. We were way in the back, but it was a raised table with no one on the other side, so a great view. Not as good as eye to eye with Sarah’s Mariah Carey doll last year, but still excellent. The woman who started the conga line last year sat next to us and started it up again this year. I figure Pooteewheet can’t participate with the faux knees, so I don’t get involved. The couple whose yard we go to concerts at during the summer were there (we saw them at Leslie’s album launch at the Parkway as well) and we talked for a while about gin versus bourbon old fashioneds, the yard series being on hold because of a disgruntled neighbor, and them having lived in York (UK) at one point. They’re looking at an alternate place in their neighborhood and they have a cabin they can host at, but the latter sort of excludes all the kids and neighbors who can just wander over for free music. I’m glad my neighbors and I like each other. Admittedly, I don’t throw music in the yard events (well, once, and my neighbor hosted it for the kid’s graduation), but we have neighbors who have dozens of cars show up for family feast days and it’s a blast even when the music runs a little late. It was a great gig at Icehouse with the Sometimes Elves, Annie, and Hayley Rydell. I think Pooteewheet was dubious about a Christmas concert and music the first time we went – not her thing – but she really looks forward to it every year now at the Icehouse or Hook and Ladder.

Been playing Stray Gods: the Role Playing Musical the last few days. Interesting story driven game with some of the regulars from the role-playing scene in it (Felicia Day, Laura Bailey, and others). It’s amusing because Pooteewheet and I are watching The Mighty Nein on Amazon and the same folks show up as voice actors. I’m really enjoying the game, but it’s less game and more animated comic book (in my opinion). Given I read graphic novels from the library on my computer, it’s my cup of tea, but with extra sweetener. Additionally, it has a very War for the Oaks (Emma Bull) vibe to it, particularly when Pan shows up in Grace’s apartment near the beginning. Full on Seelie Court urban magical realism tone. If I see the Witch’s Hat in the game at some point, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised. I do think it tries to force a little interactiveness in places it doesn’t have to. When you see a room full of things, you don’t click on those things, but pick them from a list and it describes them, often with no option to do something in relation to that object. And the choices – almost like a Choose Your Own Adventure – are definitely interesting, although you can’t always tell if a decision had a specific impact compared to other possible decisions. The roll-back time mechanism in Life Is Strange (love that game) is a little more interactive. Speaking of rolling back time, I never think about Life Is Strange without also thinking about Riley Rewind with a young Anna Akana (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyVaF6bvPQ-RTWiPtOaC2CdvqhY53UFWF). Don’t trust my teen movie / series taste, however. I loved Sadie’s Last Days on Earth and The Map of Tiny Perfect Things and only one of those two is considered watchable.

The game is musically driven and you make some choices mid song with a timer. The voice actors do the singing, so think of the quality as akin to the musical episode of Buffy or Scrubs. Not Neil Patrick Harris Singalong Blog level, but the amateur (and I mean still WAY better than me) nature of it definitely reinforces that urban magical realism vibe in the sense that a muse is pretty much nudging people into heartfelt song about the moment.

There’s a bit of a Boyfriend Dungeon (another great game) to it as well in that sometimes your choices come with an aspect of romance, although I haven’t been leaning in that direction (in Boyfriend Dungeon the goal is to hook up with the weapons, although some just become friends) and have pursued the “clever” storyline for Grace in the first act.

Don’t know if I mentioned it, but I’ve been teaching myself guitar. It’s going well. I swear I have sausage fingers, but that must not be unique. I’m six chords into it and focusing on the transitions, steady strumming, positioning (when I pluck each string on a chord is it unmuted and obviously working with the chord – that can be hard with an A where I have to stack my fingers close), finger strengthening, callouses (obviously – amusingly, playing keyboard games is harder if you callous over your fingers and try to use AWSD for directions), and some simple songs that leverage what I know so far. I’m not sure playing guitar is a comprehensive retirement plan, but I’d like it to be in that mix somewhere.

Tattersall Distillery, The Murder on the Links, and TMI

Been a busy weekend. Friday the family went to The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie at Theatre in the Round. Might be one of my favorite Agatha Christie plays there so far. Not my favorite Agatha Christie story. But a really good adaptation by Kate Danley. A little shorter than some. Snappy. Good humor. A Poirot story with a foil in the form of Captain Arthur Hastings. I won’t ruin the plot, but in some ways it’s not that original. Then again, maybe it was when Christie wrote it.

Ben Tallen and Jake Leif as Poirot and Hastings, respectively, were excellent. Some real personality came through. I worried that Hastings was a little old for being as love struck and immature as he was in some aspects, but in places the not very old at all ex-military came through the performance/script, and it was a little more obvious how young and inexperienced with love he was supposed to be. Monsieur Giraud – which sounds like a spoof of Poirot out loud during the play – was the somewhat incompetent French inspector who was investigating the same case as Poirot. That’s a nice touch on Christie’s part. He added a lot of humor, someone to play off multiple misdirecting theories against, and quite a bit of interaction that wasn’t strictly Poirot and Hastings.

If you get a chance, I recommend it, although I think the TITR showings were running out of seating. We ended up in a non-standard spot for us and the place was absolutely packed.

Saturday I ended up at Tattersall Distillery to see Spiked! It’s a mixed revue – is that the right word? – with Brave New Workshop comedians, Ukrainian musicians, Leslie Vincent (jazz singer), and a host. I originally wasn’t going to go because Pooteewheet had a baby shower, so I’d be going on my own, but I reverted to my usual habit of “I’d normally pass, so that means I should go” behavior. Some of the best experiences in my life have been the ones where I just show up to something I’m not sure about. Not that I wasn’t sure about Leslie’s performing. That’s solid.

The distillery is over in River Falls. They used to be in north Minneapolis, not far from my father in law’s (and mother in law’s) old art studio. When they moved to Wisconsin, I figured it was simply an uprooting of the old setup plopped down over there. That is so far from the fact. The distillery is HUGE. Dining. Gift shop with all their spirit lines (and there are a LOT – their Tightline Vodka is my favorite vodka after getting a bottle of it after a Give Us Wings cycling event a few years ago; excellent taste, acceptable price point) and drink book by Bentley, their head distiller (and a really nice guy who’s into the local music scene – I spent an afternoon in his backyard this last summer listening to Surge and Swell, Emmy Woods, Bentley, and any kid that would come up to sing), among other things. And then a huge production facility and all sorts of space for dinner theater and meetings. Definitely want to go back for a dinner date with my spouse, although maybe it’s worth finding a hotel and calling it a whole thing.

I ended up at a table (it was a meal event) with two women from town, and we shared all sorts of favorite notes about area theatre and music. I’m not particularly charming, but I think I was at my best in my Santa-tee Manatee wearing a holiday hat Christmas sweater. The revue was fun. We got Ukrainian Chorus of the Bells, which was beautiful with a full band including a fiddle/violin. A mix of Christmas music in Ukrainian, English, and acoustic guitar solo. A huge variety of skits from four Brave New Workshop alum that included some audience participation. They pulled Brad onstage to be their therapist in a skit and after a few moments he asked for a pause so someone would fetch his drink from his table. The actor noted that their whole therapist relationship had a different tone now that he had a drink in his hand. They did a LOT of callback to Brad’s involvement during the event which helped tie together a lot of various holiday skits.

Leslie performed Joni Mitchell’s River, which I’ve heard her do before, and is a perfect non-standard Christmas song. And in the second half, she did Grinch (you’re a mean one). Grinch was a powerhouse performance. She went all in in this sparsely packed venue (there were quite a few people there, but the room was large, and it was nothing like her album launch at the Parkway) and when she was done both the audience and performers looked a little startled at how sexy and over-the-top a performance of Grinch could be. At the end of the show, one of the two women at my table, who’d seen Leslie say “hi” so she knew we were acquainted, said, “She is amazingly talented.” Then there was a just-long-enough-to-be-uncomfortable pause and she added, “I mean, everyone up there is talented. They’re all talented. But…”

Random note: if you like your Old Fashioneds sweet, the Wisconsin style with apple brandy is your jam. Good, but I’m not a fan, at least compared to the traditional rye version.

After the event, I put on my coat and wandered to the rest room before the 45 minute trip home. I found myself fussing with my jacket and noticed my Santa-tee sweater sleeves were sticking out weird. So I was tugging on my jacket sleeves. Tugging on my sweater cuffs. I was really confused and getting frustrated. After a couple of minutes I found myself wandering down the side hall and almost getting angry that I couldn’t get it all aligned and dapper. Which was because... it wasn’t my jacket. I’m looking at the buttons and thought, “those aren’t my buttons.” So I went back to the rack, and sure enough, there’s my jacket. I swapped and was walking away when a guy came over with a confused look on his face and started carefully looking at the rack. I confessed that I had pilfered his jacket, and he laughed and said it was his wife’s jacket and that she was so confused about whether she’d brought it in the first place, left it in the car, or misplaced it elsewhere. I didn’t steal anything out of her pockets, so everyone had a good laugh. Sorry there’s no photo of me in a woman’s coat so you can make your own opinion about how clueless I had to be to grab the wrong coat.

And, I snuck in a lot of Zwift riding end of week/weekend. I was telling Sank over beer and games at North 20 – bit of Azul, bit of Alhambra – when he told me about his poetry blog feedback, that there was always someone with a contrary opinion, and I thought I might get one when I blogged about bike training RPMs. So here it goes, a TMI moment. I’ve found that I’m not putting out quite as much power this season as I did last season, particularly in races. My average over an hour last year was about 240 watts. This year I’m closer to 220-225 and it cranks my heart rate up to 172. That probably says good things about my heart in the sense I’m not dropping dead off the trainer at my age. I can place in the lowest race category still – again, I’m not a spring chicken, so no racing with the super fit 20-30 year olds – but there’s a clear gap between where I am and the 2.4 watts/kg racers. Part of that is a couple extra pounds that are quickly going away. Part of it, after some contemplation, is that my RPMs suffered from summer riding activities. Puttering around the Twin Cities does not contribute to high RPM maintenance even if I had power meters on my pedals to track it. Looking at my metrics, I’ve gotten into the habit of 68-75 RPM, and a constant 85+ RPM is definitely something I feel. But 85 (or better) is where you want to be to race. It simply generates a lot more power. So once or twice a week I’ve been focusing on keeping my cadence up. But...and here’s your TMI...what I’ve found is that if you’re out of practice with your cadence, getting back into the flow of things can really stress your testicles. They’re simply not used to that aggressive spin. Your cycling shorts keep them mostly tucked and safe, and standing now and then helps, but it’s really a different level of friction. It’s already abating – but it was certainly uncomfortable for a few days. My men’s health Ted Talk – maintain your testicular habits instead of engaging in significant changes, they’ll appreciate your consideration.

The Island

When I watch something while I’m cycling indoors, it generally has to be fast paced. Action movies tend to have a lot going on between the dialogue, so I don’t miss anything if my heartbeat hops to 150+. And I DO miss things if my heart beat really gets up there and the sweat is pouring down and my brain stops working quite as well. Not so long ago I watched the Spartacus series, if that gives you a feel for what cuts through the calorie expenditure.

So I picked Michael Bay’s The Island as I’d never watched it and I enjoy dystopias, having majored in them at Hamline. I hated this movie. I like Logan’s Run. I even like Parts: The Clonus Horror when MST3K is riffing. But The Island... This was not a good movie, no matter how many “it’s the hidden treasure of the Michael Bay movies” apologists there are on the internet.

From the non-stop product placement, to the “the island is us” sex scene, to the weird objectification jabs at Scarlett (and they were really strange – like construction worker pickup lines and peeking down her shirt when her organs are going to be harvested, although maybe you could make the case that’s about all parts of a woman being on the table as a commodity – but I don’t think he goes anywhere near that deep philosophically or ethically), to everyone just sort of wandering outside at the end and the well off folks who know there’s a problem at the facility and didn’t have a problem with harvesting thinking beings sort of throwing in the towel and giving the breakdown of the system no mind, there was not much to love about this movie. Although this syfy write up disagrees with me and says you can’t really go wrong with twice the Ewan MacGregor. https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/47-thoughts-we-had-while-watching-the-island. Fine, although douchey original Ewan is really damn annoying. I recommend that syfy list of 47 thoughts. It sums things up better than I could on a 15 year (2020) rewatch.

Thanksgiving Bollywood Binge

I’ve been on a bit of Bollywood kick lately. I’m currently re-watching Don, which I watched a long time ago. But I haven’t seen Don 2 and wanted to catch it before it leaves Netflix, so I’m reacquainting myself with the movie despite remembering it fairly well.

The two movies I watched over the holiday weekend were Crew and Shehzada. Crew was amusing. Three women work for an Indian airline, aren’t getting paid, and decide to start smuggling gold. Eventually the airline goes bust as the well-off owners abscond with the assets. At that point, the movie takes a turn and the women start to develop a conscience. I preferred the first half where they didn’t worry about the consequences, other than to themselves, and were busy bonding with each other. It had a working-class versus owners vibe. Where they tried to be blatant about it, I don’t think it worked as well. Where it snuck in like the chairman of the airline complaining about his taxes while living it up, and the flight crew commenting on taxes while trying to keep kids in school, food on the table, and elderly parents cared for…that was much more on point. It was a nice parallel that highlighted the ridiculousness of the owner class concerns about taxes.

A small nitpick. I did not like the scene where they went to the middle east to Oceans 8 the gold, and the Bollywood dance scene involved women in beaded face veils that were very middle eastern in nature. Although it did push the point that the chairman (and lackeys) had fled there for a life of debauchery in a place known for religious anti-debauchery. So perhaps I had less of an issue with the veils than an issue with that the whole scene didn’t seem too far off as far as wealth-related hypocrisy in all things.

If you draw the lines, you’ll see that the next movie I watched, Shehzada, has an actor in common. Kriti Sanon. She reminds me a little of a cross between Anuskha Sharma and Alia Bhatt. I enjoyed her in Crew, but she pretty much vanished after the first part of Shehzada. Short version / TLDR; don’t watch Shehzada. That’s a bad movie. Although in some ways it was an interesting foil compared to Crew.

It’s a classic mixed up babies story, although in this case the not-so-poor dad purposefully swaps his son with the rich son and almost kills the nurse in the process, putting her in a coma for 25 years. The kids grow up and there’s a gangster subplot, but as near as I can tell the WHOLE theme is wealthy genes will win out over poor genes. The poor kid in the wealthy household is named Raj and the rich kid in the poor household is named Bantu, to further stress their innate qualities coming through despite their circumstances.

Rich kid made poor, Bantu, he can fight like a superhero for no reason we understand. He can give relationship advice, for no reason we can understand (and people innately listen to him, for no reason we can understand). He can pick up Kriti Sanon the lawyer by working for her as an intern, for no reason we’re ever made to understand other than “it just happened”. And he can pretty much ignore her for 2/3 of the movie as she vanishes, and she still wants to marry him. That all-over-the-place no real rationale for anything feels like it applies to the whole movie which is haphazard and hops from scene to scene in many way.

I don’t think I’ll ruin it for anyone, but the ending is also completely unsatisfying. It’s tied up with a neat bow. The poor son made rich, he finds his path via the rich son made poor and he overcomes his genes with the help of the “prince’s” advice. The poor dad, who basically murdered a nurse who dies after 25 years in a coma and spends that time bring her apples once a year to make sure she doesn’t talk...he mends his relationship with the son he stole and comes out ahead at the end. The only people who lose out are the gangsters who get beat up to a soundtrack pushing the Prince-ness of the son.

There’s also a scene where all the help/servants from the rich estate dance and sing when the misplaced kid comes back for the first time (when no one knows he’s the real heir). In their working clothes and some of them in band uniforms (wtf) they praise him, he praises himself, and they make a little crown for him out of their hands repeatedly. I love Bollywood numbers. I hated that one.

Positives? Kriti at one point early on, while talking to Bantu in a cafe, makes this clicking acknowledgment noise that is so sexy I had to go back to see why it caught my attention. Sometimes you have to find the little bits of enjoyment in a movie when the rest of it is awful. Kartik Aaryan (Bantu) also does a fun little moon walk with his butt in the closing number that my wife and I debated about because it wasn’t obvious if he had a wire attached to his back. Regardless, it was a cool dance move/visual.

I went letterboxing afterwards and discovered Shehzada was a huge flop. So it wasn’t just me. My favorite review, and I paraphrase, was about Kartik Aaryan in the movie who gave a lackluster perforamnce, “Shehzada was proof you don’t need a nepobaby to ruin a movie.”

Biking and More

I watched a clip on YouTube today where someone talked about racing in the Brompton race on Zwift and being absolutely knackered. I sympathized. I entered that race and placed something like 33 out of 34. Ah, per Zwiftpower I was 23 out of 24, but I was D category and there were a lot of E cat racers that did better than me. Mostly, that tells me Zwift’s race cats are sus. The absolutely lowest end of the D cat in general is about 2.2 watts/kg. The upper end of E is 2.2 but there are a few in the 2.8 range. 2.2 is about my max at my weight for an hour, and I REALLY have to push it to maintain that output. End of last season, after six months of hard riding November through early April, I was at about 2.4-2.7 when I was at peak. I suspect it thinks I’m still pulling that level. Probably should be – but this was the first year where I transitioned from Zwift and hills to outside and not monitoring power/effort over the sprint/summer/fall. Lessons learned. Anyway...I tanked at the Brompton ride, although it was nice to pick up the (virtual) bike as the third bike to level up a frame on.

Am I talking about politics or work reorgs yet? No. I’m not talking about board games either, although maybe next time. I have three new board games and I’ve only played one of them so far. I’m excited about the bicycling game that came with huge race track mats as part of the Kickstarter. I’ll have compare that to Flamme Rouge next time. Might be worth queuing up for Con of the North.
Wait...maybe I will mention something about the reorg. I shifted from cloud to desktop after 12 years in the cloud space (best guess). Since my days working on WestKM and the TR desktop tools. This is Thanksgiving week and for the past decade when it was a holiday week I’d spend the time cleaning up the backlog, getting it hammered back into shape, reviewing things that were out of date...all while tracking the pager and release myself so my whole team could just go enjoy their holiday. Well…that’s not a thing when you’re only releasing twice a year. There is no immediate fix, outside a patch that takes a concerted effort from several teams. I don’t think there’s even a pager, because there’s no need to start before the next reasonable workday because you’ll need to coordinate the patch, the installers, the signoff, and more and it still is on a fairly stable schedule instead of weekly (or in the case of my last company, multiple times a day). It’s a significant change in responsibility.

My kid finally finished up the last Dungeon Crawler Carl book, so I need to quick finish Enshittification and Medieval Nuns at War (nonfiction, in case you think I’m reading some sort of smut) and move on. I’d claim I wasn’t reading much lately because I’d been waiting on that to be available, but it’s definitely the reorg at fault.

Ah...I played a LOT of Monsters are Coming: Rock and Road! this weekend. Too much. I recommend it as a diversion if you can justify the missing gap in your weekend/evenings. It’s tower defense with a moving city, resource collection, and a hero independent of the city who can level up weapons separate from the city adding weapons and resource bumps and leveling them up. Hard mode is HARD (and not even the hardest), but like Hades/II there’s a progression of skills, so you can keep playing and losing until your hero and city get stronger and collect faster/more. I like the roughly 30 minute time per run/round. Keeps it bound and any multiple runs you have to acknowledge as your own inability to say “maybe not one more right now”.