The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton My rating: 3 of 5 stars A story detailing upper class “society” New York of the 1870s as the backdrop. Wharton details parties and mores. As the story goes along it feels more and more critical of them. A couple oddities: 1) Newland Archer, the protagonist, visiting the…
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot My rating: 4 of 5 stars Part biography of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Part explanation of the contribution the cells taken from her have had on medicine. Part memoir of Rebecca on the challenges brought in even getting to write this story. It jumps around…
Go read “Science Fiction Is for Slackers.” As a rule, science fiction may be the laziest of all genres, not because the stories themselves are too facile—they can be just as sophisticated and challenging as those of any other genre—but because they often revel in easy solutions: Why walk when you can warp? Why talk…
Years ago, maybe 2011 based on the age of files, our Systems group moved our Linux home directories to a central system. My only real complaint about this move was finding anything I needed in my Bash history. See, I am terrible at remembering things and often make typos. It is easier to go back…
Our CIO is leaving us for another job. My boss wanted to give my name to someone on the search committee seeking staff input for what we need in a CIO. This is just an organization of my thoughts and conversations I have had. A couple recent conversations netted these: Big picture. There are over…
The AJC had an interesting article about RollCall Safety Text, an app which automates “I’m OK” messages for loved ones. Failing to get such a message lets someone know something might be wrong. The intended audience is for kids off at college to send these to parents. There is a note near the bottom: While the app…
A while back I pulled a post. It had to do with my wanting to be caught being wrong by my coworkers. I catch myself being wrong all the time, so I very much know my own fallibility. But, people take lack of confidence as lack of ability. Which means to get things done, one…
Our office resides in Athens, GA about an hour from Atlanta. A work news post noting Atlanta tech blogs was strange to me. There is plenty HERE. Why ignore all the great local stuff? And I do not mean my blog. I post too infrequently to really matter and mostly ignore technology of late. Four Athens is a…
Táin Bó Cúalnge. English by L. Winifred Faraday My rating: 4 of 5 stars I put out a call on Facebook for suggestions on Gaelic mythology to read. This was the top suggestion. This strongly reminded me of Norse and Saxon epics. All account for the names of places by describing the battles undertaken there.…