I recently listened to a talk by Bill Burnett about finding meaning in work. Burnett is an instructor of the tremendously popular Designing Your Life college class and book, and one particular idea that resonated with me was trying to figure out the sort of impact we each have in our work. He laid this […]
When the stakes are high, I tend to look away. In 2010, my dorm mates watched the Olympics gold medal hockey game between Canada and USA while I hid in my room studying. I couldn’t bear to be in a room full of Americans if Team Canada were to lose. Instead, I missed watching Sid […]
When I was in middle school, a friend’s older brother showed me Baldur’s Gate, a computer game where you controlled a party of warriors and wizard exploring a fantasy world so big that the game came on five CDs. On my following birthday, my friend gifted a copy to me, and my RPG obsession began.
Some people claim to have “dessert stomachs” where they can always find room for cake or ice cream even after a meal. I, on the other hand, have a “dim sum stomach”. At most meals, I usually eat about as much as other people. However, as the steamer trays fill the table, my appetite and […]
Due to the length of my thoughts, I split my Harry Potter re-read and re-watch into two posts. My last post covered the first four Harry Potter movies and books, and this post will cover the rest. I’m surprised that I actually had more for the latter half since I like the earlier books more.
Despite writing frequently about roleplaying games and video games, I have been playing a lot of board games recently. In fact, I have played about a dozen board games over the past month ranging from casual party games like Scattergories to intense strategy games like Terra Mystica. I enjoy them all for different reasons, but […]
Growing up, I was a Star Wars fan. I watched Friends on TV in syndication, and I played StarCraft. However, the defining pop culture phenomena of my generation was Harry Potter. I first learned of Harry Potter in 5th grade roughly when the Prisoner of Azkaban was being released. I never purchased any of the […]
Despite having worked as a software engineer for over a decade and received a graduate degree in Computer Science, I had a serious gap in my knowledge: I didn’t actually know how computers worked. Of course, I exaggerate. I knew how logic gates and Boolean algebra worked. I knew that compilers were related to formal […]
These days, most news stories are either about COVID-19 or about the impact of the pandemic on something else. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything that hasn’t been impacted in some way. A few weeks ago, I read a story about how blood banks were running low. Presumably, usual donors were reluctant to […]
As this pandemic continues to stretch out (at least in the US), this new way of life is feeling more normal. Not only has the pandemic affected work life, errands, and socializing, it has also changed our hobbies, and I’m just starting to notice the new normal set in. Of course, four months is perhaps […]