Categories
D&D tabletop games

The Minimum Acceptable Session Length

D&D takes a long time. Movies are around two hours long. MLB has been shortening baseball games because three hours was too long. The average commute (during the before times of 2019) was about a half-hour. And yet, when you ask people about their weekly games, it sounds like sessions commonly go on for around […]

Categories
personal

Retaining What I Learn Revisited

In 2019, I set a goal to retain more of what I learned. I enjoy consuming a variety of educational media in books, newsletters, podcasts, and more, but I had difficulty retaining it much of it. By the end of that year, I called it a mixed success with a few takeaways: Mental reviews immediately […]

Categories
personal

Daylight Saving Time Listicle

Twice a year, we all ask ourselves, “So what was the point of this in the first place?” Well, I thought I knew why we change our clocks, but apparently I was wrong. Here’s assorted list of Daylight Saving Time facts. Some of these are easily picked out of the Wikipedia article, but a few […]

Categories
parenting personal technology

Changed My Mind: 2021 Edition Part 1

I always find it interesting when I change my mind about something. It can happen at any time for any reason, and I might not become conscious of it for awhile. However, when I actually realize it, it’s an interesting moment. It’s hard to remember my previous mindset and reconcile why it happened. Some amount […]

Categories
board games

Board Games Best Played Online

Over the past 2 years, I have played 267 games on Board Game Arena. I have both learned many new games as well as gotten deeper into many of my past favorites. Although I have played a few games live, I mostly play turn-based games over the course of days or weeks. Rather than needing […]

Categories
New Year's Goals

My 2022 Goals

You might say that I’m 6 weeks late in setting goals for the entire year. I am going to spin that and say that I just have gotten past the typical New Year’s resolution failure point and am going with something sustainable. Play “Happy Birthday” on Ukulele every day Band was probably the most important […]

Categories
board games food parenting podcasts reading television video games

My 2021 Recommendations

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: the most time-consuming and best thing I did this year was parenting. I hope that continues to be true for many years. However, that doesn’t seem like something I should be generally recommending to everyone, so I still have the rest of this list. TV: Ted Lasso

Categories
New Year's Goals parenting personal

2021 Goals Review

At the beginning of the year, I set three goals. I already wrote about baking 52 batches of cookies, so I’ll only cover the other two goals here. Re-establish Routines Before 2021, I had been trying to develop better habits and routines. At the beginning of the year, I was a new parent, and my […]

Categories
food New Year's Goals

52 Batches Later: What I Learned about Cookies

At the beginning of 2021, I set the goal to bake 52 batches of cookies. Since then, I have gone through countless sticks of butter and bags of flour to bake over a thousand cookies. I have been asked many times what my favorite cookie was and what I learned from the experience. Now that […]

Categories
food

Baking King Arthur’s Pumpkin Biscotti

On the one hand, holiday baking makes my cookie goal quite seasonable. On the other hand, that means we already have too many sweets around to be baking even more cookies. I had to find a cookie that didn’t really seem like a cookie. A few weeks ago, the King Arthur blog posted tips for […]