12.19.24
Today is officially the first day of my vacation for the long winter break, and it will also be my last post of this year. I still haven't decided whether to take Jan 2 and 3 off to tack on an extra four days to this break, but whether I do or not, I'll have at least two weeks away from work responsibilities to recharge and clear my head a little.

12.18.24
What an amazing year for music—there were easily 30+ albums that were worthmultiple listens this year, and narrowing it down to my top 10 was as hard as I can remember it ever being. So instead of just my top 10, I'm going to go with my top 10 in ranked order, another 10 in alpha order, and then another dozen or so records that I enjoyed in no particular order.

So here we go with the top 10:

1. The Cure—Songs of a Lost World
2. Tyler, the Creator—Chromakopia
3. Kim Deal—Nobody Loves You More
4. Liquid Mike—Paul Bunyan's Slingshot
5. MJ Lenderman—Manning Fireworks
6. St. Vincent—All Born Screaming
7. Jessica Pratt—Here in the Pitch
8. Waxahatchee—Tigers Blood
9. Nilufer Yanya—My Method Actor
10. Friko—Where We've Been, Where We Go From Here

11-20 in alpha order:

Cursive—Devourer
Jack White—No Name
Kendrick Lamar—GNX
Los Campesinos—All Hell
Origami Angel—Feeling Not Found
Oso Oso—Life Till Bones
The Smile—Wall of Eyes
Wishy—Triple Seven
X—Smoke and Fiction
Yard Act—Where's My Utopia?

Everything else in no particular order:

Green Day—Saviors
J Mascis—What Do We Do Now
Boeckner—Boeckner!
Kacey Musgraves—Deeper Well
Vampire Weekend—Only God Was Above Us
Jesus and Mary Chain—Glasgow Eyes
Tierra Whack—World Wide Whack
Cloud Nothings—Final Summer
Oceanator—Everything Is Love and Death
Greg Saunier—We Sang, Therefore We Were
Les Savy Fav—OUI, LSF
Vince Staples—Dark Times
Wilco—Hot Sun/Cool Shroud
Zach Bryan—The Great American Bar Scene
Y'ALL'RE—First Edition
The Smile—Cutouts Me Rex—Smilodon

12.17.24
I was summoned for jury duty earlier this year, but my summons date was for when we were already scheduled to be out of town for Will's spring break trip. I was able to get a deferral, and a couple of months ago I got notification of my rescheduled service date for Dec 16 (yesterday).

Even though I was involved in honor council hearings (once as a witness, and twice as a jury member) in high school, college, and grad school, I've never served on a real jury as an adult. I've been summoned a few times before, but each time it was coincidentally just after we had moved, so I was no longer a resident of the summoning jurisdiction, so I was excused from service. I did get called for DeKalb County a year or two ago, but my call number was pretty high, and I was notified the day before that I didn't need to come in.

This time, my number was reasonably high (367), so I was hoping I would also be excused this time, but no such luck—when I called in the day before to see if I would be needed, the message informed me that they were requiring jurors 1-936 to show up for service. I'm guessing they needed so many because 1) it was a Monday and 2) everyone was trying to get as many trials completed before the holidays as possible.

After you arrive and register with the clerks, your original juror number means nothing—for each block of jurors for a given trial, names are chosen randomly from amongst all the people who showed up that morning. I sat and read my Kindle (dealing with mild freakouts that occasionally came up to the edge of a panic attack due to the sensory issues I experienced in the large juror holding room) for a couple of hours while two other blocks of jurors were called into their courtrooms, wondering if I would be called at all. But around 10:30, I was called to be part of a group of 48 jurors and given a new juror number of 33.

When we got into the courtroom, we were informed by the judge that this was a civil trial where the plaintiffs were a couple who were suing their contractor, who they claimed did a shoddy job of removing and then rebuilding a retaining wall and also did not complete the job, while the defendant was countersuing for lack of final payment. After that brief explanation of the facts of the case, we then went through individual questioning by the judge (who was mostly concerned about hardship claims if the case were to last 3-4 days) and the two attorneys (who asked about conflict of interest, experiences with construction/contractors, etc.).

I thought I might be dismissed because of our ongoing lawsuit against our insurance company related to our house rebuild after our fire a few years back, but I never got a chance to find out. They dismissed us for lunch after all the individual questioning, and when we came back, the judge read off the numbers of the jurors who hadn't been excused by the judge or struck by one of the attorneys (without giving an explanation as to why they had been removed). They filled up the 12th spot with juror 31, two spots before they would have gotten to me, and dismissed the rest of us.

I think I would enjoy serving on a jury, but the real fear is getting pulled into a trial that would last for weeks. Even this one, which the judge estimated would take 3-4 days, would have been inconvenient for me given my vacation schedule around the holidays, but it wouldn't have seriously impacted me. But there's almost no time of year when I could afford to be out for more than a week without extensively planning with my team to make sure everything would get done in my absence.

12.12.24
We released Early Decision 1 decisions last night, the earliest I can ever remember doing in after 22 years in this industry. We usually go out around Dec 15, but we like to release midweek (typically on Wednesday and no later than Thursday). Last year was also early on Dec 13 because Dec 15 was on a Friday, but we've done that a couple of times before. This year, the 15th is on a Sunday, and we can't wait until Dec 17 or 18, so we made the decision to go out on Dec 11 instead.

Things went pretty well—there are always a couple of little surprises and last-minute changes, but it was really quiet for the rest of the evening, and we only received a couple of emails from applicants with questions the next morning. The winter break for my institution doesn't officially start until Dec 24 this year, but we've been pushing hard for the last couple of months, and once we get past this decision release, everyone takes a deep breath and starts wrapping things up before we leave for the rest of the year.

I'm not taking all of next week off, but my vacation will start a week from today, so I'll end up with a full two weeks off before we come back in January. I'll still be monitoring things, simply because the volume of applications we receive in the last two weeks of December is massive and we need to make sure there's nothing that interrupts the processing workflow (which is largely automated at this point), but since we're not traveling for the holidays this year, I'll still have plenty of time to chill out and catch up on personal projects during the break.

12.11.24
I just finished watching season 2 of Apple TV+'s Foundation, the sci fi show based on the series of novels by Isaac Asimov. Even though I was an avid reader of sci fi from an early age and I've read a lot of Asimov's works, I have surprising never read any of the Foundation books, so this story was all new to me.

Like a lot of these series (I'm thinking of other recent shows like House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power) there are a lot of characters to get to know and a lot of worldbuilding to do, so it drags a little bit for the first few episodes. But once you get settled in and get going, it's a pretty watchable show, and it makes me want to go back and read the books now. This is especially true once you get to the second season, where there are only a few new characters who are brought into the narrative, and there are more events and conflicts that impact the story in a satisfying way.

Season 3 was apparently greenlit in 2023 after season 2 finished airing, and it completed filming in mid-2024, and although it's expected sometime in 2025, there's no specific release date yet. Depending on my reading inclinations and the volume of other books I want to tackle, I might wait to read the novels until after season 3 comes out so I can save the reveals for the show and not have a clear idea of how all this might end.

12.10.24
20 years ago today, I logged onto Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft and made my first character, who is still my main after all these years. It's kind of crazy that I've been playing this game for two decades—I started years before my son was born, and he's 14 now and a gamer himself (although he hasn't really played WoW seriously at this point).

The "massively multiplayer" part of the game (the "MM" in "MMORPG")—the social part—isn't nearly as important as it was in the beginning, but it's why I still play. In the first couple of years of the game, my wife and my brother both played, and we started to develop a strong social network within the game. My brother actually met his wife playing the game, and my best in-game friend (who I met in the game in the first couple of days of playing) also met his current wife playing. I know tons of family units—typically spouses, but sometimes children as well—who play the game together, and over the years, I've met at least a couple dozen people from the game in real life (including my first friend and his wife, who I saw most recently when we were in Chicago over the summer).

I still generally log in for a few minutes every day to do a couple of daily quests or mindlessly farm mats while listening to music, and twice a week I raid with a group of friends who I've known for more than 15 years and who I've raided with for more than a decade (I ran with different groups before then). The game doesn't demand nearly the attention that it did in the first few years, when you had to spend at least a couple dozen hours a week playing if you wanted to be competitive for the most challenging content (which at that point required you to coordinate 40 people being online at the same time)—now you can level your main and your alts and have them reasonably well-geared even just playing a few hours a week.

That's been a nice change as I've gotten older and have more work and family responsibilities—I've never had to make a choice between my real-life existence and keeping up my game progress and relationships. And as much as I loved the early iterations of the game, I never would have expected to still be playing two decades later. But there have been a lot of quality of life improvements in how the game works, and a lot of changes to how progression works to not only make it more friendly to casuals but also create multiple pathways to getting your character leveled and geared.

It's easy to take it for granted now because it's been part of gaming and pop culture for so long, but even with subscriber numbers that are likely a few million people lower than the peak, it's still a remarkably successful games, with millions of monthly subscribers all over the world and an environment that a player 20 years ago would still recognize as part of the same world they were exploring back in 2004.

They have already mapped out the next five years of expansions for the game, and if it continues to be at least as successful as it is now, there's no reason to think that it won't make it to 30 years. Who knows if I'll still be playing by then or not, but I still have a strong social connection to the game, and as long as my friends keep playing, I probably will as well.

12.5.24
I got both my Covid and flu vaccines on Tuesday, and per usual with these kinds of shots, it has knocked me out the last couple of days. Body aches, fever, headaches, etc.—the kind of stuff I would normally take a Tylenol for to blunt the symptoms, except that supposedly reduces the efficacy of the vaccines because it dulls the immune systems response. So I've suffered through a couple of lousy days, with long stretches of trying to sleep but only being able to do so intermittently and not really wanting to eat anything.

I started to feel a little better today and had dinner for the first time since getting the shots, so hopefully tomorrow I'll mostly be back to normal. Luckily things were pretty quiet at work this week, and most of the already-lower-than-usual meetings on my calendar were canceled so we could focus on getting ready for our first big decision release of the cycle, which comes next Wednesday. We also don't have anything going on this weekend after hosting family for Thanksgiving last weekend, so I'm just going to chill and rebuild my strength.

12.4.24
Before I started collecting vinyl a few years ago, I had heard of Record Store Day, but never really cared about it much because it's very focused on physical media, and at the time it was born, I had transitioned away from all physical media, and I had never really owned vinyl.

Since I got into the hobby after the fire as a way to fulfill my collecting impulses after I lost all my other collections during that incident, I had paid more attention, but usually just picked up records I wanted after the fact from online sellers—up until this year, I had never gone out to a record store (and there are tons here in the Atlanta area) on RSD, or even the weekend after an RSD date.

But that changed last April (the original RSD date), when there were so many good rarities that I finally ventured out on RSD itself to see if I could find anything locally. I didn't go out at 6 a.m. to line up for a 10 a.m. opening like many people do, instead waiting until the initial surge had died down and hitting up a few shops in the afternoon. I found quite a few of the items on my list, and even though I had to wait over an hour at one shop between the line to get in and the line to pay, I generally thought it was a pretty fun experience.

A few years ago they introduced a secondary RSD on Black Friday, and although I didn't go out on Black Friday itself (partly due to the family obligations that day), I did go out the next morning to Fantasyland Records (which seems to get the most stock for RSD in Atlanta) and was the first one through the door to look at what was left after Black Friday. I found two of the five albums I was looking for, and after talking to the shop owner, it was pretty clear that I would have likely ended up with the same discs unless I had been the very first one through the door on Black Friday—of the remaining three albums I was looking for, they only received one each of two of them and only five of the other one (which likely didn't last past the first dozen customers).

A lot of my interest in RSD depends on how many releases I'm looking for and how limited they are (and therefore how likely I am to find them online somewhere for retail price after RSD), but given my experiences this year, I will seriously consider doing the real RSD experience next April if there are some good selections. I can bring a book and sit on the sidewalk for a couple of hours if it means getting more of what I want locally and not having to pay for shipping costs.

12.3.24
We hosted Thanksgiving again this year, and in addition to all our local family (my mom, one of my sisters and her husband, and Julie's mom), we were also joined by most of the other half of the family who still live in NC where I grew up—my dad and stepmother, and my other sister, her husband, and their two boys.

They drove down to Georgia on Wednesday, but they stayed with my sister out at her place the first night, so we didn't see any of them until Thursday. That gave me time to do a lot of the prep on Wednesday so I didn't have as much to do day of. I've done this enough now that I've got the menu and the prep time pretty down pat, including the brining and cooking of the turkey, so it's really not that stressful even with my sister's chronic lateness (she likes to bring a few of her own side dishes, so it's critical that she's at the house when the turkey comes out of the oven so we have time to heat up her dishes while the bird is resting).

We did have one hiccup this year: despite us using our oven the day before and the morning of to cook some casseroles, etc., when it came time to put the turkey in, the pilot light for the oven wouldn't light. This has happened a couple of times before, and in both those instances, we just had to shut off the breaker for a few minutes to let the electronics reset, and then everything worked as expected.

This time, however, that didn't work, at least not initially. We did everything exactly like we'd done it in the past, but it just wouldn't start. Everything else in the over was working fine—the clock/timer, all the stovetop burners, and even the broiler in the oven. But the regular oven burners just wouldn't light, even when I tried to help them by lighting them manually.

After about 45 minutes and repeated attempts to get it to restart, it finally turned on, and so we got the turkey in about an hour after originally planned. That worked out well for my sister—she was supposed to be there no later than 3:15, but instead she didn't arrive until close to 4. But with the delay, that ended up being exactly on time for the turkey coming out of the oven for its resting period.

My out of town family stayed until Sunday, and we did lots of stuff on Friday and Saturday, including a trip to the Children's Museum, a visit to the Zoo to see this year's holiday light display (my NC family was supposed to go to this last year, but they came down with Covid the week of Thanksgiving and didn't end up making the trip), and an outing to the Legoland in one of the upscale malls (Will hadn't been in years and was very excited to revisit with his two cousins).

All in all it was a pretty good visit, even though I don't feel like I got to spend much quality time with anyone. That's something I'd like to figure out—the big group outings can be fun, but I'd really like to figure out how to make time to have one-on-one interactions that last more than five minutes so I can really catch up with people and understand what's going on in their lives. If we go up there to visit for Christmas this year (which isn't a certainty given Will's school schedule), I'm going to try to find ways to make those conversations happen.