Take 5, D.

Weekly Update 2025-11-02

What happened during the week of October 27th - November 2nd:

🎪 It's been a quiet week, as both L. and I have been OBE'd at our respective jobs. We're both okay with this, as our home activities have been tamped down in anticipation of our upcoming New Mexico trip. Neither of us are stressed out from having to meet both home and work demands. Check in next week once the trip deadline (12 days away from today) gets closer!

👨🏻‍💻 Despite the increased work activity, I found some time to make a few changes on this site. On Wednesday 10-29, I kicked off the new Les Ketchup series: an occasional set of entries where I will follow up on earlier posts written here. Future entries should not be as long as my initial one, as I had nearly 8 months of entries to review. I also found time to update both the "Where are you?" and "What else?" pages to reflect current social media usage and websites of interest. I aimed for brevity with both updates, and I hope I hit the targets.

🍂 Autumn leaves have largely peaked around us, and with the frost advisory on Sunday 11-02, it's very likely that Halloween weekend may be the last opportunity to enjoy the foliage. L. and I went on a local leaf-peeping tour on Saturday 11-01, heading in a loop towards Shaw Nature Reserve, then towards Washington and Augusta before returning home. The nature reserve had an art fair going on, so we skipped it. Shortly after leaving, we encountered intermittent showers that followed us along our drive. We only made one stop at Noboleis Vineyards, so here's a view from the back of the winery:

Looking north from the winery. I'm unsure of what grapes are on these vines.

🚙 If you read the Les Ketchup post, you'd see a photo of my car from last year's accident. There's more evidence piling up suggesting that the initial assessment of damage was too good to be true, which I detailed in one of the follow-up sections. Before I leave for New Mexico, I will see if I can get a second opinion about the estimated repairs from the Kia dealership. I hope for positive news from this action, but even with a better outcome, I’m still worried about replacing my car in 2026. It feels like I've crossed the threshold of throwing good money after bad.

🍻 I spent about 2.5 hours on Thursday 10-30 at Side Project Cellar, talking with other regulars and bartenders there. Thursdays are traditionally for bottle shares, so folks will unearth some old beers from their cellars and share them with the folks at the bar. During the bottle-share, a former co-worker from my last job, M., showed up and we ended up talking for quite a while about the workplace. From her vantage point in R&D, the merger has been more successful than anticipated, with very little detrimental fallout regarding her team's roles. She couldn't say the same about the corporate side, as consolidations are happening in relation to the merger-reorganization-split. I know my old director of IT, who was the boss of my boss, is no longer in that role, but that's about all I know regarding my old department. I am glad for M. that her department is still around and that for some teams, the merger-reorganization-split has worked out better than was feared. At the same time I still don't regret leaving there, as I suspect IT would be one part of the corporate sphere where cost-cutting, removing redundancies, and reorganizations would take place. Unlike M.'s good fortune, I don't believe I would have been as lucky to escape unscathed.

A Couple Two Tree Items To Note From Last Week:

External Actions

Internal Labor

Media

Obligations:

More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:

Brainwashed is a podcast that has been around since 2004. The site itself dates from 1996, and has long espoused various musicians such as Coil, Meat Beat Manifesto, The Legendary Pink Dots, The Residents, and Cabaret Voltaire among others. The podcast will occasionally feature one of these bands, but it's often an outlet for newly released music. If you are a fan of KEXP, you'll find a lot of overlap with Brainwashed.

The big surprise with the Cory Doctorow/Ed Zitron podcast? It's only an hour long! Both of those guys aren't exactly known for their brevity, so having such a "brief" episode is a rare accomplishment.

Diving into the long history of English soccer clubs is fascinating, as many clubs pre-date entire American sporting leagues. Sheffield Wednesday, which dates from 1867, has effectively gone into bankruptcy and were docked 12 points in the EFL Championship (second-highest tier in English soccer) standings. It's not often you get to see a team earn negative points in their season, but the chart doesn't lie. Here's what you'd see on BBC Sport as of October 31:

The article interviews fans who are oddly happy about the loss of points, as well as their likely relegation to the EFL League One (which in spite of its name is the third-highest tier in English soccer). Oh, and if you’re an older sports fan, you may recognize Sheffield Wednesday for their home grounds, Hillsborough Stadium.

There are very few trains in the US or Canada that compare with what Japan has to offer. I picked two interesting examples of non-bullet trains: one food tour train, a format that has quite a following in Japan; and the last remaining overnight sleeper train in the country. The sleeper train will be retired in a couple years, with a potential replacement a few years off. As far as the wine train goes, I only wish the offerings included Japanese wine, as I’m curious as to how they’re perceived by the native audience.

I’ve been reading High Country News more frequently of late, as they focus on many issues in the Mountain West region that often get overlooked by larger media outlets. A significant portion of their reporting deals with water, but you’ll find nearly the same amount of coverage over energy issues. Speaking of which, Charlie Stross' entry ties in global unrest with a transition in energy sourcing, which was a twist I didn't expect. It's a more hopeful piece than usual from him, as some of Stross' articles hew close to being well-written and despairing. Well worth your time to read.

However, if you want despair (and its antidote), I'd read the Goon Squad article first, then follow it up with the social friction entry. In spite of how the titles are grouped, the "friction" mentioned in the Noēma piece has nothing to do with gooning. There are parts of the gooning article which may elicit desires to bleach your eyes, but it's well worth making it through to the conclusion. Keep that ending in mind when you read the Noēma article, and you'll understand why I grouped them together.

The difference between the all-you-can-eat steakhouse near Tokyo and the ABV Chicago Torture Test is one of intent. Ryan and Craig have made an Halloween tradition to prank each other with beers that have either gone bad or just simply taste horrible, and while the 9th edition can't compare to last year's ghost pepper beer experience, you'll get a few good laughs out of their efforts. By contrast, the all-you-can-eat steakhouse was a genuine discovery to see if a cheap steakhouse chain in Japan can deliver the goods with their beef offerings. Your mileage may vary, but I'd rather have the bad beers than the steak that was on display. Some of the close-ups of the steak made me gag more than hearing Ryan and Craig's reactions to what they drank.

Finally, Patrick Wyman has embarked on a new theme for his Tides Of History podcast, where he examines the ancient economies of various civilizations during the first millennium BC. I don't know if such a field--paleoeconomics?--really exists, but so far, these episodes surprised me with how interesting this topic could be. In this episode, you'll learn that Ancient Egypt survived on a redistribution of wealth via the Pharaoh, largely due to the fertile grains and regular floods along the Nile, and they were able to make this method work for several centuries. You'll also learn how the Pyramids really were a one-time thing, whereas the monuments in the Valley of the Kings were the result of specialized labor.

#Documentation #Ketchup #Life #Metablogging #WeeklyNotes