Wednesday, June 10, 2020

The ONE Thing by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan



The voice, tone, empty bromides, and vapid aphorisms, especially in the first few chapters were very nauseating and I almost put the book down a few times.  However, one of my mentors recommended the book, so I felt obligated to get through it and the book did get better.  In a nutshell, as the title suggests, the book prescribes why and how to prioritize a single task, and  engage in that task with a singular focus.  The authors' innate values, intensity and driven personality shine through.  They assume everyone and all readers are megalomaniacal and driven to amass wealth, power, fame. The concepts and prescriptive recommendations in the book are actually very good and I do recommend the book.  For example, the time management recommendations and approaches to expanding your horizons are modern and treated poorly by other self-help authors.  3/5 Stars.  One of the top 100 business books you should read. 

Monday, June 8, 2020

Sunday, June 7, 2020

The Neutronium Alchemist by


A great space opera thriller with terrible physics, 4/5 Stars.

Friday, June 5, 2020

Opinions!!



Everyone is very angry.  I was looking for data and peer reviewed academic publications but they are difficult to sift through.  This August 2019 study has almost no conclusions other than we don't gather enough data, But many journalists are citing that study to lend evidence to their own opinions. As Pinker keeps reminding us, the total number of urban fatal shootings keeps declining every year:

But this week we had car-b-q's, property damage, and theft, even in my sleepy little town.






Monday, June 1, 2020

Checklists are good


I am a fan of Atul Gawande's book and frequently try to use checklists for work-related activities. If you are trying to formulate a "launch readiness" checklist for your approval or release workflow for your backend applications, Aleksi Kornev's checklist is a good place to start.

Rejoiner Revisited


Google is seriously backing their GraphQL middleware (Rejoiner).  Kris Sandoval takes us on a quick overview of why it is so appealing and cases where trying to use it are inappropriate (expensive database calls).

GitOps deployment pipelines explosion


It seems everyone and her uncle is jumping on the GitOps bandwagon to deploy continuously.  Omer Kahani explains in his write-up how his company (Riskified) uses Argos continuous deployment in their pipeline.

GCP Audit Logging


DataDog gives us a guide to google cloud platform (GCP) audit logging and how to scan and use the logs.  My company pushes our logs through existing scanners used for other types of logs. But these audit logs can be used for other purposes.  It's relatively straightforward.

Meeker Report: Our New World - April 2020

Although her 2020 Internet report is not yet out, Mary Meeker published a report in April called "Our New World."  Her reports and analysis are always worth skimming.  I am hoping her Internet Report 2020 will come out this month.