Tag: Kyle

Games May 2026

May 31, 2026 2:41 pm

Won a game of 7 Wonders at a dinner-and-games get together.

Completed quests 9 and 10 of Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall with my campaign group. We were victorious on quest 9, but on quest 10 a giant moth creature got the drop on us and wiped out half the group’s health on the first blow. From there it was an agonizing struggle to stay on our feet until, ultimately, the moth creature pummeled my character into the ground ending our suffering in defeat.

Played a round each of Azul and Hardback at the board-game meetup. I lost Azul pretty badly, but I won Hardback.

Played Wondrous Creatures at another board-game meetup. This one was new to me. It’s a bit like Everdell, but more complicated. I focused too much on engine building and lost badly. But, in my defense, the person I was playing with had recently been obsessed with the game and had played it 5+ times in the prior 6 days. And he didn’t exceed my score by more than 50%. Definitely a game that one needs to play several times to get a feel for the pacing and strategic options.

Books May 2026

May 30, 2026 2:36 pm

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson — Book 3 of the Stormlight Archive series

This book took up most of my month of reading. Another massive tome in the series primarily covering a continuing series of failures trying to rally the nations to a common cause and solidify a defensive posture against the opposing forces. A shattering revelation about the voidbringers, but a glimmer of new hope before the end.

Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson — Book 3.5 of the Stormlight Archives series

A side-plot novella taking place after the events of book 3 to flesh out some side characters and history.

Leaves us still asking, “What is the Dawnshard?”

Games April 2026

April 30, 2026 9:20 pm

Completed Quest 8 of Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall with my group. Another victory for the team.

While Mom & Dad were in town we played a few games

We played half of a game of Keep the Heroes Out with Corinne. We were victorious.

Played Harmonies, a game of somewhat-abstracted habitat creation. Given to us by friends for Christmas this was the first time we managed to get it to the table. I’d played once at the board-game meetup in the past. For practice, I read the rules in French and managed to figure it out correctly. I believe Mom won.

A quick game of Cat Fluxx. I won.

Followed by a quick game of L’Oaf, which I also won by virtue of being the only baker not fired.

Books April 2026

8:51 pm

Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter

A deeper dive than I was expecting into the discovery of the Stuxnet attack and its believed impact on the Iranian nuclear-weapon program.

The forensic analysis effort of the code was well told. I found it interesting.

Crisis Engineering by Nitze, Weaver, & Dickerson

Lessons learned from a team brought in by organizations to help resolve technology-related crisis situations. For example the botched roll out of healthcare.gov and California’s Covid-era unemployment system collapse.

If you’re in the tech industry the case studies will be unnervingly relatable, but also a little cathartic to know you’re not alone. The dysfunction all around you is, sadly, common.

I would read an entire book of similar case studies to hear more stories like: the unkillable 3AM status-update phone call, the call center that doesn’t know it’s a call center, and why aren’t you using the operations center built for this?

Full disclosure: I am related to one of the authors

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

After two technical, non-fiction books I wanted something light. So I did another read of Jurassic Park.

While it’s almost a truism that books are better than the movies, I think the movie actually does a really good job of cutting out some distractions and telling the core story really well.

For example, the book has a slow opening presumably intended to build some mystery, but the title rather gives away where it’s going so I’m not sure the slow-burn opening is beneficial. And then it ends with an unnecessary excursion to find the raptor nests. Which might have made sense to set up the sequel, but the sequel has nothing to do with the migrating raptors plot line (as I recall).

Anyway, I still enjoyed it.

Games March 2026

March 31, 2026 6:19 pm

Completed Quests 5, 6, & 7 of Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall. Our team remains undefeated.

At the only meetup I made it to we played a game of Northern Pacific. It’s a railroad-building game in which players bet on which cities the railroad will connect through and then try to steer the construction through the cities you bet on. It has some interesting game-theory aspects to it. It’s played in 3 rounds and each round was very different as players adapted their strategies. I won out in the end.