Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Pizza Quest 2024
October 25, 2024

At the beginning of the summer, the family embarked on an expedition to find the best pizza in Chester County. We did this because every time we went out for pizza or ordered delivery, we’d end up with something that didn’t satisfy one of us, or any of us. I thought we had found the best pizza place—one that satisfied all our needs—when we discovered a nearby spot called Revival Pizza.

Revival Pizza was initially pretty good. They had unique toppings, used different cheeses with distinct flavors on various pizzas, and their crust was nicely cooked and flavorful. Plus, it wasn’t too far to drive for pickup. Everything seemed perfect. But at some point, either Revival changed ownership or they altered their menu. Fundamentally, their pizza changed and no longer satisfied everyone. The cheese, which was an interesting factor at first, became less flavorful or too garlicky in some cases. They also used to have a really nice spicy shrimp pizza, which might sound odd to some folks, but it was amazing. Unfortunately, that pizza is no longer on their menu, nor is shrimp available as a topping anymore, which is kind of sad because I occasionally crave shrimp on my pizza.

Tin Update
October 23, 2024

It’s probably not apparent from what you see here, but I’ve made a pretty significant breakthrough with the way the software works to display this site. I want to get back to the note-taking exploration, but I’m pretty excited about this change and I want to make use of it.

One of the big intended features for the software that runs here is to be able to set some environment variables and then run the software and have it offload all of the storage to a git (not necessarily GitHub) repo. There would be no local storage. Everything would run in memory. When you write new posts, it would simply commit them to your repo for you directly from memory.

Notetaking For Gaming
October 08, 2024
games gaming notes work

Continuing some of the thinking from my last post about Notetaking for Business, I had mentioned that I use Obsidian for all of my note taking needs. I make pretty extensive notes for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting that I play most weeks with a group of friends.

The notes I take for my game are pretty straight forward, but there are a lot of them. I do use some Obsidian-specific plugin features to enable my game to run smoothly, but this is more of an add-on than an essential component of my notes themselves.

Notetaking For Business
September 29, 2024
notes business work

I have seen endless books and blogs and forum posts espousing the use of specific note-taking techniques that are meant to give a leg up to anyone who takes notes as part of their daily life. I am bothered that most of these techniques assume a certain disposition of note-taker – You are either a student taking notes for topics in class that you will later be tested on, or you are a “researcher” of some kind taking notes to help you think through complex topics for deeper meaning.

In the former case, students have a variety of note-taking tools that have lasted for what seems like millennia. Cornell Notes, a system designed in the 1950’s, is a note-taking strategy that allows students to quiz themselves on details they take notes on, which is generally regarded as a good practice for study. Sadly, there are many studies that report the general achievement of Cornell Notes takers isn’t statistically better than other students.

Eagles Tailgating
September 22, 2024
Eagles Philadelphia football tailgate

I’ve been attending Philadelphia Eagles games since 2012 with a group of guys who share several season tickets. Initially, it didn’t seem like something I would enjoy—attending a football game. I never had much interest in football growing up or even up until that point. However, my friend Stan invited me to a couple of games, and it ultimately seemed like a good idea to join this tailgate crew as a weekend activity during the fall.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve attended the majority of home games at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia to watch the Eagles play. We usually arrive between three and four hours early so we can park in the lot and tailgate, which is a significant part of what we do when we attend the games. In fact, I would say my interest in this weekend activity is more about getting together with people I enjoy hanging out with than about the actual football, even though football is ostensibly the reason we gather.