Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

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
football tailgate Eagles Philadelphia

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.

Excelsior Day 9
June 30, 2024
excelsior Riley vacation

On Sunday morning, we woke up in our tents in Yellowstone with everyone camping around us packing up to get out for the weekend. We packed up all of our stuff and headed to the Grand Prismatic Spring to try one more time to get a closer look at this thing. We parked in the lot on the ground level near the Prismatic Spring and walked up the boardwalk to where the spring was. It was worth the stop.

There was a hot spring there named Excelsior, which we found — Riley says “steamy.” The Excelsior spring used to be a geyser all by itself! Then we wandered over to the Prismatic Spring, which was very colorful, also steamy and warm. You could tell the water was warm with all the bubbling and the temperature of the water vapor coming off of the pool of water.

Excelsior Day 8
June 29, 2024
excelsior Riley vacation

We started out the day in Lander, Wyoming, had breakfast at the hotel, and headed north toward Yellowstone. We drove some ways and stopped in Dubois, which is spelled like “do-bwah” but is actually pronounced “dew boys”, as we discovered when we went to the Jackalope gift shop where they had stickers that told you how to pronounce the name of the town. There was a jackalope outside the store, and I rode it. Riley refused on the basis that someone would take his photo and put it on social media, I’m sure.

While we were in Dubois, we stopped for lunch. We got some barbecue at a place called Two Z’s Barbecue, which was super, super good. We stuffed ourselves with way too many ribs and made ourselves feel bad, but didn’t feel bad having done so. We rolled ourselves into the car and got the car rolling again, this time heading farther north towards Yellowstone.

Excelsior Day 7
June 28, 2024
excelsior Riley vacation

We woke up in Gillette, Wyoming, in our hotel. We had breakfast, and then we set out for Casper, Wyoming. In Casper, we stopped at the National Historic Trails Museum, an unexpected stop. Still, there were interesting tidbits about some of the major trails that came across the United States in history, including the Pony Express, the Oregon Trail, and the Mormon Trail. It had a good exhibit, showing details about how they got across the country in wagons and supplied themselves during a year’s worth of travel without extant trails. I was surprised and impressed at the quality of the museum.

From there, we decided to grab some lunch. We went to a place in Casper called the Bluebird Cafe, one of the best lunch spots I think we had on our trip. We ate a BLT and a club sandwich. Our server was telling us about places to see if we would go to Lander, which was later on our agenda for the day. She gave us a tip, which turned out to be pretty good.