Focus for the rest of the week!

Celebrating International Women’s Day 2020! 👍 #IWD2020 #EachforEqual

See IWD 2024, 2021, 2020, 2020 @ SPS, and 2018.

Nice 5-2 MN United win over San Jose! 🙌⚽️ #MNUFC

Family movie night with Mr. Popper’s Penguins. 🎬

Rummikub!

The top blocked domain that my Pi-Hole is protecting me from every day is api.segment.io. That isn’t a web browser thing that 1Blocker could even block. It is API calls embedded, I suspect, in iOS Apps. I love having multiple layers of surveillance blocking!

International Women's Day 2020

We had a great event recognizing International Women’s Day at SPS Commerce. Great keynote and exercise around vulnerability and bias led by Brave New Workshop’s Margi Simmons and a wonderful panel from women leaders in #TeamSPS! Thank you Kara Boespflug, Jenny Nolan, Anna Picchetti, Nikki Riemersma, and Bre Taft.

See IWD 2024, 2021, 2020, 2020 @ SPS, and 2018.

Enjoying Tina Schlieske doing solo acoustic show at the 318 Cafe in Excelsior. 🎶

Well, that isn’t supposed to be there. 😤

We had a lot of fun at REM5VR tonight! Beat Saber was my favorite. 🎮

I’m having a fun time with the Pi-Hole just to see the volume of DNS activity on my home network! Green line is total requests, blue is the number that were blocked. 🙌

After the Tech Talent event today John Avenson, VP of Technology for the Minnesota Twins, took a small group on a short technology tour of Target Field. It was an awesome time! I loved hearing how the network works and how all the cabling is routed around.

Upon seeing this cable tray, Amy Patton blurts out “That’s beautiful” with absolutely no irony. Only in tech… 🤩🙌 (PS: I agree!) Nice job Target Field tech team!

MHTA Tech Talent 2020

Learned a lot this morning at the MHTA Tech Talent 2020 event! A wealth of data from Grant Riewe, Erin Olson, Sri Koneru, and Tim Welsh.

The Success Stories from Minnesota Workplaces at todays MHTA Tech Talent 2020 event were very informative. It was great to hear what is working for everyone. This event is only in it’s 2nd year but is already a mainstay for the community.

It was a privilege to be able to share some perspective and success stories at the MHTA Tech Talent 2020 event about what we are doing at SPS Commerce to attract, retain, and develop technology talent!

Maybe taking your blood pressure a couple hours after “breakfast for dinner” with bacon isn’t a great idea. 😬🥓

Configuring my Raspbery Pi 3B+ with Pi-Hole! 🤓

Pi-Hole up and running! Easy to setup. 👍

I find the Feb 22nd 2020 cover of The Economist so perfect. I love the imagery of these cybernetic bulls. And probably even more, I like the choice of having them run directly at the viewer — as if you are about to get run over by them.

Wow — Pythonista 3 finally got an upgrade to some of the newest iOS features! And release notes make it clear further Shortcuts support is on the way! 👏

Mimi Uploader may fundamentally change how I use micro.blog. It makes it much more compelling for longer blog posts.

Ticket to Ride Japan

Our family enjoys playing Ticket to Ride and we have some of the expansion packs. When I saw the new Japan expansion pack I knew that was something we would like. We’ve now played both the Japan and Italy (the flip side) versions.

Japan

The Japan expansion pack is interesting because it introduces a new cooperative element to the game in the form of the bullet train. All players work together to build the bullet train, and in fact you are rewarded and penalized for how much or little you work on it. It’s like a game in a game. The bullet train can then be used by all players. It changes the game a lot and is a really fun way to play. I think this version of the game will reward players that draw a large number of tickets.

Italy

Italy is more traditional. There is no communal play like the bullet train. It introduces Fairies to the game to build water routes. It also has a bonus concept of connecting a large number of regions. It is fun, and if you enjoy Italy it’s fun to play with all of those cities. Gameplay is pretty standard.

Playing some Skittles this morning.