2018 has passed into yesteryear as I write this on the first morning of 2019. Every year in a life contains a number of sharp or strong memories and experiences, so why not share them? What the hell...
The most impactful book I read was Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. A gripping, and what feels like "first person" account, even though it's not, of the pressure and profit involved in the housing market of the poorer neighborhoods of Milwaukee, or any city for that matter. The weaving of great storytelling, data and personalities can not be topped by any other book I read this year (I'm looking at you Hillbilly Elegy).
Finding great music continued to plague me this year. The search for the perfect full length album is always a tough one. A good long time ago, I used to say that I'd buy any record that had 2 good songs on it, in the hopes that I'd be romanced, over time, by the rest of an album. No one has time for that anymore, or at least I don't. Luckily, all of those click baiting Top 10 lists started to come out late in the year and I stumbled across U.S. Girls and their 2018 release: In a Poem Unlimited. How to describe it? Not sure I can. Catchy, relentless, a bit of disco feel and weird as hell. I keep coming back to it, in the few weeks I've known it. It makes me want to find something else this interesting. This album definitely gives me hope again.
TV and movies, especially movies, were nothing special. That being said, I've fallen down the rabbit hole that is YouTube. Having it on the TV, courtesy of an app on the Amazon Fire TV, has opened my eyes. YouTube has been big for years, I know, but as I'm a late adopter this just fits my usual pattern. The rabbit hole aspect to this is that anything and everything you could possibly search for is out there somewhere. Entire concerts recorded via a cellphone held in the air for two hours... yep. Sturgill Simpson's obscure first band Sunday Valley performing live on some radio station... yup. Epic Porsche builds by Japanese tuners...yes. Off the grid home builder interviews and showcases, I could go on but I don't think there is any going back.
Regular travel continues to pay dividends on the life experiences front. A trip to Temecula in July taught me about fear as I changed a tire on the side of a particularly dangerous highway. The trip that really stands out was an annual Rocky Point trip, but this one had the added flavor of my wife's birthday. A normal trip to RP involves pure rest and relaxation all day, followed by dinner and a sunset and that's about it. This trip was vastly different, but just as refreshing. Friends came down for the first part, so we did a pirate ship cruise, some late night bar hopping, and a few crazy taxi rides. Other friends came down for the second part and we met some new folks, hit some new places and tried some new food. These new experiences were really eye opening in that you can have fun doing something outside your norm, your expectations and typical behavior (i.e. safe, secure and a stick in the mud) .
On the technology front, AWS continues to consume more and more of my time, demolishing old paradigms, tools and frameworks I typically would use in a project. The reliability and breadth of the services make AWS an unstoppable force. On another front, after reviewing some maturing JS frameworks (Angular, React and Vue) for their viability, I've started to get involved with Vue on a new project. Whether Vue becomes a force in the industry as Angular and React have, I'm not sure I care. I've found it to be very flexible even when building some rigidity into my reusable components. It's also been a very forgiving environment to learn in, and lean in to, whether dangerously or barely. Vue has allowed me to reinvigorate some of the curiousity I had some 20 years ago when I started down this path. It doesn't feel like rote effort or practices and I'm excited again about the possibilities ahead.
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