Busy Summer

It's been a very busy Summer so far. I've gone to Savannah, Georgia / Tybee Island with my friends. It was my first beach vacation, and it was pretty fun. I can definitely see why people like to live by the beach. Savannah was a really cool city and had lots of interesting history.

I've gotten to spend a lot of time with friends and family, which has been great. I'm grateful to have been able to take time off from work. Since the full RTO at my job in April, I've definitely felt like I "needed" time off from work much more than when it was hybrid - I'm honestly shocked at the difference the two extra days in office has made to my mental state. I hate to complain about my job because I like what I do and am comparatively very lucky to even have a job (given the current state of the job market for new graduates in CS), but I feel like RTO has started to give me a permanent burnout that I'm not sure I'll be able to escape in a permanent way. But the vacation days are a nice respite.

Video Games, Movies, Books

I played a lot of Minecraft in the last two months. This is probably the most impressive Realm my friends and I have made. I'm feeling a bit of Minecraft burnout right now, but I really want this Realm to be more long-form, where my friends and I return to it instead of starting a new Realm in the future. We'll see.

I started watching Game of Thrones. I'm only five episodes in, but it's fantastic so far.

I started reading Dune: Messiah (the second book in the series). It's very different from the first, but I like it a lot. Frank Herbert has some of the most awesome world-building. Side tangent, but the idea of the Butlerian Jihad in the series, where computers are outlawed, or something like that, is super interesting. It results in there being humans who are trained to think "like computers", called Mentats. I think it feels particularly interesting with the rise of AI recently. I wonder if we will see groups or subcultures of people who are otherwise "plugged in" (use the internet & technology regularly), but refuse to use AI (or at least the un-creative / anti-creative LLM capabilities).

Random other stuff

My girlfriend got her first full-time teaching job, which is super awesome. I'm really proud of her and it was great to see how happy she was to get the job offer. We celebrated with ice cream, and I had to buy a whole quart of the Handel's Key Lime Pie since it's a seasonal flavor and also my favorite.

I made bread this past weekend. I enjoy making bread because it tastes great, but it's also just a great reminder to slow down and take things a little easier. If you haven't made bread before, give it a try! I used the "simple" loaf in Brian Lagerstrom's "1 Dough 3 Loaves" Recipe.