Category: Review

  • Review: From Strength to Strength

    Review: From Strength to Strength

    Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age. Arthur C. Brooks How do you ensure you don’t get the most out of…

  • Work vs Relaxation or Why Captain Call is the Villain

    Embracing hard things is important. We lift up those among us who work harder, endure more and suffer to get stronger or make the world better. But how much suck should we embrace? When is ok to relax or is choosing to relax opening the door to cowardice and weakness? Yesterday when I was playing…

  • DIY Calibration tools

    I had purchased Fowler 52-520-109-0 Dial Indicator with 1″ Travel with +/-0.5% measurement accuracy. I wanted to measure the alignment of my table saw blade and fence. You can buy tools that do this using the miter slot track with a dial gauge included for about $70. For example, this one: This had fairly limited…

  • Math of the Kreg 720

    The Pocket-Hole Jig 720 uses Kreg Automaxx™ to enable one-motion clamping by simultaneously clamping your workpiece and automatically adjusting to the exact thickness of your material (from 1/2″ to 1 1/2″). GripMaxx™ anti-slip holds the project piece secure. The manual doesn’t address how to pick the right screw length or how to set the stop…

  • Containers Are My Proxy Pass Tutor

    I have to build and interact with things to understand them. At MIT, we focused on combination of thought and practical action to solve current and future problems and our motto (mens et manus) combines application (hand) and theory (mind). By day, I’m leading adoption of containers and automation technologies to drive big changes in…

  • The Codebreaker

    Walter Issacson’s words formed my understanding of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci. Given his habit of writing engaging biographies from the most well known people on the planet, I was surprised to hear that his latest book was about someone I’ve never heard of: Jennifer Doudna. This is probably both…

  • The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

    This seemed like the book to read since I got a break and wanted to get smart on virology and try to make sense of what’s happening in our world. Professionally, I’ve been deep in the world of cyber security and defence technologies but I’ve always looked over the fence what’s happening in the Pharmaceutical…

  • The Making of a Manager

    I’m a manager and have been one for 20 years. The Air Force never gave me the chance to be an individual contributor except for 5 months where I wrote FORTRAN code to develop chemical dispersion models. A manager leaves behind their individual contributor role and assumes responsibility for the output of a team. The…

  • Meaningful Work

    I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to folks like me trying to connect their vocation to meaning, but I had to get past a rough start. "It’s not the chocolate, it’s the chocolate." is the banner quote of this book — a book I was seeking to help me understand the intersection of…

  • What you do is who you are

    This book was a timely opportunity to understand the intersection of culture and action. Ben Horowitz is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. The firm’s investments include Airbnb, GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Previously, he…