The Emperor’s Agent by Jo Graham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

And so my first book of 2017 is done, although it’s a bit of a cheat as I started it at the end of 2016.

I purchased this book as part of a book bundle - I think it was on StoryBundle.com. The relevance of that is that I didn’t buy the bundle for this book and I hadn’t realized until starting it that it was the fifth book in a series. As far as that goes, I think the book functions quite well as a standalone book. Taking a quick look at the descriptions of other books in the series - it appears that only book 4 (the one preceding this one) is directly related to the characters here. So other than not knowing the conceit of the way the world works in the Numinous World series, you’re not out of luck starting here.

With modern technology, here’s the pattern I’ve noticed since college. New tech comes out and I can see that it’s neat, but not how I can make use of it. A few years later, I finally come across the right article and it all makes sense to me. I first noticed this with VMs. I couldn’t see a reason to want to use it outside of a server context. Then I used it to review Linux distros. Then I used it to run my network’s services. The same happened with tablets, smart phones, and Docker.

One day, I wanted to enjoy time with the kids a little differently and since my love for photography is once again peaking, I took photos of the kids playing in the ball pit.

The weather was finally improving and so we figured it was a good time to take the twins to the zoo for the first time. When Scarlett was around the same age she didn’t care for the animals as much. She was much more interested in the kids around her. So we weren’t sure if the kids would enjoy it. The National Zoo seemed like a wise choice since it was free to enter.

For a long time we’d been avoiding New York Strip Steak. I’d tried to grill some a long time ago and it just couldn’t hold a candle to a Ribeye. But recently my father-in-law bought a bunch and gave us some so I gave it another shot. I took all I’d learned in the past year or so from Meathead and used my thermometer to get a prefer medium steak. Here’s where I ended up:

Things are busier now, especially as the weather warms up and we begin to do more outside, so I’m switching from keeping track monthly to doing so quarterly.

Vertical Drop Heroes HD (3 hr 15 min)

https://youtu.be/NcjpCmkKb9c?list=PLEJrELYLxNgXBv5HxeZNUxg5AWWM9QGJb

Finally beat this game. It was a lot of fun and I’ll probably play some New Game+ this year if I find the time.

Contraption Maker (1 hr 20 min):

https://youtu.be/Yezzplk2dYs?list=PLEJrELYLxNgULZsu5WJW6Xyb1Hc4XPK_X

Scarlett loves when I play this game and it’s always fun to go through the brain teasers to try and figure it out.

In a post about how security has changed, Josh Bressers had this great bit of info in how some people are living in the past when it comes to understanding technology:

If you listen to my podcast (which you should be doing already), I had a bit of a rant at the start this week about an assignment my son had over the weekend. He wasn’t supposed to use any “screens” which is part of a drug addiction lesson. I get where this lesson is going, but I’ve really been thinking about the bigger idea of expectations and reality. This assignment is a great example of someone failing to understand the world has changed around them.