Book reviews for December 2020
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John E. Doerr
4/5
4/5
Abrigo Valley Trail to Santos Trail returning on Briones Crest Trail, a pleasant three and a half mile hike in Briones Regional Park.
(Previously: Mariposa Loop)
Hike starts at: 37.927261, -122.158768. View in Google Earth.
(Hike Map)
(Published to the Fediverse as: Abrigo Valley #hike #map Briones Regional Park hike taking in Abrigo Valley Trail, Santos Trail and Briones Crest Trail. 3.5 miles. )
Lake Merced in San Francisco (Previously: Lake Merced).
(Published to the Fediverse as: Merced #photo #lakemerced #sanfrancisco Photos from Lake Merced in San Francisco, California. )
A five mile loop in Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. Super limited parking so a good one for an early start. Descend Grabtown Gulch Trail for a little over two miles (and it doesn't really stop going down). Then after about five seconds along Purisima Creek ascend Borden Hatch Mill Trial all the way back to the top.
Hike starts at: 37.422216, -122.338163. View in Google Earth.
(Hike Map)
(Published to the Fediverse as: Grabtown Gulch and Borden Hatch Mill in Purisima Creek #hike #purisimacreek #map Awesome 5 mile hike in Purisima Creek, down Grabtown Gulch Trail and then back up Borden Hatch Mill Trial. Lots of down and then lots of up. )
2020 Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, including the Galilean moons.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Great Conjunction #photo #saturn #jupiter #conjunction Photo of the 2020 Great Conjunction including Jupiter, Saturn and the Galilean moons. Shot from San Francisco, California. )
Winter starts now in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer to the south. 10:03 UTC Dec 21 2020 rendered in Catfood Earth.
(Previously: Winter Solstice 2019)
(Published to the Fediverse as: Winter Solstice 2020 #code #winter #solstice #catfood #earth The exact moment of Winter Solstice 2020 rendered in Catfood Earth, including clouds and the extent of day and night around the Earth. )
Minutes spent so far this year waiting for Excel to talk to a printer: about 290.
Lifetime Excel print jobs: maybe 2?
How to fix Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel:
The only real disadvantage is you'll need to select a different printer when you actually need to print anything (which you probably don't).
(Published to the Fediverse as: Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel #etc #excel #microsoft How to fix the annoying Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel wait in Excel by setting a different default printer in Windows 10. )
Mariposa Loop in Briones Regional Park near Lafayette. Park near Happy Valley Elementary School and then head up Panorama Drive to the top to get the trailhead. It's just over three miles. The first mile goes up 600 feet without stopping and the views are fantastic in every direction. This is the first time we've visited Briones, will be back soon as it looks like it has a lot of decent loops.
Hike starts at: 37.905312, -122.142265. View in Google Earth.
(Hike Map)
(Published to the Fediverse as: Mariposa Loop #hike #lafayette #vulture #map #hikevid #video Three mile hike in Briones Regional Park near Lafayette. Steep first mile goes up 600 feet, then a pleasant loop back to the start. )
There is going to be a grown-up in charge. Maybe a little too grown up, and maybe not in charge of the legislature but what a relief.
This is a historic election for me. It's the first time the party I voted for (either in the UK or the US) has ended up in power. After a lot of shopping I rather fear I finally bought something.
It's more than a little shocking to me that more than 70 million Americans looked at this choice and voted for Trump. It's also shocking that out of a couple of hundred million possibilities that this is the choice we ended up needing to make. Biden was pretty far down my list in January but I held my nose and voted for him. I have to be charitable and assume that the same is true for many Trump voters. But still. FFS. He's literally killing you.
A decade ago I compared US politics to daisyworld and it's still true. We have guaranteed two party rule and neither party is particularly attractive. This forces people to pick a team and it's why we got the tribalistic result that we did. You're going to keep rooting for your side even if you don't particularly like the team this year. We need more like twenty parties and some genuine choice and some power sharing that results in compromise rather than deadlock.
On the subject of deadlock in practically every other democracy when the government can no longer govern then it falls. I do not understand why we go years with an imponent leader. I know that there are many people who think that this is a feature rather than a bug. That having Biden in the White House but Mitch McConnell saying no in the Senate is the kind of checks and balances that gave the hallowed Founders wet dreams. But I'm sick and tired of minority rule or near rule. Obama at least got two years to legislate, Biden might be facing zero and that's a crazy outcome for a majority of four million and counting. We need a National Popular Vote and we need to do something to fix the Senate.
$14 billion was spent on the 2020 election which is eye-watering. We're on track to spend $6.6 trillion this year though so we can afford to word on getting the money out of politics. It's crazy that Congresspeople face election every two years and are basically just fundraising the whole time. Let's have longer terms and Federally funded campaigns and term limits. Let's have independent redistricting that allows voters to choose their candidates and not candidates to choose their voters.
I'm not holding my breath.
(Published to the Fediverse as: 2020 Results #politics #election #biden #trump #politicalreform #senate #congress #democracy I'm happy that Biden won the 2020 election but still can't help complaining about the wet dreams of the hallowed Founders. )
Does closing the Great Highway cause an increase in traffic accidents?
Export Google Fit Daily Steps, Weight and Distance to a Google Sheet
Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel
Download a Sharepoint File with GraphServiceClient (Microsoft Graph API)
Monitor page index status with Google Sheets, Apps Script and the Google Search Console API
Enable GZIP compression for Amazon S3 hosted website in CloudFront
Scanning from the ADF using WIA in C#
Is it safe to open securedoc.html (Cisco Registered Envelope)?