Tag: fun

  • Fun at Epic Systems

    Epic is a software developer that focuses on medical records and information. They were founded in 1979 and have grown since then to be a dominant company in their space. They remain privately held, and have a campus outside Madison, WI.

    I recently went there to discuss Redgate partnering with them and while there got to tour part of the campus. This is a bit of a dump of a number of photos, because it’s a cool campus.

    When we walked up to the first building, it was reminiscent of Falling Water. I visited that house years ago, and our host confirmed that was the inspiration for this building.

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    Connecting to that building was one that had quite a bit of a wilderness/safari/African theme. Art on the walls

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    Images around elevators.

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    Some fun spaces to sit and work or chat.

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    Walking from that building to the next, since most are connected, we came upon a mini recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. When I pulled on the idol, we got a soundtrack of the boulder rolling playing in the background. Very fun.

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    The basement of the next building had a recreation of a New York city deli and subway. I caught a shot of the space, where people can hang out with lunch.

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    I loved this piece of art overlaid on the iconic skyscraper worker photo.

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    In another building, there was a Hobbit theme. The entrance to one conference room looks like the Shire.

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    Inside there’s fake grass around the table.

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    And a space where you can get refreshments or sit outside of the main room,

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    Even the place where catering or refreshments might be set out continues the theme.

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    Walking further, this space has a outdoor feeling around the staircase from one floor to the next.

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    Just past that, there’s a few walls with the handprints of employees who have been there ten years. How cool is that?

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    We left the outdoors, heading for space. This was a very cool hallway.

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    And between two buildings, there was a Heaven theme, and a Hell one. If you press the buttons, the elevator doesn’t work, but it does remind me of Dante with some lights and sound.

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    Our presentation was in the Mos Eisley cantina.

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    With some statues and reproductions at one end of the room,

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    Around the conference room, there were various window spaces in the rock, each showing a different galaxy and the distance from Earth.

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    There was even an audience for my presentation.

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    Outside, it looked like the spacers were hanging out.

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    With plenty of art everywhere.

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    One thing I love is that Epic has maintained a lot of values over the years, and these are posted in every bathroom. I assume elsewhere, but I’d heard this and I saw these three items: commandments, principles, and principles of community.

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    Our meeting was protected with a notice, and a guard.

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    Epic has one of the largest, or maybe largest, underground event facilities. It was build into the ground on a former farm.

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    The elevator and stairs take you down.

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    Hallways have themes

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    And there are 11,000 seats. I’ve spoken in a few large venues, but never this large.

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    Different sides of the facility have different themes.

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    Do you recognize this?

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    Or this? In the entrance from above ground, this is near one of the escalators.

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    This was a fabulous visit, and I wish we had more time to tour other spaces. They have a new Star Wars and (I think) Harry Potter building under construction. Hopefully I’ll get to go back.

    If you want to just go and visit, you can.

  • Brain Exercises: Fun Away from Work

    I do like using my brain and trying different activities. Trying to solve T-SQL puzzles, or writing some code, or even playing some games that require me to think.

    Recently my wife and I took a cruise. We’ve done this before and one of the things we’ve enjoyed it the trivia contests. They’re fun and they tax your memory a little, and reveal how much you know about the world around you. A few years ago we (with my son) won one of the contests and got a pin. This time we were hoping to repeat as winners at least once during the week.

    We learned there are lots of smart people. We tried a few different contests and were close, but multiple questions away from winning. There are usually 16 questions, of various points, and we often knew 10-13, but often multiple teams fared better. Especially with the last, bonus question, which was worth more points. A few things we didn’t know:

    • Italian snack food made in 600AD inspired by children praying (pretzel)
    • how many stars are on the New Zealand flag (4)

    We did get a few things right

    • Australian snack made from leftover brewers yeast (vegemite)
    • honey never spoils (true)

    One of the days had a Michael Jackson theme. We are big fans, and as we listened to the songs, we knew most of them. The one we didn’t know, and in fact only one of the 25 or so teams knew, was Liberian Girl. One that my daughter knew, which none of us did, was Chicago. That was the bonus question and we needed it as we won by one point.

    We got a sticker for the win, which was fun, but it was nice to stop and try to think under pressure, but not too much pressure.

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    We won a second time, this one with TV Show intros. That was truly a group affair. I didn’t know many, but between my wife, my daughter, my son and his finance, we tied with 19/20 points with 2 other teams. We got a tiebreaker, and my son recognized the OC Theme, which one one else knew and I got a second sticker.

    This makes me think I ought to do some trivia at a Day of Data sometime.

  • My 2024 in Data: Health and Workouts

    This is my last week of the year working (I guess I come back on the 30th for a minute), so I decided to do some analysis of my year. I like data and numbers, so I’m looking at a few aspects of life this year with data I’ve compiled from previous years.

    Today we look at my health (somewhat) and exercise. That’s a big part of my life and I dedicate a lot of time to taking care of myself.

    Health

    I don’t want to disclose too much, but I feel fairly healthy. I have some age-related things that are annoying, but in general, I can live my life. This year (2024) was the first time since ankle surgery (2022), that I felt my balance was really good on the surgical ankle. That was nice to have it feel over the summer that it was back to full strength.

    I don’t have history (that I know of) of heart issues, but I like tracking my heart. I use a Garmin Forerunner 645, which seems to be accurate the few times I’m also hooked up to a doctor’s machine.

    My yearlong resting heart rate is: 52bpm. Sightly high, as I’d like it at 50 or below, but I’ve had some stressful travel stretches, and I think that’s made things slightly worse.

    My avg. high is 128, which is mostly from exercise, though I don’t know what to think about that number as an average.

    My one year sleep average is 8h35m a night. Pretty good, though I think the watch sometime catches me at night or in the morning as lightly sleeping when I’m reading. Still, it’s good I’m in bed for a nice stretch most nights.

    I struggle with weight as I travel. I was trying to stay 220-225, which I did well with in 2023. This year, with some really long trips, I’ve struggled. I get up around 230 on trips, and then struggle to get below 226-227. This was my year, and the upward trend started with the UK and then AUS trips.

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    Slowly doing better as I’ve been home since Nov 22. I hope to close out the year at 225 or lower.

    I should track BP, but I don’t. The closest I get it stress, which for me is from my watch. The scale is 1-100, and I show an average for the year of 23. My lowest reading was 17, and the highest was 30. I remember it being above 25 and I know why.

    In general, I am fairly low stress most of the time, and when I feel stressed, I can see it in the readings.

    Exercise

    I try to log all workouts on my watch. If I miss one, or it’s not charged, I try to add a manual one. I don’t always log walks, especially days when I’m just walking a lot without dedicated exercise time. Like in a convention center.

    In any case, here are the workout stats.

    • Indoor Cycling    102
    • Yoga    56
    • Strength Training    54
    • Elliptical    15
    • Pool Swim    8
    • Walking    6
    • Resort Snowboarding    3
    • Indoor Rowing    1
    • Other    1

    That’s a pretty good count overall. I had 246 workouts. Since I often cycle and lift, those can be the same day, but I do a lot of cycling on the road as a quick workout.

    The disappointing bits. Being gone a lot this summer only had me with 8 swims, which was sad. Only 1 of those was over a mile Sad smile

    I also only had 3 days snowboarding, which was also sad, but that was a busy life.

    Still, I think I worked out about 160 days this year by my best guess. We’re still a few weeks short, but that’s about 40-some% of the days that I specifically dedicate to workouts. Less a variety of things, as last year I had 10 types of workouts. Also less yoga, which is something I need to get better at on the road.

  • My 2024 in Data: Reading

    This is my last week of the year working (I guess I come back on the 30th for a minute), so I decided to do some analysis of my year. I like data and numbers, so I’m looking at a few aspects of life this year with data I’ve compiled from previous years.

    Today I’m looking at the books I read. I read a lot to get away from my chaotic life and this has been one of the things I’ve tracked for many years. I use GoodReads to track my reading, and I’ve done this since 2018. I used to do some book reviews or track counts on my blog, but I gave that up as Goodreads has great Kindle integration.

    The Numbers

    The numbers are constantly in flux, as I never stop reading, but as of this writing (12/16), here are the totals by year:

    • 2024 – 131  – updated 12/16
    • 2023 – 111
    • 2022 – 105
    • 2021 – 118
    • 2020 – 82
    • 2019 – 128

    This was my biggest year, likely because of all the time I spent in airports and on planes. I tend to read a lot during those stretches.

    A book isn’t a book, and I’m not sure how to easily get a count of pages read. Even then, with forewards of different lengths, citations/references/etc. it’s hard to know if I read more of less this year. However, from Goodreads, I could get this:

    • 2024 – 51753
    • 2023 –  34157
    • 2022 –  29517
    • 2021 –  29058
    • 2020 –  22932
    • 2019 –  42349

    More pages in books this year.

    I tend to read a lot of series, and this year, I had 18 authors of whom I read multiple books. I don’t have a series grouping, but these are the top authors:

    • J.N. Chaney    15
    • Douglas Pratt    10
    • Jeffery Deaver    9
    • Jack Slater    9
    • Steven Konkoly    9
    • Stephen Taylor    8
    • Harlan Coben    6
    • Robert Dugoni    6
    • Brad Lee    6

    Harlan Coben has a series (Myron Bolitar), but I think most of these were standalone books. Most of the Deavers were either the Colton Shaw series or ones from Lincoln Rhyme that I hadn’t read. The Douglas Pratt, Logan Ryles, Steven Konkoly, and J.N. Chaney series were new ones I discovered. I ripped through quite a few of these in trips, storing them in my Kindle app and reading offline.

    • Devices used: 3

    I only used my computer a few times to read during lunch, but almost all my reading is on my mobile phone. It’s a 6”+ screen and it works well. The third device was also a phone, which I replaced this year.

    I tried to use a small Kindle device in the past, but my daughter appropriated it last year and I haven’t used it since. I don’t miss it and while I carried a Kindle Fire a few times on trips, I ended up barely using it for video and never for reading.

    Genres

    I tend to read mostly fiction, as this is an escape for me. However, I do try to keep a few business/career related books in play. This year, by my count, I read these genres:

    • Thillers: 81
    • Sci-fi: 19
    • Mystery: 17
    • Legal: 6
    • Nonfiction: 4

    The nonfiction books were mostly for work, though I did read Geddy Lee’s bio, which I enjoyed. I roughly categorized these by author, so keep that in mind. Some of the thrillers likely fall into mysteries or something else, but I wanted just a quick look at my world.

    The Highlights

    I’ll recommend a few different items. I read a lot from my Kindle Unlimited subscription as well as a local library borrowing. If you buy from a link, you’re funding my reading habits.

    I’d recommend all the non-fiction books I read, which were these:

    I got lucky as I have a couple others in progress that I am not sure I’d recommend. In the sci-fi area, I really enjoyed the Sentenced to War series. It’s 15 books, so a nice long time to learn the characters. The main one is a little immature, but we watch him grow up, which was neat.

    I’ve also been trying to catch up on the Spinward Fringe series. I loved Hunters: Broadcast 16, but if you want to start, Broadcast 0: Origins is free.

    In the thrillers area, The Never Game caught my eye. It’s the Colton Shaw series from Deaver, and the basis for a new series on CBS. I enjoyed these 4, though the short story wasn’t great (1.5). These got me to look back for Lincoln Rhyme books I’d missed.

    I tried some Crighton’s I’d missed, but didn’t love them. I did, however, really enjoy the Prosecution Force series, book one is Brink of War. It’s a crazy tale, but I enjoyed the character and how he can’t quite trust anyone. I need to get a few more from this author.

    In the legal area, I’ve enjoyed the books of Robert Dugoni. This is an area I’ll get stuck in sometimes, usually with a new (to me) Grisham novel, but in this case, the Trace Crosswhite series was good last year and I liked the David Sloane series this year. The first is The Jury Master.

    That’s the year in reading, which was a fun one for me. Who knows where next year will go. Right not I’m in a bit of a sci-fi channel, with 2-3 business books on tap.