Smoke All the Things

Today I’m smoking brisket, salmon, and lamb. Last night I brined the fish, then got it drying around 10, and started the smoker at 1250. I’ll smoke it until about 1700, then do the lamb to 160℉, then do the brisket overnight. The lamb is 5.7 lbs at $7.99 per lb, brisket 14.2 at $4.99 per lb. Unfortunately the brisket has a ton of fat on it - this was a bad buy.…

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Rust Number Conversion - Don't Follow the Book...

I’m at an intermediate level with the Rust programming language. I’ve done a year of adventofcode, a medium-sized API server project, and little more. While refactoring some code in my project recently I got rid of some of my explicit string conversions and let the type inference system and From/Into do their jobs. Now that I’m more comfortable with reading code using From/Into patterns I think it’s actually simpler - I can easily understand and trust what the type inference system does in those instances.…

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Stories

During this leadership development course one of the instructors quoted one of his previous mentors saying that leaders should have stories ready about: mission, discipline, loyalty, and safety This is in line with what one of my former mentors told me more briefly, “you need stories”. Ok - I thought, but stories about what? I have stories… I can tell a story… Typically I’m coming up with something appropriate on the spot.…

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Military Feedback

It will be a continuing struggle to stay on top of how the Air Force is changing in the feedback system, and the systems they add over the years. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2490030/air-force-announces-airmen-leadership-qualities/ Here’s a new one I need to stay on top of - a new additional feedback form. It looks fantastic - the “Airmen Leadership Qualities”. During the Leadership Development Course communication section, the Chief said: Great leaders help people understand their “now”, then help people understand the future…

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Dear White Colonel

This is an interesting article shared as part of this leadership class I’m in right now: Dear White Colonel … we must address our blind spots around race What I liked about this article is that by describing instances where the topic got steered wrong, and the author’s feedback about what got missed when that happened, the article provides a roadmap to steer conversations back in the right direction. I feel like these examples really resonate with me - as if I’ve been a part of conversations like this.…

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Applying Personality Quiz Results

I’m finding this course pretty interesting. They asked us to reflect on some of our results from a personality quiz - the one at 16personalities.com. I got an INFJ, but normally I’m INTJ and think I probably still am, really. How will we apply what we know about our personalities to our interactions with our teams? I’ll try to be more conscious about how I react to “perceiving” teammates.…

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Managing Culture

This video discusses organizational culture - I don’t love it because it’s too cheesy-motivational to me. https://youtu.be/neDFJlUCXR8 One think I do like about the video is that it provides some solid ways to change organizational culture. By providing a solid definition (even if it’s not the one I’d choose), the video is able to specify how to move the needle against that decision: clarify embody celebrate Determine what behaviors will be rewarded or corrected in your organization, and clarify that to the entire team.…

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Commander's Attention

I’m sitting in the Leader Development Course from Air University - distance learning. One of the stories I heard this morning has the crux - the commander needs to walk a line between being too involved and not being involved. The story involved the former commander trying to show he cared by being there when new members arrived, by sitting with folks as they did work, and by visiting them when they were out in the field.…

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Google Fiber Broke My Sprinkler System

We got Google Fiber installed a couple weeks ago, shortly after it became available in the neighborhood. It has been great. There’s still some construction going on at the mouth of my neighborhood and it has caused one overnight outage… But that’s understandable. What’s not understandable is why my sprinkler system stopped working at about the same time they installed the fiber… Ok - so I can guess what happened. The fiber trench was run, then a few days later the sprinkler system was scheduled to run, but it did not.…

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