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Bryan Hermsen

Dask

It's been awhile since I've written about anything technical, mostly because I've been busy and not really investigating anything new. But recently, and largely on whim, I've checked out a course on Dask. This is a framework for doing parallel, scalable data

Mission Statement

If someone were to ask you what your personal mission statement is what would your reaction be? Would you laugh at them? Slowly back away? Would you actually have an answer? This topic came up between my wife and I the other evening (you talk about strange things when you&

+1 for Gratitude

Your gratitude post really resonated with me. Looking back through my posts here, I think most of them are basically this–looking for things that are working, even if they're small. I remember reading recently (I can't remember where now) that gratitude is a habit or

Suddenly You're Old

Last week there was a point at which I stepped back from my desk and took stock of just how old I seem to have become. There I was in my slippers, soft jazz playing on my computer (because I no longer have the focus for lyrics), cushion on my

Switch

I avoided getting a Nintendo Switch for a long time. That's in spite of having several friends that rave about them and having played one and really enjoyed it. I think that the reason I was holding out is because of a long-standing image that I've

Ways to Listen

It seems that we are awash in outrage these days, and righteous indignation. I am not immune to this. I often grapple with how best to engage when there are wrongs that I see, and harms being done, especially that will affect my kids. I believe that we have an

Green and Growing Things

I've always enjoyed gardening. When I was in grade school I would grow pole beans along our fence line, and would spend time during summer afternoons talking to a lady who sold flowers near where we lived. I have no clue what got me into it, nor where

Diffuse Thinking

I recently finished the book Elastic by Leonard Mlodinow. The concept that he primarily covered reminded me a lot of Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, with some new statistics to back it up. To grossly oversimplify, my takeaways were: * We should take care of ourselves * We should take

Your Calling

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of a "Calling", or even pursuing one's passion as a guiding principle. In Office Space there's a scene where Peter suggests he works at his thankless job because he never had a passion

The Ice-Breaker is the Meeting

Like many people I've read and thought a lot about Zoom fatigue over the past year. It's a real thing. Zoom fatigue, along with my general impatience with long or desultory meetings means that I'm always keen to keep meetings very short, targeted and