Tags
BlackBirch 3, Books, Crash Course History, Curiosity.com, documentary, MS Excel, Office Newb, Reading, VBA
Many of you may be wondering why I tell you what I am telling you this each Thursday. It’s simple. I want to document what I’m doing publicly, so I have a record to go back to. Yeah, I know I could put all this in a journal, but there’s something about broadcasting it to others that helps me stay focused and accountable to myself. Anyway, that’s my reasoning.
Blackbirch is really exciting. I won’t divulge anything here, but have to say, it’s a great third book in the series. The reason I say this is that many “series” dry up and become really redundant, telling you what happened a book or two ago and rehashing what’s already taken place. I guess this is because they want each book to be independent of another in the series. This doesn’t work with me, however. If you’re going to write a series, explain to your readers that you need to read these books in order. If they still ignore that advice, it’s not your fault they don’t know what happened. Anyway, that my thought on that. The Blackbirch series is anything but that. It has been a wonderful ride and the author has indicated on her blog that book 4 is in the works. Hurray!
Crash Course History covered WWI, WWII, and now is addressing the Cold War. These 20-minute bites are terrific because they discuss many things about many topics, but continuously slip in information that is unique. The narrator is also hilarious. You can check them out on Youtube. If you’d like a more understandable format, you’ll have to watch them on Curiosity Stream, which will run you $19 a year. It’s well worth it, if you are a documentary geek like me.
Finally, MS Excel. We are working on a loop for a sum function that knows how to sum a column in a worksheet and will span multiple worksheets to total up the same column on each one. It’s really cool to learn how to logically work through a problem like this. It is also really time consuming. For those of you who would like to learn more about Microsoft Office, I highly recommend this guy’s courses on Udemy. Just do a search for Office Newb and you’ll see all of his courses, which are fantastic.
I love learning new things and I really enjoy reading fiction. I did not used to be a big fiction fan but have adopted it as a form of entertainment. I wanted to read fiction to improve my creativity, learn how others write their stories, and to improve my dreams. You got it right–dreams. When you have to engage your imagination to become part of a story, those muscles also improve the dream recall you will have–at least that is what has happened to me. Ever since I began fiction reading, my dreams are more clear, understandable, and more story-like. They are no longer broken pieces or a collage of images and sounds.
Learning is one of the key items I hit on each day. I love it. There is no purpose behind it, other than I am curious about things and like finding these little treasures on YouTube, TedED, and Curiosity Stream. I also keep my eye open for any good documentaries on Netflix and Amazon. Being curious and learning new things is a great way to stay engaged. I’ll be 60 this year, and never want to lose the child-like curiosity I have. I love waking up each day and looking forward to what I will learn.
Well, that’s it for today. I hope all of you have a great Thursday!
Until next time…
Dave
Daily Ramblings... 