Ben Mann Monthly Sep 2023

Speech, Euda's first birthday, weird cake, An Elegant Puzzle, dad life

Purpose

• An index for my memory

• A menu of topics for my next conversation with you

• A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it

• A skimmable way to spread content I found valuable

Photos

Experiments and experiences

• The AI Conference talk

  • I wrote a 15 minute speech for The AI Conference. I didn't get a chance to memorize it, but I printed it out and read it from the podium. There were probably 200 people in the live audience. Afterwards I was mobbed with questions mostly around my forecasts of the industry and technology. I'm still not sure who was at the conference and why, which made it a bit challenging to target the speech, but based on the questions it felt like it landed well. The conference organizers had to intervene to extract me from the mob. Appreciate the interest!

• Euda's first birthday

  • Diana planned a birthday party and we accidentally invited 50 people (~12 were babies, most of the rest were parents). We ordered catering from Woori and cake from Paris Baguette. Instead of the usual party favors, we bought tiny dustpans, dusters, and aprons so the kids could clean up after themselves, at least in theory. They were a big hit! Especially the dusters. She also bought a traditional hanbok on Etsy for Euda, which she was willing to wear for about 15 minutes. This might be the last big birthday party we put together for her! Too much work 😅.

• Antidepressant update

  • Sertraline started messing up my sleep just like it used to, even at half dose. Switched back to duloxetine and started taking glycopyrrolate at half dose, which solves the night sweats without cognitive effects. I've been taking this for a few months now and I think it's the best combo I've found so far. A few days ago I tried doubling my duloxetine dose due to what might be elevated work stress, or might be internal demons. Jury's out on whether it's better, will see.

• Dad life: year one

  • Euda is so much more interesting and capable now! She can say a few words that correspond to real objects or actions (dada, mama, bubble, etc), pull herself up, race crawl, eat ~everything including spicy food, follow some commands, cry less, and exert some control over objects. My parents have moved into our building and take care of her every day 9-5. My daily 4:30pm alarm to come home works 90% of the time, and after she goes to sleep around 8pm I get back to work until 10 or 11pm. I've started exercising more again but haven't found a consistent way to work that into the routine. I am starting to feel like I know how to entertain her and keep her engaged when we spend time together. Echoing sounds she makes, helping her explore the world, and challenging her to do tasks that are at the edge of her abilities are reliable ways to elicit a smile, or at least interest. Excited for year two!

Life updates

• 📖 Started reading Scaling People

• 🇨🇦 Vancouver for 10 days (ongoing)

• 🎂 Made a weird cake: angel food cake, coconut custard as a topping (recipe by Claude to use up the 12 egg yolks from the cake), blueberry preserves, and fresh mango slices. Worked pretty well!

Content

5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend”, sorted

• An Elegant Puzzle 5/5 for software engineer manager of managers

  • I learned a lot from this book, and wished I had read it much earlier. It's a dense read, so I organized a biweekly book club at work to force me to practice it with spaced repetition. Claude's recommendation!

  • Some of the tools and heuristics that particularly stood out to me:

    • Teams should be 4-8 people.

    • Create sub-teams by staffing up one team at a time and budding off, not by hiring a manager.

    • Classify your team into {falling behind, treading water, repaying debt, innovating} and apply the appropriate fix.

    • Kill your heroes

    • Make your peers your team

    • How to make interview processes great

  • I was struck by how many books Will references in the text. He clearly takes self improvement to heart, and I hope to do the same!

• Past Lives 3/5

  • I think this movie meant more to Diana than it did to me. Covered the Korea -> US immigrant experience, and how there are two different selves inside you, one from each culture.

  • Is it realistic not to see a childhood friend for years, and then despite being married, instantly fall for them? Apparently this is based on the director's life experience, so I guess it is! There's something about that that makes me sad. Did you settle so much in your life that it's so easy to upend everything? I guess that's why divorce rates are high.

• Baby Mama 3/5

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2/5

  • Watched the Every Frame a Painting on David Fincher and decided to watch this. The final quote from the video "I think people are perverts... That's the foundation of my career." summed it up perfectly.