What I Learned in 2024

2024 was a memorable one. My family has been expecting and welcomed a baby boy early July, and he’s been an absolute joy. My wife is starting an exciting new job in 2025 (healthcare+remote), and I’m continuing contracting via Tressero LLC whilst back in school taking classes. That being said, my reading has gone down this year, and probably won’t go up too much next year… but I’m including textbooks, so who knows.

In any case, I decided to switch up how I write (or categorize) some of the books I’ve read. Typically, I’ve categorized things as: logos, ethos, pathos. That categorization isn’t really inducive to living a balanced life… (e.g. physical health). So, I’ve decided going forward (even if this year is a bust) that I’ll do body, mind, and spirit. Maybe I’ll decide I hate it by next year, but why not.

So, here’s the books I’ve read:

• The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

  Leonard Mlodinow

• Caffeine Blues: Wake up to the Hidden Dangers of America’s #1 Drug

  Stephen Cherniske

• Grokking Algorithms

  Aditya Bhargava

• Intro to Algorithms (Textbook, 3rd Edition)

  Thomas H. Cormen - Textbook

• A Promised Land (Audiobook)

  Barack Obama

• The Ministry for the Future

  Kim Stanley Robinson

Body, I didn’t really do anything this year, excepting maybe Caffeine Blues (which I considered more ‘mind’, but…). Overall, it was pretty decent. I tend to overdo my caffeine consumption, particularly if anxious, so I read this at a time that I was quitting caffeine, and it has helped me to stick with it. There’s some things in it that aren’t fully substantiated, but also many things that are (e.g. coffee’s environment impact, impact on sleep, negative impact on focus, etc.)

Mind, I recall The Drunkard's Walk being really informative in terms of re-learning about statistics and how critical it is in today’s world, as well as how misued and poorly deduced statistics are in today’s world, even by professionals. It’s created a general distrust of data related reports, though, and I’ve decided that any alleged report which doesn’t publicize it’s source data, is realistically not to be trusted and at minimum to be taken with a grain of salt.

• Runner-ups: I also really liked ‘A Promised Land’ and ‘Ministry for the Future’, from both of which I learned a lot of things regarding economics, history, and global events (even though the latter one is a sci-fi, it leads you to google quite a bit).

Spirit, I didn’t really do anything this year. I’ve been feeling a little drained on that one this year, political season and living in the south and all. But, I’ve learned a little bit about faith through solid discussions with people that are important to me, and I consider that a positive. Also, I’ve learned a little bit more about the history as it pertains to the three major religions in the world and their interrelatedness, so still a net positive. With the Israel/Palestine war (which I learned more about in Obama’s Promised Land), I do generally want to learn more about Islam’s roots next year.

And that’s really it. I’m hoping to get more present on LinkedIn and my business website, so that maybe I can make this one more personal or niche focused on home tech things. We’ll see, though. The format of this blog is very dated, so I don’t really like updating it.