Book Note - The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

 Posted on January 20, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  147 words  |  Robert McLaughlin

There are more books than I can read, and there are more books right now than I can read right now. As a result I have a backup in my active to-be-read queue. I promoted The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton to the top of the list and recently finished it. Right to the point - 5 out of 10, a poor rating. 7 1/2 had a novel story but executed in a way that did not work for me. [Read More]
books 

MLK Day

Common Appreciation

 Posted on January 16, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  190 words  |  Robert McLaughlin

In addition to providing a much needed PTO day in mid-January, MLK Day also reminds me that Martin Luther King and I share a common appreciation. In 1964 MLK won a Nobel Peace Prize and in 1967, Dr. King deemed another human worthy and nominated Thích Nhất Hạnh for the same honor. Thích Nhất Hạnh (or Thich Nhat Hanh if your browser has trouble rendering the name properly) was a Buddhist, teacher and peacemaker. [Read More]
holiday  books 

Web Hits

 Posted on January 10, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  83 words  |  Robert McLaughlin

Being a novice web site writer/manager/janitor is an interesting challenge, especially with the ‘do everything myself’ approach I’m taking. There are a few bits that that are surprising. mclaughlin.one suffered through a bit of downtime while I made an enhancement in the way the web server operates. Now that everything is up and running again I took a look at the page hits and discovered one of the pleasantly surprising bits: [Read More]
website 

Book Note - The Maze by Nelson Demille

 Posted on January 7, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  181 words  |  Robert McLaughlin

One week into 2023 and one book complete. First book of 2023 was The Maze by Nelson Demille. I read quite a few Demille books over the years and some of them were fantastic. Plum Island and its sequels, The Gold Coast, and my favorite Demille, The Charm School, were all great reads. I recommend all of those. The Maze earned a rating of 6 out of 10 from me, a little below my average. [Read More]
books 

Website Construction

 Posted on January 4, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  285 words  |  Robert McLaughlin

My website building started in the early 2000s with manually written html sent via ftp to a host. Mostly it was a way to share pictures before it there were countless easier ways to share pictures. In 2021 I put up a site on AWS. It was a static blog hosted insecurely on S3 but it worked. That evolved into a custom domain, www.mclaughlin.world, hosted on GoDaddy and run through WordPress in 2022. [Read More]
website 

Best Reads of 2022

9s and 10s

 Posted on January 2, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  689 words  |  Robert McLaughlin

I ended 2022 with 53 completed books, a handful of ‘did not finish’ and no audiobooks, I did give The Boys a try on audio but ran out of time and enthusiasm. They first 2 chapters were good. This year I read no books that I considered a 10, although one was close. I rate on an unbalanced scale of 0-10 for fiction: 10 - Engaging story, good flow, relatable characters, superior writing and impactful. [Read More]
books