#robert kurson

Continue reading Book Club in Session: Shadow Divers: Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson

Pirate Hunters by Robert Kurson

Title: Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert KursonAuthor: Robert KursonRating Out of 5: 4.5 (Amazing, but not quite perfect)My Bookshelves: History, Memoirs, PiratesPace: MediumFormat: eBook, NovelYear: 2015 I’ve had a bit of a thing about pirates since I saw Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean, who wouldn’t after Captain Jack Sparrow? There’s…

A True Blog Post of Safety, Inertia, and the Man Who Settled for Blindness

Man gets blinded in chemical accident at age three. Goes on to live pretty incredible life. In his mid-forties, he learns about radical new treatment to give him vision. It’s risky, but he goes for it.

Man can now see. Movement and color are fine, depth and faces are not. This frustrates him greatly but he keeps trying. Researchers determine neurons necessary to interpret depth and faces are gone. He’s on the verge of giving up but doesn’t. Decides to use his organizational and memory skills acquired as blind person to help him with depth and faces.

Story ends on a positive note. Man’s vision is not perfect, but he’s still working on it.

That’s the story of Mike May as told in Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See, a crazy book by Robert Kurson.

And I didn’t even mention the painful injections straight into his eyeball.

I have taken so much for granted in my life. I can’t think of much in my life that could even be charitably described as “crashing through.”

At work I ostensibly want to get better at advanced analytical methods because that is the direction my industry is going. I updated my development plan accordingly. In my current job I have the luxury of space to work on these things and being encouraged to develop myself in this area.

Last week I saw a job description that would be a slight promotion, not one I would go for now, but one I could use the details of to model my development plan off of.

And I could work on those things for the next year or two. Take a few classes in data science and machine learning. Tinker with things myself. Read Towards Data Science every day on Medium. Stay on top of what’s new. Blog all about it along the way. Really dive deep.

And that would certainly set me up nicely for the next decade of my career. But I’m not sure I want the next decade of my career to move that direction. When I picture myself being happy a ten years from now, it’s not managing a team of data scientists, it’s writing.

 The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins – one of those very hard to describe books – could possible describe it as mystery/science fiction. If you like a book that’s very unusual (as most science fiction is) then give this one a try.

Rocket Men by Roburt Kurson – the true story of the Apollo 8 mission- mans first journey to the Moon. Personally, I love books about space (perhaps because I love the science fiction genre), and this one was no exception - a thrilling read!

The Endless Beach by Jenny Colgan – a continuation of the Café by the Sea story. Going to be a trilogy, and this time I’m thrilled. Jenny Colgans novels are all about love and friendship…..and food! Yum!