Warning: Post Too Long
Welcome to the 38th entry of my public journal, where I share *some of the things* I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.
Dear Friends,
It's been a minute since I've written. Seven weeks, to be exact. So much for my "publish twice a month" goal. July and August were filled with travel, and writing took a back seat.
Since my last update, I’ve traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, with my oldest child for her college orientation, spent a few days in Lisbon, Portugal, with my husband, headed to Idyllwild, California, for BaseCamp 001 and FWB Fest, enjoyed a week-long family vacation in Belize, and returned to Madison to move my daughter into her freshman dorm.
Warning! This is one of my least edited posts but I had to get it out, so proceed with caution. With the kids going back to school soon and a quieter travel schedule ahead, I'm planning to get back into the swing of things with more frequent, shorter, and hopefully more eloquent updates. But for now, here's a quick dump of some of the things I've been up to.
Enjoy!
Travel Notes: Lisbon, Portugal
An easy, direct flight from NYC makes visiting Lisbon convenient for a short trip. We took the red-eye on Monday night, spent three nights in Lisbon, and were back sleeping in our own beds by Friday night.
Our itinerary included an electric tuk-tuk tour (perfect for the first day when we were jet-lagged and tired), a day trip to see the palaces in Sintra, Cabo Da Roca (the westernmost point in continental Europe), and the beach town of Cascais, as well as an e-bike tour of Lisbon. We also left plenty of time for wandering the streets, eating and drinking local cuisine, and enjoying fado music.
Highlights included appreciating Artur Bordalo’s street art—large animals made from trash—seeing the bridge designed by the same people who built the Golden Gate Bridge (it was giving SF ), and listening to live fado music in a small, cozy bar in the Bairro Alto neighborhood.
The last time I traveled to Europe was in 2009, and yes, European cities now have too many tourists. Yes, parts can feel like Disney World. In most of the neighborhoods we visited, it was mostly tourists—I didn’t see any locals just walking to work. But travel is still valuable. Seeing different countries is valuable. We met interesting people from all over the world, and the city told a beautiful story through its culture—architecture, food, and language. I noticed less plastic, less luxury, and less comfort, but I enjoyed the simple things: fresh food flavored with fresh herbs, Pastéis de Nata, vinho verde, and live music.
Travel Notes: Belize
I didn’t know much about Belize before going. For some reason, I expected it to be similar to Costa Rica—a haven for eco-tourism and adventure, with rainforests full of flora and fauna to discover. I also assumed I’d be speaking Spanish, as I (wrongly) thought all of Central America was Spanish-speaking. While there are similarities to Costa Rica, such as tourist areas in the rainforest and along the beaches, Belize is much less developed and less populous. We enjoyed both a jungle adventure and a beach vacation, plus rich culture and history, all without the crowds. As a former British colony, English is the official language. The countryside is stunningly beautiful.
It’s was hot. And humid. And buggy. I thought the locals would be more acclimated to the heat, but some told us it’s been hotter and hotter and they are feeling the effects of climate change. Sad to hear how they talk about it.
We took a Mayan cooking class where we learned to make chocolate from cacao beans, corn tortillas, and caldo, a traditional chicken soup. The process was hands-on and authentic: we ground cacao beans, mixed cornmeal dough for tortillas, and simmered the soup over an open fire with fresh herbs and habanero. The Mayan women who taught us brought all the ingredients right from their yard, from cacao and corn to spices, making the experience truly special.
We went on a few hikes through the jungle and didn’t see another person. The river was crystal clear. We spotted leaf cutter ants, frogs, and tons and tons of butterflies.
We went tubing through a cave with water fed by an underground spring at its rear. The water was clear, and although we spotted a few tiny flying insects and a single bat, the cave was otherwise dark and lifeless. There were intricate stalagmites and stalactites. The ancient Mayans used these caves for human sacrifices to appease the gods, believing that water dripping from the ceiling came from the rain god. When we turned off our headlamps, it was as dark a place as I’ve ever been.
We visited the Xunantunich Mayan Ruins, an ancient Mayan city and active archaeological site. The scale of the site was massive. We climbed to the top and could see the Guatemalan border. When the ruins were first discovered, all the buildings were buried underground. This happens as small plants grow in the cracks of the stones, leaves fall from trees and decompose, and layers of soil build up over time, allowing larger plants to take root.
In Placencia, we snorkeled near Silk Caye and another island, spotting tons of tropical fish, nurse sharks, spotted eagle rays, and loggerhead turtles. We also took a boat up the Monkey River, followed by a jungle hike to spot monkeys. Along the way, we saw crocodiles, various birds, and howler monkeys. We passed an area where manatees are known to hang out, but after 30 minutes of searching without any sightings, we gave up.
BaseCamp 001
I’m grateful to have been invited to BaseCamp, an offgrid experience in the mountains in Idyllwild, CA. It was a great opportunity to spend time with other people building on Base, surrounded by the beauty of nature, and get creative with hands on art workshops.
I enjoyed the 2-hour program and talks featuring Brian Armstrong, Vitalik Buterin, Coinbase/Base product managers and engineers, and Base builders like Blackbird. Brian Armstrong discussed pushing Coinbase to do more on-chain, including getting all their engineers to deploy a smart contract. He also shared valuable advice that resonated with many: "Action produces information." He compared it to climbing a mountain in the fog—you can't see the top, but you can see the next few steps
I always appreciate hearing from Jesse and his consistent messaging: "Build on Base, and you will be rewarded"—this is 100% true in my experience so far. He emphasized that Base is a bridge, not an island; while moving funds there is easy, the off-ramp needs to be just as seamless
I liked Vitalik’s answer when Jesse asked him what gets him excited about Base: The high-quality technical talent and the close proximity to users.
The Onchain Summer Buildathon winners were announced from BaseCamp and I was thrilled that my entry - The Farcaster Writing Hackathon - was chosen as a finalist in the unplugged category. I love seeing writers get recognition for building.
Other highlights - Fridays at the Park nouns panel, The Cyber Feminism Index, getting .5x selfie lessons, and discovering new music, adding two new artists to my rotation - Iman Europe and MoRuf.
Tenger Ways/ Tech Sfuff
The guidance paper I coauthored for this year’s Fall 2024 Enterprise Technology Leadership Journal has been published. Our paper is titled Strategic Decision-Making in Cloud Services and our topic is vendor lock in for cloud providers.
Gene Kim posted a thread of images showing the scale and impact of the CrowdStrike issue that affected windows machines and took down airlines, banks and more. Seeing the massive impact got me thinking about single points of failure and all the things that are outside our control. A lot of what we do at Tenger Ways is work with clients to assess their IT landscape to find and remove single points of failure. Sometimes it’s a server or a database or sometimes it’s a guy named Brent who has all the knowledge in his head. We add redundancies and make sure there are back up services in the event of failures. With modern cloud architecture, you don’t hope things will go well, you expect and plan for them to fail. But every now and then- when an AWS region goes down, or CrowdStrike pushes a bad update - we’re reminded of single points of failure that are largely outside our control as individual organizations.
I loved this post by my cofounder Daniel who talks about why we don’t just push Salesforce (or any one solution) onto our clients.
Some of the things
As always, a collection of things that made me think or feel something:
I like this comment from Ramp founder Eric Glyman about setting goals around inputs not outputs. “… if you want to win the Super Bowl, you don’t practice winning the Super Bowl. You practice throwing, catching, running, tackling, and other things that eventually – if you do them well and consistently – help you win the Super Bowl.”
Nat Eliason on Infinite Loops podcast. Jim O’Shaughnessy made so many comparisons from the past 100 years of finance to newer crypto trends that were so interesting. Crypto is new, but finance is not.
Loved this podcast with Mario Gabriele talking about his motivations for starting The Generalist, writing and writers today, VC vs. media companies, and more. He had one comment about media companies being better at value creation than value capture that really stuck with me. Probably because I’m starting a Farcaster media venture and already seeing what he means.
I took this photo of Chickering’s Seven Vectors and the Theory of Identity Development at my daughter’s college orientation. College is about more than developing competence in a field of study. Managing emotions, developing autonomy, developing mature interpersonal relationships, establishing identity, developing purpose and establishing integrity. These vectors deal with feeling, thinking, believing, and relating to others. Could be summed up by emotional intelligence? How many adults do you know that are complete in all these areas?
I read two books: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel and Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Morakami.
Two more (travel) pics
On the left is a photo from a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, and on the right is Lake Mendota in Madison Wisconsin.
A Note to My Subscribers
I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post or my more recent reflections after sticking with it for a year.
I write about twice a month and share musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out a farcaster-native media company, a modern technology consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.
Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.
Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️