List: The Voices in Bob’s Head

[BobWay]

I just announced a new project that I hope will educate more people than me just trying to write a book. I hope everyone will take a look at my announcement, and if you are interested in helping out please send me an email. As we develop new material, I'll be posting it here in the club for open discussion.

 

 

[BobWay]

Good morning everyone!

If you have been following me here, you'll soon realize that I invited some new people to the club from all around the world. I hope you will welcome all of them as graciously as you have me.

One of those new members @Kerin_Way is my son Chris. He's joined to meet the community, learn, and to help me get organized and moving forward more productively. He'll be introducing himself shortly.

Thank you again to the operators and mods of XRP Chat who have created this awesome space for me organize (in theory ) my discussions with the XRP Community.

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To those who are new to "Bob's Book Club". This is my presence thread.  I post what I'm currently thinking about and working on here. Part of that is vanity. But mostly it is just to keep people informed while they are patiently waiting for me to respond about a topic they are passionate about.

The rest of the "book club" is made up of topics and questions that members of the XRP Community have been passionately interested in. I've done my best to answer those questions and explain those topics a thoroughly as I can. Please continue asking new questions if you read something you don't understand. For those wondering how this all got started. Hi! I'm Bob is the original 50 page introductory post I made back in early March. I hope you will all find something interesting to read while we are all getting organized.

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This morning I'm working on a longer post explaining how my original goal of "writing a book" has morphed into a broader mission of increasing the worlds understanding of "rippling payments." This topic includes XRP, the XRP Ledger, ILP, Ripple, COIL, money itself and the current financial system (both how it works and what it lacks). I'm also going to explain how I've come to believe that simply my writing a book will not affect the change I would like to occur. I simply would not be a sufficient medium to meet everyone's learning needs.

I'm also working on a post introducing the awesome study group members who responded to the video I posted above at the beginning of the week. Thanks to all of you! Especially the ones that now have to track yet another social media account!  I know coming here will be worth your while.

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I'm going to be continuing discussions about the "study group" here in this club. I'd like existing club members and the broader community to be able to follow along. This is also where I'll be posting and/or linking to the material I present and the recordings of our sessions. I'd like this club to continue to be the initial place where new XRP Community members come to ask questions about "rippling payment" and the material we'll be jointly creating and discussing

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[BobWay]

Good morning everyone!

Chris and I had a great time with family yesterday. I hope y'all had a great day as well!

• I have a lot of posts and emails to respond to this morning.
• In the late afternoon I'm going to go meet-up with some of the Houston XRP Community at Rice University.  If you are local, please join us! 

If you are a study group member, please:

• Introduce yourself here: Chat: [Study Group] Introduce Yourselves
• Please also read this status thread: List: Bob's Study Group TL;DR
• Meet your new friends here: Chat: [Study Group] General Welcome Discussion

Once I've answered all my personal correspondence, I'm going to create some other organizational threads. I'd like to solicit your help in working through the remaining open topics.

Edited April 22, 2019 by BobWay

[BobWay]

Today I’m working on splitting the topics I want to present into six sessions. I’ll post the list for your comment soon. I have a nagging suspicion it might take at least eight sessions. We’ll just have to see.

Day 1: I know what I want to share first. It is going to involve everyone setting up address on the test net, issuing fiat currency, creating a market and then sending cross currency fiat to fiat payments to each other. I consider these foundational concepts. They are easy to “think you understand” but to actually internalize them requires hands on practice.

For us to be able to do that, I’m going to have to evaluate and choose a good teaching wallet for the class to use. That will be my next big personal project.

——

While I’m doing that, I’d like it if everyone else could contribute to and help work out the answers to these issues.

 

[BobWay]

So I’m done evaluating client software and planning what I want to share. I’ve also setup a bunch of demonstration accounts on the test net. 

I have a decent deck for the first session. I may add a couple of animations to it tomorrow just for clarity.

So really, all that is left is to pick a date and time to get started. I can’t wait to see what y’all have come up with.

I’m hoping we can work out a plan with two sessions each week about 12 hours or so opposite each other. That way, hopefully everyone will be able to find an acceptable time to participate live.

If we do those two sessions about 2 days apart, then those that want to can review the material from the first session prior to attending the second.

I’m going to start a couple of new threads so we’ll have a place to discuss the season details. I say a couple because I’m going to put some “back story” material into a Session 0 thread. I think many people will already know that material, but for those who don’t it should be helpful in setting context for Session 1.

If anyone has time, I’m going to do some Zoom.us conferencing software testing tomorrow to make sure I’m prepared. I’ll post when and where in this thread and on Twitter.

I’m hoping we can target a Session 1 date of Monday or early next week. I’d actually like to start earlier, but this is the one week of the year I seem to have booked up.

• Tuesday: Medical scan
• Wednesday: Medical scan
• Thursday: Baton Rouge XRP Meetup
• Friday: New Orleans (Birthday)
• Sunday: Mother’s Day

Edited May 5, 2019 by BobWay

[BobWay]

Sorry to disappear for so long. The week turned out to be more involved than I thought.

Just as a quick recap, I've been fighting prostate cancer. I had radiation treatment, but my PSA numbers have not responded in the way they were expected to. (down) Unfortunately, they have been trending up. This is quite puzzling to the doctor's because I caught the cancer early. It was also a less aggressive variant that should have responded to treatment easily. That has been coupled to some nagging discomfort in the area that won't seem to go away either. 

So last week was a bit stress inducing. I had two full body scans last Tuesday and Wednesday. The first was a bone scan and the second was a full body CT scan. The goal was to make sure none of the cancer had escaped and spread. Medicine being what it is, the scans had to be done, read by a radiologist, then relayed to my oncologist. I had to wait on the final results until this Tuesday. 

So in between, Janet and I decided to mitigate the stress by driving to Baton Rouge, LA to meet the awesome XRP Community there. Many thanks to @RippleWraith for setting up an awesome dinner meetup. And even more thanks to everyone who showed up despite the torrential rain and flooding happening last week. RippleWraith even brought an amazing birthday cake to top off the evening.

It turns out, it is only an hour and a half more of pouring rain to make it New Orleans. So Janet and I spent my Birthday there. Her gambling (she won) and me drinking (I won!) We managed to get out of there Saturday morning just before the flooding got to NOLA. Turns out only six hours more rain to make it back to Houston! 

We ended up going straight to my mothers to pick up Puccini, then stayed over Saturday night to be there for Mother's Day on Sunday. Of course, the endless rain and driving broke something on the car. So Monday meant fixing that. Then staying over longer to see the doctor on Tuesday.

Good news is, it turns out, all the scans are clean! That was a huge relief. We still don't know what is causing the numbers to stay up, but it is seeming likely that it may be prostatitis. I've got a long course of antibiotics to take now and more testing and followups later in the summer. So all in all, it looks like I'll survive.

So now that I'm finally home and back online onward to the first study group session. I'll post about that in another thread.

Sorry to keep everyone waiting. But at least, XRP has been trending up in the meantime!

[BobWay]

Wow it has been longer than I expected. Thank you everyone for sending all your good wishes.

I've had a bunch of family related issues to handle over the past few months. Some were related to family members. Just the kind of things that every family has from time to time. But these issues outrank everything else for me. I don't mind talking about my issues, but the ones related to others I'm going to keep to myself.

For those wondering, the doctors assure me that my prostate cancer is likely handled. They assure me this is true even though my PSA numbers are still higher than they should be. It turns out this past week I had my first PSA number drop! Woot! The working diagnosis is that I've had a strange case of prostatitis. I've had two months of different antibiotics and the second one seemed to turn the tide. I'll have lots more followup to make sure. But at least the discomfort is diminishing.

One of the other long time consuming issues was that Janet and I have been basically transient for more than five years. This has included more city and apartment moves than I care to count. Unfortunately, our unpredictability has had negative impact on the rest of our extended family. So it became apparent that we needed to pick a permanent home base to settle into. Of course as anyone my age knows, these decisions become complicated when you have both aging parents to plan for and children you'd like to be close to.

The end result is that we managed to move two more times. Finally we are almost settled into the place we intend to stay for a while. It's not super impressive, just a two bedroom condo, but we like it. My mother will be moving close to us in the near future. The combination will make a nice "home base" for the kids to come visit.

Of course, when you close everything seems move-in-ready. But the move-in reality soon becomes an endless stream of home improvement projects to undertake. I'm still trying to sort out a 3-way light switch that looks like it was wired by a crazy person. There's no cabinet, closet space or furniture to unpack all our boxes into And here is a deck that needs to be rebuilt.

The good news is that I have the internet working. Better still, my desk and computer are setup and I finally have a quiet office to work in! Woot!

The plan is to get back to work on the Study Group if there is still interest. I'm digging out the decks and reworking the examples for practice today.
In addition, I'll be reading the latest posts here in the book club and responding where I can be helpful.

Feel free to message me if you have anything urgent to discuss. It's good to be back!

[Guest]

I’m going to abuse my mod privilege here to post in your thread and speak for all of us how delighted we are that you are ok.  

Welcome back Bob but please don’t overdo it...  steady as she goes mate.   

[BobWay]

Well, things happen... Are people still here and interested?

I've started tweeting again, but that doesn't leave much of a historical record for people to follow.