reiddraper
Helium IoT Hardware Development kit promo pricing ($49)
Generative Testing in Clojure
Writing a QuickCheck in Clojure
Simple-check: QuickCheck for Clojure
Nomiku Sous Vide cooker on kickstarter
One way is to write domain-specific logic that knows how to resolve your values. For example, your models might have some state that only happen-after another state, so conflicts of this nature resolve to the 'later' state.
Another approach is to use data-structures or a library designed for this, like CRDTs. Some resources below:
A comprehensive study of Convergent and Commutative Replicated Data Types http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/inria-00555588/
https://github.com/reiddraper/knockbox https://github.com/aphyr/meangirls https://github.com/ericmoritz/crdt https://github.com/mochi/statebox
TCP incast: What is it? How can it affect Erlang applications?
Knockbox - consistency toolkit for Clojure and Riak
That being said, there are situations where you may truly need single-node performance that isn't available on AWS.
A quick look shows that it's the sixth chapter. Either way, he's clear about this disclaimer, and his post was enough to peak my interest in this specific book.
For you, first impressions _do_ seem to mean much.