Words On Wednesday

Two vodka options, two countries, two prices, one label. Which is the better option? Name: French Vodka Source: Kirkland Signature ABV: 40% Price: $18.99 Volume: 1.75L Price per oz: $0.32 I’ve been buying vodka from Costco for several years now, but I’ve always opted to go for the American vodka . I knew they offered French vodka, but it was more expensive for the same volume and proof. If I’m just mixing it anyway, why pay for a premium if they both have the same amount of alcohol? After several sources described how good the Kirkland Signature French vodka was, my curiosity grew. I wasn’t big on vodka anyway, but this stuff was apparently legendary. Many described it as being better than Grey Goose, which is top dog when it comes to common vodka brands. Maybe that premium is worth it. One day, I ran by Costco to restock on Evan Williams. While I was in there, I noticed the vodka area. I still had a little bit of American vodka left, but I was getting low. May as well save the trip an

Plex offers a premium tier for a paid subscription, the Plex Pass, and I’m almost tempted to bite because of their latest music app. Part of what drew me to Plex originally was the ability to listen to my own music, from the internet, without paying any sort of regular subscription fee. No ads like YouTube Music, no limited selection like Amazon Music, just me and my tunes. Sure, they offered a paid subscription for some fancy frills, but it wasn’t anything I needed. I used Plex for several months without any bit of interest in a Plex Pass. The web version on desktop worked perfectly. On mobile, it was a little less ideal. The first-party Plex app is fine for video, but it kinda chokes on music. It takes forever to actually recognize my library when I’m not on my home network, and will randomly stop playing after two or three songs if my screen is off. This is after I paid five bucks for that unlock, mind you. For whatever reason, the app continues playing just fine when connected to A

I’m trying to consider the best way to organize a data store. Maybe some of my IT friends can shed some light on it. I want a collection of standard household food products. The problem is how to handle different brands or sizes of the same product. Consider rice for example. We usually purchase family size bags of Success Boil-in-Bag white rice. When the grocery store doesn’t have the family size bags, we’ll purchase the normal bags. Occasionally, they don’t have any Success brand rice, so we’ll buy store brand or some other brand. With just white rice, that would be at least four unique items that all serve effectively the same purpose. If I’m going to the grocery store to get rice, I don’t truthfully care what brand or size at the end of the day. Once the rice makes it to the place, I couldn’t care less what the box looks like. I need some way to consolidate each of those records into the same group. UPC as Primary Key At first, I considered making the UPC the primary key and having

You know what’s hilarious? Seeing a bunch of kids barely out of high school cowering in fear at “brown liquor” after they’ve been shotgunning cheap beer like champs for hours. Really puts things in perspective. But Evan Williams is good for a lot more than just that. Name: Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Source: Evan Williams Style: Bourbon ABV: 43% Price: $19.99 Volume: 1.75L Price per oz: $0.34 I’m a fan of bourbon. I won’t say that it’s my favorite spirit with any certainty, but it’s often the liquor that I reach for to sip on straight. I’ll mix vodka or rum with almost anything, especially for buzz maintenance, but I’m not just pouring up shots or highball glasses of vodka. Bourbon, though? I’ll hit a glass with 2 or 3 fingers and just sip, because it’s gosh dang delicious. Previously, Jim Beam was my bourbon of choice . It’s cheap, it’s accessible, and it’s pretty good. My local liquor store still has a deal on 2 fifths for $20, and really, it’s hard to get cheaper for anything

One of my favorite pastimes with my family is watching old VHS home videos. I want to generate that same experience for my kids, but today's media doesn't really seem to have the same sensation. These videos of my childhood all have a sort of specific feel to them. Long form movies, these typically took up the entirety of a VHS tape, about 80 minutes or so if I recall. Scenes might run for several minutes of us just doing household things. Maybe it was a birthday party, or it could be the one time my cousin tried to make a documentary about trees. In any case, it was a live action glimpse into that period of time. I still need to digitize those videos. We have tons of them somewhere or another, and I know that tape media will most definitely degrade over time. If I can convert those to mp4 now and properly store them, they’ll be preserved for years into the future. I might just burn them to DVD and watch that instead of the original VHS. Who has a VCR nowadays anyway? Fast forw

You read that title right. This is a book report about a children’s book. My wife and I like to read to our children as much as we can. We want to foster a love of reading, increase their vocabulary, and all those other good things that come from reading a good book. Because of that, I’ve read a lot of children’s books. Some of them are pretty decent, others I hate to see the cover of, but rarely do they stand out as something that even I can enjoy. One exception is “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse” by Kevin Henkes. The general premise of the story is that titular character Lilly got a new purse, and she brings it to school to show everyone. She is so excited that she has a hard time paying attention, and her teacher is forced to take the purse for the remainder of the day. She is very upset at first, and says some unkind things to her teacher, but she later apologizes after some consideration. It’s a situation that most of us can relate to. We get some new toy or gadget that we are infat

I’ve often heard the adage that “storage is cheap,” when referring to computer drive sizes. And honestly, it is. Plus, it continues to get cheaper year after year. I got a 5TB external hard drive from Costco a few years back for about $120 if memory serves. This past summer, a similar drive from the same company at 8TB in size was available at the same price. This trend isn’t just for hard disc drives, either. I’ve seen some popular solid state drives at roughly $100 for a 1TB external. The same goes for SD cards as well. The storage capacities continue to rise, while prices stay mostly similar or drop. Not to mention data transfer speeds that tend to go up as technology improves. Realistically, if you wait a few months or years, any drive that you might want is going to be cheaper, larger, faster, or some combination of the three. In almost every case, a superior drive will be available later on. The problem then, is how soon you need the drive, or how much you need it now. This isn’t

Hard Seltzer is the hot thing lately, and Costco finally got in on the game. Say hello to Kirkland Signature Hard Seltzer Name: Hard Seltzer Source: Kirkland Signature (Costco) Style: Seltzer ABV: 5.0% Price: $19.99 per 24 pack Volume: 12 oz Price per oz: $0.83 per can Everybody has tried a hard seltzer at this point, and every company that makes alcohol is selling their own version. Truly was the first one that I can recall. Soon after, we started seeing hard seltzer from White Claw . Then, household names like Budweizer and Jose Cuervo started making hard seltzer. It’s everywhere. It only makes sense that Costco would eventually throw their lot in. At my local warehouse, you can get a 24 pack for $19.99 plus tax. The distribution is 6 cans of each flavor: Mango, Grapefruit, Black Cherry, and Lime. Let me just point out how much I love the even distribution. I hate it when companies do more of one flavor than others. Those flavors seem to be pretty standard for hard seltzers, especial

I was recently considering my rate of success with job interviews, and how I tend to get an offer for jobs that I get a chance to interview for. After some thought, though, I realized that it’s still probably a 50/50 gamble. I’ve often heard that I have a Lawson tongue. My family is known for being charismatic. We don’t really try, it just comes naturally. Sometimes that’s a benefit, other times less so. When we need to convince someone of something, it comes in handy. The problem arises in situations when we’re perceived as flirting, when we really don’t intend anything of the sort. My wife understands the gift/curse thank goodness, but that is a downside to be aware of nonetheless. One situation in which this ability is beneficial is job interviews. Especially when computer science people are normally so quirky and socially inept (sorry guys), having the gift of gab allows me to stand out from the crowd rather easily. I think my skills with software are moderate, but being able to ta

The “Artemis Fowl” series is one of my favorite book intellectual properties, and I was devastated to have that come to an end with “The Last Guardian.” However, author Eoin Colfer continued writing about that fictional universe with spin-off series “The Fowl Twins.” There are now two books available in that series, with a third scheduled for release this month entitled “The Fowl Twins Get What They Deserve.” To quote The Dark Knight, “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” I hate to pre-emptively apply that concept to this book series, but I have a hard time saying that the spin-off lives up to the reputation of the original. I read the first “The Fowl Twins” book, and it was pretty good. Not quite “Artemis Fowl” level, but it’s also hard to introduce completely new characters after experiencing 8 books with the same group of people. After I learned of “Deny All Charges” coming out, I was hopeful that it would fall into that comfortable routine

In the context of rating systems, I’ve recently been pondering the difference between thumbs up and thumbs down versus five star styles. When I discussed my use case for Plex a little while back, I mentioned how the star rating system for songs and dynamic playlists allowed me to have effectively the same functionality as Google Play Music and its thumbs up playlist. I tell the system that I like a song, and I can shuffle the collection of all songs that I like. Pretty simple, and they both do that job very well. However, that doesn’t really tell the full story. The part where I tell the system what songs I like? That’s actually an enormous undertaking. My music library has a ton of tracks. Currently, it sits at 34340 items, and that continues to grow week after week. I can’t guarantee that I’ve even listened to all of those tracks (confession: I definitely haven’t), let alone considered each of them long enough to give it an informed rating. There are a couple ways that I could go ab

I love a good bock, and I am always super excited to find a new one. Name: Andygator Source: Abita Style: Helles Doppelbock ABV: 8.0% IBU: 25 Price: $12 per pack ($2 per bottle) My wife and I went to The Lost Cajun for a date night a few months ago. Our dates usually consist of going to a restaurant that our kids would never consider eating from, and maybe having a few drinks while we’re there. I didn’t plan on drinking that evening, but I saw that they had a doppelbock on the beer menu. Given how uncommon of a brew that is, and how much I tend to like them, I had to try it. The waitress brought out a bottle, and the first sip was just as good as I hoped. I didn’t plan on getting more there, because I hate paying restaurant prices, but I had to have some for home. I looked up where it was available in stores, and the only place around me seemed to be The Lost Cajun. Unfortunate that it wasn’t in a grocery store somewhere, but hey, at least I was in the place where I could get more. One

RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic  is a mobile port of the old amusement park  simulation game released on PC back in 1999. The original had an undeniable charm, despite dated graphics and some gameplay restrictions. Does Classic manage to capture the same experience of the original, or does translation to mobile leave something to be desired? Story - ?/10 There isn’t any story to a simulation game. You own a theme park. You need to make it profitable and satisfy some scenario criteria. That’s all we needed before, and it’s all we need now in my opinion. General Gameplay - 9/10 Gameplay is the core element here. The problem is that the quality or goal for a port is different depending on who you ask. Some people want the exact same experience on a new platform. Others want more of a remake, keeping the spirit of the original, but revamping and updating where possible. Personally, I like something in between that. If there are obvious opportunities for quality of life improvements, take it.

You might remember that I started a master’s degree at SNHU a few years back. I never actually finished that. For all intents and purposes, I am a college dropout right now. I didn’t really mean to  stop taking classes , at least not for an extended period of time. I was taking advantage of tuition reimbursement from QS/1 to cover half the cost of classes. Things started looking a little rocky for the company, and I was afraid I would get caught mid-class and the company suddenly stop the tuition reimbursement policy. After taking 5 classes, I stopped until the future of the policy was a little more certain. Unfortunately, that future never came. I was terminated from QS/1 before I started classes again. I planned on starting again during my time at System Logistics, but the HR department never actually gave me any information about the tuition reimbursement program despite multiple requests. I left System Logistics and started at Michelin, but only as a contract employee. The contrac

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to update and organize my photo library. Fortunately, “digiKam Recipes” by Dmitri Popov is helping me learn a few tricks to improve that process. Admittedly, “digiKam Recipes” is not a book that I would expect just anyone to pick up, nor would I encourage it. Despite the name, this isn’t actually a recipe book. It exists in the space somewhere between a user manual and a tips list for the digiKam product. If you don’t use digiKam, or ever plan on using it, don’t bother. If you don’t care about digital asset management (DAM), you will not gain anything from the book. However, if you’re interested in improving the organization of your personal photos and videos, and you haven’t yet settled on a definite tool for the job, I might suggest this short work as a sort of high level overview of what it offers. Furthermore, if you use digiKam in any capacity already, I would highly recommend it. Novices might learn about new features they didn’t realize d

After using free forms of cloud storage for several years, I believe it’s almost time that I pay for more storage. With all the options available, what should I choose? I held off for a long time. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back is Google’s decision to make Google Drive files count against user storage. Part of what drew me into using mostly Google Drive was the fact that I could make Google Docs and Google Sheets files with reckless abandon. Now that they count against my quota, that previously unlimited source of storage is going to dry up pretty quickly. Logically, I could continue using Google Drive and just pay for a Google One subscription to get more storage. But really, why should I throw money at something without determining if there are better options. Tons of services provide cloud storage now. I personally have used Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox as well. If I’m going to start paying for a service, I should at least do some research and make sure that I ge