Words On Wednesday

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,...

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 con...

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...

As my first (and probably only) Thirsty Thursday Eve covering monthly discounted liquors from North Carolina, I thought it all too appropriate to pick the first style of alcohol that I ever reviewed here : spiced rum. Specifically, Admiral Nelson’s 70 proof spiced rum. Name:      Spiced Rum Source:      Admiral Nelson ABV:      35% Price:      $7.95 ($9.95) Volume:      750ml Price per oz:      $0.31 ($0.39) For a long time now, my approach to bottom shelf liquor has been, “just how bad can it be?” This cheap spiced rum surprised me, however. I’d genuinely say it’s good. It’s very smooth, even accounting for the small proof reduction. I try to base my judgement on smoothness from a standard 80 proof perspective, and adjust my expectations accordingly. This spiced rum is 70 proof, but it drinks more like a 40-ish proof liquor. It’s sweet and a little spicy. The flavor profile isn’t exactly dee...

I have been very out of touch with modern gaming lately, but holy crap am I hype about Metroid Dread. I love Metroid. I love the gameplay, the mythos, the characters. It’s easily one of the coolest intellectual properties that Nintendo has, and I really hate how it feels so neglected most of the time. Metroidvania games are probably my favorite genre. I just can’t get enough of that search-battle-upgrade cycle that allows you to delve ever deeper into curious alien environments. The Prime series is fun, but I have always preferred 2D side scroller Metroid games. I get the logic for why 3D games have been the more popular choice for developers lately. Originally, it was a technology limitation. 2D games are easier to make, and that was the only thing that consoles and handhelds could actually manage for a long time. Now that technology has evolved to easily handle 3D environments and navigation, why shouldn’t everything be 3D? But there’s a different style to 2D games. The way that you ...

Over the past few months, I’ve read a lot of books by the same author, frequently in the same series. Because of that, I’m experiencing a lot of book burnout. It probably started with Brandon Sanderson. I was flip flopping between his Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series. These books are long, with some very dense content. Mistborn books are around 20 hours of audio each, and Stormlight Archive books are roughly 50 hours each. They’re great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a lot of material. I wanted to finish book 3 of Stormlight Archive before book 4 came out, and then I wanted to read book 4 while it was in that new release phase. After I finished book 3, I also read the final book in the Mistborn trilogy to wrap that up. I started book 4 within a few months, but goodness gracious, I was just so spent on it from the beginning. The characters and plot are interesting, but it’s so much. After reading about half of Rhythm of War (book 4 of Stormlight Archive), I just… stopped. The check...

The music died on July 1, 2021. Well, at least that’s when Spartanburg County Public Libraries stopped carrying music CDs in circulation. I know Don McLean was referring to February 3, 1959  when Buddy Holly and others died in a plane crash. I don’t mean to trivialize that event. But for me personally, it was a huge blow to my music consumption to hear that my local library wouldn’t have music on CD anymore. The lion’s share of music in my personal collection has come from the public library for a long time now. I would check out a music CD, bring it back to my desk at work, rip the album to my company-provided computer, and return the disc that afternoon or the next day. Was I supposed to be saving music from county-owned discs? Probably not, but I also wasn’t doing anything to profit off them, so I figured it wasn’t that bad. This process went on for several years. I started doing it some time in the late 2000s, but it really hit stride between 2012 and 2019 during my years at Q...

I recently tried pineapple lemonade, and I enjoyed it so much, it inspired me to make an alcoholic beverage with pineapple lemonade as the main mixing ingredient. Recipe: 16 oz lemonade 12 oz pineapple juice or nectar 6 oz white rum 6 oz coconut rum Combine ingredients in a large shaker. Serve over ice. Never had I heard of pineapple lemonade before I saw it on the menu at Q's Crackin' Crab & Seafood Kitchen . I like pineapple, and I like lemonade, so obviously I had to try the combination. I’m not really sure what I expected, but it just tasted like pineapple juice and lemonade, but they go together surprisingly well. So well, in fact, I decided I should try to make it myself. We keep pineapple juice and nectar on hand most times, and I got a case of Rockstar Energy lemonade for dirt cheap a little while ago. Those candidates seemed as good as any to reproduce the pineapple lemonade I had without the hassle of driving down to Florida again. My concoction wasn’t exactly the...