Words On Wednesday

I’ve long said that I don’t really like laptops because they don’t seem to last long, and they are difficult or impossible to upgrade. One company is trying to change that. A coworker introduced me to the  Framework laptop . I had recently purchased my  Surface Pro 7 , but I was immediately intrigued. I’ve always gone budget tier with laptops, mostly because I treat them as almost disposable. It’s going to break down and become obsolete pretty soon anyway, and there’s no sense in paying a lot for one if my best option is going to be replacing it with a new model anyway. My Surface was a tentative bet on more premium lasting a little longer, but there still aren’t many ways you can upgrade it besides swapping out the solid state drive. The master plan of Framework is a device that is modular. You pop open the case with the provided tool and switch components as necessary. Need more RAM? Pop in a larger chip. Processor isn’t fast enough, or you’re working with a model that’s a f...

Some life lessons come pretty easily, but others require a little bit of painful personal experience before we catch on. Normally, I’m pretty quick on the uptake for a lot of lessons. Touch something hot, you get burned. What goes up must come down. I may not have a lot of common sense, but I have enough to realize the basic stuff without a lot of difficulty. Even caution is normally something that comes natural to me. I do a whole lot of things “just in case.” Data backups, an extra layer of padding, and 911 already dialed on my phone are just a few of the things I’ve done because I know things don’t always go as planned. One specific example is the floaty back door for my GoPro. This floatation device ensures that if you lose a grip on the camera in water, it will float to the surface. If I’m getting in water any deeper than a swimming pool, I’m using the floaty back door. I don’t care if it’s just a few shots, I know how clumsy I am, and I know that it’s safer to use a flotation dev...

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...