Words On Wednesday

I’ve recently started experimenting with vodka infused with different types of peppers. The flavors have been all over the place, but it’s a really interesting way to spice up (pun intended) a boring spirit. Spicy drinks are very divisive. My first spicy beer was at an Independence Day party many moons ago. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t know if I liked it, either. Over the years, I tried a few other spicy beers, as well as the novel idea of putting hot sauce in a regular beer, and I’ve grown to like them occasionally. I’m not drinking spicy beer all the time, but I’ll drink one every now and then just for something different. After trying a few spicy beers, it occurred to me that I could infuse a distilled spirit with spicy flavor on my own. I had made Jolly Rancher vodka before, how different could spicy vodka be? I sliced up a jalapeno, threw it in a pint mason jar, and filled it up with Kirkland Signature American vodka . I let the jar sit for a few days undisturbed. I didn’t ...

My favorite cologne has been discontinued, but I fortunately bought enough that I should be alright for a long time. A very long time. When I was in high school, I explored a couple of different scents. I wore my friend’s Diesel Fuel for Life when I would go to his house over the weekend. I bought a bottle of Abercrombie Fierce because a girl I had a crush on said it was her favorite scent. But the biggest source of cologne for me was rue21. I was already in rue21 frequently as is. They had clothing that I liked for cheaper than a lot of the other mainstream apparel retailers. Plus, their cologne was only $10 for a large bottle. I could try out different scents and use way too much without spending a ton. That $60 bottle of Fierce was a Christmas gift, and I couldn’t be spending that much on cologne all the time. They had several scent options, and I think at one point I had a bottle of each. One of them was themed around being eco-friendly, and it smelled like “clean trees” according ...

In this philosophical approach to art, Rubin illustrates an interesting stance where we are all artists in some way, shape, or form, and art comes from an ethereal “source” in the universe. I’ll be the first to say I don’t consider myself artistic, nor would I say I am an artist. My drawing skills were passable in middle school, and I have neglected those for several years. I’ll occasionally write a poem or come up with lyrics to a song that will never materialize, but that’s usually just to get it out of my head and alleviate the nagging experience of an idea that won’t go away. Rubin takes the perspective that this is all art, and it is all valuable to express. And even beyond what is traditionally considered art, he goes so far as to suggest that nearly anything we create is art. Furthermore, things can be art without ever being rendered in reality. An experience is art. The more I thought about it, the more I realized ANYTHING can be art. This blog? Art. A particularly elegant codi...

The Carolina Code Conference was the first developer conference I attended as well as my first time speaking at a developer conference. It was new and exciting, if a little scary. Now that I’m on the far side of it, I wanted to look back at the experience and the weeks leading up to it. My first foray into the conference scene was submitting a talk for Carolina Code Conference 2023 . At the time, I was pretty heavy into MuleSoft (for work, definitely not because I wanted to be). A coworker mentioned the conference to me and suggested that I should submit a talk for it. With MuleSoft taking the lion’s share of my current work responsibilities, I figured that low-code/no-code solutions were probably the thing I was most qualified to talk about. Looking into the submission process, I couldn’t figure out exactly what a “good” submission would look like. The only required details were a title and description. I decided to put together what I WOULD present as a talk, record a  video of i...

Costco recently discontinued their “Original Spiced Rum” for a few months and brought it back as the simply named “Kirkland Signature Spiced Rum.” Is it the same thing in a different bottle? I had to find out. Name: Kirkland Signature Spiced Rum Source: Kirkland Signature Style: Spiced Rum ABV: 40% Price: $16.99 Volume: 1.75L Price per oz: $0.29 I used to love Costco’s spiced rum . I always kept a bottle on hand. It was super cheap and really good, with a high enough alcohol content to really pack a punch when you wanted to make a strong drink. And one of the really nice things was its availability. This isn’t one of those limited releases that you have to keep an eye out for before it gets bought up, or wait until something more expensive catches a rare sale. Every time I walked into the Costco liquor store, they had a full pallet of it, and the price was always the same. This is the type of consistency and dependability that I live for. At least, it was. I went for my regular Costco ...

The United States presidential election is coming up in a few weeks and I have two requests for you: be civil and vote. People get heated with politics. I get it. As citizens of the United States, we are very passionate about our country and its leadership. And we should be! That’s the beauty of democracy. We all have a say in who our duly elected government officials will be. It’s something to celebrate, and I believe it is our duty as citizens to engage that right and privilege. We are going to occasionally disagree with others about most things, especially with politics. Even if we want the same candidate, we may have disagreements about policy. That’s fine! The world would be a boring place if we all thought the same, acted the same, and voted the same. HOWEVER, we do not have to let those disagreements get in the way of us being decent and polite to one another. Let’s make a concerted effort to be civil with each other. Every citizen in this great country is entitled to their vote...

A little while back, I was determined to win some stuffed penguins from a claw machine for my kids, but it took over a month to actually get the opportunity. Our church has a claw machine in the lobby near the entrance. They have different things in it, but the bulk of the contents are usually stuffed penguins wearing shirts with the church logo on them. Somewhere around the beginning of summer, I decided that the kids would like to have one. They both like penguins and I figured the money would be going to a good place. The first Sunday that I decided to look into it, I checked the machine to see what kinds of payment methods it accepted. Upon inspection, I noticed that it took coins and bills, but no credit card payment. Fair enough, that’s pretty standard. Credit card payments usually have a transaction fee associated and the readers are often finicky. I wasn’t mad. I took a look in the truck for cash, but I couldn’t find any. That week, I looked in the truck again and discovered th...