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The 4 Points Church Claw Machine

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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
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Book Report - "Big Little Recipes" by Emma Laperruque

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For the first time in the history of Words on Wednesday book reports, I’m covering a cookbook. I like to cook and I like to read. You would logically think that would mean I have a ton of cookbooks, but I really don’t. Usually, I either just get individual recipes directly from the internet or I go rogue and come up with my own stuff. We have a few cookbooks, but I use them more for inspiration than actual sources of recipes that I’ll cook directly “by the book” (pun intended). With “Big Little Recipes,” I actually first encountered the book through a social media post about a particular recipe in the book. In particular, the author highlighted the 2-ingredient sour cream dressing that is simultaneously easy and delicious. Easy and delicious are great individually, but they’re even better together. I was intrigued. I didn’t particularly want to buy a cookbook from a single recipe. Although I didn’t anticipate this book being available at my local library, I had to check it out. SURE EN
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Talking Tech - The Mythical Man-Hour

Work in any industry is often broken down to man-hours, the expected amount of work that an average person can finish in an uninterrupted hour. While that’s great for planning and budgeting purposes, I think it’s a terrible measure that gives inaccurate estimates at best and coerces people to work absurd amounts of unpaid hours at worst. And much like Fred Brooks probably suggested in 1975 (I’ve never actually read the book that I based this title on), there are several reasons why basing expectations on the work capability of some theoretical person in some theoretical hour is unhelpful and often harmful. The first problem with man-hour estimates is the amount of work. Who is this average based on? In the software engineering industry, there are vast differences in experience, specification, and familiarity with different products. If you ask me to build something in a language I’ve never written for an industry that I have no exposure to, it’s going to take a while. A recent code sch
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Thirsty Thursday Eve - Dunkin' Spiked Iced Coffee

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Dunkin’ has released a new line of alcohol, dubbed “Dunkin’ Spiked.” These assorted flavors of hard iced coffee and iced tea drinks sound like a natural hit from a chain that does drive thru beverages so well. But are they? Name: Dunkin’ Spiked Iced Coffee Source: Dunkin’ Style: Malt Beverage ABV: 6% Dunkin’ (Donuts, because old habits die hard) has let me down in perhaps the most devastating alcoholic revelation of the past decade. They took coffee and alcohol, and somehow managed to put them together in some abomination that is abhorrent to both coffee drinkers and alcohol drinkers alike. I am frankly amazed that they managed to take two individual things that are independently so good and make an amalgamation that is so terrible. I first heard about these beverages back in March. A news article informed me of their existence and I quickly began searching for them. The locator on the Dunkin’ Spiked site suggested that a nearby convenience store sold them. I happened to be driving pas
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The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

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A new Zelda game comes out later this month and I’m still not really sure how to feel about it. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94RTrH2erPE I’m excited, for sure. New Zelda is always a good thing. But I pre-ordered Tears of the Kingdom and I still haven’t actually played it. The kids did, and they seem to have enjoyed it. For me, I just couldn’t get enough uninterrupted time with the Switch while I was simultaneously interested in picking up something new. Alas, I OWN TotK, I just haven’t bothered with it yet. Echoes of Wisdom is interesting in that it actually stars Zelda, the namesake of the entire franchise. Despite the propensity of players to name their character “Zelda” in some past entries of the game, Link has always been “that little green man” (as my grandmother called him) that we got to actually play as. That finally changes with Echoes of Wisdom, as Princess Zelda is the player character. I’m glad we finally get to play as Zelda. That’s a cool theory that fans have
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Book Report - "The Sin of Certainty" by Peter Enns

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“The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our ‘Correct’ Beliefs” is a controversial take on Christianity from controversial author Peter Enns. I didn’t realize before I picked it up just what I was getting myself into, but I am tremendously glad I experienced this book. Modern Christianity exists in a weird space where the Bible tells us some things about the world and scientific experts tell us often contradictory things. Many Bible literalists believe Earth is only about 6,000 years old, but science tells us Earth is closer to 4.5 billion years old. Evolution is a bad word among evangelicals, but Charles Darwin and most biologists since are fairly confident that species today evolved from common ancestors in the distant past. Some extremists even go so far as to say that God built the world as a firmament, so we live on a flat plane with an impassable dome above us. I can’t imagine that’s the majority of believers, but those people exist. Suffice it to say, there is
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Talking Tech - OnePlus Nord N30 5G to Google Pixel 8 Pro

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After discussing my  smartwatch experience , it occurred to me I haven’t talked about how I ended up with a Pixel 8 Pro. In July 2023, we went tubing with my brother-in-law. I had recently purchased a wet bag and I was itching to use it. I threw my phone (a Google Pixel 6 at the time) in there, my sister-in-law had her phone, and my brother-in-law had his vape. My wife asks me, “are you sure you don’t want to leave your phone in the truck?” Nah, the wet bag should keep it safe. Remember this, it’s important later. We get maybe halfway down the river and my brother-in-law wants to hit his vape. Cool, no problem. We drift over to a sandbar for a quick break. He gives me his vape, we throw everything back into the wet bag, and we continue on our way. Apparently, when I put everything back into the wet bag, I didn’t capture enough air in it or seal it properly. Once we reach our destination, I pull everything up onto the bank and notice that the wet bag is suspiciously heavy. I open it up
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Thirsty Thursday Eve - Shark Attack

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This cocktail idea is more of a riff on the same showy theme, rather than a specific recipe for a particular drink. Even still, sharks are cool, pizazz is fun, and everybody loves drinking during the summer. Hence, the Shark Attack. Back last summer, we went on vacation with some of my wife’s friends. One girl kept talking about a drink she had at some bar near some beach called the "shark attack.” She didn’t know what was in it, but the bartender would mix a very blue drink, yell “SHARK ATTACK,” and then dunk a toy shark filled with grenadine in it. One of those overpriced tourist trap things that gets blasted on TikTok and Instagram. Admittedly, it sounded kinda fun and I’d be interested in getting the drink at least once for the experience. That vacation came and went, and we didn’t find any bars serving any variation of the shark attack. I promptly forgot about that conversation and went on about my life. Earlier this year, I started seeing that same theme advertised again on
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I Hate Souls Games

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There, I said it. I hate Souls, Souls-like, and pretty much everything FromSoftware has made. That includes Armored Core (I played Armored Core V. It was garbage.). It’s a genre that I don’t get, I don’t enjoy, and I really wish the industry would move on from. My exposure to Souls goes way back. Waaaaaay back. Back to when “Souls two” sparked a hot debate that Demon’s Souls was the first “Souls” game, and Dark Souls II was technically “Souls three” thank you very much. I played Demon’s Souls on my roommate’s PS3 when our friend from down the hall picked it up. It was… fine. We spent maybe a week or two going back and forth with bosses and who could make it further. I made it a few bosses in and never finished. I didn’t care to. Dark Souls came and went. I remember it coming out, but I didn’t really care to get more of the same experience I had with Demon’s Souls. Dark Souls seemed to be more popular, but I couldn’t really place why. My next chance to play around with Souls was Dark So
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Book Report - "The Coworker" by Freida McFadden

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“The Coworker” looks like a promising murder mystery on the surface, but I hope we’ve all learned not to judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately, it’s more of a poorly written love triangle drama with a backdrop of murder and mystery. This one was a struggle for me to finish. Admittedly, I didn’t exactly pursue it initially on its own merit. I was looking for something to listen to while I waited for the audiobook that I ACTUALLY wanted to hear (the next “Dresden Files” book). I sorted by popularity descending and filtered to available audiobooks. The first few were either random entries in a longer series or autobiographies. Sorry, Britney, I’m not really looking for another autobiography right now. The first book that wasn’t part of a longer series and wasn’t an autobiography was “The Coworker.” Interestingly, my wife had recently purchased another Freida McFadden book as a birthday gift for one of her friends. “The Teacher” wasn’t available, but I figured this might give me some in
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