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rue21 CJ Black Cologne

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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
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Book Report - "The Creative Act: A Way of Being" by Rick Rubin

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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
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Carolina Code Conference 2024

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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 it ,
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Thirsty Thursday Eve - Kirkland Signature Spiced Rum

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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
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Election Day

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
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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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