Words On Wednesday

“Golden Sun” and it's sequel "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" are a pair of JRPGs released on Nintendo Game Boy Advance in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Frequently featured in lists of the best RPGs and JRPGs of all time, clearly they're good games, but what makes them so special? Also, why would I cover BOTH in the same post? I'm putting these two games together because they're almost more like two halves of the same game. Not quite like Pokémon where it's the SAME story with slight variations between versions. Golden sun is effectively the part 1 to The Lost Age's part 2. Playing JUST Golden Sun would leave you with an incomplete story. I don't want to suggest that this reflects poorly on either game. On the contrary, I think it was kinda nice to be able to sink about 25 hours into the first game, then take a break before continuing on to the second game. A sort of built-in intermission, if you will. I often burn myself out if I bum rush through a singl...

After discovering that Costco's Tequila Reposado was almost identical in price per volume to their Tequila Blanco , I had to compare the two. Name: Tequila Reposado Source: Kirkland Signature Style: Tequila ABV: 40% Price: $14.49 Volume: 1L Price per oz: $0.43 I uncorked the new bottle and poured a shot of each side by side. Fortunately, I had a single shot left from the Blanco for the comparison. This would equip me with the information to decide if I would buy another bottle of Blanco or just start keeping Reposado on hand. Most obviously, the color of the Reposado was pretty visibly darker. Not quite bourbon or black rum dark, but something like a watered down cola. The Blanco is indistinguishable from water at a glance. Although I am frequently advised against it, I always have to smell a new alcohol before I drink it. The Reposado didn't really have much of a smell. I'm not sure if it's because of less volatile esters or if something about the process remov...

I lead software engineering teams with a philosophy built on trust, autonomy, and intentional structure. My core belief is that talented people do their best work when they are equipped, empowered, and protected from unnecessary friction — not monitored, micromanaged, or buried in low-value urgencies. I keep teams small by design, act as a buffer between developers and business stakeholders, and treat blocker removal as my highest-priority function. I hire deliberately and collaboratively, prioritizing cultural fit and intellectual curiosity over narrow technical experience, because adaptable people outperform specialists over the long run. I create space for my team to take risks and occasionally fail, calibrating conditions so that failure is recoverable and instructive rather than catastrophic. Knowledge sharing and documentation are non-negotiable expectations — not nice-to-haves — because a team where information lives in one person's head is a fragile one. I communicate openl...

I'm getting a new Kindle for my birthday and I wanted to detail how I've been preparing for that. I had a Kindle 4th Generation that a coworker gave me back in April 2020. His family recently upgraded to Kindle Paperwhite devices, and since nobody was using that old Kindle, he offered it to me. I've picked up a lot of his hand-me-downs through the years, but that one was one of my favorites. Thanks, Matt! While I had that Kindle, I would frequently  sync library books from Overdrive  and then turn on airplane mode so I could keep those books indefinitely. It was a convenient system for hanging onto books for longer than an intended checkout period, but it wasn't perfect. I would occasionally check out large batches of books, sync them all at once, and then go offline so I could have some options available. If I ever wanted a different book, however, I had to resync and I would lose the books that had expired at that point. Alas, it did give me the capability to hang ont...