Words On Wednesday

Peanut butter whiskey is delicious, but it serves as a case study on too much of a good thing when you buy a whole handle of it. I picked up a bottle of Skrewball one day when I hit Costco Liquor for the standard options that I always keep on hand. Of course, I had to grab my spiced rum and American vodka , but I also make a quick pass around the store to see if anything else catches my eye. On this particular visit, I noticed an unfamiliar bottle and my curiosity was piqued. Peanut butter is delicious. It’s good on crackers, it’s good on apple slices, I’ll mix it into my overnight oats occasionally. George Washington Carver was my hero, to the degree that I actually won a prize in primary school for knowing that he was credited with the invention of peanut butter. So peanut butter whiskey was an OBVIOUS try. I wasn’t worried about Costco only selling handles, I’d be back for more soon enough anyway. As soon as I got the bottle home, I had to give it a sip. The first thing you’ll noti...

In order to keep myself current on trends in the technology space, I want to start regularly blogging about various things going on in the field. Call it “Talking Tech.” This isn’t going to be a regular monthly segment. Book Report and Thirsty Thursday Eve chew up enough of the month as is. And maybe most months end up having a Talking Tech post in them anyway, but I don’t want to be beholden to it. I don’t know quite yet what this is going to look like, so it’s partially experimental. There are a few ideas floating around that I want to discuss and would fit well with the Talking Tech moniker. First post is most likely going to be an article spin on the no-code solution talk I suggested for the Carolina Code Conference and briefly discussed on the Carolina Code Cast. I’ve already created a short video presentation on it, but it makes sense to have that tied in with Words on Wednesday as well. Beyond that, the Raspberry Pi 5 came out, so that’s a pretty cool piece of hardware. If I’m a...

I was big on murder mystery novels a couple years back, and I have a hard time leaving a series unfinished unless I just truly hate one of the books. Hence, I decided to revisit the Hawthorne series for the third book that had since been released after I read the first two. The one thing I can tell you is that I would be an awful detective. Up until the very end, I don’t have a clue who committed the crime. Sure, I’ll throw out theories while I’m reading. Occasionally, one of those theories does coincide with the final resolution, but nothing makes it any more special than the dozen or so theories I floated around. When the big reveal comes, I am consistently surprised. Great for the satisfaction of reading, but don’t expect me to solve any crimes for you. Given that disclaimer, I can’t tell you how easily this mystery would have been solved by someone with a more keen eye for detail. The clues make sense when they’re finally laid out clearly and directly at the end, but I wouldn’t hav...

I started replaying The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim again recently and I forgot just how much I enjoyed the game. In the past few years, I’ve been fairly… disconnected with gaming. Sure, I was an avid gamer in my teens and early 20s. I had kids and that occupied a lot of my time. I switched jobs a couple times, started school again, gaming just fell to the wayside. Gaming is a passtime rather than a way of life for me, but I didn’t have much extraneous time to pass. Runescape and Rollercoaster Tycoon were about the only recurring games I played, and only because they could be played in short sessions on my phone, so the barrier for entry was pretty low. Having recently finished school, I’ve found substantially more free time. Not to say that I have as much free time as I did in high school, but I do have a few spare moments here and there to explore some old passions. I played through Super Mario Wonder with the kids and really enjoyed that. We try to get in a few sessions of Mario Kart 8 ...