Words On Wednesday

I made my own mead once a little while back. It wasn’t great, but it didn’t kill anyone. I call that a win. The whole idea started when I came across a simple recipe for mead from a tumblr user by the name of Recoil-Operated. He detailed steps to make mead with nothing more than a gallon jug of spring water, a few pounds of honey, and some bread yeast. It sounded simple enough that a software engineer could do it. Several times over the course of a few years, I would remember that mead recipe and decide that I should make some. Every single time, I would eventually abandon the idea and forget about it. Finally, about a year ago, I went through with the process. The original post was lost to the annals of time, but an Internet Archive capture of the first part of the post was still available. Besides a bunch of images, this is the only text available from the post: “Recoil-operated’s $12 traditional mead: So one of the most common things I see on my Mead posts is “I’d love to do that, ...

We own a go kart, and let me just tell you from experience: small engine repair is a nightmare. This go kart was a Christmas present to my kids a few years back. It seemed like the time. They were quickly outgrowing the 12V electric vehicles we got them earlier, and something gas-powered was the obvious next choice. We considered something like a 4-wheeler (because it’s not an “ATV” in the south), but that seemed a little too dangerous for them. They’re top heavy and easy to flip, and my kids aren’t exactly experts with caution. Instead, we decided that a go kart had the benefit of speed but safety in the form of a lower center of gravity and a roll cage. At worst, they probably wouldn’t be able to flip it and get stuck underneath it. When Amazon had a deal on the go kart we were interested in, I pulled the trigger. Freighting it to the house was annoying. Normal Amazon deliveries are great, and very transparent with where a particular delivery is and when it should arrive. Third party...

Every now and then, I try to sprinkle in some self-help and business savvy reading. My new Director of Software Engineering recommended “The Advantage” by Patrick Lencioni, but the local library didn’t have that in audiobook format. Instead, I decided to listen to another work by the same author. I checked out “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” The premise of the book is a sort of two-phase approach to explaining team dysfunctions: Lencioni gives a short fictional story with plenty of staged dialog and then finishes with a more concrete explanation about these dysfunctions and what we can do about them. The entire book is only about four hours in length, so it’s a super short time investment. More importantly, the content is valuable food for thought, even if the fable itself is a bit predictable. Characters in the fable are clearly manufactured for the sake of example, but man if they don’t fit descriptions of people I know in real life. It just goes to show that things tend to be the...

I posted a review for “Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age” last month, but I didn’t mention how I got the platinum trophy, one that was an absurdly long time coming. My first exposure to Final Fantasy XII was actually the original release back on PS2. My roommate at the time had a copy and he really enjoyed the game, so he let me borrow it. I played for a while and got maybe a quarter through the main story. I liked the game, but I moved out before I managed to finish so I returned it to said roommate. Rest in peace to that save file that maybe still exists on some PS2 memory card somewhere; I haven’t played it since circa 2010. A console gap and almost a decade later in March 2019, I picked up Zodiac Age from my local library to play on PS4. Unfortunately, I did have to start over since saves from the original release aren’t compatible with Zodiac age, but it was a small price to pay for the improvements and availability on a current platform. I played for a while and got further than...