Words On Wednesday

A nearby liquor store had a sale on Bird Dog Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. I’m a sucker for trying new things and this brand had apparently won some awards. Seems like as good a reason as any to pick up a bottle (or two) and try it. Name: Bird Dog Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Source: Bird Dog Style: Bourbon ABV: 42% Price: $20 (for two) Volume: 750ml Price per oz: $0.35 I was running low on distilled spirits, so I ran by the liquor store to pick up at least a bottle of something. Originally, I grabbed a fifth of   Jim Beam Black because they had a sale that brought the price down to $11.99 for a fifth. I grabbed a bottle, but I continued to peruse for a minute just to see if anything else caught my eye. Sure enough, as I was meandering up the bourbon aisle, I noticed a big sticker on the Bird Dog box that read “2 for $20” as opposed to the standard price of $14.99 per bottle. I had never heard of Bird Dog, but that was cheap when it comes to bourbon. Specifically, it was...

My perspective on finances is that I want to automate everything. Bills and utilities on auto pay, direct deposit paycheck, anything that reduces the likelihood that I’ll forget to pay something. The only thing that I want to keep manual is my credit card payment, so I can decide how much of a balance to keep and how much to pay off. And even in that case, I have an automatic monthly payment of my minimum required payment, just so I won’t get hit with a late fee or missed payment penalty. This generates a problematic situation sometimes, though. My various bills hit at different points in the month, and sometimes I forget about a bill that will be coming out soon. Once before, I paid a substantial amount toward my credit card, but I didn’t leave enough in my checking account to pay our vehicle payments. I postponed those payments until after my next paycheck arrived, and fortunately nothing bad happened, but it was a pretty scary scenario. I take a lot of pride in my credit and consist...

I’ve gotten a little more handy with woodworking in the past few years, and I recently made a king size bed that I’m really proud of. The whole thing started when my wife and I got a king mattress and we were looking into options for the bed. After we sold our house, we tossed our queen bed and mattress. They were both pretty beat up and we were interested in getting a king size anyway because of how often the kids end up in the bed with us. Figured it’s one less thing to move and store. We got a king mattress (I’m not above sleeping on a mattress on the floor) and decided we would postpone the bed for a little while. I don’t know if y’all realize, but beds are expensive. We looked at a couple of beds at a few different stores and none of them really fit what we wanted. They were either prohibitively expensive, they looked like they would break if I sat down on them too hard, or both. I’m a big guy and I’ve broken beds several times before. I want something that would hold up to plenty...

A second book by the same author in as many months is not the way I typically do book reports, but Lencioni has been resonating with me and I came to a realization that stretches beyond just these two books. Although there is an assessment available, I didn’t feel the need to pay for it to identify my own strengths and weaknesses or geniuses and frustrations. Similarly to “ The Five Dysfunctions of a Team ,” Lencioni offers a fable to illustrate the model and then explains the details of the model after concluding the fable. Simply reading through the fable and his explanation is adequate to get a good understanding of the working geniuses and some introspection should allow most people to identify their own. Source: https://www.workinggenius.com/about Working Geniuses Enablement - One of my greatest pleasures with work is helping people through their problems and finding the best solution. Tenacity - I thrive at the point in the project where the needs have been determined and th...

“ Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ” is a Metroidvania (or “Igavania”) released on the all major platforms in 2019. As a spiritual successor to Castlevania games produced by Koji Igarashi, Bloodstained originated as a Kickstarter project when IGA (as he prefers to be called) parted ways with Konami in 2014. The intellectual property of Castlevania stayed with Konami, but nothing was stopping IGA from creating a new IP in the same style of side-scrolling exploration platformer with gothic styling. Nothing, that is, except funding. The Kickstarter was WILDLY successful, meeting 11x the original goal of $500,000 with over $5.5 million. I didn’t personally back it , but I was very tuned into it as a long-time Castlevania fan. I wanted the project to succeed, but I didn’t have any console to play it on and I previously didn’t have much faith in Kickstarter after the OUYA fiasco . Instead, I just watched from afar. When “ Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon ” was released after meeting the ...