Words On Wednesday

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...