This was actually my first introduction to the song.
Writing about things that I like feels a bit trite, but I want to
write something, just to write something. My hope is that, as I get
going, more things will come to me.
Guinness
Academically, Guinness is a light beer (source cited) and is the apex of beers. I have
had everything from the cheapest of cheap, to beers that have advanced
degrees, but nothing comes close to a Guinness.
Bench press
I should work out other parts of my body more frequently, but there
is something wonderfully primal about crushing reps on bench (especially
with the boys).
This is the distro of Linux that I learned on, and still use today.
I have jumped around and tried other distros, but Debian is fast, works
great, consistent, and doesn’t need system upgrades often. I have no
problem with the supposed “dated” software, because I can compile it
myself if needed. This picture explains my computer
ethos.
I’m not one of those guys that really tries to configure Linux (or
other Unix-y environments) that much, but as a power user, I really like
tmux. I have a sensible config that is
useful to help me be more productive.
French press coffee
There’s no telling how many french press carafes I have broken
throughout the years, but it’s the type of coffee that I like, and it’s
really low effort.
Slippers
I was never a slipper guy until a few years ago, now I exclusively
wear slippers inside. I’ve even started calling them my “house shoes”,
which is a concerning move in the direction of aging.
Walks around the neighborhood
There is nothing I enjoy more after dinner than walking around the
neighborhood with my family. It’s something that I enjoyed as a child,
and I still enjoy it into adulthood.
The Orthodox Anthologion
Similar to the western breviary, the “Anthologion” is an anthology
of prayers and services from Eastern Christianity. The one by St. Ignatius
Orthodox Press is really good.
The KJV Bible
I’m not a KJV-only guy, and I realize there are some deficiencies in
the KJV, but I love the language style. It makes reading the Scriptures
feel special. I just wish we would use King James English in Liturgical
services as a standard.
For $100 up front and for three to five dollars a year in
electricity, I can run room309.net and
other services on my RPi 4. It’s a nice little computer and has given me
no trouble in six years of ownership.
This one is pretty “consumerist” of me, but if I’m going to buy
something, I try to save up and buy quality. I have a few Colonel
Littleton products (some of which I’ve had for a decade), and they have
all held up great. Fantastic company to work with, and they send you
some “freebies” when you buy stuff.
I used to be strictly a tap water guy, so I could look down on
people that felt they needed something fancier. This was the case until
I learned about PFAs
in the water supply. Hopefully the
lawsuit doesn’t hurt their business too much.
Say what you want about the language, but I have never used a more
productive development environment in my life. This would require a
longer article, but I’m a Go stan for sure.
I have never used vanilla PHP (i.e. PHP without a framework)
professionally, so I don’t know all of its downsides, but I made our guest book as a semi-LAMP
stack application. It was delightfully simple and productive to produce.
Additionally, I am well versed in OWASP
security best practices, and know how to avoid common web development
traps (XSS, SQL-injection, broken access control, etc), so the things a
web framework provides are just a convenience mechanism.
I have tried Neovim and found it too complicated and slow for me (I
will not apologize for this comment). I would like to like the Helix editor, but I find that it is
just different enough from Vim that I would really need to dedicate time
to building up new muscle memory. For now, I stick with Bram’s (RIP,
king) flavor of vi. You can augment it pretty well with universal ctags
and the following script:
autocmd BufWritePost *.c silent !ctags -R --c-kinds=+d+e+f+g+l+m+p+s+t+u+v+x ..
Just replace the specifics to C with the language of your choice.
Again, I’m not a computer customizing fiend, but I do like
GPU-enhanced terminals. Alacritty has some downsides, but I find it to
be very minimal, workable, and sensible. It gets out of my way and I
have never had any issues with it.
My iPhone (cringe)
THANK YOU TIM COOK! It’s not cool around “serious” tech people to
have an iPhone, and Apple, in my opinion, is not a good company, but the
iPhone is really not bad.
The Blues Brothers
What’s not to love? SNL golden-era actors, killer soundtrack, cameos
by famous blues musicians, an original “gonzo” story line, very quotable
script, and fantastic aesthetics make
this movie a 10/10 for me. In the short stint that I made lofi hip-hop,
the move inspired this
song.
I have known about Libby for awhile, but never used it til recently.
You don’t need Audible when you have a public library system that is
begging you to use their services. Additionally, the current
iteration of the application (v9.1.0) is very nice to use.
Old boots
I like to boot goof, and I like to do it in boots that are as old as
me. I got Tecovas one year for Christmas, but I returned them, because I
had just gotten my boots resoled.
This one makes me a goober, but I like wearing overalls when I do
yard work. Round House overalls are sturdy, comfortable, and made in the
USA.
Led Zeppelin II
While I can’t recommend Zeppelin II as it has lots of suggestive
themes in it, there is no other album that I would rather have playing
while getting a PR bench max (see “Bench press”)
This is getting longer than I expected, and it is getting late, so
I’m going to try to wrap this up quickly…
Red Alert 2 (and Yuri’s Revenge)
I don’t care for video games that much, but I love RA2 and have
played it more than any other game in my life. I will not allow myself
to own a copy so my family can see me during my off time.
Drinking a gallon of water every day
I crush water. It’s so good for you, and it helps you feel amazing
(see “Berkey Water Filters”)
Cats (unfortunately)
I was never a cat guy. In fact, I actively disliked cats until about
three years ago. I now own a cat, and, as fate would have it, I like
cats.
What a fantastic piece of software. Beautifully written, it works
great, it has a wonderful
code of ethics, it’s fast, building and integrating with it is
pragmatic, it’s public domain… I can’t say enough good things about
SQLite.
Peppermints
The perfect sweet. Infinite replay-ability and always there for you
when you need them. They are the unsung hero of candy.
Oatmeal
Though you need to avoid the types of oatmeal that
can make you sterile, if you want to talk about a contestant for a
perfect food, this is it. Oatmeal is good for you, you can prepare it in
many different ways, it’s cheap, it’s great for vegans and meat eaters
alike, etc. Bury me in oatmeal.
Anyway, I ended up writing a lot more than I thought, and, though
this is a low-quality post, I’m glad I wrote something rather than
nothing.
