Hi. Let’s skip the introduction. Just kidding that would be absolutely horrible for bloggular cohesion. Since I last wrote a post, I have had several things float through my mind-space that seemed to warrant blog posts but were simply not juicy enough to consume an entire post. Such thoughts pile up quickly, my friends, and at the rate I’m currently writing posts, they will eventually overwhelm me, and I shall become more thought than man. I think I’ll just have to set aside particular times of the week specifically for blogging purposes. Yeah. That’s the only way.
aNyWaY, to relieve my brain, I will now proceed to write several shortish things about a wider variety of topics than usual. Various people have told me they enjoy the “stream of conscious” nature of my blogs. To that group of people, I must say that I actually haven’t really considered most of my posts to be particularly “stream of conscious,” but I must warn you all that what will follow in this post will simply blow every other post I’ve written out of the water in this particular category.
To begin the shotgun thoughts, let’s first talk about shotguns. I like them. My brothers and I recently got together with a family friend of ours, and we drove golf balls off a cliff into the wild blue yonder. We then subsequently shot skeet off the same cliff, and it was deeply enjoyable. My father owns an over-under shotgun (which is a double-barreled 12-gauge, but the barrels are stacked vertically), and that boi is simply of bucket of fun to shoot. Highly recommend to a friend.
Next, let me tell you about a lad named Nathan Peck. Who’s Nathan Peck (I mandatorily ask to keep up the jaunty flow of the post)? Well, he’s about the most stereotypical San Franciscan developer I’ve ever laid eyes upon. He works for Amazon, specifically AWS (my only true love), and his job title is “Developer Advocate for Elastic Container Service at AWS.” Pretty boring, right? WRONG. Go sit in a corner and think about what you’ve done. But why has Nathan Peck achieved loml status? Well, he wrote a series of just shockingly, almost offensively informative Medium posts about how to launch a serverless containerized chat web application on AWS. Huh? Let me dissect the previous statement. Medium = A web app where people can basically write blog posts. Medium is very, very good, and has been a critical well of information on my four-month web-app journey. I love it almost as much as StackOverflow. AWS = Amazon Web Services, which is essentially a butt ton of computing services running on a butt ton of gigantic computing centers that Amazon built all over the world. For me, I basically rent computers on AWS that run the backend of my application 24/7. Serverless = I give AWS code, and AWS simply deploys it wherever the frack it wants to. Serverless = Fan-frickin-tastic, because I don’t have to provision and maintain servers. The maybe two people of my user base who have ever worked with servers should understand the intrinsic pleasure serverless architectures bring to my soul.
Anyway, figuring out AWS and CloudFormation and Server programming in general was a challenging endeavor, but the posts my boi Nathan Peck wrote about AWS and chat apps has probably been one of the most helpful things I’ve read in the past four months.
Boom, next. So, Charli XCX is a gal. I was familiar with neither her nor her work until several weeks ago. Actually, that’s not quite true. I distinctly remember in 2012 driving through Indiana and having “I Love It” irrevocably stuck in my head. That was brutal. Anyway, I believe my sister and brother were talking about her, so I gave her latest album a spin. Spoiler alert, it slaps. It slaps hard. My gosh. Two days ago, I had a private drugless rave in my bedroom in which I turned on Anthems to max volume on my headphones and engaged in a dance form I have dubbed “rhythmic contortions.” Very good fun. Highly recommend to a friend. If nothing else, give Anthems a listen. It simply deserves your time.
It is an intellectual crime that I have never once mentioned blue corn tortilla chips on this blog. Hey friend! Are you a sentient human being that requires food to survive? Do you find that standard food is lacking in both saltiness and texture, but you don’t know where to turn? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then boy do I have the thing for you! Introducing blue corn tortilla chips! You remember regular tortilla chips, right? Well blue corn tortilla chips are just like those, only blue! Amazing! But Danny, I hear you ask, why are blue corn tortilla chips any different than regular tortilla chips? Well, intellectually endowed reader, I don’t have a fracking clue. What I do know, however, is that blue corn tortilla chips are 20% more salty, have 45% better mouth-feel, and 13% better texture than the average tortilla chip.
I can hear some of you sputtering about how on earth I’m able to properly quantify mouth-feel, quality of texture, or even saltiness. Beat me in a fight, and I’ll tell you.
Passionfruit La Croix. Mother of Mary. Unlike blue corn tortilla chips, I’m quite confident that I’ve mentioned my enjoyment of La Croix prior to this post. I haven’t, however, mentioned which flavor of La Croix is categorically superior to all others. The answer to that question is simply Passionfruit. I can firmly say, and I think you’ll all agree with me on this one, that anyone who disagrees with me has an incorrect opinion.
Now that Passionfruit has taken its place as the rightful leader of the La Croix pack, let me whisper some sweet hymns into your ears about another flavor of La Croix that deserves your full attention. That flavor is Coconut. Why? Well, pretty much all “flavors” of La Croix show up immediately the second that blessed liquid graces your tongue. I trust most of my readers are fluent in memes, so it seems like a flagrant waste of everyone’s time to discuss the faint nature of La Croix flavors. The coconut in Coconut La Croix, however, sneaks up on you in the form of a three-second delayed aftertaste. Thus the immediate onslaught of unadulterated carbonation that we all know and love doesn’t blatantly overpower the coconut in this particular rendition of La Croix. The coconut taste is, understandably, faint, almost like a pleasant dream, and thus after sipping a Coconut La Croix, it almost feels as though you’ve closed your eyes, and are lying on a hammock on the beach.
For those of you who’ve hopped on the Bubly bandwagon, you are all mindless sheep, and it will be a miracle if we can even superficially be friends.
You know, I really haven’t given MBMaM the time of day that it deserves. This is a great place for it. My Brother, My Brother, and Me is a podcast by three wonderful human beings, who give advice based on a series of questions either sent in or gathered on Yahoo Answers. The names of these bois are Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy, and they are simply very good. If you don’t know this Podcast, get familiar with it. It is guaranteed to improve the quality of your life by at least 17%.
Cher Lloyd wrote a song a good while back called Want you back. The sweet sweet beat of the song, combined with the British nature of her accent have conspired against me, and that song has been stuck in my head for like a week. I want it to stop. I am very tired of it. Wow, I’ve Googled Cher Lloyd, and apparently after she was on the X Factor, she was one of the “10 most hated teens in Britain.” Dang. That’s kinda wild. Way to reinvent yourself, Cher.
I’ve been running a bit more. I mostly just do it because it clears up my head space, which allows me to come back and program with greater ferocity. I’m super super slow, however. Nothing like a quarantine to absolutely have its way with your fitness levels.
I think that’s enough for now. Hmmst. I’ll spend 30 seconds thinking if there’s anything else.
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Nah I think that’s good. Bye.
Sup Schmeags. I’m immensely happy to say that I’m finished with school for the semester. For a variety of reasons that I will likely put in irrationally whiny upcoming post, I have declared a personal war with academia. Suffice it to say that I am oh so done with stupid classes and stupid professors.
Ok now that we’ve established I handle my problems with the maturity of a three-year-old child, let’s get on to some dank Alfredo. Sike! The internet has seen to it that this particular topic, which was at one-point dank Alfredo, is now no more than mediocre Marinara. However, seeing as I’ve essentially written myself into a corner in my last posts, I feel I must take on the mantle of a Basic Betty and address the shockingly average Marinara that’s just sitting in the corner of the metaphorical room.
What is the Marinara? Well, it is simply the fact that Grimes and Elon Musk named their child X Æ A-12.
Now this, as with most information about celebrities that makes them appear different than the cookie-cutter image thrust upon them by the media, caused quite a stir. Perhaps the funniest article I saw said that the name X Æ A-12 isn’t legal in California, so I’m just not sure what Grelon will do about that. As any of you who follow Elon’s doings know, Elon is becoming increasingly militant in his attitudes towards the state of California, so perhaps California declaring he can’t name his child X Æ A-12 will be the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back.
Now then, enough about important people like Grelon Musk, let’s talk about me. Why, after my explicit fawning over this pair of humans, do I regard this topic as lame Marinara? Well, I suppose one reason is that I’m bitter that I was wrong on all accounts. First of all, the child X Æ A-12 is a male, not a female. Furthermore, the child’s name is X Æ A-12, not Enza (short for Influenza). 0 for 2, Danny.
However, I also feel like at this point, by writing about this, I’m actively drinking some sauce that the internet swished around its mouth for a couple days and then spat back out. Also, it doesn’t help that literally everyone and their mother hates Elon’s guts right now.
Whatever. Actually wait a second… I feel something deep inside me stirring. Let’s take a trip down to my emotions to see what’s going on.
* Danny walks into the frightening halls of his emotions and is immediately assaulted from all sides by a militaristically passionate desire to deeply analyze the name X Æ A-12 and explore its implications. Danny wasn’t ready for such an attack and is sent reeling backward. Danny looks up, trying to make out the emotion that so violently assaulted him, only to be viciously backhanded in the face by either Rage or Fury. It happened too quickly to tell. Danny limps backward, trying to escape the halls of his emotions, when a sort of conscious smoke engulfs him and holds him back. As he struggles with the smoke, he hears the voices of his emotions behind him, speaking in chorus: “Remember our agreement: you don’t mess with us, and we’ll only occasionally launch strikes against your consciousness. Remember how little power you have against us.” At this point, Danny is expelled out the emotional halls and thrust back into the chair in front of his computer. *
Well that was entirely unpleasant. Nothing like being reminded that you have no control over your emotions at 8:42 AM on a Thursday. For the maybe two of you concerned readers, there’s no need to worry about me. I’ll regroup and launch a more complete attack against my silly emotions later today with the help of the more logical aspects of my mentality, and Thor-willing, we can get my emotions to sign a better agreement that gives me more power in our relationship.
Enough of that. Well, even if it went cataclysmically, my trip downstairs to my emotions did in fact inform me that even though by most standards, the topic of X Æ A-12 is chyme-like Marinara, I do in fact want to provide some level of discussion regarding X Æ A-12. So here I go.
The first and most pressing concern regarding X Æ A-12 is simply how to pronounce his name. From the information I have received by means a variety of shady sources, the name X Æ A-12 is pronounced “Ash.” Like, what? Either Grelon are trying to make an incredibly bold statement about the fluidity of language, or they’ve just entirely deaged themselves. Now I’m all for making up words on the fly, as anyone who has met me, or read this blog can attest. However, the entire purpose of doing so is the fact that I feel that the words I make up better describe the connotations I wish to impart that any sequence of characters in the dusty old Encyclopedia Britannica, and I’m fairly confident that people around my will be able to understand my new words based on context and word-construction.
What Grelon has done, however is much different. They’ve essentially said, “Here’s a lot of letters and this is how it’s pronounced.” It’s like me saying I named my pet Beta fish “DD-% 49 L,” which is, of course, pronounced “Bartholomew.” Wild stuff, blessed readers.
To some degree, this is ok because they are both influential/powerful people and have jurisdiction over the name of their child. On the other hand, they’ve entirely deaged their child because based on standard conventions, “X Æ A-12” is not pronounced “Ash,” as I think you may agree.
I think the only trap door out of this madness is for the child to simply go by “Ash.” Just as the Queen of England is the figurehead, and Parliament is the collection of bois that actually gets stuff done, so X Æ A-12 will be Ash’s name only legally, and he will otherwise be known as Ash.
Or, I mean, X Æ A-12 could start a new trend in baby-naming, and he could be the hipster-like entity in this particular field. I suppose we’ll just have to see. However, I will say that it would be pretty sick if the first Space Commander’s name is X Æ A-12. I would be ok with that.
Good heavens, it’s almost 9. I actually have a little call set up at 9 AM this morning, so I’ll have to take my leave. Also, now that it’s summer, I believe I’ll have significantly more time to devote to blog-writing. We’ll see. Sayonara!
Grimes, or Clare, or c, or whatever the heck she wants to be called is really just the coolest kid in school. For simplicity, I shall heretofore refer to her by her common artist name, Grimes. If for some god-forsaken reason you are not incredibly familiar with the life and masterful works of Grimes, then I can assure you that your time would be much better spent listening to even a single song Grimes has produced than continuing to read this post. In fact, if you don’t know Grimes, I urge you to spend the next 30 minutes doing the following:
If you followed my patent-pending quick-and-easy four step process for falling in love with Grimes, and you have not yourself fallen in love with Grimes, I can only recommend that you take a moment by yourself in a dark room to genuinely ask yourself if you’ve entirely lost touch with your sense of humanity. Perhaps you have. If you find yourself to be one such emotionally-challenged specimen, please send me an email. I am deeply interested in what may have happened in your life that has so robbed you of feeling that you are unable to innocently fall into a deep passionate love for a random Canadian Artist you’ve never heard of.
I suppose that if you are actively married or in what my junior high teachers would refer to as a “dating relationship,” you are probably a bit apprehensive about purposefully trying to fall in love with a different person than your significant other. I understand your concern, but let me humbly submit that your situation actually gives rise to an interesting opportunity. Have your significant other go through my patent-pending quick-and-easy four step process for falling in love with Grimes. Now then, it is likely that you both are trying to hide your deep, romantic, passionate love for Grimes from one another to prevent each other from becoming jealous (or whatever feeling someone develops upon learning their significant other has romantic feelings for someone else). While it may be difficult, let me urge you both to share your feelings towards Grimes with one another. This conversation, while potentially difficult, will actually bring you both closer by uniting you both together under a common, powerful, mutual emotion for a girl you both will likely never meet.
Now then, since I have solved the “significant other” issue, you, dear reader, should have at this point allowed yourself to embrace a love for Grimes that you should hopefully recognize as entirely inevitable. Given that is the case, I believe my work here is done. Hasta la vista, mis amigos.