My Life and Code

Last November, my wife decided to take up bird watching as a hobby. We bought one of those bird feeders with a built-in camera, but due to the holidays and a lot of snow, I didn't get it all set up until February. Within 30 minutes of filling it with bird feed, we got our first customer. Of course, it was a squirrel. If you're going to feed the birds, then, by proxy, you're also feeding the squirrels, unless you take steps to try not  to, which we didn't think was right. So in addition to the bird feed, we began to buy nuts as well. Prior to COVID, I'd feed the squirrels in the park near my office every day, and I learned that they're smarter than you might realize. They recognize people, even by voice. One day, when feeding them at lunch, I ran out of nuts with one squirrel left. I made a quick mental note of some distinguishing characteristic to help me recognize that squirrel, and came back out later to try to find him/her. I walked all the way around the bui...

As I mentioned in my last post , I worked at a haunted hayride with some friends during the fall after I graduated high school, and the one after that. That whole period of my life between the end of high school and the start of my career was an interesting time, kind of an adventure, kind of some lost wandering, directionless, but free from those long school days I'd known for most of my life. My friend Ed had heard about it. It was the Sleepy Hollow Haunted Hayride, and is still around and has a website, which you can visit here . On the nights we'd want to work, we'd just show up, and be given our assignments. It was usually me, Ed, our friend Brian, and Brian's girlfriend at the time, Liz. And by work, what I mean is "act" -- we'd be actors in whichever scene of the hayride we were assigned to. We could be zombies, werewolves, vampires, you name it. It was almost always a social activity as well: for example, if you were a zombie, you were part of a gr...

Pictured: Part of the Penn State Abington campus during a Philly.NET code camp I attended a number of years back. This is my favorite time of the year, but where does the time go? I couldn't believe, when I looked at the date a few days ago, that we were already in mid-September. I feel like I look forward to fall every year, but never really stop to enjoy  it, usually due to whatever else is going on at the time. It also seems like it doesn't start getting cooler as earlier as it used to. The cooler weather is part of what I appreciate about fall. That, and the leaves changing color. I remember both from being a little kid, rolling around in piles of leaves in the brisk weather. It was later, when I was in high school, that I gained an even greater appreciation for it, when my 10th grade biology teacher gave us all an assignment to collect 10 different kinds of leaves and use clear contact paper to collect them into a book of sorts. As I just typed that sentence, it sounded bo...

I've had this blog post in draft form for a few years now, and am finally publishing it. At the time I originally wrote it, I was 100% behind Bodylastics, with a small caveat concerning the anti-snap technology. Now, I'm looking for an alternative due to the discrepancy in their explained max resistance amounts. Bodylastics is a system of stackable resistance bands used for exercise. I asked for a set as a Christmas present back in 2013 and have been using it ever since. At the time I received it, Bodylastics was a unique product, but since then many imitators have sprung forth. It's a product I use regularly and am quite happy with. But it's not without it's caveats, and the changes they've made in the past few years have not been for the better. The Product and Its Advantages Bodylastics produces multiple products these days, but the one I'll be discussing is the one they're known best for: stackable resistance bands. These are tube resistance bands wi...

Nine months after I graduated high school, I got a new job…working at a high school. Whereas most of my classmates had post-graduation plans, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I spent some time taking a few classes at the local community college and continuing to work. I worked as a janitor. Definitely not my long term goal. At the end of each school day, I’d go up to the teacher’s lounge on the fourth floor and wait for classes to let out. Then I’d begin my rounds of emptying trash and sweeping floors. One of the teachers at the school was a lady named Peggy Blanco. One day, while waiting for classes to let out, I was in that teacher’s lounge with Peggy and the topic of what I wanted to do with my life came up. I told her that I was considering becoming and auto mechanic. “Oh Alan!”, she said. “You’re smarter than that!” I have to stop right now to explain that, because being an auto mechanic requires  intelligence, both in understanding how things work and ...

“Some days I’m scared I’m gonna die. Or even worse: I might survive. I try to keep these words in mind: Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight. Gotta kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight.” — Chris Hannah