Ravings of an Undead Cheese Minion

 excellent Friday night / Halloween activities 

Sometimes I research the CS Animation program just because I'm curious about how it's progressed and how the reqs have changed.  I really need to help more premajors on r/byu more, but life is busy and I spend most of my Reddit time shitposting anyway.  However, I want to make one comment clear from this thread . This person is WEAK, and their ancestors are weak:  In my experience, it's important to not only consider the acceptance rate but also recognize who you're competing against. When I applied to the program, the most eye-opening class for me was the intro to 3D modeling. We were told this course would be the biggest factor in determining our chances of getting in. At the time, I had never done any 3D modeling before, but many of my classmates had parents working at Pixar or other major studios. They were producing Pixar-level work in an intro class. That was when I realized I simply couldn’t compete with people who had been doing this since they were nine. Just k...

Ten years in Utah (gross), plus another year before my mission, and I am still weirded out by how bizarre Utah Mormon dating culture is. I can't do it.  I was very romantic and idealistic in high school, though this was overshadowed by severe, then-undiagnosed (but blatantly obvious) social anxiety disorder. I would listen to Michael Franti and Spearhead like this song, which I'm listening to now:  Now, I'm not a highly metaphysical man But I know when the stars are aligned, you can Bump into a person in the middle of the road Look into their eyes and you suddenly know.   So if you had asked me if I believed in love at first sight, I would have said, without a question "absolutely".  But then in Utah, you had people get married after only knowing each other for a few months.  WHAT? When I first noticed this, my reaction was "EW, EW, EWWW! Love at first sight, yes. But no, NO! Not like THAT!"  I can't even fully describe how much it freaked me out. CA...

It's on May 9, 2026! They moved it back.  sign up using my referral link uwu What's funny is, despite how much the course hurt in 2025, I really wanted to do it again.  I love that it starts and ends at the same park. No buses; no freezing start lines. Instead, I just camp out in my car and take a little nap.  Who knows if they'll have pancakes this year or not. But, the pancakes last year were radical You get to run past the Lagoon roller coasters! It's not a net downhill; in fact, it feels pretty uphill in a lot of sections. So it's a different challenge.  It's a smaller race, so it's way easier to place in your divisions.  It's usually one of the first truly warm days of the year, bleeding into hot. Spring is in full swing and everything is so bright and happy.  Water parks are opening very soon and it's fun to think about that!   Right after the race, I just go shower in the Lagoon campground and then go ride coasters at Lagoon.  I only r...

That's annoying.  It's on the exact same date as the Springtime Surprise 10K. This year, it was on May 10th. For some reason, in 2026 it's been moved to April 18th, almost a month earlier.  I'll see if I can find another May race up there, but it's not likely. May the Fourth Half is at night and I'd rather not. There's Run Vigor in SLC, which may be my best bet...

Honestly loved that Ninetails. I wanted to keep it. :p Or at least have Brock take it on as its new trainer. 

My eventual goal is to do them every Sunday morning, year-round. When I do them on weeknights, I tend to fall asleep.  But weekday and Saturday mornings are for gymming.  At any rate, I will be doing them weeknights too (once a week) and hopefully just by practicing I'll learn to not completely conk out.  I plan to resume my regime on Wednesday nights as soon as fall festivals are over, shortly after Halloween. I will restart with the first one. Hope to have some interesting experiences over the coming months. 

The feeling of letting go, I guess we'll never know.  - Owl City Every day. Engineering  Gym and Run  IT  Duolingo Micro Block (Lunch) Music Art Reading and Writing  Meditate Mini Block Code and Games Free Space Prehab and a Show  No letting go. 

Apparently, there was a progressive death metal band with my username, well before I ever created it in 2010ish when signing up for Bulbagarden  Masquerade Of Silence I only found this out due to trying to get into my dev blog and accidentally hitting Enter too early and googling it instead. 

Exhibit A (TryHackMe):  Exhibit B (Liftoff): 

I'm finally getting the routine down.  30 minutes engineering.  Workout - 75 lifting / 75 running (or other alternatives when injured).  Cyber/IT - 30 mins before work Duolingo - 5-15 min during break  Music - 30-40 mins at lunch  Art - 75 mins after work  Read/Write (and clean with audiobooks) - 60 min The meditation and imagination break - 15 min Code/Graphics/Games - 60 min Of course, the actual time targets aren't easy to hit, especially since you have to take some unwind time to not become a robot.  And sleep enough. :-)

That was the weirdest 8 minutes of my life, and it was awesome. 

This is over an hour's drive from me, so it likely wouldn't happen unless I was already heading up that way (ex. for Crystal Hot Springs, Lagoon, etc.) and I'd have to get there at a time I felt like there wouldn't be a lot of kids on it. :P  These aren't coaster credits, at least not according to most definitions, but it could be a good way to get your adrenaline fix in the Depresso Months of mid-November through late March.  Found thanks to  this blog post  and a Reddit thread about whether or not they count as coaster credits. 

This is just me broken record-ing, really, but No more cutting work blocks. I lifted for 80 minutes recently. It felt amazing, even if I was dying by the end. I love how sore I feel now.  Even when I try to find new jobs with better WLB, I can't let the search derail my studies. It feels like it never works in the end. Instead, I will have three different blocks, one for code, one for graphics...and one for work prep. I also might write some automation tools to speed up the process.  Also, if a job requires after-hours work on a regular basis, it doesn't have good WLB. That's all I'm saying. there's no point in me switching jobs to a different one that still has a regular after-hours requirement.  Why does no one in this state practice CI/CD? 

I see this on Reddit all the time.  People whining about people using Doordash because it's lazy.  I'm training 8 pursuits daily plus I work 8 hours a day. It's not lazy to get food delivered; it's efficient. I'm not going to spend 30 minutes driving and risking an accident to pick up spaghetti if I don't have to. Nothing productive can get done in the car as a driver. Podcasts are useful, but they don't produce mastery. 

It's called  silent dev  because it wouldn't be mine if it wasn't super emo.  I'll still be dumping code crap here. Nothing about this blog will change. I just have a dev-focused blog if I ever want to do more polished write-ups. 

I strained my calf coming back from St. George Marathon too quickly and now I'm in Spain with a silent S. I had to defer the Haunted Half until next year and I guess I'm in a bodybuilding-focused block now. No races until April. It's my off-season, starting a few days earlier than planned.  Regardless, here's the plan: RunDisney Springtime Surprise 10K  Farmington Half Marathon Grand Teton Half Marathon Run of Remembrance 5K Timp Half Marathon Freedom Run 10K  Onion Days 5K Big Cottonwood Half Marathon St. George Marathon Haunted Half Marathon  Wild cards: Sydney and/or Berlin if we get in. If so, St. George might be downgraded to the half. 

Not anymore, anyway.  You can't be hybrid if you skip lifting completely during a marathon block. That doesn't even make sense if you're a pure runner who doesn't care about muscle. Wtf? For me, the whole reason why I started following him is because holy crap, this guy is jacked AND fast and clearly balances running and lifting. Just like me.  Sure, 2:25 is faster by far than I'll probably ever run (my goal is to get to 2:45). It's extremely impressive. And the people whining about St. George being downhill are missing the point. It's a beautiful course and it isn't easy. I'll run it every year I can.  But I didn't realize he Stopped lifting to get the pull-up WR Stopped lifting when doing 100mpw for St George Is planning to continue NOT lifting, drop down another 25 lbs to around MY WEIGHT (!!! I'm 131 lb lol)  And apparently break the marathon WR.  Sorry but that's not hybrid. Cam Hanes is hybrid. So is Nick Bare. And Goggins. I don...

Summer before: CompTIA, maybe it would've taken 2 summers to complete  Summer before: CtrlPaint, Blender Donuts, Drawabox Other summers: Working on other security certs Same major: Computer Science, Animation And Games Emphasis Same minors: Math and Creative Writing Additional minors: IT, physics (OR double major with Mechanical Engineering, if BYU had let me), Design (if BYU hadn't dropped it)  Once getting accepted into CS Animation, never stopping daily art practice ever. Film class doesn't count. Homework doesn't count. Doesn't matter how busy you are Stayed consistent with exercise (Running + Lifting)  Taken Scripting, 3D Animation, Intermediate Graphics, etc. Maybe even Digital Sculpting and Digital Painting.  Made a demo reel AS I WENT  Tried to take University Band every semester instead of just "when it fit"  Internships earlier. Possibly: IT, then software engineering, animation, FAANG, theme park design.  I probably would've dropped the Span...

Website here .  It's hard to quantify just how much I love this piece. I could stare at it for hours.  She's working on something creative, with a beautiful night sky outside. It's cozy, and adventurous yet safe.  And the perfect unification of indoors/outdoors, I'd say. I have many indoor, sedentary type pursuits, but I also love being outside.  She feels a bit more cartoony and stylized than the world behind her, which has this sort of...anime realism look? I'm not sure how to describe it. But it's in the style of a lot of the pieces I loved seeing when I first discovered the online digital art world in high school.  Inspiration piece for sure. One day, I will make art like this. It's a bit frustrating that I thought I'd be there already, or at least way closer than I am now. In 2015 I thought I'd be there by 2016-2017ish, and instead I got slammed by my coursework and clawed my way into CS Animation. But when I do get there, all the years in which...

This is one of my favorite Youtube channels for writing and I just watched this one:  LINK I just realized something important. I NEED to polish as I go; I just have to draw a line so I don't get stuck. If I don't, I go crazy. This is actually okay (and it's also how I code). This is the Polisher type that Sarra discusses.  I do tend to outline/plot, and I balance a lot of creative projects simultaneously, so to a lesser extent, I also relate to the Plotter and Multitasker types. But primarily, I Polish.  I basically had to ditch word count and focus on hammering a chapter into submission, THEN submitting it to groups and moving forward. This is much more aligned with how I think and create. It's better to lean into that than to fight it. 

Working with this for now. It's basically me, just not EMO. It took way too long to write this and I was listening to Caramel on repeat.  Alex Neville  Full-Stack - UX - Documentation Full-Stack Software Engineer Alex Neville is a computer scientist and software engineer who is passionate about creating clean, secure, and well-documented software. From raytracing to the shadow DOM, every layer of the computing stack fascinates him.  Alex specializes in the glue that holds systems together. Combining an artistic eye with deep technical understanding, Alex’s full-stack development abilities give teams the tools they need to accomplish their objectives while minimizing friction and bottlenecks. His training in technical writing and commitment to documentation ensures that the “why” of technical decisions is as accessible as the “how”.  Alex is also a digital artist and writer of both novels and poetry. He earned his MS and BS in Computer Science with an emphasis in Anim...

wisdom, even the great intrigues of mathematics and computer science he also seeks recommendations on how to keep his screen cleaner :p

Expect more from this doodle-series eventually. Unless of course I can't find it or I forget . 

Shared by Wilkerson Farm on FB:  This opinion piece I guess local politics really are important. I normally have a hard time caring about that stuff. I like to just live in my own little world and pretend that such things don't exist. Ignorance is bliss, and I like bliss.  But that's how we lose local gems like that farm. This autumn has NOT been the same as other autumns here in Orem. Because some innocent-sounding group "Stronger Together" (omg so wholesome Keanu chungus uwu 🥺) has way too much power to override the will of citizens to do whatever the fuck THEY want.  TL;DR don't vote for the lady whose last name sounds like Candles. Even though her signs are everywhere .  Sure, the farm's hours were crap, because they'd randomly close without warning. But I loved that little farm. It made me love and even look forward to fall, when previously I only saw it as a harbinger of winter.  It was the closest amusement park to me other than Scera Pools and Ore...

"It's a sacrifice to live this kind of life." - Straight Line Stitch . (Screaming alert, it's almost instant, do not play out loud if in public :P ) Forever grateful that I heard that song.  Some quick notes: I don't know what my target running mileage is going to be yet for this week even if I aim to return to my baseline of 56 mpw soon. Currently, I am laser-focused on rehabbing my calf strain and being healthy for Saturday's long run at all costs.  I will be lifting for an hour a day. I will push close to failure this week. My body is strong, and it can handle this. Except my calf apparently. Working on it.  My other targets in minutes. I have to take these as weekly totals, as seriously as I do my fitness -- Art targets: 75 Monday through Saturday, 20 on Sunday Reading/Writing targets: 60 Monday through Saturday, 20 on Sunday Code targets (IT, cybersec, SWE, CS, Graphics): 90 Monday through Saturday, 20 on Sunday Gaming and game development targets: 60 Mon...

Inspired by some post on r/hygeine where the OP was complaining about her husband being grossed out about her not showering daily, and about how he was wrong and she didn't need to shower daily. Because she...works an office job? Ah yes, because body odor is a capitalistic conspiracy and doesn't exist unless you do an ironman, amirite? And all the top comments were...agreeing? On...a...hygeine subreddit.  ??????? So, don't you...LIKE taking showers? They feel good. They're relaxing. I'm baffled.  It's hard to believe those people are real sometimes. But, as they say...the nose knows.  Let's be clear. If you don't shower daily, regardless of your lifestyle - yes, that is disgusting.  I can't believe that has to be said. I assumed it was all implicit knowledge, and intuitive. But we all know what ASSUMING does.  In the TMCB basement at BYU, some poor soul is stressing over their Systems Programming assignment, coding TCP/IP packets in C. They want not...

So excited to ride a nutcracker on my weekend Lagooning sesh  Just Lagooning for hours and now there's a nutcracker  I'm such a Lagooner  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) But anyway. We all knew it was going to be an S&S Screamin' Swing, but it was nice to have it officially announced. The traffic is too brutal on Friday nights for me to get over there, but I saw some recordings online a few hours later. Good enough for who it's for, as my late grandfather would say.  Kinda funny because Screaming' Swings are not exactly the nicest on the bejeweled gentlemen downstairs due to the restraints IF you get stapled in. \ o / But I absolutely love  this flat model. It's both relaxing and thrilling at the same time. There's this pleasant whoosh of air with every swing. This will dramatically change Lagoon's skyline and soundscape.  I've been on Hot Seat at Fun Spot Orlando and the excellent Skyhawk at Cedar Point. I can count on that annual Skyhawk ride, but now I'll be ...

The deepest incisions, I thought I got better But maybe I didn't.  https://genius.com/Sleep-token-caramel-lyrics I also love the harsh background vocals towards the end of this song. 

This is a beautiful concept. A few things.  1. I cannot hear the word "sharding" without hearing a DIFFERENT word. 💩 2. This:  These concepts -- backups that are automatically engaged for redundancy -- are so fundamentally inherent to computing as a whole (think about like RAID arrays) that it's just bizarre to me that people still build software in our modern day without  thinking about that fundamental engineering problem.  It made me so happy I almost peed  :D  

2021:  Hi guys :) I am a Berkeley EECS senior. I grind Leetcode for 40 hours a day. I have FT offers from Facebook, Amazon, Meta, Google, Lyft, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, Fetlife, Chaturbate, Bad Dragon, Grindr, and Chipotle. TC will be $400K a year, 92 days PTO per week, 3-day workweek, free luxury apartment with ocean view, fully remote, no meetings at all, free meals catered 3x/day. Which one should I choose? uwu  2025:  hey guys :( I have applied to 69420 jobs FULL IN PERSON 95 HOUR WORKWEEKS 7 DAYS A WEEK AND ALL OF THEM REJECTED ME and just hired PEOPLE IN INDIA INSTEAD WHO WILL WORK FOR 3 DOLLARS A YEAR. SCREW THIS I AM GOING TO BE A PLUMBER  STAY AWAY KIDS  SAVE YOURSELVES IT'S A SCAM IT'S ALL A SHAM  DO NOT LISTEN TO THE SIREN SONG OF PYTHON AND CLION THEY WILL LURE YOU INTO A WATERY GRAVE ---- In all seriousness, keep coding. CS will return to the nerds eventually. The clout chasers will go somewhere else and we'll be free to geek out about mutexe...

It's about systems, not goals, but we still want to use goals as a looser ballpark, i.e. "I will get there eventually".  We might not be able to be the best at everything, but we sure can be pretty dang good  at a decent smattering of things we're passionate about .  Anything in parentheses is mostly just "stay consistent for now, worry about markers later"  RUNNING Boston qualifying time. I'd try to run at least 2:45 downhill. 2:50 flat This would probably be like...70mpw base for a few years I may need to crank this up because the field keeps getting more aggressive.  LIFTING 8-10% body fat at....oh...155 lb.? It's hard to say what's realistic. But definitely I could have more mass than my current weight while still getting faster.  I'd like to lift for at least 60 minutes, 5-6x/week.  ENGINEERING Completing Paul Lynn's PLC/SCADA sequence.  Reading all of Serway/Jewett: Intro Physics with Modern Physics CAD certification.  Reviewing all...

I enjoy a good day hike as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong.  I've done some longer ones, too: Paintbrush Divide, Grand Canyon R2R, and Whitney represent the rough "max" of what I'm willing to do, mainly because I want to sleep in a real bed and take a shower. So I stop at day hikes.  But here's the thing. I don't go very often because it's inefficient. Take your average summer Saturday:  I wake up at 4 AM to get my running gear ready, eat, and work on some stuff  I lift at 4:45 AM  I leave the gym at 5:15 AM  I run at 5:30 AM Whether I run 16, 18, or 20 miles, I will almost certainly be done before 8:30 AM. If I run 22, could take until 8:45 especially with bathroom stops.  I've burned an obscene amount of calories  I've had wonderful, meditative time in nature, it's just not the backcountry  This gives me all day to do other things, including water slides and working on my non-fitness goals.  Now take a hike Saturday: Everyone ...

I don't know who's carrying the boats, but I'm carrying the logs. 💩💩 This was my second full marathon, having run St. George last year in 3:34. I only tapered for a week and I never stopped lifting except for the day before. I knew I was capable of going much faster than 3:34 overall and that's what I set out to do this round.  This training cycle peaked at 62mpw and had a lot of lifting, but not as much as I'd like. Usually I did 1 speed workout per week and maybe threw in 1-2 fast miles for my long runs with the rest at fairly comfortable conversation pace. My longest training run was 22 miles.  We drove down Friday (I took the day off work and slept 9 hours, hallelujah.) Saturday, probably slept 6.5-6.75 hours, but woke up a LOT. I did core in the morning for about 5-10 minutes just to get the system up and running and also vanity. I wore my favorite Big Cottonwood 2025 tee with my Revel bib clips.  The start line was freezing. I did manage to work on all of my...

See You Next Year, a wonderful Halloween story! Glad I gambled on this Kickstarter. It's only the second one I've ever backed, and the first was the Sandman, so you KNOW it's going to go through. :P

RWBY, season 9, A Cat Most Curious I love this cat so much. And if anything were to happen to them,  well... Unfortunately, I've been slightly spoiled since it's been out for a while aaaand.... 😬