thoughtsofadyingsoftwaredev

[thoughtsofadyingsoftwaredev]

The Cure

Hello, Tumblr-verse! As always, I am here to make a few posts for the year before I inevitably get busy with life or otherwise forget about this thing existing. Again, I don't do this for anyone but myself as I find it a nice platform for journal-entry style posts.

I recently had a hankering for some nostalgia, and sought to scratch that itch in a rather bizarre manner. I can't remember if I really explained where I first went to college, but it was in east TN and a private Christian liberal arts school. At the time, they were called Milligan College, but today they are now Milligan University.

Milligan College was a perfectly lovely institution with a beautiful campus, wonderful people, and what I would consider a great liberal arts program. One thing that I certainly did not enjoy at the time was the rather stringent requirements surrounding "church" attendance. It was less church and more a Christian-y get together twice a week, but before you could graduate you had to have x amount of points, which were earned by scanning your student ID at the door when entering the building where these get-togethers were held.

Much like many things in my life at the time, I found this to be complete BS, but was also perhaps a bit melodramatic. But it certainly bothered me as I was at a time when I considered myself very "counter culture" to the environment Milligan had established. Years of growing up being forced to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday, regardless of if I particularly felt like it or not, had led to some resentment from me towards organized religion, and perhaps God himself. After reading that last line back to myself, I wonder if the melodrama never left my body...

Anyways, back to my hankering for nostalgia. As I said, I found myself scratching that itch in an odd way. I pulled up the Wayback Machine and went to my old college's website circa 2011 (ie: around the time I first began attending). To say that a wave of nostalgia washed over me would undersell the torrential downpour that followed. A photo carousel towards the top, displaying a few student testimonials about the benefits the college afforded them, a blurb about the new fully online Business courses that had just begun being offered, and what would today be considered a fairly "static" overall user experience in terms of overall page layout and interactivity.

And upon navigating around the site and observing the overall layout, I had a thought: how does the college's site from 2011 compare to their site as of today in the year of our lord 2025? So I pulled them both up next to each other in my browser and began to investigate.

What follows is largely my personal thoughts on how web design and development has evolved, and it's likely one many share; I'm certainly not unique for having the following viewpoint.

Modern web design and frontend experience is utter garbage, devoid of any true personality, bloated to the gills with useless fluff, one or more libraries being loaded into the browser to achieve very basic goals, and does more harm than good to an end user looking to utilize the website.

Going back to 2011, the first thing I noticed was just how much of the page's content fit onto the screen. It had very legible heading/navigation menus, one towards the very top of the page, another a little further down, and some footer navigation links as well if a user scrolled down to those.

On the modern site? They can barely fit the primary navigation menu on the page with their splash screen, fighting for space alongside a looping video taken from a drone to demonstrate what the campus looks like. Hovering over any of those navigation links, immediately causes, no kidding, more than half of the page to be engulfed by the nav menu background for the sub-navigation options. Everything else now gets pushed behind that (not below, behind), until the user moves their mouse out of the navigation section of the page in order for the sub-navigation menu to disappear. Absolutely ludicrous.

Back to 2011 - the background captured what I believe is the Appalachian Mountains, which while not as concise or accurate to what the campus looks like compared to the drone footage in the modern site, provides a lot of character and an appealing visual to always be displayed prominently to users as they navigate the site.

The main "meat" of the site, then, is displayed in a div within that background image, chopping off the width on both sides of the page to create a nice, centered main content section, while also allowing the background image to be easily visible while users peruse through the main content section in the middle of the page. Again, I cannot describe to you how much character comes through in the old site when compared to the new.

As with most modern websites, the new site simply has no charm or anything that would make it stand out from another college website. A white background, with a few components such as headers/nav menus/etc that utilize their university color (orange), and that previously mentioned looping video which is only found on their main page, and struggles to compete for space with the aforementioned bloated components.

Additionally, with the modern site's issues with screen space - bare in mind I am viewing on a 1080p monitor; maybe 1440p would work better? But the overwhelming majority of users will be on a 1080p monitor, so I would say that's a moot point either way - the overall choice of font size is ridiculously large, putting giant print KJV bible editions to shame. Meanwhile, the 2011 site uses an appropriately sized font that assumes you are not attempting to use the site from 20 feet away from your desk. Everything remains legible without compromising on screen space, which in turn helps deliver more information to the user about what the college provides.

This is not a problem unique to this college - similar issues can be seen with just about any university page, from Harvard to little community colleges around the country.

The idea of a frontend just piling tons and tons of garbage, bloat, useless componentized pieces has been prevalent probably going back to pre-2016, which is around the first time I remember hearing about React and all of the goodies involved with that.

I think the use of these bloated frontend libraries is not necessarily a problem with the tools themselves, but the jobsites choosing to use said tools. If you're Facebook, and you have thousands of software devs who need to be able to work collaboratively across the site, and perhaps the things they are creating can be reused elsewhere, it makes perfect sense.

For what I would say represents the 75% of websites that aren't a Facebook/Microsoft/Netflix shop, I would wager they only use React/Vue/Angular because it was instilled into the company by some CTO or middle manager "Well, it's what Facebook and Google use, so we should use it, too!" - I know this because I have heard this at my own company, so I know that it is a sentiment likely shared amongst other companies. And don't get me wrong, I do like Vue of the big frontend libraries. But I would never truly need to use it outside of gaining experience with a "component-based" frontend framework, and could just as easily get by with Thymeleaf templates, or Go HTML templates, or even just bare HTML/CSS/JS making fetch calls to my API.

These days, my tools of choice for any hobby projects are Go and HTMX. It provides such a simplified approach to development that I could not see myself using anything else for my personal projects.

I know previously I brought up my use of Spring Boot and Vue, and again, while I do enjoy Vue, it is not something that is necessary to achieve my goals, much like it is likely not necessary for the overwhelming majority of corporate websites or web applications.

Just wanted to share these thoughts here as I wandered through the past looking at the old university pages. Stepping forward to 2013, I was glad to see that I saw myself in a few pictures posted on the college from the concert choir at the time. They are very blurry, but I can still distinctly tell it is me.

Outside of my appearances in these photos and my performances at piano recitals, I don't think there exists another strand of evidence that I actually attended Milligan College, as I obviously did not graduate, and also was not a social butterfly trying to get my photo taken at any opportunity. And so I thought I would look through the old site design to see if those pictures were in fact still present, as they removed most old links in the modern site at some point, causing it to redirect to a 404 page.

I do have another thought regarding my time perusing the site, but perhaps I'll split that out into it's own post to bring me to a whopping TWO entries for 2025 thus far!

PS: I highly recommend neocities if you want a hit of nostalgia or are interested in creating your own "retro" looking sites - people there create their own pages, and while sure, you can use more modern approaches or frameworks/tools, a good chunk of the userbase there seem to prefer good ol' HTML/CSS/JS, honestly probably not even JS, and just raw HTML/CSS. I love looking at modern retro site designs, including silly "under construction" style web badges, and other such fun. Just thought I'd give them a shoutout as it also scratches a nostalgia itch in a slightly different and fun way.

[thoughtsofadyingsoftwaredev]

I know it's only rock 'n' roll but I like it

Hello once again, tumblr! I somehow remembered this thing exists before another full year passed. I know, I know - I also find it very surprising. I'm sure since my last post many things have happened that I'm not thinking of. Uhh, I know recently we've been making our backyard a more habitable place - by that I mean making a built-in firepit, adding some edging stones and filling that area with pea gravel, and getting a canopy swing for that space. It's been hard but very rewarding work, and it is almost finished. Outside of that, things have mostly been the same. Work is the same - still work, so not like it's my first choice of things to do, but I do enjoy the challenges and puzzles that present themselves as a part of my occupation. The good thing about not working for some FAANG company or other public company like that is the lack of pressure. Like, yeah, I still have 2-week sprints and adhere to the whole Agile manifesto. And I also always complete the work I commit to. But even in times where perhaps I don't complete or something else comes up, there is very little pressure or negative consequences as a result, and that is a breath of fresh air. That and being able to stop at 40 hours* (*TYPICALLY. Can sometimes go over depending on where I'm at headspace-wise) Personal life stuff is all good and locked down, no issues there. My interest in music has been growing - I found myself getting a copy of Ableton and a small MIDI keyboard to tinker with, and have found it to be therapeutic to explore some different sounds and chord progressions to put to some simple beats/bass lines. Oh, and I went to a concert for the first time in awhile! The last time I went to one, I believe, was for Buckethead. Since then, I had also started listening to TWRP, due to their presence in NSP's stuff. When I first started listening to them, Together Through Time was their latest album. Apparently, that was six fucking years ago?! Time as a concept is just so wild and insane to think about. I know other TWRP albums have been released since then, because I listened to them as they came out, but it never fully clicked for me that this meant that Together Through Time was no longer considered a "recent" release. ANYWAYS, when I saw they released Digital Nightmare, I of course dove right in and holy shit, what an excellent album. It really does feel like such a maturation of that classic TWRP sound. The lyrics are super feel-good, the chord progressions and rhythms are tight and super funky. The bass is booming, but with such purpose to it. The guitar rips exactly where it's meant to and shows restraint at just the right times. I love being able to hear a band evolve and become more "refined" over time, and you get all of that and more in spades with Digital Nightmare. That being said, I absolutely knew I had to see them in person. And I did! I took my wife and went to a show (as VIPs), and had an absolute blast! Nelward opened the show, and despite never hearing of him before, I was super impressed and now have him on my radar! Trey Magnifique, well, that's an "If you know, you know" situation if I've ever heard of one lol. And of course TWRP kicked all of the asses. Their pre-show was also wonderful. Perhaps most surprising to me, as a long-time Tup Tup first time tour attender, was how nice the crew was. I had spoken with Dylan online as I was interested in TWRP signing one of my guitar backplates. As an aside: I didn't want to lug my entire instrument to a show due to fear of it being stolen. Plus, I didn't want to be an obnoxious fan trying to force the group to sign this heavy instrument out of fear of obligation or some silly shit like that. So I just grabbed my backplate and slapped it in my pocket, perfect solution! Anyways, I messaged Dylan about it online and asked if the group even did signings or stuff like that, and he was more than helpful in every way, basically saying to just drop it off with him before the show starts and he'd try to have them sign it.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to just not do it, say he tried, and give it back. But that crazy motherfucker actually was able to get it done, and I am now the proud owner of Fender Strat WITH the signatures of all the TWRP folks. Massive respect to Dylan and TWRP for that, because as a fan, I'll never forget how awesome it was to have that happen. And I think that's about it from me for now. I think I have some other thoughts swirling around, but right now I mainly want to go do some other stuff, so I'll leave it at this for now.

[thoughtsofadyingsoftwaredev]

Hello, Tumblr world! For some reason I am drawn to you in the Fall season. My last post was just over a year ago… sorry about that. Not that you, my lovely reader, care - and that is IF anyone reads this! I won't lie I don't care if people read these or not, this is essentially an online journal for me at this point, ha.

So, what's new with me lately, you might ask? Well, I'll break it down:

Still happy with our house. We've made gradual updates to it since moving in, including redoing some old flooring with some new vinyl faux-wood looking stuff. Super nice. Also replaced an old toilet in the process. Next we're eyeballing a bathtub upgrade for one of the bathrooms and big landscaping changes to our back yard.

Got promoted at work to Senior Software Engineer after 3 years. Not bad turnaround time for that title change, in my opinion. My responsibilities shifted from managing the IAM software to managing our search experience for the many different applications we provide.

This primarily means I'm responsible for drafting search document schemas, working with these other teams to get answers on questions they refuse to provide answers to without me having to ask first, and handling the logic for ingesting hundreds of thousands of items of varying types to different search engines. In my 3.5 years of working here, I have enjoyed the challenges of the job. Of course, it's not without it's awful days or days where my head is screeching, but the good days outweigh the bad for me.

Wife and I are still on speaking terms. That's my way of saying we're both as good and happy with each other as ever lol she's my best friend. We both got super interested in NFL this season and watch every Monday and Thursday game and watch Minnesota (wife's favorite team) on Sundays. RIP Vikings post-Cousins injury.

That's about all I can think of life-wise. My 31st birthday was a few weeks ago, and I feel old as shit sometimes LOL I look in the mirror and I see what seems like new wrinkles in new places, my hair is graying in small parts, and I find it hard to stay up late. It's 1:04AM right now and I find this to be the upper range of my limits lol

I had a dream recently that my wife and I died in a freak accident at some theme park (not a specific one, just some weird abstract dreamy one) - from what I can remember we were on what we thought was part of a ride, but what ended up happening is we both fell to our deaths.

After we died, we both were floating over family and friends as spirits, watching our bodies get carried in open caskets. For some reason, I had two huge pieces of hair that went down both sides of my face (this is nowhere near what my hair looks like so no idea why this was).

At first, when I woke up, I kinda had to laugh at it. The overall sequence of events was a bit silly. But I found myself thinking more and more about it throughout today. Who will care if I die? Not in a "bad thoughts" kinda way, but genuinely - what kind of footprint am I leaving in this world? Will people know or care that I die? Probably not, and I think ultimately I'm fine with that, but the dream gave me pause and kinda fucked with me today haha.

Can I tell you a secret Tumblr? I have a burner Facebook account that I use to see how my old friends are doing. I am very anti-social media, and as part of that, have no real ways of keeping up with people from previous parts of my life aside from those who have my cell or email, so this gives me an outlet to see how friends I've made over the years are doing now.

Some of them never left my hometown, which kinda bums me out, because when I think of my time there, I couldn't imagine having stayed. But I have to consider that they may really love the place and have strong ties to it. I don't want to sound mean when I say that, but it's just a very small, quiet town that seems like a place you'd stay if you decided not to attend university or a trade school. And that's perfectly okay, too.

Some are thriving, too! A very good friend of mine recently got married, and I'm thrilled for him. I remember late nights at college talking with him outside of his dorm in the night air, rocking back and forth in a rocking chair, like the ones you see at Cracker Barrel. We'd talk philosophy, religion, girls, music, and much more. He's an awesome, genuinely kind hearted person and I'm glad to see he's doing well. He's not the only one, there are others who are all out there doing their thing, so to speak. I can't say why, but seeing these people I've known at some points in their lives doing well makes me incredibly happy.

Music is always a wonderful memory and hobby for me. Music is what brought most of my friends I've made and I together. I recently started playing guitar again (thank you Rocksmith 2014) and it has been a blast! I recently acquired a dream guitar of mine for awhile now: a Surf Green Fender MIM Strat. I fucking love it.

Piano is still on hiatus and has been for many, many years. I think it might intimidate me a bit. I eventually will have to bite the bullet and revisit it. I plan on using ABRSM resources to find some appropriate pieces for where I'm currently at. I'm hoping I can ramp back up to SOMEWHERE close to where I was when I went to school for music. I realize it may take years, but I think if I devote myself to it, I can achieve it. Honestly the hardest thing will be getting that dexterity back and remembering scales/fingerings/etc. Hopefully by the time I post next, I can report back with some success on that front!

Hobby coding-wise, I'm starting a new project using a new stack (for me): Java (Spring), Vue, and Postgres. My goal is to create a web application for Veterinarians offices for administrative use. This app will handle invoicing, communications with patients, store pet/owner data, store data regarding prescriptions, surgeries, etc., and probably more I'm forgetting. It's a lot of moving pieces, but it presents a fun challenge on both front-end and back-end, and frankly I've seen the most popular competition (Avimark) and it looks like dogshit. So my plan is to work on this for the foreseeable future, get an MVP up, snoop around my local area and see if anyone is interested in testing it out. This will be a long-term project, though. I have some ramping up to do with Vue as I have not used it since it was still in v1.0, so many things have changed!

Started watching Frieren and that shit kicks ass! The music, the animation, the art style. Only 4 episodes in, but it is easily top 5 anime.

JJK Season 2 has been fucking insane. It started off so crazy, I ended up binge reading the manga up until the end of the Shibuya Incident and holy shit. Seeing the Yuuji vs Choso fight animated was a fucking masterpiece!

Games-wise, I've been deep into WoW classic and FFXIV. FFXIV has always been my go-to, but lately I've been doing WoW and I love the customization that is possible within a class (priests, wars, etc builds can vary wildly and that's awesome!).

And I think that's all I've got! I've been drafting this post for the past 20 minutes-ish. I have to start winding down for today. This may be my longest post so far? Not sure, I'll compare it to my others word count-wise after this and confirm!

[thoughtsofadyingsoftwaredev]

Sprung From Cages On Highway Nine

Good grief - I always think I’ll be more active here than I am... So here are some updates, you filthy animals. Remember how I said we purchased a home but were putting work into it before moving in? Well, we were able to get that work finished and moved in without much issue! We had to pay for a new roof install which sucked (and we’re still paying that shit off btw lol). Living here has been freaking awesome. There’s something to be said about wanting to change or install or uninstall something and having the freedom to do so without having to ask someone else or worry about undoing that change at some other time. The only real downside is I’m so much more anal about things that stop working or “Hey, was that moisture stain there before or is it new?” - fear of water is very real. If a rabies victim and a homeowner were venn-diagrammed, it would be a circle for fear of water. Work is going fine, if not a little mundane or headache-inducing at times. I manage our orgs identity management platform, so I handle all things user registration, login, single sign-on, and much more. On top of that I also work on our microservice based REST APIs, having worked on a fine-tuned recommendation engine that handles over 11 million records. Idk why I’m typing this out like I’m selling myself on a resume or cover letter lol I guess it’s just nice to talk about things I work on? In my spare time I sadly enjoy coding personal projects. I’m currently working on a video upload and live streaming platform a la Twitch/Youtube. I’m not expecting it to pop off or anything, and would honestly prefer it didn’t. I’ve heard real horror stories about the cost of maintaining such things at high volume. Let’s see, other than that, the wife is good (though maybe a little tired of her job - not that I can blame her; it seems exhausting and she deserves better[note: may be biased]). We’re playing through God of War for the first time together to prepare for Ragnarok. I’m watching JJBA for the first time and have just started Diamond is Unbreakable. After watching the first episode I’m super excited to see how the rest of the season unfolds. Music wise not much has changed for me. I want to iron out a decent schedule for practicing my instruments, but it proves hard to do when splitting my time out between work, side projects, house projects, routine chores/maintenance, etc. Hoping that maybe that can change starting in the new year! Like always, I’m hoping to post here more often maybe, but I won’t sweat it if I don’t. If anything it gives me more to talk about lol maybe once I finish my projects I’ll just come here and shill them out here to a resounding 0 people reading this! I think at this point these posts are more just for self therapy and talking things out, and I’m good with that! - Greg

[thoughtsofadyingsoftwaredev]

A Followup

Hello again. Funny how you can create a blog, write a post, and then just forget all about it! Look, give me a break, I’m trying here! But seriously, I saw that my last post was in January 2020, so I think an update is due. I think the fate of this blog will be to forever post updates leading up to the post lol. So, things that are new since January 2020 and today: 1) My fiancée is now my wife! Much joy; the wedding was a wonderful occasion and all went well. 2) I successfully graduated from university, finally obtaining my Bachelors of Science in Computer Science. 3) I was fortunate enough to get a job as a fulltime software engineer secured before graduating and began working the first week after graduation. I am still working there as of today, 2 years spent at this company as of May. 4) In my last post, I joked about how getting a house would make the house new bae. Well, fun fact, we bought a house, and while it was a close contest, wife is still bae. The funny thing about reading my last post was the lack of anything COVID-19 being in it. Little did I know that in two months things would go slightly wonky for a while. While I hate the devastation that C19 brought, I must admit it worked mostly in my favor. It allowed me to finish my spring semester online, which as a nontraditional commuting student is a godsend (my drive to uni was 45 minutes one way). It also brought significant work culture changes and allowed me to work remotely for my newly acquired job. Until around August 2021, I had never been to the office of the place I was hired at since starting (aside from meeting at the company parking lot to pickup my equipment). Finally, it lowered interest rates for home mortgages, which kickstarted our desire to purchase a home. (Note: I think this was only a very slight advantage to the market pre-C19 since the actual purchase prices of homes skyrocketed, but our area was not hit too hard on this, so I believe we benefitted slightly). We bought a nice split-level home in a quiet neighborhood, and we are very excited to move in! We closed in December 2021 but due to some needed updates (paint, carpet, lights, etc) will hopefully move in around March-April 2022. Stay tuned for my 3rd post in another 2 years and I’ll tell you all about that process lol. Other than Covid, getting married, getting a house, and my newfound employment, things have stayed mostly the same. I am at a very content stage of my life with my partner that I enjoy sharing experiences with. I dropped off on my piano playing but plan to pick back up shortly. I would say I am currently around an ABRSM Grade 7 or 8 level, although I am going to invest in some theory books to shake the rust off in that department. Also need to work on my sight-reading (it was always a pain point for me, so no surprises there). Lastly, I’ve created a new blog, thoughtsofadyingpianist. Instead of long-winded diatribes about my life, I will try to focus on what my OG blog did - quotes about or related to music. Alright, that’s enough for this installment. I promise I’ll try to create a new post sooner... -Greg

[thoughtsofadyingsoftwaredev]

First Impressions

It has been a long time since I found myself on tumblr. Because of this, I thought I’d write up a post to introduce myself, reminisce about my previous time on tumblr, and maybe figure out what I want this blog to become. (WARNING: THIS POST MAY TURN SUPER LONG. I AM SORRY BUT YOU HAVE NOW BEEN WARNED.) 

TL;DR: I used to have a tumblr almost 10 years ago, now I’m back. I talk about why I was on tumblr and what has changed in almost 10 years. A lot has changed.

I mentioned I was on tumblr before, mostly active around 2011 - 2013. I had the name ‘thoughtsofadyingmusicmajor’. It is easy to guess that from 2011 - 2013 I was in college and was a music education major. I would post lyrics from various songs, ranging from baroque to romantic to contemporary. I would also post the occasional video as well, either of myself being stupid on Youtube or of a particular song or pianist (I was a piano primary). I won’t lie: 90% of the reason I posted here back then was to impress and further talk with my best friend who I went to high school with that I had been flirting with all the way up to graduation. We drifted apart when we chose to attend separate colleges. The other 10% was my genuine love for music.

I would argue me becoming best friends with her was the worst possible thing for someone like me, who does not like taking large risks. When she became my best friend and then I developed feelings for her, it suddenly felt like an all-or-nothing game: I either walk away with my best friend as my girlfriend or I lose both trying. Yes this is a bit melodramatic, but again I was a kid in love with my best friend and was not doing so hot all the same. Give me a break!

That first tumblr allowed me a chance to express my thoughts and emotions as a guy going through early stages of depression and angst over my inability to act on my feelings for this girl. It also gave me yet another platform (snapchat, texting, voxer, etc) to speak with my best friend, which brought a lot of happiness to me during some mentally rough times. I was not prepared well enough for college during high school, and especially not for the rigorous schedules music majors had to keep up with.

I would occasionally visit my best friend at her campus. I actually just looked up the distance because it felt like the divide was immeasurable, but apparently immeasurable can be summed up in a 2 hour-ish drive... Well regardless it felt like we were much farther apart.

I remember buying her gifts of her favorite things; a large plush orca, a coffee mug shaped like an owl. I remember going to the movies with her to see Warm Bodies with a couple of her other friends. I finally had the bravery needed to hold her hand in a dark room, and I was glowing. It led to this very, VERY faint intimate relationship with an occasional kiss, time spent huddled together on her dorm room bed, and not much else. The distance was a big thing at the time, especially with my own internal issues and trying to keep afloat in college. And so, like so many things that have potential, it slowly died out. She started dating a mutual friend and after that we drifted apart as friends and as anything else. (What a lengthy prologue, right?)

Right around this time, I dropped out of college due to my plummeting grades and mental health. I’d stay up until 5am and then sleep the day away, or I’d try to reset by not sleeping at all, only to have that fail as well. I moved into a small house with 5 other dudes because I had no job, had family issues, and it was either that or a homeless shelter. I did chores around the house, pawned off my more expensive possessions, and constantly searched for jobs to make sure I didn’t get thrown out.

I got drunk one night and made an OkCupid profile, where I met my fiancee. We are almost 6 years strong and I can honestly say she is the greatest thing in my life (until we can get the down payment together on a house, then the house is new bae).

Not long after we started dating, I found one, then two jobs near where she was going to university. We moved in together, she graduated, then we moved again to the northern US, where we still are.

We both found decent customer service jobs, and I used mine to pay off outstanding student loans so that I could go back to college and finally get the bachelors degree that slipped away from me the first time. Clearly, by my new name, I am in school for computer science now. I graduate in May 2020, almost 10 full years after I first set off on my own as a young adult.

My fiancee works for the local government, which was her dream job, and I am working part time as a software developer until I graduate, which will then become a full-time position.

We have a cat, a rabbit, and two turtles for pets. I do not like the turtles.

All this to say, I suppose, that things have worked out well for me. I had very grim prospects for myself way back then, but now I feel like I’m where I’m meant to be.

As for why I switched from music education to computer science? Well, three things.

Being a music major made music a chore and made me genuinely loathe playing. I did not want to have something that let me escape myself and get away to become a cage.

Music education isn’t going to pay the bills with just a bachelors. Not on its own.

I’ve only ever really been good with technology and music. So I really just had the one choice left, right?

So yeah, I’m very happily engaged, I’m finally going to have that stupid piece of paper, and I should fall into a nice job immediately after getting it. I still play piano to unwind and relax, but no longer have to use it as an escape. To anyone who may see my old tumblr name and know who I am IRL, hello! I hope that regardless of who you are or if you do or do not know me that you have a great day. Especially after reading all of this (if you did lol) -Greg