Alvaro @OMGTehAwsome@queer.party

Better rip off the old #introductions band-aid so people don't think I'm a poorly written bot.

I'm Al. I'm an old school bisexual, just because they didn't have the word "pan" back when we were driving our hot rods to the malt shop and getting an egg cream for a dime.

I love indie comic books, comedy and cooking. My TV is always blaring something, since otherwise I get lonely.

I'm as broken as everybody else and my coping strategies are pretty terrible, but I make do.

As of this morning I can now officially make a whole new category of dumb jokes.

"Please, Mr. Alvaro was my father. You can call me Uncle Alvaro."

"I didn't spend six years in Uncle school to be called 'mister', thank you very much."

It's snowing in Texas! I made a little snowman and set him up outside the window, but he started melting and uh...

Alright, I got what I needed! I was trying to punch up a line in a book review.

"I'm always over the moon to see queer representation in books, especially bi- or pansexual people who actually use the word out loud, but... not like this. Please not like this. If Eloise was a real human person the council would surely have sent a sideways-sittin', cuffed-jean-wearing, finger-gunning representative to take her license away."

Recipe request: does anyone have a basic recipe that uses masa harina?

99% of my pantry is in boxes, and I've got just a pot and a frying pan, but I really want to make *something* with this quarter bag of masa... All my other kitchen hardware is boxes up. I was excited about arepas, but apparently those use a pre-cooked corn flour instead.

The Lord whispered, "When you saw only one set of footprints,
Those were mine.
Yours got washed away, y'know, because of the tide?
Pick up a me-damn textbook once in a while."

Book rec correction:
I think I might have misremembered Felix being Latinx, since no other reviewer seems to have mentioned it. I'd double-check but I already returned it to the library. 😅

Queer book rec for you beautiful babies: Felix Ever After.

It's a YA romance novel about Black, Latinx, trans guy at a New York City art program. My god I ate half of it up in one sitting, and had to stop myself during my second because it was 2:30 in the morning. I cried like 6 or 7 times.

The characters and the dialogue feel so real, and you see them grow, and you just want to hold them and give them a hug (or throw them straight into the ocean.)

Aww, dammit. I accidentally got Brigadooned again.

I'm moving house. The next thing I need to box up is the drawers in the bedroom, the ones that are, uh, y'know, mostly filled with silicone. Silicone, batteries, water-based lubricants, stainless steel, wood, self-adhesive vinyl tape, just normal, casual bedroom things.

My original thought was to label the box "porcelain unicorns (bedroom)." This made me concerned that it would cause the movers to stress about its fragility.

I think I've settled for "bibles (bedroom)."

Bummers:
1. A second pass-through USB-C port would have been nice. It's so perfect for travelling with (because of being so smol) that plugging a mouse into it with a wee cord would have been great.
2. My kingdom for a single RGB LED. I don't want per-key lighting, this thing is all business, I get it. But give me just one single color-adjustable LED, right in the blank spot in the middle, so I could tell what layer I'm typing on.

So my Keyboardio Atreus palm rest came in, which prompted me to start using it as my daily driver. Happy thoughts:
1. It's so dang tiny. Like absolutely adorable.
2. The firmware is super easy to adjust, though the default layout is quite good. (I only did one swap, Esc and Tab.)
3. It's way more comfortable in my tiny hands than the Model 01.
4. I'm crazy excited about it using standard keycaps. I'm going to put some magical girl ones on this bad boy so quick.

So I started watching some series that I never got into during my youth just due to having excess time on my hands. Smallville has proven to be just an absolute delight as a show with pretty much no redeeming qualities.

After *9 years* of this being on the air a character point-blank asks Superman, "wait, didn't you not date because you were worried about getting carried away during, y'know?"

He answers, "not anymore, a hologram of my daddy taught me how to cum real gentle-like."

Did y'all know the Southern Lights are pansexual?

(From: https://capturetheatlas.com/northern-lights-photographer-of-the-year/ )

So just a general data point of how strong the emotions are right now in my neck of the woods: I saw a picture of pull-apart bread sticks and it made me start crying.

Does anyone have suggestions for how I can find artists looks for commissions? All the ones I've done were just when they popped up into my feed, but I've never sought them out.

There are times when I get to really enjoy the privileges of my lead dev position...

"Can we add support for metadata fields?"
"We can probably do it in Q4."

"Can we add support for course name columns?"
"We can probably do it in Q4."

"Can we add custom import schedules?"
"We can probably do it in Q4."

"Some of our students who, uh, identify differently now keep getting their names overwritten during imports with their old legal--"
"I WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY. I WON'T SLEEP UNTIL IT'S DONE."

Hot diggity damn is Hollow Knight good. I haven't felt this urge to finish my chores quickly so I can go explore a game since I was a kid.

I've been trying to find something to combat my own blend of depression and ADD at work, and decided to try using the pomodoro technique with a visual timer. So far I'm digging it!

1) Being able to see the time until my timed break lets me work through my brain's urge to distraction after a block of work.
2) The structured breaks discourage me from consuming fluff (I've be walking away and reading a book.)
3) My long breaks between cycles are guilt-free, like a post-workout ice cream.