I Can't Believe This Is My First Original Tumblr Post In Literally Years, But Also I Guess I Can Totally

Years ago back when I worked in cubicle land, we were hiring junior software developers. They didn’t have to have a ton of experience, just a willingness to learn, and some demonstration of their software skills. Like: show me a program you wrote (any language) or a web site you designed. Anything.

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team. 

And yes, his cubicle was loaded with ceramic frogs.

destiel, putin, etc, how are you forgetting the real star of the november 5th? how soon you forget gritty.......

the iconicism of the gritty memes

the saviour of philly

the true reason for trump’s downfall

the one who was promised

the truest most honest part of this day

gritty

It’s that month again folks! Happy February.

I wrote up a 3,000+ word comment about a fic... I have no idea if this is Too Much or not but I think I'm actually going to post it and just cross my fingers and hope that it's not a creepy thing to do...

I have almost no followers and so am probably screaming into the void here, but! An important addition to this:

Respiratory distress is the number one cause of cardiac arrest in children.

This isn't the case with adults (I believe the main cause is arrhythmia? but don't quote me) but kids? Absolutely. It's not a terribly intuitive thing - I think we usually expect people to stop breathing because their heart has stopped, but in children it's very much the other way around.

So this kind of thing is VITALLY IMPORTANT to remember when you're using things like essential oils and cleaning products that a child could be sensitive to! Their little bodies are fragile, and they really, REALLY need to breathe. Keep an eye out for respiratory issues in children, especially if there's something new that has been introduced into their environment.

Oh my god, food extract is not the same as an essential oil.

Food extract is the flavoring of something cooked down into a carrier oil or alcohol that is safe for human ingestion.

Essential oil is the pure extract of the plant refined down and distilled for concentrated medicinal purposes to a significantly higher strength than simply adding ground up mint leaves to your water. The two are not comparable in any way.

Cinnamon extract and cinnamon essential oil are not the same thing.

One is about 100 times the strength of the other and can also cause acute organ failure. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the food extract.

Sweet gods I’m not trying to be mean, I want you to be aware and safe and stop putting yourselves and others at risk. Please.

Attention Tolkien Fans!

I am excited to announce that lotrart is nearing 2,000 posts! This has gotten so much bigger than I ever could have anticipated and I'm so happy that people love this collection of fanart as much as I do.

With that in mind, this is one for the tags! If you're interested in rediscovering some of the most breathtaking, <100-note art posts from Tumblr's byegone era, please come and join me! I may be busy, but my queue is busier. this is a bold-faced lie I will reblog art from any Tolkien-adjacent anything if you send it to me - the original LotR trilogy, the Peter Jackson films, The Silmarillion my beloved, Rings of Power, and anything else you can think of - so please reach out to drop me links to your favourite art and artists! My mission is to get as much old stuff recirculating as I possibly can.

@minors on this website:

You 👏 are 👏 in 👏 public 👏

Your blog is public, your posts are public. There is actually a setting to change this if you want to; otherwise literally anyone can and will interact. Stop advertising your age (and mental illnesses, etc) and block adults yourself if you want to.

If you wouldn't walk through a crowd of strangers wearing your personal info on a billboard or expecting nobody over 18 to so much as glance at you, don't do it online.

PHX at sunset, 31 January 2025

I wish mine had been that cheap!

(delivered October 2022, literally never regretted it for a second)

Is this available?