As had been mentioned before, last year I invested in a laser cutter. How I got to the point of getting a laser cutter is an interesting tale of random coincidence. During the middling part of the pandemic, where Kayla was back teaching in school but I was still working from home, I did as I do and would go on very long walks over my lunch break. This gave me an opportunity to explore the streets and areas around our house.

One day, I was wandering around the area I like to refer to as "Olde Town Silicon Valley", an area that's all old 80s/90s office buildings that are either now abandoned, occupied by tech companies that nobody's ever heard of, or about to be plowed under and replaced with offices for Google/Facebook. As I was wandering, I saw a sign for "Maker Nexus" that I'd not seen before. Curious, I checked out their website as I finished my walk and they were a maker space that had very recently relocated. They did regular classes on the various big machines they had and one of those series of classes just happened to be for laser cutters.

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When doing these blog challenges, I generally try and find a way to churn out a least a few low effort posts. You've seen them this go 'round in the form of the "minute blogs". But, this is 2023 and we have technology and I cannot believe it only now dawned on me to have ChatGPT write a blog post for me. So, that's what I did. Here was my prompt:

matt hackmann is a 37 year old man who was born and raised in oklahoma and has resided in the san francisco bay area for ten years. he is a staff software engineer at surveymonkey, having gotten a start in software development as a teenager. he's been married to kayla for almost two years and has a new seven week old baby boy. his writing style is very casual, full of pop culture references and self-deprecating humor

write a blog article in the voice of matt hackmann about the challenges of being a new father

As you can see, I tried to set the stage with a little bit of who I am and a wee bit about how I might write. This is what it gave back:

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Diapers and Dad Jokes: Navigating the Hilarious Chaos of New Fatherhood

Hey there, fellow humans of the internet! It's your friendly neighborhood software geek turned sleep-deprived dad, Matt Hackmann, here to share a little slice of life with you. Now, if you're in the same boat as me – juggling baby bottles, sleepless nights, and a desperate need for caffeine – you're in for a treat. Grab that leftover pizza slice, buckle up, and let's dive into the wild world of new fatherhood!

Chapter 1: "From Code to Cooing"

Remember the days when I used to debug code at 3 AM? Well, those late nights have taken on a whole new meaning now that I'm a dad. Instead of semicolons and brackets, it's all about deciphering the mysterious language of baby cries. Seriously, why didn't they teach us this in programming class? One day, I'll crack the code of whether "Waaah!" translates to "I'm hungry" or "Change my diaper, you rookie!"

Chapter 2: "Pop Culture to Poop Culture"

Gone are the days of binge-watching Netflix and debating whether Han shot first. These days, my pop culture references are all about baby burps, poop explosions, and "Baby Shark" on an infinite loop. The other day, I caught myself singing "Poop, there it is!" as I tackled a diaper blowout that rivaled a volcano eruption. Oh, the glamorous life of a dad!

Chapter 3: "From Sleepless to Speechless"

Remember those nights I'd spend perfecting lines of code? Well, let's just say my "code" these days is mastering the art of changing diapers in record time. Who knew it was possible to change a diaper while half-asleep? It's like a special ops mission – precision, speed, and absolutely no room for error. And don't even get me started on sleep deprivation. I used to survive on coffee; now I survive on the sheer force of will and maybe a few baby snuggles.

Chapter 4: "Self-Deprecating Dad Jokes"

Ah, the cornerstone of my personality: self-deprecating humor. It turns out that dad jokes and self-deprecation go together like peanut butter and jelly. Picture this: I'm in the grocery store, juggling a crying baby, a shopping cart, and a sudden realization that I forgot the one thing my wife told me to get. What do I do? I crack a joke about being the real-life embodiment of "Dude, Where's My Car?" Cue awkward laughter from other shoppers. It's all about survival, folks.

Chapter 5: "Changing Roles, Changing Diapers"

In the midst of all the chaos, there's one thing that's crystal clear: my role has changed. From coding algorithms to lullabies, from debugging software to soothing a fussy baby – it's been a rollercoaster. But let's not forget the rockstar partner in this adventure: my amazing wife, Kayla. Together, we tag-team parenting like the Avengers (minus the superpowers, unless you count the ability to function on minimal sleep).

So, there you have it, folks – a glimpse into the whirlwind journey of a software engineer turned dad extraordinaire. From geeky references to diaper disasters, it's all part of the hilarious ride. As I navigate this new world of fatherhood, one thing's for sure: my life will never be the same, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Until next time, keep calm and dad on!

Yours in sleep-deprived solidarity, Matt Hackmann

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What can I say, this reads nothing like how I write now (where's the one-liner last zing of a sentance?), a little bit of how I may have written as a teenager/early-20 something, and a lot like a MadLibs. "Ah, the cornerstone of my personality: self-deprecating humor."? A little on the nose, ChatGPT. Oh, well. It was a lot of text for little effort.

I shan't do it again.

They say the American dream is something about opportunity, being able to build yourself up from nothing, or some other patently false bullshit. I say the American dream is owning a chest freezer and stocking up on things in bulk. The evidence is definitely there. Having a dedicated freezer always felt like it was treated as some sort of life goal, one of those moments similar to getting married or having a baby. Also, the existence of giant bulk box stores like Sam's Club or Costco.

Growing up, my family went through a phase of frequenting Sam's Club and buying ridonkulous amounts of food, mostly to keep the ridonkulous amounts of people in the family fed. When we acquired a stand alone freezer, there were grandiose plans of buying a side of beef and making oodles of freezer meals that never really panned out, for whatever reason. That freezer mostly because a place to lock up Christmas cookies, keeping me from depleting the supply of those delicious morsels before Christmas actually arrived. Side note: I really developed a taste for frozen cookies; there's just something about them...

Fast forward a couple decades and I wound up marrying into a Costco membership. While we may not have ascended to the level of adulthood that would see us having a stand alone freezer, there are definitely benefits to be gained from shopping bulkly at Costco, namely quality, though at an upfront cost.

For example, one of the our standard restock items is USDA prime ribeye steak. These chonky, inch-thick bois usually come in packs of three for somewhere around $50. That probably seems like a lot at first glance, but one steak is large enough that it will feed both of us for one meal, giving a cost of $8 per person per meal. For a steak that fancy, it winds up being cheaper than a lesser cut of meat of similar weight at Safeway. It's a similar story for all of the meats we buy there, and when we get home, I spend an hour or two measuring, cutting, vacuum packing, and freezing all manner of meat.

Similarly, their prices on booze has elevated the level of snobbery of my mixed drinks. Prior to Costco (and meeting my father-in-law), Woodford Reserve is what I considered a nice, sipping whiskey. At your general liquor or grocery store, a normal 750ml bottle would run somewhere around $35-40. At Costco, you can get double that for roughly the same price. So, now my nice whiskey gets diluted with Coke Zero, and I spend the money I've saved on actual nice whiskey when I want something to sip on.

I haven't said much about Costco's in-house brand Kirkland Signature, but following the paragraph about alcohol seems like the best place to mention it: their products are legit. You could spend $60 for a 1.5 liter bottle of Grey Goose vodka at Costco... or you could get buy the 1.5 liter bottle Kirkland Signature "french style" vodka that tastes basically identical... FOR $18! Now, my bar looks a little ridiculous with all these giant bottles of booze (and/or just makes me look like an alcoholic out of control), but this shit lasts months.

Of course, it shouldn't need to be said, but since all of this product is bought in bulk, it's a trip we make once every couple months (give or take some weeks). So, again, the up front cost may be high, but averaged out over that period of time, we're saving in the long run. I can only imagine what life would be like if we had a chest freezer...

...or if I had a much larger bar...

I don't recall how it came up, but a couple years ago, Kayla had made mention of enjoying the original Pokemon games for GameBoy. At the time, I was messing around with GBA modding, inspired by a real rabbit hole my brother was going down. In my posession were two GBA SPs, so as a new thing for us to do together, I procured a copy of Pokemon Blue for myself and Yellow for Kayla. The idea there was that we could play in tandem and, once we'd built our pokeymans up enough, play against each other.

I failed to take into consideration the Animal Crossing Effect.

This phenomenon I've just invented and named is a reference back to what happened when Kayla got her copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons way back in March of 2020. She'd been watching me play my launch day copy and asked if I thought she'd like the game, thinking she might get her own copy. I was a little waffley in my response, as $60 is a bit of coin to drop on something that ends up not being enjoyed, but ended up recommending it because, similar to above, it was a thing that we could eventually play together. I needen't have waffled, because by the end of that first week, she'd put way more hours into the game than I had. This even though I'd had the game a few days longer and had also been a fan since the GameCube version and had been deprived of new Animal Crossing since 2013. To this day, she still has one or two hundred more hours of gameplay over me.

Back to Pokemon.

I got the games, set her up with a swank modded SP with a sharp, backlit screen and she proceeded to power through the game, leaving me way in the dust. This was nice in that I could ask her for advice or tips as I played through, but meant that all of my pokeymans would be way under powered compared to hers in a head-to-head match. Still, it was a fun little thing to bond over, even if I never finished the game or got to a point of being able to battle her.

Why I tried this again recently and expect different results, I'm not sure. Twice, even.

Weeks before the arrival of the wee baby, I bought each of us copies of the GBA remake of the original game. Partially, this was out of curiousity on my part to see how a glow up of the original would be on more modern hardware, partially I wanted to complete the original game just to say I did. (For the record, Leaf Green and Fire Red are the superior versions). I never even made it as far as I had in the original version, and Kayla once again smoked my ass, even in the new content the remake had that the original had not. In my defense, I was still working at the time and she had just gone on leave, so there was a need to fill boredom on her part that I didn't have. Still, she was playing with home field advantage because she knew that Pokemon game so well.

Once more, I tried to level the playing field by picking up the GBA generation of games, Ruby for her and Emerald for myself. I kept up for a while, mostly because I didn't have any loyalty to a generation of Pokemon game and Kayla was initially hesitant to try something new and figure out all the new pokeymans and strategies that would come with. But, fourth verse, same as all the other ones before. She eventually pulled ahead and has since completed the main quest of the game, while I'm wandering around trying to figure out what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing. We tried one battle together and I got my ass summarily handed to me.

Maybe I should just stick to playing Tetris against her. She'll never be able to beat me at Tetris.

I'm playing catch up at this point and it's quite late. Though I have topics to talk about (one fairly fresh, but perhaps too fresh), I'd rather get quantity content out over quality right now. Let's go.

Candles are fun. I'm not talking about birthday candles, but the scented kind that you can get at Bath and Candle works. It's fire, so that's cool, but it's also a nice way to class up your house just a tiny bit. Also, it'll cover the smell of the trash can, which is good if you like having polite company over. Not sure when I started getting into the candle game, but...

Who knows where that was going. Some things are best left unanswered.