Here are the other seasons since Lemmy doesn’t allow for multiple images:

My contributions definitely had an impact, but it was more local than global. Like I said in my post, I don’t like talking about my day job online, but over the years thousands of people have used the applications that I’ve written. I’ve had many people compliment me saying that the applications helped them out. (As a side note, I wish my Imposter Syndrome would remember those praises when it tries to tell me that I don’t know what I’m doing.)

I guess it’s just hard to see a lot of the things that you’ve worked so hard on over years being taken down one after another.

I do enjoy building LEGO. Not just the boxed sets, but I’ll get minifigures and then design and build biomes for them. After writing about my wife’s crochet, I realized that this is one reason why I enjoy this so much. I design a habitat for a LEGO minifigure using BrickLink Studio (a CAD program for LEGO)., I refine the build - both to improve it and to lower the cost of the build. Then, I order the parts and build it. (And then, I’ll often need to add additional parts to fix issues with the build that weren’t apparent until it was built.)

I’ll need to do some more of that building. Frankly, if I’m going to have a midlife crisis, it’s going to be a “build LEGO” midlife crisis and not a “buy a sports car” one.

Oh, there’s definitely upsides to that. There are posts I made to Usenet in my college years that I’m glad have been swallowed up by time and consigned to oblivion. I would hate it if all of those embarrassing moments were to suddenly resurface and become a permanent part of my present and future life.

But the idea that EVERYTHING that I’ve done will vanish freaks me out. Yeah, this is definitely a midlife crisis coming on.

Yeah, I think a big part of this might be a kind of mid life crisis. I’m not the “buy an expensive sports car” kind of guy, but I’m definitely the “worry that all you’ve done in your life was for nothing” sort of guy.

My wife crochets and I’ve got to admit to being jealous that she has a physical object when she’s done. I love programming. I love being able to take a big and complex problem, break it down, and construct an application that solves the issue. Still, at the end of the day, our works are 1’s and 0’s whose existence will be a lot shorter than my wife’s crocheted house elf.

I’ve been using DirectNIC for quite some time.

“Yes, my potion turned you into a chicken, but just look at what happens when your enemies attack you!”

Here are the flame pieces: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=18394pb01&name=Wave Rounded Curved Wing with Bar End (Flame) with Marbled Trans-Yellow Pattern&category=[Energy Effect]#T=C

I originally was trying to have the pot suspended over the flames, but that’s hard to do given that the pot takes up 2/3rd of a stud. I like how these flames seem to flow around the pot.

In my case, it means I’ll be buying less from them. If they were in the bags, I’d have gone to the LEGO store with my older son (who has a 95%+ success rate at feeling figures in the bags) and would have gotten all the figures I wanted.

Now, I’m going to buy a 6 pack (to ensure no dupes) and if I don’t get everyone I want them oh well. Maybe I’ll buy the others from BrickLink, but likely not.

On the other hand, it might finally give me the kick in the rear to start a local “minifigure trading group.” If I got two Wolverines and someone else has an extra Moon Knight, we could swap so we each get closer to a complete set. (It would need to be local because the cost of shipping the figures back and forth wouldn’t make it worth while - not to mention keeping people honest about actually shipping figures instead of getting a figure and then ghosting.)

When I heard that were moving to boxes, I had the (I’m sure not very original) idea for LEGO to print codes on the boxes. Determined fans who wanted a particular figure could look up the code and purchase boxes based on this. Fans who wanted the full blind box experience could ignore the codes.

It wouldn’t be anything obvious like “this box contains Wolverine.” Instead, it could say something like MCMF2-3200 and fans would need to decode the numbers to tell which figures had which codes.

For a short time, it looked like there might have been codes on the packages and I was happy that LEGO did this. Then, the codes got disproved.

I still think this would work. Think of it like the alien alphabets in Futurama. That led fans to rewatch episodes over and over to decode the language. This would be the LEGO version of this - only not as complex because there would only need to be 12 to decode.