Why can't things just work?

Here's a little something I've been struggling with lately. Technology. I wouldn't say I'm horrible at it, but I know enough to make me dangerous. I make things for the internet, after all! The best part is that I'm not the only one. There are plenty of people out there that make things for the people that make things.

Tools, platforms, plugins, packages, whatchamacallits...

Very talented people put together some really cool shit to make my life as a developer easier, but sometimes these talented people don't know how to document their shit, and that usually makes my life harder.

In the advertising industry, speed is a necessity. If you can build products faster than the other guy, then you're probably alright. To get that edge, you can't keep reinventing the wheel by writing your custom code all of the time. Do you miss your deadlines? You're probably too creative for your job.

To remedy that, we use these tools and plugins to develop quicker, getting the same results from someone else's hard work (but they usually make it open source, so it's totally okay).

My struggle is when a certain tool or plugin is highly rated, but I'm the idiot that can't figure out how to use it. Basically, I'm not winning, and I don't like it.

/rant

Dear Childhood Best Friend

We haven't seen each other in a very long time, and I've found myself thinking about you this past week. You moved very far away a few years ago, and I figured it was time I finally wrote to you.

You broke my heart. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. You kept doing it and seemingly without remorse. You grew up and became a psychopath and I hope you're living a miserable life.

But I still miss you.

Not the you you are now. I miss the you I knew when we were kids. You were tons of fun. I still remember when and where we met.

I had just moved to the area and was riding a new bus. I got on for the first time, and I saw this mousy brunette sitting in the middle. There were some bitchy girls in the back and few other kids speckled around. I sat across the aisle from you. You were very quiet. Didn't look at me at all. Just read your book. So I just kept to my own business and looked out the window. The bus was almost never packed.

It would seem like you brought something new with you on the bus every day. First it was Beanie Babies. I had a pretty good collection on my own, but you had some I've never seen before. Other times, you brought these really cool animal robot toys. I saw you had this one like a lion, so I finally spoke up.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a Zoid," you responded.

"That's cool. What does it do?"

"It fights other Zoids. This is Liger Zero X."

And so our friendship began. I started asking my mum to buy me Zoids when we went to Walmart, but my collection was never as big as yours. It didn't matter, we shared them and made up our own stories.

We learned about our other interests like drawing, and eventually discovered anime together. We could never pass by Walden's book store in the mall without going in to look at the manga rack to see if the newest book of favorite series' were there.

Some of my favorite memories include buying random fabrics from JoAnne's and running around the woods by our houses, playing pretend. We were queens of the various animal kingdoms. We were warrior princesses of an anthropomorphic fox species. We were super saiyans. I was Sailor Jupiter and you were Sailor Uranus. We both crushed on Legolas and Aragorn, son of Arathorn.

I brought you to all of my family functions. You met my cousins, and she's just as quirky as us, so we had loads of more fun making music videos. We were so close, we promised each other that we would all be each other's Maid of Honor when we got married.

We had wondrous adventures together, but it came to an abrupt halt when we started dating boys.

I wasn't mature enough to really care. I thought boyfriends were just friends that were boys. I got a boyfriend before you, but I still made time to hang out with everyone because that's how I was. You turned into something different when you got a boyfriend.

You started to ignore me. You essentially forgot about me. Then you actively avoided me. It really sucked. It tore me up because you were my best friend. I shared all my secrets with you. When something shitty happened, you weren't there for me. I needed you.

When your boyfriend dumped you and you remembered that I existed, I forgave you. I missed you. I was excited that things were going back to the way they were before. But it didn't last long. You turned into a serial dater. You forgot about me every time you had a new boyfriend, and every time, it broke me down just a little bit more.

I moved away for college and lived in my dorm in the city for a year. We barely saw each other. I had hoped you had changed because I asked you to come be my roommate in the city for our first apartment. You did. We had some fun, but it quickly deteriorated. I started to learn you weren't who I thought you were.

Not once did you get a real job when we lived together. Your job as a stripper paid well. Too well. In fact, all of your boyfriends were previous clients. You dated a 32 year old man (we were still only 19 and 20 at the time). You dated a computer savvy college student (probably your best yet). And you didn't come home a lot. Almost ever. Our apartment was more like a storage space for your shit while you slept at mens' places. I'm sorry, clients. Sure, you weren't the stereotypical stripper that got addicted to drugs. But you were the stripper that dated clients and allowed them to pay you under the table for going on dates with them like an escort. I never asked if those packages included sex because it just wasn't my business and honestly, I didn't want to know.

The biggest blow to my heart is when you started visiting my cousin without me. I thought we were best friends, only to feel betrayed when you two started hanging out behind my back. It's not like she was a short drive away. It required a lot of planning to visit each other because she lived four hours away. It also sucked because my cousin never visited me when we lived together, but she visited you after we got our own, separate apartments. She visited me for the first time just last October, and I've been living in this city since 2009.

Regardless, you chipped away at my trust in you. You're the reason why I can't stand you now.

Since we've parted ways, my cousin got married. You couldn't even be bothered to attend her wedding when she asked you to be her Maid of Honor because you'd rather take your shirt off at your job. It's okay, I attended but didn't get to be her MOH either. I'm not even mad about that. I'm mad because you blew her off.

Now I'm about to get married, and my cousin will be in my bridal party, but you won't. And that makes me happy. You moved to the Virgin Islands to live with a guy you met online when you were 15. I hope you make each other miserable. You are such a despicable person, you had the gall to accuse someone I love of raping you because you needed to pull the "victim" card to keep your relationship with that weirdo together.

You're a liar. You're a heart-breaker. You're a disgusting human being and I hope you get what you deserve, because I certainly am.

Cheers.