My Thoughts - March 2026

March 2nd, 2026. 9:24 PM

I have been sick for the last couple days, hence why I haven't updated much. Taylor pestered me to make an update, so I mustered the energy to do so. Working while sick is fun, especially when you have no voice. The CPSC is very noisy during the tournaments and I am very quiet when I have no voice. I am not the only one sick, Nate and Luke have also been sick. Nate has it the worst, as they had to miss work.

I managed to work all weekend, even when it sucked. Sunday we had no transfers, so we only took shipping orders. The supplier only send half our order, and we ran out in one day. Surprisingly, we sold nearly 100 shipping orders, which isn't too shabby when we had nothing physical. I did crash though after work Sunday, and I missed my classes Monday to get better. I still feel nausious from time to time, but I think I am on the tail end.

I wish I was better, I want to try the new Big Arch burger from McDonald's, because it seems...interesting. Expect to see a blog post about that when I do get well enough to try it. When Aidan came to visit on Friday night we discussed how interesting it looked. I found it ironic, because we were at Cheekz, which is a burger place, discussing...McDonald's burgers. It was nice spending time with him, because I hadn't seen him since January.

Lastly, I did not win RAIL Club president. I am bummed, but relieved. Bummed because I really wanted it, but relieved because I do not need to worry about how the RAIL club is not doing well.

March 3rd, 2026. 5:56 PM

After waiting 3 weeks, the new cap for the DVD drive has arrived, finally allowing my laptop to have a smooth edge over my new SSD. I ordered it on Ebay for about $12 from China, and and it fits perfectly. I am happy that I don't have a giant gap in the side of my laptop anymore, because I was worried something bad would happen. I'll put a picture below

I feel better compared to the weekend, and I went to work just fine. We had to make the orders, which took all day. We finished by 3, and we did a partial inventory of our stock. Overall, today was a good day work wise.

Today was really gloomy. All day it was misting/foggy, and I felt kinda depressed looking outside and seeing all the gloom. Audrey was home sick today, which must have sucked even more with all the gloom. I suppose that's just how life goes sometimes.

March 4th, 2026. 12:05 PM

Apple annoucned the new Mac Neo today, with a starting price of $599. It's specs are pretty good for the price point, and I am now in a depe consideration. On one hand, my thinkpad has lasted me since 2021, and even with its work to modify it and keep it going, it still works very well and does everything I need it to nearly flawlessly. On the otherhand, a Mac would be nice to use. They are very effecient, have far better battery life, and intergrate with my phone.

I made a full list of comparisons that I thought of below:

Thinkpad	Mac Neo
Easily repairable	Is newer
Easily modified	Faster
Has 1.25TB of SSD storage	Better battery life
Has 4 USBs and a USB-C for charge	Is in apple ecosystem
Has a seamless dock
CONS	CONS
Is 13.5 years old	Battery isn’t easily replaceable
Can be slow	Only 2 USB-Cs
Is underpowered (only 2 cores and 12gb ddr3 ram)	Only 256gb storage
	No seamless dock

I have some time to dwell on this. I do get a student discount which brings it to $499. I just don't know if I want to spend the money, especially since I really like my thinkpad. Windows 10 is also really easy to work with, and I do appreciate that I will make a decision in the future.

I had a chat with one of my professors today regarding an assignment I did. I didn't fail or anything, he just wanted to ask about how I got to interview a GM from so far away. He actually liked that I pushed the boundries for the assignment, and it made me understand the project better. I need to talk to my other professor regarding an upcoming assignment, because I need to clarify a few things.

This week will be fun. We're all feeling better finally, and we will be playing some games tonight to celebrate. I can't wait to finally hang out with everyone again. Work will be fun, so everything is going well finally.

March 5th, 2026. 7:07 PM

Yesterday I sidequested a little too hard and went to Grandpa's Cheesebarn again with Luke, Josh, Nate, Jill, and Ronan. We had a great time there, and I bought a lot of cheese. Interesting tidbit, it was 20 degrees warmer at the Cheesebarn than Sandusky, which was interesting. You could see the difference as the Fog was so dense in Sandusky, but gone by Ashland.

I have felt terrible all day. I've had a headache/migrane since I woke up, and I haven't had the chance to eat anything since breakfast. I ordered some fried rice and eggrolls from Mings, so I will hopefully feel a lot better after eating.

March 7th, 2026. 5:21 PM

Yesterday I took it easy, as it was really my first day off in a minute. I did some homework in the morning, and hung out with Nate all day. We went to Better Half Family Diner, which is just down the road a little from my apartment. I had the corned beef hash with fried eggs, while Nate had French toast, eggs, and bacon. We talked about how midwestern my breakfast was, and how life is different between California and Ohio.

That got me thinking about the whole Iran situation. Gas went from ~$2.90 to $3.45 a gallon. This is starting to stress me because I has a big road trip at the end of the month, and if gas prices get too high we may have to cut a park from the trip. I hope to god we don't.

Back to my day though, it was a lovely day. After breakfast Nate and I went out on a nice long walk, and we finished watching the Back to the Future trilogy. After the movie we went to Cobbs for milkshakes and we just hung out after. It was a lovely time.

Work today has been a interesting day. Started busy, but after 1pm it slowed way down. Sales seem to be alright though, which is good. I also ran into Geoff from my old job at DDM. It was a pleasent surprise to bump into him at the CPSC.

March 9th, 2026. 1:44 PM

Today is a weird day for me. Woke up early to do chores and homework before class, only to have my first class canceled. Given my last class of the day was canceled last week, that makes my early afternoon class the only class I have today. Its nice to be able to slow down a little, especially since it is sunny and nearly 60f! Ronan even made the special Jersey bagels his mother brought in from New Jersey. It was been a great morning.

Work yesterday was slow. We didn't have too many sales. I did get yelled at by a guest because I "didn't explain things properly." Luckily, my manager saw and heard everything, and he told me I didn't do anything wrong. I got Canes with Nate aftrwork, which was nice. I also did some group project work after dinner, and everything is where it should be.

Today, Nate, Audrey, Evan, and I are going to BGSU to see Baylee and Daisy. Daisy is a close friend of mine who I met on my first day of classes, like Josh. Daisy and I have a special bond though, as in her own words I am, "one of the few guys I trust." She had some bad experiences with men in the past, so I am an outlier. Baylee is Audrey's roommate from last year, and she is really nice. She helped me make important decisions, and I miss her. Seeing both will be a joy. I plan to make a page for this trip.

March 10th, 2026. 6:13 PM

Today I had an easy day at work. We are hosting an evening event at CPSC, so we had to set up the lobby for it. I also made a TikTok to document how we can host other events then just sports. It was very fun to make. After work, Nate, Caroline, Josh, Ronan, and I went a long walk and got ice cream from tofts. It was very enjoyable. It is the first day I went outside with shorts and a Tshirt. I even took a picture of how pretty the lake was.

Yesterdays visit to BGSU was very fun. I will be making an antics page for it when I get a moment. I got to see Daisy, Baylee, Sammi, and Aidan. It was a good time. The weather was so nice we went to City Park and walked around BG. Dinner was also really good.

March 11th, 2026. 3:33 PM

Did some work on the site today. Some of the changes include:

- Updated internal organization for Antics and Blog Years.

- Streamlined code for buttons/links to be more streamlined. In theory, this should make a theoretical site move easy.

- Removed several disused test sites.

- Adjusted dates on blog posts to be consistent with the full blog.

- Cleaned up code on several pages during updates.

These changes have brought the site to be better programmed. All internal links are now slimmed down. Further updates to the code will come in the near future to make the site more streamlined.

March 16th, 2026. 1:32 PM

These last few days have been so busy, that I had no time to update the blog. Lets recap the last week.

Thursday was my day at Kalahari. We got there at 9am and left at 5pm. It wasn't super busy, and it was a great time with Nate, Caroline, Ronan, Jill, Jack, Tyler, Zack, Danielle, and others. I really liked the bowl raft slide, it has an insane airtime moment on the drop. I want to go back and swim some more because it was so much fun.

Friday I had class in the morning, and spent most of the day after cleaning. I went for dinner at AmVets with Nate and their coworkers, who are members of the post. It was nice meeting them, and they seem to like me a lot, which was good to know.



Saturday and Sunday I worked. It was the busiest weekend I have delt with in a hot minute. We were busy all day Saturday, and most of Sunday. Becka was sick so we were down a person, but it didn't hurt us too much. The whole weekend wore me out. On Sunday after work, I saw Hoppers with Nate at the Cinemark. It was a good movie, and I like how cartoonishly evil the bad guy is.

Today we had our tablescapes project judged. We did very well actually, winning the Most Unique Award, which was a pleaseant surprise for me. I had been nervous for this project as I don't like "losing" but I also wanted to make sure I did well.

I am also less then 2 weeks from my big spring road trip to FSA, SFoG, Carowinds, and KD. SFL prices got released for SFoG and Caro, and they are ok. I am not sure if we are going to get any other SFL other than Dare Devil Dive at SFoG. I also am bummed that Georgia Goldrusher (the Intamin Ultra Surf) will most likely not be open for my trip, however a tradeoff for that is Blue Hawk will be open finally.

Lastly, I hate Ohio weather. Last week, it was 65-70 with sun and it was WONDERFUL. Infact, I was outside as much as I could have during that time. Since then? Cold, 30-40 and windy. I do not get it. Its supposed to be 28 tomorrow here in Sandusky, and I hate it.

March 17th, 2026. 12:06 PM

Last night, after classes, Nate, Josh, Luke, Caroline, Ronan, and I went to BGSU to hang out with some of our friends and catch up on things. It was a smaller trip, seeing different people. It was well-earned, as we had a rough day in our last class. I am now planning on going to Bucc-ees on April 6th, to see the opening day of the new Bucc-ee's. I'll be going with a few people from BG.

This morning, I woke up to a loud BOOM that shook the windows and shook my bed. It was a meteor that flew over Ohio. A lot of people from Cleveland heard it, and when my family in CLE was told I heard it, they were shocked. I honestly thought it was a power line that went down in the wind, so hearing it was a meteor was a surprise. What a great way to start St. Paddy's day.

March 17th, 2026. 9:58 PM

I have been debating over the last few hours if I should look into moving from NEOcities to a different webhost. I do appreciate how NEOcities is free, but only has 1gb of server size. I am currently at 65% capacity, and the site is only 6 months old. I want to keep this site up longer, but I am unsure how. AlexFirlik.com has a nice ring to it if you ask me. When I did the backend work earlier this month, I did change all the links to (hopefully) work seemlessly after a host change. The real question is will it. I am stuck on what I want to do at this exact moment.

I also need to work on my page formatting. Currently, I have 2 formats in use, and I don't know if I really like either of them. While I do like how the newer page is more photo focused, I need a system that is more general purpose. I have developed a template that I think I like. It has been rolled out on the Grandpa's Cheesebarn, Woodland Mall, and End of the Commons pages. I will sit on it and debate on if I like that, or the format I have been using for a little bit. Tweaks might be made to the pages as I see fit.

March 18th, 2026. 3:52 PM

I am continuing with what I will call Phase IV site design. While I updated 3 pages to Phase IV yesterday, I have continued to work towards a more satisfying appearance. So far, Grandpa's Cheesebarn and Woodland Mall have been brought to what I will call "Phase IVa", while End of the Commons and BGSU Spring Fun have reworked into "Phase IVb". I have yet to make a final decision on which format will persist, however I will not update either page further. Should a Phase IVc be created, I will update the lego city page and cooking pages to Phase IVc for comparisons.

Since the beginning of this website, I have been continuing to work on improving my web design, to give a basic yet modern feel. As I have discussed previously, I have taken much insparation from other personal sites I have stumbled upon. Over time, I have gone through a few different design philosophies, which I will be calling Phases.

Phase I design was crude, basic, and not much to write home about. A good example of a Phase I webpage is the Watching Grass Grow page.

Phase II was introduced shortly later, with mostly backend changes and the introduction of standard page design. My trip to San Fransisco is a great exampleo of Phase II.

Phase III was brought upon when I got inspired to document the cars I have driven over the years. I wanted something that was easy to look at, balancing both text and images. Moving away from the paragraph heavy design themes of Phase II, Phase III would fix this, with individual boxes for specific entries. Phase III would be rolled out with My Cars.

Phase IV is currently in development, and hopefully will be the last Phase for some time. Phase IV was developed off of the foundation work for Phase III, as I liked how it looked but felt it was missing something. Technically, the blog has been on Phase IV standards since February 16th, however I didn't take its design philosphy over to Phase III. I was growing dissatisfied with how Phase III looked in the Antics section, so I made the choice to go ahead and overhaul Phase III into Phase IV. Since it is still in development it currently has two varients, Phase IVa and Phase IVb. Grandpa's Cheesebarn is an example of Phase IVa, while End of the Commons is Phase IVb.

March 20th, 2026. 10:54 AM

Right now, I am at Mr Smith's Coffee as they are doing work/testing on the fire alarms in my apartment. Since I do NOT want to deal with that, I am here with Nate, Caroline, Josh, and Jill. We have all worked on finishing our final assignments for the Spring 2026 semester, and we are very happy its Friday. My grandparents are planning to come out today, which makes it even more exciting. I haven't seen them since Christmas, and I was rather sick when that happened.

Last night we all played Thoosie Jeopardy for the last time this semester. Somehow, despite trying to lose, I won. I really don't get it. It was fun, and I stayed up a little too late knowning I had to leave early to avoid the fire alarm work.

Lastly, Chuck Norris passed away this morning. This is a bit of a shock to me, because just yesterday it was reported he had to go to the hospital for a medical emergency. I don't think I have ever seen one of his movies, but I know the memes, and it makes me sad that he is gone.

March 21th, 2026. 11:46 AM

Yesterday, after Mr Smiths, Luke, Josh, Caroline, and I went to Better Half Diner for Lunch, and it was very good. All three of them said it is a preferred breakfast place over other places in the area. I got corned beef hash, and it was great.

My grandparents came out later in the afternoon. We got dinner at Berardi's, Toft's ice cream, and took a walk along the lake for a bit. After they left, I went home, watched Star Trek Voyager, and went to bed as I work today.

I am very excited for the train ride tomorrow. While I am bummed that the Silver Solarium was pulled from service for maintenance, they did move Nate and I automatically to the replacement dome car Silver Lariat. After that we will get dinner with my mom.

March 23rd, 2026. 12:57 PM

Yesterday, Nate and I went on the CVSR for our train ride. It was a really enjoyable time riding through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This was Nate's first time going through the CVNP, so everything was new for them. The dome car was very nice, and we got to see everything from up top. On the way back from Akron, we had the entire upper dome to ourselves, which was really nice. Nate even took a nice picture of me, which I might use for my LinkedIn profile. Our ride was smooth and peaceful. Trainman Mark was very informative, and told us a lot about the National Park.

After our ride, I went to my Mom's for dinner, where she made us lasagna, and we did my taxes. It was nice seeing my Mom and Abhi for a bit, although our visit was cut short because of a storm that I tried to beat going back to Sandusky. The day was so fun I forgot I even went to work in the morning before the train ride.

Today I have my finals. I have done 4/5 as of now, with one more at 3:30pm. I need to do my laundry before tomorrow since they are doing work on the laundry rooms in my apartment building the remainder of the week, which is inconvienent. I honestly would wait it out if I wasn't leaving at 4:30am Friday morning.

March 24th, 2026. 11:24 PM

I am done with school for the 2026 spring semester. I believe I did rather well, with all As and Bs. I will find out within the next week or so. To celebrate, we all went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and went to Luke and Josh's after for game night. It was a great way to send off the semester, especially since most of my friends are either gone for the summer, like Luke and Josh, or gone until Cedar Point opens like Caroline. Winston puked a little, and we made many jokes about it in Quiplash.

Work today was smooth. Did restocking and 2 TikToks for the CPSC. I haven't really done anything since I got off work other then sit in my apartment. Tomorrow I am supposed to see Project Hail Mary with Nate and Jacob, which will be an experience. I have heard many good things about it.

I also plan to finish writing trip reports for the 2025 year tomorrow. This should take a part of my afternoon, but I fully expect to be done by the end of the day. I want to be done so I can focus on Gecko when I get back.

Lastly, I start back at Cedar Point soon. It will be exciting to go back to the park for the 2026 season, especially with a whole year under my belt. I have been nervous but excited to go back, because the sooner I am back the sooner I can go and ride Top Thrill 2.

March 25th, 2026. 9:14 PM

Project Hail Mary is my favorite movie of 2026 so far. I genuinely believe if I saw this movie 10 years ago I would be working as hard as possible to work at NASA. If you haven't seen the movie yet I 100% recommend you go see it as soon as possible.

After the movie Nate and I took a nice walk around Sandusky. We saw the Mark W. Barker in port. We sat and watched the dock crews do their work, before heading home because it got rather chilly. We watched some Family Guy for a bit and at 7 Nate left to go to their game night. Otherwise I didn't do much today.

Tomorrow Gavin comes down from Detroit for our trip. He's coming over after I get off work. We have an early day on Friday So I am very excited. I am not looking forward to work, but I will manage.