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OBR Newswire Bloviation Header
OBR Newswire Bloviation Header
Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
I'm in my happy place.
Maybe it's not quite as happy watching the Browns clinching a Super Bowl win and downing a celebratory shot of the finest bourbon with my wife and family around me, but it's a happy place, for sure.
Through both my previous career in business consulting and my current career as whatever-the-hell-I-am-now, some of my happiest moments are when I'm coding something that I think is cool and that people will enjoy. This compulsion led to unique apps on the OBR, such as the Mock Draft Muncher, which anticipated current mock draft aggregators by well over a decade or an old service we had called The.Raw.Feed. Before this, I developed apps such as the MSDS Generator for the Lubrizol Corporation, an AI-based app that somehow gained much notoriety.
I had basically hung up my programming career back when our old partner at Scout.com was bought out by CBS Sports. Along the way, all the facilities that Scout.com created for me, a development server and help from the internal engineering department vanished in a flash. As servers were shut down without notice, I lost all my source code (including the Mock Draft Muncher) and infrastructure. Given little alternative, I focused on the OBR in other ways.
Over the years since, I've developed many hacks and workarounds and some fairly complex systems, such as the one that feeds this Newswire by managing feeds from a variety of sites and auto-generates part of this article. But it's been a while since programming environments and coding manuals have surrounded me.
What I love about coding is that it's a challenging, logical puzzle that you put together piece by piece. There's almost always a way to do what you want; it just takes a bit of thought and research to figure out what it is. The moment where something works the way you want it is, for me, a rare time I throw my hands in the air and yell with glee outside of sports (which has mostly while watching the Buckeyes over the last 30 years, admittedly, or occasionally the Cavs or Guardians).
Doing what I love, having the app be about the Browns, and hoping to deliver it to some of my favorite people here at the OBR... I'm rarely happier than in this moment, as weird as it sounds, to be doing this thing.
Happy Fans
Not Browns fans, but let's imagine they were. (Photo: Unsplash.com)
The payoff for what I'm doing now is still a long way off, and I'm just starting, but I'm looking forward to the eventual results already. One of the downsides, while I'm deep in code, is that I'm not tracking the Browns news as much, which is probably better for my mental health anyway.
But it begs a question I'd like to have answered: Over the past few years, have there been any Browns moments that make you suddenly throw your arms in the air and shout with glee? That's not to say that only these things bring me happiness, but only sports and solving a challenging problem make for these spontaneous outbursts.
I remember a few times in the past few years when I was genuinely thrilled by something the Browns did, even in this challenging era, that made me leap out of my chair.
The moment the Browns drafted JOK and Mike Hall, to me, was about players I really wanted to see the team pick, and the moments where I shouted with happiness when the picks came in.
Early in the playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Covid year, when the Browns recovered a fumble in the end zone on the first play of the game. There were several moments in that game as it became apparent the Browns would win that left me delirious.
There were, I admit, some moments in the Joe Flacco run that had me jump out of my chair down the stretch. I can't find a clip of the play or remember the receiving target, but I remember one throw into triple coverage that I couldn't believe was completed that had me jump.
There have been many others, but those three are at the top of my mind as I'm writing this. If there were any for you, please leave them in the comments.
As much as we grouse about the new Browns and how difficult their run has been, they've provided some amazing happy moments along the way.
As I enjoy my time in my happy place, doing work I love, I think it's worth celebrating those.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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