I made the MrPowerScripts YouTube channel on Jan 5, 2012. Very close to seven years old! How wild is that? After making over one hundred videos my channel has 373,803+ views. It feels really great knowing I’ve helped so many people save time by scripting, programming, and developing. I’ve had so much fun with it, and I want to see it continue to grow. And this is always the challenge with growing up, right? I’m finding I have less to spend on hours and hours cutting up video. Doing in-depth research about a subject so I don’t get called out for being inaccurate in the comments. Reviewing, making the thumbnails, doing conversions and more reviews after reviews after reviews.

I’m exhausted just thinking about all of it. I started blogging and it’s great. I love writing, and this has given me an opportunity to write more and share thoughts in a different way. But videos have always been my thing.

When I was in my early 20’s I somehow ended up as the “IT Guy” at this company headquarters. This was a long time ago but I still think about it sometimes. While most of the company was out in the west coast they had a headquarters on the east where all the executives worked. Though, their IT support was entirely based on the west coast. Which left a gap in the morning for available IT support. Well, that is not the kind of service these money makers are used to! They want support, and they want it NOW. So through a series of odd events that person ended up being me. That’s where the story really starts.

Having trouble concentrating? You don’t feel as productive as you once did? Are small things getting to you? If you answered yes to any of those questions I really wish I had a pill to sell you. Really. I could be like a millionaire by now. Almost everyone I know has these problems. I’m not here to offer any medical advice though. If you have a severe ailment you should really see a doctor. If not, here’s a giant helping of opinion for ya.

I always loved working on React projects. There was a lot of overhead getting started early on for me. I don’t even want to get into how many hours I spent learning how webpack work. Oh, there’s a new version of webpack? EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW. React isn’t that much better with breaking changes. When you combine all these various software “solutions” it can be hard to even get started with what you originally wanted to do. Code the freaking idea up.

It took me a long time to figure out a setup that allowed me to jump right into developing the react app and thinking less about the setup. This is what I’ve finally settled on.

Discord is probably one of my favorite apps ever. They started off with a simple idea and worked really hard to add features over time. Though the software hasn’t suffered from its rapid development and release cycles.

A lot of times you’ll see apps with the growth of Discord become bloated. Discord has managed to remain simple, but still has lots of power available to the user.