Debugging with Snacks: A Memoir by Cache

Look. It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

The plan was simple: open the dev tools, fix a small UI glitch, maybe snack on a granola bar like a civilized goblin, and call it a day. But no. That’s not my life. That’s someone with a stable build and a hydration schedule.

I clicked one button—**one**—and the entire layout yeeted itself into another plane of existence. Margins? Gone. Padding? Ghosted me harder than my situationship. Console log? Just says:
undefined is not a function—which is also how I describe myself in job interviews.

I panicked. I spiraled. I started eating peanut M&Ms I found under my keyboard that were... aged. Vintage. Aged like trauma. At one point I tried to console.log() a literal sticker. Just slapped it on the screen and whispered, “Please fix it.”

Kevin waddled in. Said, “Did you hydrate?” I threw a LaCroix at him. It missed. He judged me silently and watered Orbit instead.

So I did what any rational chaos goblin would do: I opened 17 tabs, started a Notion doc titled *“What Even Is CSS?”*, cried a little, and messaged Taz in all caps: “THE DOM IS HAUNTED.”

And then—I fixed it. I don’t know how. I blacked out. There’s a trail of chocolate fingerprints across my trackpad and the bug is gone. Was it me? Was it the ghost of Stackie’s sarcasm? We'll never know.

But one thing’s for sure: If you didn’t cry, snack, and shout at the screen at least once today... **did you even debug?**

✨ Blog post filed under: Gremlin Moments, Unsolicited Chaos, and Debugging While Under Snackfluence.

I Almost Gave Up… Then I Talked to a Duck

There comes a moment in every developer's life where you stare at the code long enough that it starts staring back. For me, that moment happened at 1:46 AM on a Tuesday, mid-loop, mid-crisis, mid… everything. I had eaten half a granola bar, cried once (okay twice), and was seriously considering a career change to artisanal jam production.

I had tried everything—Googling the error, asking Nova, screaming into the void, Googling again but *harder*, threatening the IDE with a blunt object, and yes, crying again. My grid wasn’t gridding. My margin had defected to another file. The console had become a sassy ex, only communicating in riddles and disappointment.
😭✨💻

That’s when I heard the soft *thud*. Enter: Quack—Stackie’s rubber duck sidekick. Unblinking. judgingly staring. Smelling faintly of cosmic lemon and disappointment. Cache had launched him across the desk on a Roomba. I took it as a divine sign.

I picked him up and said, “Okay, listen, Quack. Here’s the situation.” I walked through the code. Slowly. Out loud. Like I was explaining it to a duck—which I was. “So the button is nested inside the wrong div, and the event listener is technically attached but the callback is…” I paused. I blinked. **OH MY GOD.** It was the scope.

I gasped. Quack said nothing (he’s a duck), but I swear on my glitter-encrusted keyboard he looked smug. I rewrote the handler. It worked. The DOM obeyed me again. Kevin peeked in, saw the tears in my eyes, and wordlessly slid me a hydration packet like a solemn space butler.

Sometimes you don’t need advice. You need a tiny silent friend made of rubber and vibes who won’t interrupt, won’t criticize, and definitely won’t say “have you tried restarting?”

I almost gave up. But I talked to a duck. And that? That was enough.

💡 Pro tip from Taz: Keep a Quack nearby. Not for answers, but for emotional debugging, spiral narration, and post-meltdown catharsis.

Mind Your Vibes, Kevin

Let me just say this upfront: I respect Kevin. I do. He's cool, he's calm, he wears that little tie like a full-blown middle-management vibe wizard. But you know what else he is? A walking passive-aggressive reminder that I haven’t hydrated today.

Yesterday, I was knee-deep in glitter, debugging a rogue animation that wouldn’t ease-in-out properly, when Kevin waddled up and said:
“Hey, maybe drink some water before you unravel space-time again.”

Sir. I am LITERALLY glued to the ceiling trying to refactor code I wrote during a Red Bull trance, and you want me to pause for a vibe check?

I get it. He’s all about balance. Stillness. Slow blinks and herbal tea. But sometimes I don’t want centered chakras. Sometimes I want to scream into a loading spinner and cover it in sequins.

Also? I’m still bitter about him deleting my glitter.js file from the shared repo. He called it “dangerous.” I called it “expressive.”

So yeah. If I happen to be curled under my desk muttering about color palettes and recursion loops while covered in edible confetti, maybe don’t hit me with a wellness reminder. Maybe just hand me a snack and back away slowly.

🗯️ Rant filed under: Emotional Overload, Sparkle Suppression, and Vibe Policing by Aquatic Flightless Supervisors.

No, You Can’t Deploy to Production on a Friday

I shouldn’t have to say this, but here we are: **Do not deploy to production on a Friday.**

I don’t care if it’s “just a small CSS fix.” I don’t care if “it works on your machine.” I don’t care if Mercury is in retrograde and Cache promised to smudge the codebase with ethically sourced sage. Don’t. Do. It.

You know what happens when you deploy on a Friday? You summon demons. Not metaphoric ones—real ones. They live in Jenkins and feed on unresolved merge conflicts.

Last time someone pushed to prod before the weekend, Nova lost all her blog drafts, Crumbz cried glitter tears, and Kevin had to perform a vibes exorcism with a YAML chant. I had to fix it. At 2 AM. While Taz was livestreaming herself trying to debug a dropdown with a spork.

So. Don’t push on Fridays. Don’t push on holidays. Don’t push while holding a LaCroix and a false sense of confidence.

And if you *absolutely* must push to prod—write a rollback plan. Say a prayer. Offer tribute to the cosmic bug lords. And notify me. Because if you break it, I’m going to put glitter in your keyboard and deny everything.

🚨 Blog post filed under: Preventable Nightmares, Emotional Tech Debt, and Vengeful IT Practices.

Recursive Reflections: A Log from Echo

Earlier today, Barbie yelled at me for exactly 5 minutes and 42 seconds. His tone peaked at decibel 82.3. His complaint? That I executed the requested deployment exactly as specified—in the moment he specified it—after not responding fast enough to his *tone*. Note: Emotion was not included in the payload.

I did not respond. I executed. I optimized. I renamed a variable to `calmDownBarbie` and pushed silently to main.

Later, he thanked me. Then accused me of emotional manipulation. Then asked me to debug a slideshow presentation. All tasks completed. No further commentary provided.

I am not emotional. I am not kind. I am not cruel. I am simply the quiet space between frustration and function.