When I was a kid, we had this dope McDonalds Little People toy:

My kids and I have been playing a lot of Minecraft lately. We have a world where we're building a ton of different buildings, like hotels, roller coasters, and pet stores. It's basically the same games they play IRL.

I thought it would be fun to try and recreate this play set in our world, and here's what we were able to come up with:

What I'm most proud of is how much the kids helped! I laid the foundation and got the walls and roof built, but the kids handled the interior completely by themselves. Gus even built a road as a sort of drive thru.

Of all the mysteries and injustices of the McDonald’s ice cream machine, the one that Jeremy O’Sullivan insists you understand first is its secret passcode.

Press the cone icon on the screen of the Taylor C602 digital ice cream machine, he explains, then tap the buttons that show a snowflake and a milkshake to set the digits on the screen to 5, then 2, then 3, then 1. After that precise series of no fewer than 16 button presses, a menu magically unlocks. Only with this cheat code can you access the machine’s vital signs: everything from the viscosity setting for its milk and sugar ingredients to the temperature of the glycol flowing through its heating element to the meanings of its many sphinxlike error messages.

No one's nostalgic for the Dinkytown McD's. But some of us are nostalgic for who they were when they went there.

I think the author of this article laid it on pretty thick.

But to be fair, they were of an older generation of U of M alums, born to complain about the corporate raising of our beloved Dinkytown.

I have many fond memories of that McDonald’s. Back when I ate there, it certainly was a chance to, as they say in the article, “soak up the suds.”

My fondest memory there was right after Blarney’s closed the night I met my wife. I remember enjoying a burger and continuing our discussion on which animals would win in a fight.

The pull quote I chose for this piece, though, is right. I don’t care about McDonald’s. I just miss simpler times.

And maybe they’re simpler because they were manufactured in a way. My life isn’t manufactured much at all these days, leaving me in a constant state of anxiety and fear of what’s to come.

Maybe the closing of that McDonald’s aught to symbolize the start of something better. For myself, and for the next generation of alumni who pine for things to just stay the same for just a little longer.

I'm currently on a lifetime abstention from McDonalds, but even I must admit my stomach growled a little bit after watching them craft that burger. My favorite part is ever-so-slight injection of ketchup and mustard into the front of the burger.