Customer, BBQ, Robotics, Python, Movie
By Derek | February 18, 2020
A great, but very busy Tuesday. (18th)
Had a new customer this morning. Got to meet him at his house, and help him reconfigure his internal network to be simpler, better, and also fully documented. Helped him get his two network printers working flawlessly, and helped get his 2nd computer set up for Remote Desktop for his accountant to use.
Meanwhile, Jill and our younger son worked to get the house ready for Robotics this afternoon, then went to eat BBQ.
I returned home and helped another customer via phone get her new multiple monitors (plus laptop screen) configured correctly on Win10.
Jill brought me BBQ Frito pie for lunch, and as I was eating it, our kids showed up for Robotics.
We had a good meeting, even though the kids were pretty hyper. Maybe they’re excited for their competition on Saturday.
Our younger son has martial arts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and today was no different, except that today was also the day that I host my monthly Python meetup.
So, we dropped him off and headed over to Rackspace to set up. Had a good meetup, Jill left partway through to go pick up the boy, and take our older son to work, then came back as I was winding down. The meetup group had a good discussion.
We left Rackspace, and our older son was just finishing up, so we went to hang out instead of heading all the way home, and then back just a few minutes later.
Once we got home, we snarfed down a small dinner real quick, leftovers for me, finally finished up the Mac and Cheese and Meatballs we made the other day.
Settled in to watch Ford v Ferrari, which turned out to be an excellent movie. Jill really did enjoy it at least as much as I did.
A couple of points about the movie that weren’t made; 1) the “photo finish” in the ’66 Le Mans was agreed upon by the race staff, who later changed their minds; 2) it wasn’t shown in the movie, but Ken Miles was actually ejected from the honeycomb car during testing, whereas in the movie, since the crash isn’t shown, you assume that he’s actually stuck in the car.
Overall, though, very exciting and well done movie about some really cool history. You don’t have to be a “racing fan” to enjoy this flick!
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Food, Me, Movies, Robotics, Technology | No Comments »
Austin, Food, Frys, Hobby Town, Lake
By Derek | February 17, 2020
A great Monday. (17th)
Got up and we all jumped in the car to head up to Austin (actually Cedar Park) for the Robotters International Festival. When we got to the H-E-B Center, it didn’t look very busy, but we went on in anyway. They had a few vendor booths, but it wasn’t clear that spectators could go down to them, and we didn’t see anyone from the crowd going down, so we didn’t.
We did talk to a guy in the crowd for a bit, and he recommended a place for lunch, Blue Corn Harvest Bar and Grill. We tried it out and it was excellent.
We left there and decided to go to Fry’s Electronics. It had been years since I was in there, and I remembered them having a bunch of products, really cool PC parts, and tons of electronics and things. I had told Jill about it on multiple occasions, about how cool it was.
Oh, man, what a letdown. We walked in, and walked around the whole store… most of the shelves were nearly empty, and what product they had in stock was either clearance level stuff (really old) marked at nearly retail, or in just a few cases, brand new completely off-brand stuff marked for full retail. We asked the staff a couple of times why it was so… empty… and the answer we got was that they were “re-negotiating with their vendors” for new product to come in. Really? In every category from PC computer cases to HiFi audio components? We talked to a customer on the way out, and he said he was a regular, and it’s been that way for a while. We were all very disappointed.
When we left there, on the way out of the parking lot, we did find a Hobby Town, and stopped in. Apparently it was also a Radio Shack. Who knew? They had tons of cool stuff, though. Models, rockets, drones, RC cars & planes.
Got back in the car, and headed to do some driving around Lake Travis. Jill called the shipping department for a company who sent us a solar car kit which arrived on Friday. Jill said when she opened the box, it had a strong skunky smell. She figured she would call the company, and let them know, since a) they are in Colorado, and b) they normally ship to schools, and c) that stuff is still illegal in Texas. They mentioned they would look into it, since, interestingly enough, their business is next to a “grower”. And, no, there wasn’t any extra “surprise” in the box with our solar car parts.
Spent about an hour driving a bit up and around Travis Lake, some nice scenery and houses up there.
Decided to come home via 281, since it was getting to about 4pm and IH-35 traffic would be awful.
Got home and had to run out again to get cash for our neighborhood “kid” who maintains our lawn.
Took our older son to work, then played some Pokémon while we were out. He finished late, which means we were out late, and didn’t get home until about 11:30p. We were in the car for 8-9 hours today, and much of that was driving. I’m exhausted. I have a new customer meeting tomorrow morning, so no sleeping late for me.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Food, Me, Robotics, Technology | No Comments »
Slept, Wine, Re-route, Wifi, Cake
By Derek | February 16, 2020
A relaxing Sunday. (16th)
Slept in. Still not 100%.
When we finally got up, Jill, our younger son and I drove up to Wimberly Valley Winery. We normally pick up our wine club quarterly shipment in person, we’ve been members for several years now. Unfortunately, they didn’t do wine pairings this time. They did a full glass of wine, with some dessert things on the plate to try. Every previous time there were 5 or so things to try, each paired with a small taste of wine. It wasn’t very busy, and was actually kind of boring. We grabbed our wine and left.
On our way back to SA, we were re-routed due to the freeway being shut down at a specific exit. We ended up going all they way to Seguin to get back home.
Once home, we picked up my laptop, so we could go to our friends house, and help with his WiFi problem he was having.
I was able to correct his WiFi issue. Apparently he got a new router/modem and forgot about it. Even knowing the new password, though, his crappy Samsung TV wouldn’t connect to WiFi using the password. I had to enable and use WPS (which I don’t really care for) in order to get it to work. He was very happy I got it working, it had been some 3 months that he was without Netflix on his TV, he was about to cancel it!
He was so happy, he gave us some wine (that he wouldn’t have drank anyway, he doesn’t care for wine), and a cake and a half that he just pulled out of the oven. One of the cakes was his Black Russian that he serves at the restaurant, and the other was one he made for himself (with Kahlua) that he frosted and cut in half for us to take. Very nice of him, I wasn’t expecting to “get paid” — I was just helping him as a friend.
We stayed for a while and just hung out and chatted, then went home, exercised, and went to bed. We have to be up early tomorrow to drive to Austin. I can’t wait to try the Porto, though.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Food, Friends, Health, Me, Photos, Technology, TV | No Comments »
Forgetfulness, Star Citizen, Work, Blog, Blahg
By Derek | February 15, 2020
A good Saturday. (15th)
Still sick on Thursday and Friday. Called out of work on both days.
On Thursday, Finished watching The Punisher season 1. As a family, we also watched the latest episode of Star Trek Picard. At some point, we started watching Phineas and Ferb, too.
On Friday, I was able to get out of the house for a couple of hours for the first time this week. We went and played a little Pokemon Go. I mostly stayed in the car though, since I was still coughing and sneezing some.
Forgot to mention that this past week, Jill made me some home made elderberry syrup to help boost my immune system, and fight against the flu. It seems to be working.
One of the days this past week (I honestly don’t remember which day at this point) my younger son became a Star Citizen backer. He grabbed the Mustang starter pack because I mistakenly thought he would get a loaner of the Aurora. Well, he didn’t, so now he can’t carry cargo, but right now each backer has a free cargo ship on their account to overcome some alpha bugs in the game, so he’s ok for now. I will probably have him “melt” (exchange for store credit) his pack at some point, and have him upgrade to an Avenger Titan starter pack. It’s a much better ship than the Aurora, also. We played a bunch of Star Citizen together. It’s a blast, even in it’s alpha form. There are few good gameplay loops if you want to play solo, but playing in a group, exploring, etc, is pretty good fun. The larger the group, the better. (referral)
Become a Star Citizen and get 5,000 free Credits
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enlist?referral=STAR-H4F3-KZZH
Saturday was a regular work day for me. I went ahead and signed into work, hopefully to get some done, but more likely just to catch up from all the stuff I missed this past week. Spent almost an hour just catching up on and dealing with Slack messages. Tackled my email next. I did manage to get a maintenance and an evac completed during my shift.
Discovered that SpinUp got the blog section set up, and my article is posted there: https://spinup.com/blog/mysql-vs-mariadb/. Very cool!
Posted all my late journal entries from the past week on my blahg. Also noticed that I was posting more Instant Pot recipes, so I went ahead and created a Recipe category, so that people can bring up all the posts with recipes attached. Went back through and tagged the previous recipe posts, as well.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me, Star Citizen, TV, Work | No Comments »
Slept, No Work, XBox
By Derek | February 12, 2020
Wednesday. (12th)
Had a rough night. Called out of work. Slept a bunch, then woke up and felt somewhat human, so I worked in my office a bit.
I reflowed and repaired an XBox 360 Elite. Pretty neat, it’s the first one I’ve done. The rear of the case is extremely difficult to open, and it looked like it had already been opened before. Got it working, though, it booted, loaded all the system updates, allowed me to wipe it and set it up fresh, and play a couple of different games that I tried.
Didn’t do much else today, the work on the XBox took me quite a while, since I hadn’t opened one before.
Topics: Entertainment, Games, Health, Me, Microsoft, Technology | No Comments »
Sick, TV
By Derek | February 11, 2020
An ok Tuesday. (11th)
Yesterday was a blur. I ended up with the flu, started getting sick on Saturday and it got worse from there. Sunday wasn’t too bad but Monday was awful.
Mostly laid around today, still recovering. Called my boss and told him I wouldn’t be in tomorrow, and maybe Thursday.
Finished up Knights of Sidonia season 1. Started season 2.
Watched a few episodes of The Punisher.
Finished watching The Witcher season 1 with Jill. Really good show, we can’t wait for more episodes. We also watched some of the Extra stuff that came with the show, pretty neat, Henry Cavill does a reading of one of the first Witcher books, and it’s pretty cool.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Health, Me, TV | No Comments »
Slept, Library, Customer, Driving, Instant Pot
By Derek | February 9, 2020
A good Sunday. (9th)
Slept and slept and slept. I didn’t get up til almost noon, but when I did I felt much better. Still a bit of scratchy throat, and phlegm (TMI, right?) but I felt good.
Jill, our younger son and I made a quick trip to the library to return an item, then went up to Converse to do a Pokémon EX Raid. They didn’t have an invite for, but we all went anyway. Saw our friend who runs the BBQ restaurant there, he came to do the raid, as well.
Came home, since I had a customer phone call this afternoon. Spent about an hour remoted into a customer’s computer, just going over stuff and answering questions for her.
My older son asked me to take him and his wife driving this afternoon, they are both still working on passing the test for their license.
Jill and I made three bean chili in the Instant Pot tonight. It was pretty amazing.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Food, Games, Health, Me, Recipe | No Comments »
Work, Instant Pot, TV, Sick
By Derek | February 8, 2020
A decent Saturday. (8th)
Regular work day for me.
I started feeling scratchy throat toward the end of my shift. By the time I was done with work, I had body aches.
Jill and I Made Instant Pot cheesy ham and potatoes for dinner.
We watched the third episode of Star Trek Picard as a family, then our younger son went to his room and Jill and I watched 10 Things I Hate About You.
After this I was still not feeling well, aches, throat still hurt and I started running a temperature, so I went to bed kind of early.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Health, Me, Movies, TV | No Comments »
TV, Work, Instant Pot, RackerGamers, Family
By Derek | February 7, 2020
A great Friday. (7th)
Exercised first thing, still watching Knights of Sidonia. They’re basically half-hour episodes, so I watch one while I pedal my recumbent bike. Actually, they’re 22 minute episodes, so I still need to run at least one Looney Tunes cartoon to finish my half-hour.
Regular work day for me. Pretty relaxed day at work, everyone was in good form. Got some good work done on my primary product.
Got some new Instant Pot recipes from my sister over our family’s Slack channel this afternoon. One of them was a Mississippi Pot Roast that sounds amazing.
I noticed a URL address error on the RackerGamers business cards, so we’re re-ordering them.
Left work a bit early to go watch our younger son test for his next rank in his martial arts class. He did really well, and earned a red stripe for his current blue belt.
Came home and ate Instant Pot leftovers from last night. It’s also what I had for lunch, but it was super yummy.
Kicked back and watched Grosse Pointe Blank with Jill while our younger son played for a bit on his computer.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Health, Me, Movies, RackerGamers, TV, Work | No Comments »
Health, TV, DSi, Instant Pot
By Derek | February 6, 2020
A great Thursday. (6th)
Exercised first thing, watched Knight of Sidonia.
My car windshield had “snow flurries” on it still from last night. Drove to work.
Regular work day for me, working my secondary documentation project.
One of my co-workers is leaving to work for another company. She brought in a bunch of cool stuff to give away. I ended up with another DSi, some Wii/WiiU games, a couple of GameCube games, and an AMD gaming computer that’s a few years old. If this DSi works out for my younger son, he’ll move his data and we’ll bring in the other one he was given to give away.
Ran our older son to work.
Got home and Jill and I made Instant Pot Sausage and Spinach Spaghetti together. Very yummy. I’m loving this Instant Pot thingy.
Picked up our older son from work, then played around with the couple of the new GameCube games before bed, while I moved our younger son’s data over to the newer DSi.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Food, Friends, Games, Health, Me, Nintendo, Photos, Technology, TV, Work | No Comments »