Work, Disenchantment, Exercise
By Derek | September 26, 2019
A good Thursday. (26th)
Regular work day for me. Working my primary project.
Had dinner out with some friends that just moved back to town.
Watched a few episodes of Agents of Shield season 3, then discovered Matt Groening’s Disenchantment. So of course I watched a couple of episodes of that.
I did my first full 30 minutes on the recumbent bike since July 22nd, since my doctor cleared me yesterday for exercise, driving, etc. I also was lifting two 3 lb. weights, one in each hand, while biking. I wasn’t able to pump the weights for more than a few minutes at a time. It felt good, but I was tired afterwards.
I should be starting physical therapy on the 2nd. Should be good stuff.
Topics: Entertainment, Food, Health, TV, Work | No Comments »
Health, Chama Gaucha, Games
By Derek | September 25, 2019
A great Wednesday! (25th)
Had my six-week follow up with my surgeon. They did X-ray my back and my surgeon said I’m clear to return to life, mostly. No swimming until the back skin is fully healed, but for mostly everything else I’m clear!
Things I’ve been prohibited from doing over the last six weeks:
- Bending
- Lifting
- Twisting
- Exercising, including my recumbent bike
- Driving
- Alcohol (was permitted zero, as it’s a blood thinner)
- Carrying things heavier than 10 lbs.
Things I still can’t do, They don’t cause pain, just tiredness & I gotta work up to them:
- Walk distances
- Run (haven’t tried)
- Stand for longer than a few minutes
- Outdoor work, etc.
So, the real good news is that I can get back on my exercise routine, on my recumbent bike. I can drive, etc.
So… after I got home from my dr appt. I drove to work, of course! I mean, it’s not far, but it was nice nonetheless.
Got there just in time to go with my team to our quarterly outing, which was Chama Gaucha lunch. I think we do this outing at least once a year, cause everyone loves it. Had some great conversation there, movies, video games, not much politics, no shop talk. Good times!
After we got back to work, our boss cut us loose early, to go home. I went by Discount Tire to get my tire pressure checked since I hadn’t driven my car in about 2 ½ months.
Once I got home, I worked on my computers a bit, then helped our niece get her iMac set up so her kiddos could do some homework, including printing to our network printer.
Played a bit of Borderlands 2. After I laid down for bed, I played a bit of the new Mario Kart Tour on my phone. It’s neat.
Topics: Apple, Auto, Entertainment, Food, Games, Health, Me, Technology, Work | No Comments »
Avenger, Busy Tuesday
By Derek | September 24, 2019
A good Tuesday. (24th)
I’m still not driving yet. My 6 week follow-up doctor appt. is tomorrow, I’m hoping to get good news. They’ll be taking X-rays to ensure the two fused bones are setting correctly. I hope so.
I’ve created a “Ship Showdown” entry, for the game Star Citizen. The person who wins the contest will win in-game prizes, and adoration from all. If you have an account, please give it an upvote or three: My-Avenger-Titan-The-FSS-Valentina ( written from my character’s perspective). If not, just enjoy my screenshots!
It’s our normal busy Tuesday. Lunch, robotics, martial arts, and another RackerGamers board meeting (we don’t do this every week, though).
Before robotics, I worked with one of our robotics kids & parents to teach them basic Linux CLI navigation and software installation. I wrote a Google presentation on it, if you’re interested, ping me, and I’ll share it with you.
After robotics, I welcomed the RackerGamers board for our semi-regular meeting. We’re having meetings a bit closer together right now, since we’re planning for Game Day. We also worked on the new website, and got it completely up and running ( http://rackergamers.org/ ). There’s still a bunch of previous news (blog) articles that need re-added, since we weren’t able to export the articles from the old site.
Topics: Entertainment, Food, Games, Health, Me, RackerGamers, Star Citizen | No Comments »
Car, Office, Rockband
By Derek | September 23, 2019
A good Monday. (23rd)
Started my car for the first time in about 2 ½ months. Cranked for a sec, but caught and started pretty quick. Set a 15 minute timer and let it run to charge up the battery.
Started working on cleaning my office. It’s a disaster, gonna work to make it less so. I need to get the closet organized, so I can put other stuff in the closet.
Played RockBand (3) with the kids today. You want a challenge, teach four kids ages 4 through 11 how to “strum” a RockBand guitar, use the Mic, play the drums and choose from ~400 songs (almost none of which they know) ALL AT THE SAME TIME. /whew.
It was loads of fun once it got going though, played for hours, until everyone except me got bored. Then I played some more, until my hand started cramping up from the guitar “frets”. It’s probably been five years since I’ve played RockBand.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me | No Comments »
Lazy, Minecraft, Minecraft
By Derek | September 22, 2019
A good Sunday. (22nd)
Took it easy today. Slept in a bit.
A friend of mine came over to play Minecraft with us today. Before he came over, I had to close up an iMac that I was working on before my surgery. Glad I was able to refer to the iFixit guide that helped me take it apart.
Played quite a bit of Minecraft today, then later in the evening after my friend went home, started building a lava lamp in our Minecraft world. I’m creating a video on it, I’ll upload it when I’m done.
Topics: Entertainment, Friends, Games, Health, Me | No Comments »
Work, TV, Star Citizen
By Derek | September 21, 2019
Saturday. (21st)
Regular workday for me. Had issues with getting logged in today. My work issued token wasn’t supposed to expire for 8 more days, but apparently stopped working overnight. I was able to finally get logged in and finish my workday. Pretty busy day, too.
Watched a couple more episodes of Agents of Shield season 3.
Played some Star Citizen. If you want to check it out, you should make an account using my referral URL: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enlist?referral=STAR-H4F3-KZZH
Star Citizen is a universe simulator, that’s currently in Alpha, available to backers. I belong to a medium size organization (guild/clan) in the game and they run regular events, Synchronizerz.
Topics: Entertainment, Games, Star Citizen, TV, Work | No Comments »
Work, TV, New iPhone
By Derek | September 20, 2019
A good Friday. (20th)
Regular workday for me, except that I’m supposed to work on my secondary project this one day per week, and I didn’t really get to, due to minor emergencies with two of my primary products. Nothing customer impacting, but then again, that’s what I’m here for.
Watched a few episodes of Agents of Shield season 3.
My new iPhone and case came in today, and I’ve made a mistake. I purchased a completely clear back case, to “show off” my iPhone. I put it together 8 times, and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, but some little particle of dust keeps getting in there before I can snap the darn thing together. Spent about 40 minutes on it before I gave up. To install a case. There’s a hair in the back of mine, but no dust spots. I guess I need a Class 100 Clean Room next time. First world problems, I know. I won’t be buying a clear back case next time, for sure.
The new iPhone to iPhone data transfer works really well, though. Just activate your new phone (worked first try on AT&T website) then bring them close together, and the previous one will ask if you want to move your data to the newer one. Easy, but it did take almost an hour. Most of that time, I was fighting with the case, so not that big of a deal.
I really like Dark Mode on iOS 13 (this is where you Android folks can laugh, with your custom themes) but it’s really nice. Many of the apps that I use regularly have already been upgraded to include Dark Mode.
Haven’t had a chance to check out the new triple-lens camera system yet, but I have seen some of the low-light photography that is being captured in the wild with them, and the results are pretty insane. Apple is using Machine Learning to snap a ton of pictures, then seamlessly adjust the darkest spots, and meld them all together. Crazy. The amount of horsepower these new phones have is incredible. Many of them are quite a bit faster than the 15″ MacBook 2015 I’m typing this on. It’s not the interface that you need all that raw power for, though, it’s the crazy tricks you can pull off with photos and such.
Worked on Home Inventory a bit. Scheduled for the third Friday of the month. Added my new iPhone, and added pictures to some of the items that have been needing them. It’s actually been about 3 months since I’ve done this. Rescheduled it for every quarter. That makes more sense, right?
Played a little bit of Borderlands 2 before bed.
Topics: Apple, Entertainment, Games, Me, Technology, TV, Work | No Comments »
Core Values, TV, iOS 13
By Derek | September 19, 2019
Just realized I forgot to post yesterday’s update. Sorry!
A good Thursday. (19th)
Regular work day. Rackspace announced their new Core Values today. They are a distillation and simplification of the previous set of Core Values. I think it’s a good step forward.
Today, I learned that the Sony PS4 doesn’t support 5GHz wireless. That’s awful. I guess Sony assumes you’re going to plug it into ethernet? For the record, the XBox One supports 5GHz wireless. I am disappoint. (Sources: PS4: https://www.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/PlayStation_4_Hardware_Specs XBox One (first edition): https://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/Xbox_One_Hardware_Specs )
Watched a bit more Agents of Shield season 3 today.
Upgraded my iPhoneX to iOS 13 today. Smooth as silk, and dark mode is very nice. Many apps already had it, but now they follow the system settings instead. Neat.
Our nieces’ kids got to play some Epic Mickey 2 (two player) on XBox360 today. I think they liked it. I keep forgetting that I need to by some wireless Wii or WiiU controllers for my WiiU. I have Mario Kart 8 on there (latest) but not any extra controllers for it. I think they’d have a blast with it. XBox360 gets the most use because we have a ton of controllers for it.
Topics: Apple, Entertainment, Family, Games, Me, Nintendo, Technology, TV, Work | No Comments »
Lunch, Robotics, Python
By Derek | September 17, 2019
A good Tuesday. (17th)
Had lunch at our normal weekly spot, Smokin Joes. Yummy BBQ Frito Pie.
Tuesday’s are our regularly scheduled Vex Robotics homeschool sessions, but today we also had a family come over early to look over the Wonder League Robotics Competition. https://www.makewonder.com/classroom/robotics-competition/ The WL stuff looks neat, so we decided to offer it to our homeschool families, we got another parent volunteer to coach/mentor, and we already had purchased the robots a few years ago.
My younger son has martial arts every Tuesday and Thursday, so we dropped him off there, because we had to go set up for my monthly MeetUp. I run a monthly MeetUp for beginners to Python programming. I was able to run that meeting, without too much difficulty.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Me, Python, Technology | No Comments »
Food, TV, RackerGamers
By Derek | September 16, 2019
A good Monday. (16th)
Pretty relaxing day.
We went out to eat lunch today, had some great Greek food at Papouli’s.
I started watching Agent Carter season 1. I like it.
Did a bunch of work for RackerGamers, we got our Game Day t-shirts ordered, and worked on getting quotes on some other swag to sell. We hope to have some really cool stuff this year!
Topics: Entertainment, Food, Me, RackerGamers, TV | No Comments »