Alarm, Work, TV, Weather, Movie
By Derek | April 11, 2020
A good Saturday. (11th)
Regular work day for me. Of course, I forgot to set my alarm, so Jill woke me up a couple of minutes after 9am. I was logged on by 10 after — that whole WFH thingy — and ill stay a few minutes late on my shift.
Completed the container work I’ve been doing for the last few weeks (has it been that long?), all my testing went well today.
Started working on host work, to get some hosts ready for maintenance.
Finished watching the last episode of Jessica Jones season 2. Apparently I hadn’t _quite_ finished the season.
Started watching Agents of Shield season 5. It starts out with a good twist on what’s happened so far.
After work, we ate dinner, then we went to put my car at the underground garage at work. There might be hail coming.
When we got home, our internet was out, so I rebooted all the things, then exercised.
We also watched Jumanji The Next Level together tonight. Fun.
Time for bed.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Health, Linux, Me, Movies, Technology, TV, Work | No Comments »
Work, Movie, Health, PS4
By Derek | April 10, 2020
A quiet Friday. (10th)
Regular workday for me.
Finally (with help from my coworkers) was able to solve the major issue with our container deployments. Now it’s a “simple” matter of deploying the changes to the other regions, and test, test, test. Turns out, deploying to each region is a very time consuming process, as all the repos have to rsync, and new container images are built for every flavor.
Watched the Dark Tower. I’ve only read the first book in the series, but enjoyed the movie.
Had to exercise after work again.
Worked on cleaning my office a bit. Making progress, still.
I was also able to pop the PS4 drive back into it, and get it re-installed. My diagnostics showed no issues with the drive, so it just have just gotten a corrupted file system. I would have been a little sad if the drive turned out bad, it was only manufactured in 2018.
Honestly, though, coming from the XBox world, I’m very impressed with how easy it is to re-install a PlayStation 4. Literally download the OS to a specially named folder on a USB drive, boot the thing with it plugged in, and an empty drive, click a few buttons and bam, back in business. Of course, my niece will have to re-download any games or whatnot that need installed.
Time for bed.
Topics: Entertainment, Health, Me, Movies, Technology, Work | No Comments »
Work, Culture, Nachos, HHG, Health
By Derek | April 9, 2020
A good Thursday. (9th)
Regular work day for me. Got up too late to exercise.
Got some good work done, but our team had a “Minecraft Server Culture Day” where we all logged onto a hosted server to play. We had probably 20 odd people logged on, including my younger son, and another Racker’s younger son. That was pretty fun, we played for around two hours. I think they mean to leave the server up for now, if we want to play some more.
Jill made taco nachos for lunch, super yummy. I watched a few Watch Later Youtube videos I had saved up.
Also, some Rackers in one of our company “water coolor” channels was discussing Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I love that series, and thought the movie was pretty great too. Anyway, they were talking about their physical leather-bound collector’s volumes. I had to show mine off, too. (pic)
After work, I helped a new customer via remote. She needed some help as she had about 100 extensions loaded in her Chrome Browser. Also, her internet is slow because she has HughesNet (satellite). Of course, she lives in the country, so she doesn’t have many options.
Since I had to help her, I wasn’t able to run with Jill to drop our older son off at work, but I was nearly done by the time he was done with work.
Once back from that, I was finally able to exercise. Pretty late, compared to usual, after 10pm. Watched an episode of Phineas and Serb with our younger son.
After that, I played Star Citizen for a bit, then off to bed.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Friends, Games, Health, Me, Microsoft, Photos, Star Citizen, Technology, TV, Work | No Comments »
Relax, Solar, Errands, DuoLingo, PS4, Animal Crossing
By Derek | April 8, 2020
A great Wednesday. (8th)
Got up around 10a today. Today would normally be a work day for me, but instead it’s a free mental health and wellness day prescribed by my bosses at work. They gave each of us an off the books day to take and relax. Of course, we’re still in “lockdown” and now, even, the parks are closed, so there really isn’t anywhere to go.
Watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb with our younger son while I exercised.
We took our new solar panel outside to test it today, as it’s a bit sunny. Jill watered and checked up on the garden while I set up and tested the solar panel. The USB2 and USB3 ports worked perfectly to charge my iPhone, and the plug port charges our Suaoki “generator” battery. I didn’t get to test the USB-C port because the only C device I have is the Switch. I didn’t really want to take it outside. I’m sure it works. Of course, I haven’t run any real tests to see how _long_ it takes to charge stuff.
We left the house just to take our older son on an errand, and pick up a couple of RedBox movies, then came almost straight home, we did play a little Pokemon (from inside the car) on the way home, though.
Also forgot to mention I started DuoLingo again. I’ve got a three-day streak going already. Look me up on it, if you want.
We left the house again to take our older son to work, and stopped at the convenience store to watch the bats fly. It turns out, there’s an overpass (at Thousand Oaks and Wurzbach Parkway) that houses tons of bats. About the time the sun goes down is when they start flying on their nightly journey.
When we got back home, I put the PS4 hard drive on to test, then I worked on my office some more. Making progress, but still lots to be done.
Ate dinner, then left to go pick up our son from work. Took him home, then headed home.
I started playing Animal Crossing. No, not that Switch one, I’ve never played Animal Crossing before, and didn’t really want to find $60 for it, so I figured I’d play the DS version, first. I was able to locate a copy of it, so, started playing it tonight. Played for maybe an hour. Boy, that Tom Nook, he’s a hustler, ain’t he?
Time for bed.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me, Nintendo, Photos, Technology, TV | No Comments »
Plants, Office, Brother, PS4
By Derek | April 7, 2020
A good Tuesday. (7th)
Slept in a bit again.
Jill and I put together the shelf for the plants, as the grow lights arrived.
Worked on my office some more, throughout the day.
Called my brother for his birthday. He was on the phone, so we ended up chatting a bit via text.
Forgot to mention the other day that I found it neat that I could use a standard USB “clonetendo” controller on the PS3, since our niece hadn’t left a PS3 controller for me to test with.
Our niece came by to print a couple of pages, and grab her mail. She also brought a malfunctioning PlayStation 4 Slim for me to look at. I think I figured out that it’s the hard drive going out. I pulled the original drive, popped in a small spare I had, and re-initialized the console, it seems to work fine now. I still need to test the original drive before we decide what needs to be done with it.
Went to bed pretty late. Seems to be a trend at this point.
Topics: Family, Home Improvement, Me, Photos, Technology | No Comments »
Health, Camera, Herbs, Snacks, PS3
By Derek | April 6, 2020
A good Monday. (6th)
Got up really late, since I stayed up so late last night, but exercised first thing. Just read the news while I exercised, didn’t watch anything.
Got our package from WyzeCam today, I ordered a new camera, and set it up. Unfortunately, where the camera needed to mount, the wall plug is blocked by furniture. So, we needed to get a surge strip with a flat angled plug. Altex has a nice one with three AC outlets, and two USB outlets. I went in to get it.
We all went to Lowe’s after that, to get a shelf for Jill to have an inside the house place for herbs and plants. Of course, only she went into Lowe’s. She ordered some grow lights, they should be here within the next few days.
Also swung by a convenience (essential?) store to pick up some snacks. One thing I got was bean dip and hot cheetos. I don’t really care for hot cheetos, but they are good with bean dip.
Worked in my office cleaning, organizing and scanning documents.
Our niece left a PlayStation 3 here that wasn’t working. I cleaned it up, plugged it in and it seems to be working. I was able to add my PSN account to it. I’ve never owned a PlayStation, but made a PSN account a while back for something else. I think maybe to get a free game.
Topics: Family, Health, Home Improvement, Me, Photos, Technology | No Comments »
Slept, iPad, Lasagna, Star Citizen
By Derek | April 5, 2020
A great Sunday. (5th)
Slept in a bit. Exercised first thing, though.
As noted yesterday, I helped my dad by a new iPad Pro. He forwarded me an article, quoted and linked here:
… there are nice Android tablets out there, and Amazon’s Kindle Fires are an incredible value and probably the best cheap content consumption devices you can get. But if you want the best tablet experience, you should really just get an iPad.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/04/do-yourself-a-favor-and-buy-an-ipad-during-lockdown/
Wow. That’s really high praise, especially coming from an Android-focused website.
Went to our favorite BBQ place to pick up some home made lasagna from Joe.
Also, made a quick trip to the gas station to put a few gallons on my car, since it was practically on empty.
Came home and started cooking the lasagna.
Found this cool “documentary” about an in-game Star Citizen event — yes, it’s fictional, but very well done. https://youtu.be/3V7GFDI7KqE (19m)
Stayed up super late playing Star Citizen. I played with a couple of guys from my Org, and a new guy who’s just getting into the game.
Become a Star Citizen and get 5,000 free Credits
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enlist?referral=STAR-H4F3-KZZH
Topics: Apple, Entertainment, Family, Food, Games, Health, Me, Star Citizen, Technology | No Comments »
Work, iPad, Movie
By Derek | April 4, 2020
A good Saturday. (4th)
Regular work day for me. I do have that free PTO day coming up next Wednesday, so that will give me a little bit of extra weekend. Just been feeling kind of blah, lately. Felt pretty good yesterday digging into the internals of my primary product, but still haven’t been able to solve the issue.
Exercised after work.
I walked my dad through buying a new iPad Pro today, including AppleCare+, an Apple Pencil, and a Smart Keyboard Folio. He should get it around the 25th. I made sure to recommend that he get a cell chip included. I made the mistake of not getting the cell chip with my last iPad, and I regret it. Essentially, I almost never take it out of the house, since hooking it up to hotspot is a pain. Also, AT&T only charges us $10/month for an iPad on our data plan.
Watched Bad Boys II with Jill.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Health, Me, Movies, Work | No Comments »
Work, Health, Glance, TV
By Derek | April 3, 2020
A quiet Friday. (3rd)
Regular work day for me. Slept until I had to get up work. Was almost late to the living room. Didn’t have time to exercise.
Got some good learning accomplished. I learned how to pull down and extract a Glance image first thing. I was able to make a bit more progress on the issue I’m working, with the help of one of our devs.
After work, I exercised, then we all watched the final three episodes of The Mandalorian season 1. I really enjoyed how they ended the season, and it’s super cool that they brought back “the blade”. I won’t spoil it for you.
Bed time!
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Health, Me, TV, Work | No Comments »
Work, Health, Engineering, Red Belt, Pokemon
By Derek | April 2, 2020
A good Thursday. (2nd)
Regular work day for me. Morning exercise to start strong.
Feeling kind of blah the last few days. We need to get out more, except we’re not supposed to.
My work has offered a free PTO (personal time off) day, that won’t count against my time off. I scheduled it for next Wednesday (which will extend my weekend by a day).
Got a few things done, though, good work today. I’m transitioning more to an engineering role, so I’m still moving pretty slowly, and learning a lot.
Our younger son had his martial arts class over Zoom again. They had testing today, and his teacher said he did about the beat he’s ever done on one of his tests. He moved up to red belt!
After I got off work, we left to take our older son to work. It’s his Friday, so we won’t have to do that again until Sunday. We played a little bit of Pokémon while we were out.
Topics: Family, Health, Me, Work | No Comments »