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 »
Work, Solar, No Python, Training, Movie
By Derek | April 1, 2020
April Fools Day. (1st)
Regular work day for me. Got up at a good time, and got my exercise done.
Our solar panel got delivered today, sweet! Suaoki 100W Foldable Solar Panel. I can’t wait to go outside to test it out.
Had to cancel our second Python Meetup in a row. Of course, this is something I volunteer for the community, so there isn’t any lost revenue, or anything. It’s just a bummer.
Worked through some migration training for an upcoming container migration on my primary product.
Watched Bad Boys.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Health, Home Improvement, Me, Movies, Photos, Technology, Work | No Comments »
Health, Academy, Pokemon, OLPC, Instant Pot
By Derek | March 31, 2020
Tuesday. (31st)
Slept in a bit, then exercised as soon as I got up.
We took a trip to Academy to buy some essential sporting goods, and then Lowes to buy some more gardening supplies.
We played a little Pokemon while we were out, but no raids or anything.
I worked on upgrading our OLPC XO-1 laptops after noon. We don’t use them a bunch, but they are neat little computers, so I keep them updated. I also took the time to test out a microSD to SD adapter to fit into them, in case we needed to store any data. We originally bought our first one directly from OLPC, using the Give One Get One (G1G1) program, but have since picked up a couple more on eBay. They work well, are extremely rugged, low-power, and have a bunch of good educational software built-in.
I made the Ham and Cheesy potatoes for dinner in the Instant Pot again, it’s always good for a quick meal. I have the recipe uploaded here, if you want to check out the Recipes category.
We took our older son to work, and picked him up and took him home after work.
Time for bed.
Topics: Family, Health, Home Improvement, Linux, Me, Technology | No Comments »
Slept, Health, Customer, Chiptunes, Office, Movie
By Derek | March 30, 2020
A good Monday. (30th)
Slept in. When I got up, I exercised first thing. Still staying on that every day, regardless of if I do it in the morning or not. Currently, my streak is since Sept. 29th of last year. I broke my current exercise streak when I hurt myself and needed surgery, but it was Jan 1st – July 22nd.
Helped out a customer via iMessage, she had a very simple question.
If you’re a fan of either metal or chiptunes (or both), or just need some MSDOS nostalgia, check out Master Boot Record at Bandcamp. I went ahead and bought the Floppy Disk Overdrive digital album.
I worked on cleaning my office. I got some good progress made on my closet.
We took our older son to work, Then came home and our younger son and I played some Star Citizen.
Become a Star Citizen and
get 5,000 free Credits
We went and picked up our older son from work, then came home and watched The Karate Kid II. I remembered it being good, but now that I’ve watched it again, I actually remembered that I liked it even better than the first one.
Time for bed.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me, Microsoft, Movies, Music, Star Citizen, Technology | No Comments »
Slept, Health, Pokemon, PowerShell, TV
By Derek | March 29, 2020
A good Sunday. (29th)
Slept in. Exercised “first thing” after I woke up.
Did some work in my office today, nothing major, really.
We took our older son to work, and played a bit of Pokémon while we were out.
Went to play Star Citizen, and decided to write a Powershell script to start all my requirements for it, instead. It’s not fancy, but I thought I’d share: https://github.com/derekmoyes/powershell-stuff/blob/master/start-sc.ps1
Once we got back from picking up our older son from work, we watched the season finale of Star Trek: Picard.
I think they did a great job with it, we really enjoyed it.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Home Improvement, Me, Microsoft, Star Citizen, Technology, TV | No Comments »