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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Work, Boredom, Bacon, PDF, Essentials, Halo
By Derek | March 28, 2020
A great Saturday. (28th)
Regular work day for me. I was able to get a host evacuated and maintenanced. This one had a bad stick of RAM. Of course, we use ECC RAM in all of our servers, but still, I wanted to get it replaced ASAP.
A new level of boredom. My next door neighbor — wait, let me start at the beginning.
Jill was cooking up some bacon downstairs, she had it ready, and called me down to get some.
When I came down, though, it sounded like there was a lawn mower going right outside our front door.
I unlocked the door and stepped outside. Yep, it was my next door neighbor mowing our grass. I asked him what was up, and he said he was outside because his work was making him take a week off. He didn’t have anything to do, so he was going to cut all the lawns on the block to the same level and make it look really nice.
I said, carry on, and thanks! We just had our grass mowed a few days ago.
I was asked by a family member for some PDF editing software. I ended up recommended either LibreOffice Draw, as it can load and save PDFs without adding a Watermark, or Mac Preview (my family member already has a Mac).
The task was to take a PDF of scanned images, and break them down into smaller files (under 15MB each).
With Mac Preview, to remove pages from a PDF, you could…
- Make a safe backup. Move it somewhere other than your working directory.
- Duplicate the original PDF into X number of parts.
- Keep the first X number of pages, then remove the rest from the first duplicate.
- In the second duplicate, remove the first X pages, keep the next X pages, remove the rest.
- Rinse and repeat.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202945
If you already have a Mac, this doesn’t cost you anything except a bit of time.
I made a trip to the Essential Store. I mean, you can’t really call it a convenience store any more if it not under county lockdown, right?
Literally my first time out of the house in four days. Well, except for the gardening stuff.
When I got home, I decided to play some Halo. I bought the Halo: Master Chief Collection on Steam yesterday, and got it installed. I decided to start at the beginning, which according to Microsoft, is Reach. So, I played through Halo: Reach tonight. I completed it. It took maybe 6-7 hours. Great story, it’s an origin story, which is why it’s a prequel. I won’t spoil it for you, and tell you who’s origin it is.
Time for bed.
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Work, Groceries, Garden, TV
By Derek | March 27, 2020
A great Friday. (27th)
Still tired. Slept in until I absolutely had to get up for work.
Regular work day for me.
Jill went to Costco this morning, and had to stand in a super long line to get in. She got there about 10 minutes after 9 am.
Line 
Distance 
People
Costco opened at 9:30 am. At 9:38 am, while she was still in line to get in, a Costco employee came out and let everyone know they were already out of toilet paper.
She was able to get some paper towels, a case of water, and some dog food for our next door neighbor.
She left again, to see if she could go find some more kiddie pools for the garden. Four stores later, she finally located some, at an HEB. Three different Walmarts were completely sold out.
Exercised after work, watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb with our younger son.
Our younger son and I helped Jill put in the two new pools, with river rock in the bottom and planting soil on top of that. She then planted all the sprouts that she had been growing in the seed starter.
After that we all watched an episode of Star Trek: Picard.
Watched an episode of King of the Hill before bed.
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Tired, Work, Garden, Zoom, TV
By Derek | March 26, 2020
A good Thursday. (26th)
Got up tired today, went to sleep too late last night.
Regular work day for me. I was able to complete testing on the issue that I got solved, in our staging environment, so I started deploying to our production regions. Of course, I found another issue that needs corrected in the first region I deployed to.
Jill put in our garden today. It’s something she had been planning for a while. It looks really nice.
We have three pools, but they don’t look like they’re enough for the amount of vegetables that we want to grow, so we’ll have to get more.
Exercised after work.
Our younger son had his first martial arts session via Zoom this evening. He missed attending the Tuesday class.
Watched a few more episodes of Jessica Jones season 2, nearing the end. It gets weird. Still good, but weird.
Stayed up too late again.
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Health, Work, Neighbor, Banana Bread
By Derek | March 25, 2020
A great Wednesday. (25th)
Exercised first thing. Watched an episode of Knights of Sidonia season 2.
Regular work day for me. Work went well, I was able to complete testing on the issue that I got solved, and move it into our staging environment, where I was able to start testing it there. I didn’t complete that before the day was up, so I’ll have to get back on it tomorrow.
Found out that our neighbor is fine from the accident last night. Apparently, his truck hydroplaned in the rain, and he lost control, jumped a curb, broke the axle and put the passenger side of the truck through a fence. His truck (Ranger) is demolished. We didn’t see the accident, but we saw the truck being towed away, and we were worried that it was his, and he was hurt or worse. Good news, he’s walked away from the accident, he’s fine, and no one else was in the vehicle with him.
His son takes care of our yard, came over and mowed our grass today, we got to chat with him outside, and found out the details of the accident.
Jill made banana bread today. It was her first time, and it was very yummy. I think maybe she used too many bananas, cause it had to cook for a long time. The outside got a little crispy, but still tasted very good. Fresh baked banana bread is one of the best things in the world. My mom used to make banana bread when we were kids, and it was something I always looked forward to.
Jill went to take our older son to work herself this evening, we’re trying to abide by the stay home order to the best of our ability, so our younger son and I stayed home.
Got a few things done before bed, but just stayed up late talking and reading the news. I finally crashed about 1am.
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Work, Costco, Supplies, RedBox, Dinner
By Derek | March 24, 2020
A good Tuesday. (24th)
Regular work day for me, I was able, with our engineers’ help, to get my issue I’ve been working on solved! It took me three full days, but I have a much better handle on our container software, CI (continuous integration) system, packaging system, image build system, and dev environment. All things I hadn’t worked with much before last Friday.
After work, we took our older son to work, then went to Costco to buy gas. While we were there, we noticed there was no line to get in. There was, however, a “scoreboard” at the front of the store, detailing all of the staple foods they were out of. Milk, TP, etc. We went ahead on in anyway. I should have taken a picture of it.
We were able to get some more essential supplies for Jill’s step-mom, then played a little Pokémon on the way back to pick up our older son from work.
I almost forgot to return yesterday’s RedBox rental before 9pm. I made it with a few minutes to spare. I didn’t end up renting any new ones, as the county-issued stay-home order went into effect at 11:59pm, and I wasn’t sure when I might be able to return it easily.
Back to the house for dinner, some lounging, and then bedtime.
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Work Schedule, Stay Home, Prepared, Family, Movie
By Derek | March 23, 2020
A busy Monday. (23rd)
Today is my first day at work this week, since I’m working a Mon-Fri schedule temporarily to mirror one of our systems engineers schedules, who’s departing the company.
Worked with him, and the other Ops engineer who’s doing training with him this week.
We read that Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff ordered Bexar County (which includes San Antonio) to shut down all non-essential businesses and shelter in place by 11:59pm local time Tuesday, tomorrow.
So, I read the list, and there are actually very few businesses that aren’t considered “essential” at this time. Churches, bars, restaurant dining rooms, anywhere large gatherings take place. Of course, it also prohibits home gatherings with people outside the household. But you can travel to work if your work is essential, and you can travel to essential businesses to utilize their services.
We think we’re fairly well prepared for a few weeks (maybe longer) of stay at home, but we’re still trying to help our local extended family get what they need.
Jill was on the road most of the day today, as well, visiting stores to gather essentials for them.
We took our older son to work and back, then watched a movie, Employee of the Month before bed. It has some funny parts, but it’s a bit slow starting. It’s worth a watch if you can stream it free for sure.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Law, Linux, Me, Movies, Technology | No Comments »