Health, PC, Game, Groceries, Delivery
By Derek | March 22, 2020
A good Sunday. (23rd)
Got up a bit late after building the exercise bike late last night.
Did my exercise first thing. Watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb with my younger son while I pedaled. The new bike is different, and sits up quite a bit higher, for a recumbent bike. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Jill left the house to try and get a bunch of supplies that either we or our San Antonio family need.
Our younger son and I stayed home, to minimize the amount of people already out and about.
I spent some time working on a system for head tracking for games on my PC. I got it working, finally.
Our younger son and I played some Star Citizen. We spent a good amount of time doing some mining in space, and filled up the cargo hold of the mining ship we were using (the Argo Mole).
Unfortunately, when we got to the port to sell the ore, we were griefed by a “pad rammer” — someone who tries to ruin others’ gameplay enjoyment by crashing into their spaceship while they are trying to land. Jerks.
Jill got home and we all wend to unload the groceries, then left the house to play some Pokemon together. We stayed in our car, practicing good social distancing, etc. We also delivered some of the groceries to Jill’s step mom who os elderly and lives alone. She needs our help and attention right now during this.
Once we got home, we went to bed.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Friends, Games, Health, Me, Photos, Star Citizen, TV | No Comments »
Friend, UniFi, Exercise Bike
By Derek | March 21, 2020
A long Saturday. (21st)
We got up a bit early this morning to run some errands, I mean, to stay safely quarantined in our home.
Called my friend for his birthday, he’s 50 this year. We had a good chat.
While troubleshooting an issue with my media server, I discovered that my UniFi Cloud Key and controller were offline, so I reset the Cloud Key expecting to simply restore from the auto backups.
Of course, once reset, the controller couldn’t _find_ any backups. Fortunately, they’re stored on an SD card in the Cloud Key. Of course, though, the SD card is formatted EXT4, which my Mac can’t read. Good thing I’ve got several Raspberry Pi computers available that can read EXT4 easily. So, a quick copy off the card, and “scp” to my Mac, and I was ready to restore the controller.
Let the restore run for about two hours, nothing happened, so I cancelled it. Gonna have to reset the Cloud Key again and try it again. Not tonight.
Met up with the family in PHX via Zoom, to just check on everyone and ensure everyone’s healthy and happy.
Spent another couple of hours chasing down our San Antonio family, via phone, to do the same, but also offer our assistance if anyone was in need. Jill has already been helping her step-mom find goods that are sold out in many places. It’s been a little challenging getting milk and some other staples.
Spent the rest of the evening building our new exercise machine.
No, seriously, this thing took us about four hours to assemble. The first 45 minutes — I kid you not — was getting it out of the box. There are so many pieces, and they were all packing taped together. Ugh. I was physically exhausted by the time we were done.
Time for bed.
Topics: Apple, Family, Friends, Home Improvement, Linux, Me, Photos, Technology | No Comments »
Work, Scripts, Schedule, Pokemon, Funny
By Derek | March 20, 2020
Busy Friday. (20th)
Regular work day for me. Learning the package creation, addition and deployment process for my product. Essentially, I discovered some scripts that should be in our guest containers that are missing in some of the newer ones. They exist in the package, but aren’t getting deployed correctly. Even though I worked late, I didn’t get it solved, I’ll have to pick it up Monday.
Also, made the decision to work Monday through Friday next week, so that I’ll be able to spend as much time as possible with our departing engineer. As you may remember, my schedule is normally Wed-Sat. Cleared the new schedule with my boss, who actually thought that was a great idea. This also means that I’ll be not working tomorrow.
While I was working, Jill and her sister went out to play some Pokémon. While they were out, they got me a shiny Sneasel.
Once Jill got home, with her sister, we all jumped in the car and went to play some Pokémon. Don’t worry, we didn’t interact with anyone else. Tonight we’re practicing social distancing together.
Also, I renamed my buddy Pokémon. It’s a monster called “Giratina”.
Also, I have to share this, that I found on Youtube. Remember, that during tragedy, laughter is the best medicine.
Went to bed kind of late.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Friends, Games, Health, Me, Photos, Work | No Comments »
Work, BBQ, Pandemic, TV
By Derek | March 19, 2020
A good Thursday. (19th)
Regular work day for me. Still learning tons of new things from our engineer that’s departing.
Jill brought us BBQ potatoes fro our favorite BBQ place. They’re still open, fortunately. The governor (Abbot) has closed down eat-in places, for now, but takeout or drive through is still an option. I hope this panic doesn’t kill 90% of the small businesses. Tons of people can’t work right now. Stores are crazy. This is really the first time I’ve mentioned all of this publicly, but we feel for the most part that we are prepared. We’ve been discussing options with family and friends.
Stay safe.
Watched an episode of Star Trek Picard. We missed last week, so we’re a week behind. Probably for the best, as this week’s episode is a Part 1. I’m guessing next week will be the season finale, so we’ll watch both of them together.
Bed time.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Health, Me, TV, Work | No Comments »
Health, Work, New Things
By Derek | March 18, 2020
A busy Wednesday. (18th)
Got up and exercised first thing.
“Went” to work. Of course, I’m working from home, so there’s that.
Found out that one of our most talented engineers is leaving for another opportunity. That leaves some opportunity open for myself and another guy on my team, though. We spent the day learning and deploying our product. I’ve been involved in the deploy process in the past, but only in a support / monitoring role.
This time, my counterpart and I were actually performing the deployment. The documentation is very good, but even still, as we were both first timers, we did some make a few small enhancements to both the process and the documentation.
As we have six data centers to deploy to, and run “regression” tests in, it pretty much took all day. We started at 11am today, and finished about 1am in the morning.
Time for bed.
Topics: Health, Linux, Me, Technology, Work | No Comments »
Slept, TV, Frito Pie, Star Citizen
By Derek | March 17, 2020
A green Tuesday. (17th)
Slept in a bit.
Got up and did my exercise. Watched a couple of episodes of Knights of Sidonia while I pedaled.
Jill, our younger son and I went to our local BBQ place for lunch, I actually ordered the Frito Pie.
Came back home, we had already decided to cancel all activities at our house this week.
Played some Star Citizen with my younger son. We ended up hanging out with a guy from my org ( Synchronizerz https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/SYNCH ) and did some exploring in his Carrack.
Found this cool Lego Carrack online.
Become a Star Citizen and get 5,000 free Credits
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enlist?referral=STAR-H4F3-KZZH
Stayed up too late, though.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Games, Health, Me, Star Citizen, TV | No Comments »
Sleep Study, Slept, Pokemon
By Derek | March 16, 2020
Pokémon Monday. (16th)
Completed my sleep study around 5am, the attendant told me I did pretty well, he said I slept for about 6 hours. That’s pretty normal for me, but I’m not used to getting up at 5am.
Drove home and went back to bed for a few hours. When I got up, I went ahead and did my exercise for the day.
Jill, our younger son and I went out to play some Pokémon. We did a few raids, and our younger son got a shiny Giratina, but the rest of us did not.
Came home to eat lunch. Still working on the goulash that’s Jill made a few days ago.
We went back out and played a bunch more Pokémon.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me | No Comments »
Health, Library, Appliance, Pokemon, Driving, Sleep
By Derek | March 15, 2020
A good Sunday. (15th)
Got up and exercised first thing. Still doing this every day, just sometimes I forget to mention it. I currently have a streak going since Sept. 30th.
Jill and our younger son went to make a quick trip to the library, to drop off some items, but of course, they’re closed. I used the after hours slot, there a definitely people working inside, but the doors were closed.
We went to Conn’s and Lowe’s to check prices on a new washing machine. We ended up buying one at Lowe’s with a 10 year limited warranty for under $600. Also, Lowe’s has free delivery if you buy new hoses ($29) and a $30 haul away fee for the old washer. Conn’s prices were similar, but their delivery fee is $79 if the price of the appliance is over $600 and we don’t think it included haul away.
We played a bit of Pokémon before I had to go pick up our older son and his wife to take them driving. Mostly they practiced parallel parking, since that’s primarily what they need.
I had my older son drop himself off at work, and then hurried back to the house so that we could go to my sleep study.
Jill told me she wouldn’t be able to stay the night, since we hadn’t found someone to keep our younger son.
So we took two cars, and they both stayed with me until after all the wires were hooked up and it was time to start the study. This study is with a CPAP. Hopefully I’ll sleep well this time.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me | No Comments »
Work, Tax, TV, Movie
By Derek | March 14, 2020
A good Saturday. (14th)
Regular work day for me.
Got one host evac done, then Jill and I had to leave to go to the tax office to work with our tax lady.
Got back into the office and worked late to finish out my day.
Jill and I watched the rest of the episodes in season 1 of Marvel’s Runaways.
We also watched Good Luck Chuck before bed. Funny.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Me, Movies, TV, Work | No Comments »
Work, Mandatory WFH, Emergency, Games
By Derek | March 13, 2020
Friday the 13th.
Regular work day for me, from the office, this time.
Of course, Rackspace announced that Monday, we’re starting pretty much mandatory work from home.
San Antonio announced that Fiesta was postponed, and Trump called a national state of emergency.
Jill went to Whole Foods, she said it wasn’t too bad.
Got home and helped Jill with the groceries, then we ate dinner.
Played a little MW:CoD:Warzone — just the tutorial sections. I _think_ I did ok in the Battle Royale tutorial, it let me win.
Once that was done, I ended up playing Doom(2016) for a bit. I bought it a few weeks ago, and hadn’t tried it yet. I just needed something super fun and super fast paced.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Me, Work | No Comments »