2020 05 18 Weekly Update
Welcome back!
Howdy internet friend, and welcome back to my blog. I usually don’t give myself props, but I feel like I should give myself a shout out, as this post marks six weeks in a row with regular weekly updates. Wow! This from the guy who takes three weeks to move a book sitting on the floor next to him to the bookshelf five steps across the room! But I digress. In this weekly update post, I want to one again share things that I did last week both professional and personally. As I’ve done the last few weeks, I’m going to make sure that there are different headings for each, so if you are only interested in personal crap you can easily skip the professional section, and vice versa. Without any further adieu, I’m going to just get right in to it!
Professional
I once again find myself pleased with the effort I put in last week, which is difficult for me because I am notoriously hard on myself. I managed to work on all three of my projects last week, though I did come to a decision on one item. For the last few weeks, I’ve had “fix CSS for mobile” on my list, and I’ve put in time every week trying to sort it out. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to need to redesign the theme of this site as my effort to sort out the CSS for mobile just isn’t working correctly. Right now, I’m using a custom theme I designed, but trying to visit this site on mobile sucks out loud. Best I can figure, there are two ways to resolve this issue. I can either:
- Pick a different them and attempt to audit all the source code to ensure there are no vulnerabilities or backdoors in it, OR
- Learn how to create a new custom theme and transfer the posts to that new theme
Since my code auditing skills still leave something to be desired, and all I have to do with option to is copy the folder containing all the previous posts, I’m going with the second option and doing a redesign. This will be a time consuming project, and until I can get my new monitor working with my old laptop, this will be on the backburner. However, once the HDMI to VGA cable comes in, I will start working on this project. So keep a lookout on the blog over the next few weeks for the coming redesign. My intention is to also do a post on how I redesigned the blog, and what resources I found myself helpful in creating a custom theme.
With regards to the Go programming course, I am now roughly 75% complete. When I am finished I will do a more thorough write-up and if I decide to recommend the course, I’ll also include links to purchase it for youself. Overall I’ve been mostly enjoying the class and found it’s very helpful coming from a Python/Ruby background. It’s been helpful in figuring out complex topics that confused me before. Not saying that I totally understand how pointers work now, but I feel more confident in my understanding of them. I think that I will be able to pick back up my copy of “Black Hat Go” that I stopped working on because it was too advanced. Since the Go course I’m working on ends with concurrency - which is the thing that Black Hat Go starts with and confused me, I think I will be in a good shape moving forward. Check back in the next few weeks to see if this prediction turns out to be true. One reason I am hesitant to recommend the course right now is that it doesn’t look like the author has answered any of the questions people ask. I understand that the course is a few years old at this point and the author can’t be expected to answer every question. However, I would hope that the author would at least put in some time to answer a few of the questions, and I haven’t really seen that. Once I’m finished with the course I will decide whether or not to recommend it, so also keep a lookout for that content as well in the next few weeks.
Finally, I managed to put in a little more work updating the architecture document for the MUD I’ve been working on. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been focusing roughly 75% of my morning time to finishing the Go course so I can shift focus to writing more code later. Once I’m finished with the course, which should happen in the next few weeks, I can focus more energy in finishing the architecture document and coding up the first version of the MUD. I’ll post more updates as development advances, and once I’m finished my plan is to open source all the code and make it available on Gitlab, since I’m avoiding Github until they stop doing business with ICE.
Personal
Last week was pretty good for me personally. An early present came that greatly improved my work experience - a widescreen LG monitor! It’s almost bigger than our TV and it made work last week much better. I can put both virtual machines in the same screen directly in front of me. Already my neck feels less pain, and my eyes feel less strain. Yeah I’m a poet, and a rapper, and I know it! I am really appreciative of my wife, who loves me so much and gives me things I wouldn’t otherwise give myself. Overall, my life is so much better for having married her! It’s wonderful being married to someone who loves me so much that she gives me things I wouldn’t otherwise give myself. Marrying her three years ago was far and away the best decision of my life! But enough about how much I love my wife, let’s move on to other personal things that happened to me last week.
As I mentioned above, while I’m waiting for the HDMI to VGA cable to come in the mail, I’ve got to do all my personal laptop/desktop work from one screen. Yikes! I thought about moving one of my extra smaller monitors back and forth each morning, and I might still do that. However, for the time being I think I’m going to try and work on just the laptop screen. While this is difficult and the advantages of at least one extra monitor are not lost on me, if it doesn’t impact my productivity too badly I’m going to stick with just one monitor. I will report back next week whether I was able to keep using only one or if I needed to drag a second monitor out to work. My suspicion is that I will need a second monitor, but I will see if/when it comes to that.
ACNH
Last week I did something selfish and stupid. When Daisy Mae came around to sell turnips, I bought 2000 at 104 bells/turnip. So I spent 208k bells, which has been tracking upward but is consistent with what I’ve spent the last few weeks. Well, turnips got as high as 146 bells/turnip on either Thursday or Friday, but I selfishly held on to them, waiting and hoping for higher prices on Saturday. So instead of selling my excess turnips at 146 bells/turnip I sold my remaining 290 at 59 bells/turnip. What the lesson I should take from this is, “don’t be selfish and hold out for higher prices. When the prices get as high as you’ve seen them all week, sell your remaining turnips.” Would I have been vindicated if the prices shot up on Saturday? Yeah, probably. But that wouldn’t have taught me a lesson! Not saying that I actually learned my lesson, because it’s highly likely that I will do the same thing again this week, but at least you, the reader, can benefit from reading about my foolish mistake and hopefully not make it for yourself. I did end up making about 36,000 bells in total, so it’s highly unlikely that I learned my lesson and will probably do the same thing again next week!
Finally, my employer has a Slack channel for ACNH and I went in and requested some assistance in getting the two fruits I’d been unable to find after spending about 20,000 Nook Miles on tickets to procedurally-generated islands looking for the fruit I didn’t have. Fortunately, two of my awesome co-workers traded me apples and pears for bells, and by tomorrow my island should have every fruit available! Having exotic fruits helped me raise enough money to get the last upgrade on my house this weekend as well, so I have maxed out my house. All in all, I’ve been grinding maybe a little harder than you are supposed to in the game, and I still struggle with a game that requires paying bills and doing chores as a form of entertainment, but overall I would say that I’ve greatly enjoyed my time playing Animal Crossing. It’s a wonderful game that’s allowed me to have some nice dates with my wife that allow us to get out of the house, even if it is in a virtual world while sitting on our couch. In these dangerous pandemic times, we have to find comfort where we can. Whether that be the feeling of the wind through slightly rolled down car windows on my weekly trip to the grocery story, or in getting to go on dates with my wife in video games. Until there is vaccine or treatment for COVID-19, we have to do what we can to stay safe and reduce our exposure.
Conclusion and Twitter suggestions
That’s it for this weeks post, internet friend! I’ve got an idea for a post about my experience consulting that I’m working on, but I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to post it here or on LinkedIN. As much as I’ve been really disappointed with LinkedIN as a platform and resource - I’ve found two of my last three jobs from Twitter and I’ve never once found a job on LinkedIn - I’m just not quite ready to give up on it as a platform. While it is true that I previously deleted my account when Microsoft bought LinkedIN, I’m still looking to find some benefit to the platform outside social engineering. I’ve written articles there hoping to generate some buzz, but it doesn’t seem to work. It’s for those reasons that I am leaning towards posting the article here and not LinkedIN, but I’ve not come to a decision yet. Finally, below are my Twitter recommendations for the week. You’ll probably notice that many of these recommendations are the same as last week, with no new ones. That’s because these people are awesome and if you aren’t follow them yet, you totally should be!
@cetolyne - great friend, awesome programmer, super helpful!
@blenster - cool maker, very positive, well worth a follow!
@GWeessies - very smart person doing interesting research!
Marley - first place champ! Marley is one of the best on Twitter!
Null Coder - another awesome person to keep an eye on!
That’s all folks! If you enjoyed this post check back later for more content, and I hope you have an excellent day and a great week!
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