Working from home has been a big challenge during Coronavirus. Mainly because the lack of a dedicated space that I must work in but also because of the sociality of working from home. It is easy to stop work at 2 and hang out with friends or my girlfriend and veg out for the rest of the day. It is easy to get distracted from what I was doing, it is easy to go downstairs and have a bite to eat and read an article. All of these easy things make something simple, like sitting down and typing at a computer hard. It has made me soft; I am complacent with my own laziness, sloth, and ability to “not work as hard” during these times and I feel as though I have mostly myself to blame. I remember working in a kitchen at the Milepost restaurant for a year before I landed my current job at AirCycler (which is a whole other story) and it was honest work. I remember coming home some night, smelling like a rotting garbage bin and thinking to myself, “Wow, I can’t wait to get into the shower and crawl into bed, my body hurts and that was a hell of a day.”
There are things that I am grateful for and some things that I would like to change. Change doesn’t happen immediately though, it happens gradually, through consistent effort. Instead of making a 100% improvement on my life today, making a 1% improvement every day for a hundred days will net me 270% change in wellbeing. The second one is far more sustainable (and is another beautiful example of compound interest). My good friend Henry popped into my mind as I am writing this because he wasn’t hanging out with the gang earlier today. He works very hard and it is something that I admire. 40 hours a week, waking up at 6:30am, all things that don’t seem in reach to me but things that are very attainable through lifestyle changes. Althought right now, maybe this is procrastination with the work that I should be pursuing.
Earlier this day, Russell, Luke, Hannah, Dylan, Sam, Lillian, and I went to Dylan’s house in Saquish and relaxed on the beach. I was a great day with lots of grilled food, tubing, boating, talking with friends, and playing cornhole. The weather was perfect and it was entertaining to catch up with friends and just do whatever I wanted. I did not get sunburnt surprisingly and I was also very akeen to going swimming even though I didn’t bring a proper bathing suit. This is part of the reason why I am writing this. Today was fulfilling, but at the expense of my schedule and routine. I am tired in a good way but yet there is still work left undone. Bubbles needs to be finished and I want to move on from my demons of design and old outdated frameworks (.NET Framework 4.5 and Winforms). I have ideas for the stock market, self-automation, personal business that I want to pursue but do not want to cut my ties at AirCycler. I have enjoyed AirCycler very much and have had a pleasure working on the BATS project as well as this project (Bubbles) I am working on right now. It has been a fulfilling and rewarding expirience that has brought me great people, cool projects, and good connections and I am grateful. I am a bit rambly by now but in some ways I do wish I could go back to the office because I miss interacting with those coworkers. I do miss school because of my friends, the makerspace, and my classes/dorm living. This is the sacrifice that I make.
Some good news and updates about father’s day and life: My dad and I added a roof to the eagle scout sign project on fathers day. This came as a sign of relief and as one thing less to pester my (and my dad’s) thoughts at night. Sally was delighted to see that I had added it and it marked for me on of the last few things that I felt hanging over me from long before this whole thing started.
I am now beginning to realize at this very moment that to make adding pictures to this blog (which I have really wanted to do) making a python script that automates the process of implementing it onto the blog would be really nice.
Continuing: My grandmother’s birthday was recent and, as a surprise, my dad, Hailey, Lillian, and I decided to head out to her and as a surprise for dinner. We ate at Jae’s and I drove the entire way there (We met my dad at intersection between 44 and 495 to drop off the Jeep Grand Cherokee). Right when I was about to turn left and head up the hill to the hotel that Jae’s in under, I had a problem with the transmission. When I gave the car power, it seemed like the tranmission wasn’t enganging and the car wasn’t able to get into drive. I was able to get it to pop and make it up the hill but 3/4 up the hill, the same thing happened again. This is when I became concerned. I shifted into four-wheel drive and was able to get it to catch again and made it to the hotel parking lot. We all got out of the car and my dad wanted to check on the transmission to see if we were going to need to make alternate plans going home. Reverse still worked fine but my dad, 4-wheel or no 4-wheel, was not able to get the transmission to engage. After 336,000 miles, the iconic 2009 GMC Yukon was dead. It was in the shop for new brake calipers (It still had the original!!) just that weekend and now we were stranded 3 hours from home at my grandmother’s birthday dinner. We went in and had a delicious and funny dinner at Jae’s. My grandmother, her sister Lynn, my Aunt Suzanne and JG sat at one table and we sat a table right next to them, but slightly apart. I ordered a burger and picked at everyone else orders. My Aunt Suzanne drove us to the Jeep Grand Cherokee in the hotel parking lot to get us home that night and we played crosswords in the car. My dad began the process of purchasing a car and intended on purchasing a car the day before this all happened. Yesterday, he finally purchased the car he wanted, a pickup truck, something that I think is a really good purchase. I have not driven it yet, nor sat in the interior, but when I dropped him off at the dealership to drive it home, the interior looked really nice. This car should last him a while… I hope.
Minecraft 1.16 and 1.16.1 came out on the 23rd and 24th respectively and Lillian and I have been playing them nonstop. I have been busy with the multi-item sorter (so neccessary) while she’s been gathering some netherrite. I updated both of my servers and started contemplating a dedicated piece of hardware for all of this and for other projects I am interested in doing.
Also of note: I migrated back to Github pages because of the website bloat that Netlify was causing. To properly use netlify, I would have to added a few things that I did not want. I want this site to be lightweight (other than the photos I guess) and want each aspect to be tightly controlled. It was a fairly smooth process in my opinion.
Anyways, I think I have put off work long enough, or maybe I’m ready to just give up for the night and call it a day. Who knows?? (me, calling it a day) Till next time, Jack
Also just want to say briefly that moments ago (you can look at commits now, I found the www. subdomain was not working, currently trying to fix)