Ramen Junkie

Weekly Wrap Up

Weekly Wrap Up (12.17.2023 to 12.23.2023)

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It’s that time of year again, when everyone is cheerful and celebrating and partying and buying gifts. That’s right, it’s my birthday. And these days, there isn’t a lot of partying or buying gifts. Which isn’t really a big deal. I have long gotten to the age when I really don’t care much for all of that.

It’s always kind of been a sort of, blessing and a curse having a birthday this time of year. On one hand, you end up being around more family more often so you end up with more “token gifts”. Often you at least get like, a cake or something, as a secondary dessert to whatever party was already occuring. It also just gets overshadowed by this other dude’s birthday.

It’s also just more meaningful when you are young, like I said, these days that doesn’t matter much these days. It’s just another year, another day. I am not even that old yet, though all things considered, I am likely on the downturn of “halfway”. I should probably buy a motorcycle or a fishing boat or go skydiving or something…

Mortality is kind of weird. I am not sure I really want to think about all that at the moment.

Anyway…

It’s going to be weird at work in about a week. We don’t really take any trips or anything and so back in like, September or October, I started doing math with my vacation days and found that I had a LOT of them. I have not worked a full 5 day work week in months. I only worked 3 days this week and will only work 2 next week. But starting next year, it’s back to normal.

I have also signed up for this CCNA course through work, so for the first few weeks, I get to work, then come home and do like 5 hours of virtual training each night. Its not paid time, which is fine, the cost is covered though. One of the nice sort of perks through work is that I get access to a few paid training deals, and we are allowed to do the training out of hours if we want.

I am almost always trying to learn something new. I almost always have at least one online course that I am periodically working on. Currently, I am doing a Javascript course, a C# Course I have kind of abandoned, a Godot4 course which has been fun, making cheesy little games, and more recently an AI/Machine Learning course.

There is also my constant Duolingo learning as well. I gave up on Norwegian for now. And Spanish was getting boring again. I wanted to try the new Music course Duo is rolling out but it’s iOS only for now. So I picked up my third planned language, Japanese.

I feel like, Duo’s Japanese course, is not super great, if you know nothing about Japanese. Fortunately, I have picked it up pretty quickly because I studied Japanese back in High School. It’s been over 25 years and I don’t remember a lot of it, but it’s coming back and it has helped me breeze through learning the Katakana and Kanji, and I was already familiar with the basic sentence structure concepts. Duo is full of new concepts and words though, since early parts of Duo courses are definitely geared towards “I am going to be a tourist”. My High School learning was more, “I am learning the language.”

Speaking of Japanese, last Sunday, I went and saw Godzilla Minus One. It’s fantastic, I recommend seeing it. I am looking forward to going to the black-and-white version that was recently announced. It has a lot of feel of the older Godzilla films, without being quite as cheesy “guy in a rubber suit and cardboard buildings,” to it. It also isn’t all “action drama” like the US-made Legendary films Godzilla. Though I really like the Legendary movies and that version a lot. Godzilla is really terrifying in it, for not really being the main focus of the film.

Anyway, time to wrap up, I hope to do the usual bloggy thing of some yearly wrap-up posts soon. Also, I did not forget about Advent of Code, I just didn’t do it this year.

Have a Happy Birthday to all.

No wait, that’s not right…

Happy Festivus!

Other Photos

2023 Decatur Downtown Postcard Signs

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Every year the city has around 20 or so giant postcards laid out downtown around a little park. Every year I try to take a walk down there and take some photos of the ones I find interesting for one reason or another. They are numbered, I think maybe there is some voting involved. I have never voted. They are created by local businesses and groups.

I just thought this one looked nice. It’s from the Staley Museum. Named for A.E. Staley, who was the founder of A.E. Staley Manufacturing. There are several things named for him in the city here, the large Staley Building down of Eldorado, the museum, Stayley Credit union, probably others. Decatur is very big on Agriculture and the Stayley business was making corn starch.

One of the local animal shelters put this one out. I thought the animals were cute. I am not sure I’ve ever been there, we do kitten fostering sometimes, but we do it through the County Animal Shelter.

I have no idea who sponsored this one, but hey, who doesn’t love dragons.

This one is from the Children’s Museum of Illinois, which is here in town. With its Nutcracker themed art that’s pretty nice. Nice aside from the almost unfortunately placement of that rat tail. I thought at first the dancer had a weird tentacle leg.

Not a lot of them have 3D elements, and I thought the stained glass effect was nice. It is from Holy Family Parish & Schools, which I assume is a church.

Theater 7 is a local theater group. I’ve been to a few of their shows and one of their members used to be a coworker when I worked at the TV station. This one is advertising their upcoming A Christmas Story Musical. Which we’re going to see in a week or so.

I’m not sure who sponsored this one but that old bus terminal pictured there is the centerpiece of the central park and appears in a lot of Decatur themed iconography.

Another mystery sponsor, but I like penguins a lot, so it’s secretly my favorite.

File this one under, “It’s kind of jankey looking but it’s clear that someone put some effort into it and thought they were doing pretty good so I guess it’s alright.” I’m kind of a sucker for that sort of thing.

I don’t know what Dennis Lab School is, but I thought this one was nice.

This one is a little basic, but that centerpiece is a proper fancy 3D piece which makes it look pretty cool.

The last one that I took a photo of, there were a few others that I did not photograph. I actually skipped this one until I realize that it had the “Bikini Tree” in it. When I do my walking in the park, I walk by this tree. I have no idea who keeps painting it but it has new colors all the time (it has Ukraine colors though for over year I think). I imagine it’s someone from the nearby college.

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