Projects

Weekly Wrap Up

Wrap-Up: Lets Try to Be Positive Edition

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It’s been a hot minute since I really posted. To be blunt, I am pretty much just endlessly frustrated lately over the state of everything. Particularly the state of politics here in the US. I mean, I knew it would be shitty. I didn’t think it was going to be THIS relentlessly shitty, this quickly.

Lets take a peek inside the background at some journal topics here…

Or not. Lets try to, I dunno, be positive I guess. Whats been going on lately that is not awful.

Learning

Like last year, I started doing some leader-led training courses after work a bit. Its been, less rigorous than the ones last year, and mostly consisted of doing a Udemy course. This year’s topic so far has been AWS, or Amazon Web Services. Which probably powers like 75% of the internet or something. I am actually not sure why it was being offered because I am not sure we even use AWS at work, I think we mostly use Azure, but then, I am not part of that side of the business, so I actually have no clue what we use.

The Azure courses were full though.

As for AWS. The training specifically was to prep for the Amazon Cloud Practitioner certification. I probably should go take it. I am pretty confident I would pass it easily. The only part of the entire course I stumbled on was the weird, added later, 6-point diagram thingy. I can’t even remember the name of it. Like a lot of training of this nature, the whole course felt a bit like a sales pitch for AWS. But this particular section, which the class says was added later to the exam, felt very very very much like sale pitch nonsense.

Sales jargon and bull shit terms are my kryptonite. I can listen to and absorb some technical this and that about EC2 and S3 Blocks all day long. But this 6 points of whatever, fuck I just instantly glaze over. Don’t feed me “feel good” buzzword crap, please. Ever.

I also started doing a bit of Cybersecurity stuff (again) through some work access to something called Immersive Labs. I have no idea if its any good, so far I have just been doing basics, because it was required for work, but I seem to have full access, and it feels like something I should dig into more.

Back on the cert issue. I should go take the exam. I never did take the exams for CCNA or Pentesting for the courses I took last year. I don’t personally give a shit about certs. It shows you paid money to take a test somewhere. Feels very much in the vein of “feel-good jargon”.

Whatever the case, I have kind of wanted to better understand AWS in general for a while, and the course, overall did a great job of it. Most of it’s tools are well beyond anything I would probably ever need or use, but there were a few that were interesting.

First is the basic EC2. These are essentially their “on-demand servers.” These are not nearly as mysterious as I thought, and once you spin one up, you can log in and do all the normal Linuxey backend stuff one would expect. My thought was, of course, I could migrate my current web stack to AWS from Digital Ocean. I’m not sure I would really save anything for all that effort through. I do not have the need for some crazy highly flexible scalable environment. I’m not concerned about performance really. I’m just running a few WordPress instances against a basic database. At best, I would probably break even on my current spend for a bunch of migration work while supporting Amazon more, which I am already leaning more and more against.

Second was S3 Buckets. This is data storage in the cloud. I’ve considered using it for my backups a few times. It seems useful for some complex cloud app or systems. Even with Glacier storage, which is not on demand retrieval and is the cheapest, I would end up spending more than my current spend there. Right now I have a Microsoft Office 365 Family Plan and a bunch of segmented syncs off my NAS. That gives me 6 TB for around $70/year, AND Office for everyone in my family. That’s a great deal. Rough estimates in the calculator on Amazon, with only my current usage, puts me breaking even with Glacier.

Lastly, and the one I am more likely to use is Amazon Lambda. This one is really interesting, and it seems to just be, a way to run scripts int he cloud. I’m not sure I would use it a lot, but I could definitely see writing some simply monitoring/notification scripts and sticking them in there running once an hour or so. You get a ton of free runs per month too, which means it probably would cost me nothing int he end.

The Fediverse

Something that has stemmed from all the crazy stupid nonsense in the world is pushing more to move to use Federated social media more. I set up a Pixelfed account, which so far is mostly just reposted toy photos from IG. I have been poking around some Lemmy instances a bit. I am trying to use my Mastodon account a bit more. And BlueSky. Though that is less independent and federated.

Being more active in the Fediverse does not have to preclude not using mainstream social media. I do kind of plan to try to just, I dunno, focus less on just endless angry news. Not to say I am going to stop paying attention, just, more, add more attention elsewhere, also. Balance the awful with the good, or something.

I honestly just, hate what seems to be happening with Social Media. I hate that the mindset is that “Social media was a mistake” and “Facebook etc are evil.”. They really are, but also, it was not always this way. Social Media is good, and can be good, but they (social media companies) get too much out of making everyone fucking mad and miserable. I want to go back to giving a shit about family and friends on Facebook. I want to follow local news without brain-dead idiots filling the comments.

Oops, I am ranting a bit. Let’s be positive.

Language

I don’t have a ton to say about my language learning, but I did want to mention it. I feel like I have crossed some sort of threshold. I am not amazing at it, but I find lately I have a much much easier time understanding Spanish, and in a fairly passive way. I also was inspired a bit by a Reddit post, and have gotten way way more aggressive with lessons. There is a lot of repetition at the point I am.

A lot.

Muchos

I have been getting a little too bored with it. My current strategy is to finish the first bubble in a section, then do the first story, then skip ahead to the exam. I don’t need 5-6 more bubbles to prepare for that exam. I got it. This has actually been working pretty well. Especially because the repetition isn’t limited to within a single lesson section, it extends beyond to future lessons.

I am not doing it as aggressively as the Reddit post person did. They did one of these per day. I am doing one of these ever 2-3 days. I have done some other languages, but I have been working on this course for too long.

I also feel like I am retaining it better, because I am less bored.

Other

I have not been up to a lot much else. Like I said, the mess of everything just kind of saps my give a shit, which is frustrating. When I have not been doing class, I have been playing Infinity Nikki, or Fortnite, and we have been rewatching all the Marvel movies. Most of that is more Lameazoid topics.

I have avoided it (somehow) but everyone in my house has been sick for the past few weeks as well. Kind of sucks because it means the shop is closed. This is a slow time of year for that anyway, at least one of the other local businesses in the area there said they close for January usually anyway. Also, the bulk of the sales for the shop are on ebay anyway. The bulk of the space is for managing ebay items, the shop portion is just a nice “bonus”.

I’ve also been fitting in a lot of serious hardcore Bookmarks sorting. I kind of touched on this recently I think, I mentioned setting up Link Ace, which I have already dropped, for now. I’m just creating my big link list Digital Garden now instead. It works fine, it’s easily searchable. Another nice benefit is I am being reminded of a lot fo things I bookmarked to “look into later”. I have a nice sorted pile of ‘to-do projects” that I had completely forgotten about now. I can ignore them in a whole new way this way.’

Opinion/Editorial/Life

A Project a Year in the Making

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Ok, calling it a project is a bit of a stretch. Its something I have been doing for the past year, that really worked out well. Its not even something I can show off, quite the contrary.

I have been cleaning up my old Facebook posts.

Its something I have tried to do a few times, except Facebook does not really provide a good interface for browsing old posts. Its there, but its clunky and prone to “refresh and start over.”

A lot of my early posts were thing like, Friendfeed and Social Media shares or even just straight Tweets posted to Facebook. They don’t serve any purpose. Not that anyone is scrolling way back to see all that garbage.

I wanted to delete it though, for a variety of reasons, then even moreso with all this AI crap feeding from everyone’s data.

So last year, I had a bit of a revelation. Facebook, has a daily “Memories” page, that shows all your old posts from that day, to encourage you to reshare your old posts as memories. Each post on this page, has the standard Facebook menu on it, which includes a delete option.

So I simply, made a point, of once a day, deleting everything.

Not everything, but a lot.

One thing I learned was that my current trend of “not really using Facebook”, has been my “always trend.”

This just goes back to a large desire to just, being everything back to my own control and my own blog. Its always kind of been that way, but lately I have been actively pursuing it. Even though I post to Bluesky and Mastodon, everything feeds back here in hidden categories, so in the future, I don’t have to sort it out and archive it. I already have the archive.

Another Facebook related one is Instagram. I have always kind of disliked Instagram because unless you use the platform a lot, it doesn’t show your stuff to anyone. If no one is going to see my stuff, I may as well just post it to my own blog. I have been doing that some here already with my “Snaps” posts. Just, posts with single photos. I am going to set up something similar over on Lameazoid with Toys stuff, and maybe game screen shots. I have a ton of toy photos to schedule put for daily posts. I also have a ton of random game screen shots. It would not even be the first time I made a website around random screen shots, I had a Geocities site for that back in the days of dial up.

Anyway, I am kind of happy I managed to keep up with my Daily Facebook deletions all year. It really shows now because my “Memories” pages are suddenly very barren.

Weekly Wrap Up

Weekly Wrap Up (11.17.2024 to 11.24.2024)

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I started posting these, a while back but they kind of fell by the wayside. I guess some of it just got covered in regular posting, and some of it ends up on the other blog, if I bother. Probably, I decided I didn’t really care. But maybe I should care. So here we are.

I have actually done a few of my “wishlist todo” projects this week. I have recently been hardcore digging through my too many bookmarks problem in Firefox. This has been an ongoing effort for a few months now, but I started on a phase two of this project this week. Specifically, I set up a separate bookmarking app, for some of these bookmarks. After some looking at options, I very lightly started using Raindrop.io, but I also remembered that I really want to not rely on other services that may randomly raise prices, limit features, or just plain close.

So instead, I set up LinkAce, in my docker set up. It was, surprisingly simple. Some of my attempts at docker set ups fizzle out. The biggest thing I have to watch for in the docker-compose files is for port use. Everything thinks its alone and wants to exist at port 80 or 8080. I have them numbered up now, 8080, 8081, 8082, etc.

The long term sort of idea.

  • Link Ace will be a sort of, well sorted repository of things that could be useful when I want to go look for them.
  • Anything that is a text or article gets clipped and dumped to my text archive.
  • It needs clean up, but I have been working on a series of markdown files that work as a sort of wiki for coding information.
  • Various bookmarked todos get put on a proper list. “To Read”, “To Watch” “To Play” etc.
  • Anything I may want to buy gets put in a big spreadsheet with pricing etc. I have actually already done this, since these bookmarks were already sorted together.
  • I have a zillion little projects bookmarked, these will all go in a list as well, or possibly (Probably) get sorted put into a Joplin notebook for each project. Like, sometimes I research a bit of a coding idea, them bookmark several different code snipped I may want to use.
  • Things I actually regularly use, will just stay in Firefox. The idea is to get Firefox itself down to maybe, 50 actual bookmarks. Not, 10,000. I am not sure I am exaggerating with that 10,000.

Anyway, projects this week, I got side tracked. I hung up an antenna on the side of the house today. I may put it on a proper mast later, but for now, I just stuck it on the leftover DirecTV mast that hangs off the back of the deck. I have not tested it yet. I doubt I get a ton of channels, but I should be able to get WAND and WBUI, which are both in town.

Everything else is like 40 miles away. I doubt I can get them with the antenna where it is. I literally have done this sort of thing for a living as my job for almost 20 years now. I have a “pretty good idea” of how well this placement will work. For now, it will work for what I want, which is the occasional need for local news, The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and maybe The Super Bowl.

I am not even going to be here for the Macy’s Parade, so that is… Kind of a bust.

Anyway, in the past, I could get a few channels just laying the antenna out in the deck and hooking it up. If I were super cool I could use some of the spiffy work tools I have to peak the signal etc. But I am not cool like that, also, the position won’t let me actually swing the antenna all the way around to point AT 90% of the towers in the area.

Another project I made a lot of headway on, because I can do it easily while playing Throne and Liberty. Years ago I purchased a bundle of Piano courses from a teaching website. I have been, for many years, meaning to go through and capture them with OBS for offline use, and just, archival in case that teaching website ever goes offline. YT-DL did not work annoyingly. Even using browser cookies. So a manual OBS recording, then clipping them apart in Clip Champ is the way.

In other less exciting news, I got new shoes. My old ones had a big hole in one side and I threw them out. I went to three whole stores, then bought some boring Sketchers, because I almost always buy Sketchers. Then today, I went to put on my old old old shoes to go work outside and discovered my “old old old work shoes”, are the same as my new shoes. Except the work shoes are all gross and filthy.

This wasn’t intentional.

What I Listened to This Week

My DIY Projects Opinion/Editorial/Life

The Shop

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So lately I have been a bit busy in the background helping my wife and daughter with a big project. They are opening up a vintage clothing store. They already sell online, but they are now working on opening a physical store as well. Technically, my daughter is opening up a store, and my wife is going to be running her online stuff out of the back. They have talked off and on about renting or buying a space and found a location a few months ago that fits their needs and budget.

They have done a lot more of the work than I have, mostly because they have more available time, but also because they seem to want to do a lot of it so they know its done the way they want. I have been doing a lot of little side projects though related to it and helping out with moving the totes of stuff they have to sell in store or online to the shop from storage.

One of the first big projects was stripping and refinishing the old wood flooring. The previous tenant was an HVAC shop and the floors were kind of gross and a bit rough. We rented an upright sander from Menards and I got to have the fun of running that for a few hours one afternoon. It was surprisingly easy to work actually. The hardest part was lifting it in and out of the van because its heavy as heck.

“Pro tip”, the handle, at least on the one we got, comes right off of you remove the locking bolt. Its much easier to transport in two pieces.

They spent the next few days doing additional detail sanding and then putting several coats of polyurethane down on the sanded floor. Its not perfect but it looks a heck of a lot better than it did.

The next major step was painting the walls, another project I didn’t participate in, mostly due to my day job.

I have constructed a few things though and still have more to do.

One thing we looked into was hanger organizers. Amazon had a few options, but we decided that we could just build a few. I bought up a bunch of PVC piping and constructed these stand up racks for spare hangers.

I filled the bottom half of each one with sand to give it some ballast so they don’t fall over.

Another simpler project was adding wheels to a lot of the furniture used in the backroom space so its all easier to move about as needed.

One thing my daughter really wanted were these dressing rooms, which were constructed out of some black iron pipe. They make “fancy” decorative pipes, but it was cheaper, and probably sturdier, to just buy some actual pipes. The main issue there was the coating on actual pipes is very gross and dirty and comes off easily, something you don’t want in a clothing store, so we sealed the popes before installing them.

Just for comparison, the first dressing room photo here, is the same corner where I am sanding in the above image.

Probably the most complex project was the store’s sign. We will probably upgrade eventually to something mounted on the building, but for now I have built this nice stand up sign. They originally were looking at A frame signs but the wind is a big problem with those falling over. Then we looked at some swinging signs and decided those would work much better because the sign itself will swing instead of folding up and falling over.

We also decided the pre built models online were kind of cheap, and I have the tools and ability to build things, so we just bought the wood to build a sign. Its also much heavier this was to make it more resistant to the wind as well.

I am not sure I have ever really talked about their businesses yet. It is “two businesses”. My daughter runs the Vintage clothing stuff on Lady Lettie Bug which means items of a particular style and type. My wife has R&T Thrift, which is a bit more general resale.

Most of the items come from estate sales. They will often go early to find things they want for sure, this is more often where the nicer higher value items come from. They also have made friends with several of the people who run these sales and will do a buy out of the leftover clothing after the sales. This helps them find more “hidden gem” sort of items for cheap, and helps the estate sellers clean out the homes.

Not everything from the buyouts is useful though, and a lot of the work is sorting through it all. The amounts can range anywhere from a single closet to an entire minivan full of clothes.

It gets sorted and separated into several categories.

  • Some of it is just gross or ruined and goes into the garbage.
  • Some of it is just damaged but could be cut up into rags
  • Some of it is just slightly damaged or discolored but otherwise usable, most of these items are either donated or put out at the curb for free.
  • Some of it is decent but doesn’t meet a value threshold for online, these often go into totes for a later garage sale. Pretty much everything above this line also gets laundered and cleaned unless it still has tags and is clean.
  • Some items are nice and have been found to have sold online, so they get put aside to be listed.
  • If it is a certain style or type, anything from the last category goes to my daughter as vintage instead of thrift.

One big benefit of the shop space is that it has hookups for a washer and dryer, though we don’t have a set there yet. We do a LOT of laundry and have gone through several washers over the last few years. This isn’t helped though by the washer space at the house being small so we basically can only really use smaller, cheaper, washers.

Anyway, its been a fun new adventure. There are social accounts and weblinks for everything over on the landing page for the business if you are interested in vintage clothing items.

Music My DIY Projects

Project – Record Shelf

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Since I’ve actually taken an interest in vinyl records, One thing I really wanted to do was build a simple little record shelf. This would serve two purposes basically. One, it looks cool. Two, it gives me another way to decorate the basement a bit. The concrete block walls are a pain to work with, especially the outside wall where all my music stuff is. The temperature changes mean nothing sticks to it long term. In other areas I’ve hung frames from the rafters using small chains. For this space, I’ve got a nice shelf I can use and swap out what’s on display as I get more records.

It wasn’t an overly complicated project, but it took longer than planned since my wife had the garage full of garage sale stuff and I couldn’t really reach any tools. Also it’s been blazing hot out, and I don’t care to work outside in that much heat. On the problem of the heat, probably sometime int he fall, I’ll drag the shelf and the lower shelving out and stain and seal it. Neither plays very well with the heat either.

The shelf itself is a handful of 1×4 pine boards. It’s a bit more complicated than it might seem at first. For starters, I like the look of inset joints over just using metal L braces, so I went and inset and glued the shelves inside the sides. This was a bit tricky because I don’t actually own any bar clamps. I also added the little back catch pieces under each shelf, so the albums wouldn’t be resting on the wall itself. This was slightly complicated because there is a power conduit running down this wall i had to work around. The shelves themselves are notched around the power conduit as well. I also only have so many clamps large enough to glue these, so it took like a week of “clue one piece then come back.”

Each shelf also has an angled groove cut along the length so the albums sit slightly down in the shelf and are more secure. The whole thing is screwed to the rafter above for support. In fact the whole thing is much sturdier than I thought it would be. My main worry is that the albums would tumble off, damaging the records, but now that it’s up, I actually am not worried about that at all. Everything is very stable.

Also, my original plan was to stick the CD holder I had been using back on the lower shelf, in front of the new shelf. I immediately hated this look. But I also realized that there was a small gap near the bottom, so I added one more smaller shelf to put (most of) the CDs on. I really liked this end result. Plus the board I used here was a different type of wood that was just around, and it’s a much sturdier type of wood than the pine, so I didn’t end up needing to add a center leg like I had worried I might need to do.

I suppose it’s also worth noting the equipment itself. The entire set up is pretty minimal. Everything is centered around this small mixer and amp combination.

I originally bought the mixer for use at my PC, I wanted to be able to play games on one machine, and watch a video on another machine, and merge the audio out one headset. That didn’t really work out to be as useful as I had hoped, but instead I get to use the mixer for my music instead. The amp I bought to go with some nice JBL speakers I had, that needed 2 wire connections to work, also connected to the PC originally. Except I never ever use anything but a headset on my PC, so it was a waste.

Connected to the Mixer are the input options. They can be played all at once, since it’s a mixer not a switch, but I’m not sure why you would want to. There is a Raspberry Pi hidden under the little shelf that connect to my music library and can be controlled remotely via a webpage. I have this kind of mediocre CD player that I’ll probably replace one day with something better, but still compact. Even a portable CD player would probably work better. There is also an Amazon Echo connected, but since Amazon jacked up their music service, I don’t use it as much. I also have an aux cord hanging off for connecting to a phone.

Lastly is my record player, which I bought at a garage sale. It works pretty well for my needs though. It’s an Audiotechnica AT-LP60, nothing fancy.

Lastly I have this recently acquired audio switcher. Right now I just have the one set of speakers, but at the very least, it will be easy to add a second set outside so I can listen to music while out on the deck or porch under the deck out back. The output selector will make this much easier to accomplish and it’s something I’d thought about getting at some point before, then I came across one at an estate sale.

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