I revived the ability to keep a specific small engine operable by figuring out what the actual transmission drive belt was for it, instead of the completely wrong belt everyone had been using.

Turns out I was a tooth short on the length, but it was close enough that someone else took it the rest of the way.

I started lifting weights at age 56. I’m not stopping until I’m dead.

I got my company to start using an environmentally sustainable solvent called d-limonene rather than continuing to use petroleum based solvents which were much more toxic.

So on my college campus there was this nutty (by the standards of the time unfortunately might be considered normal now) guy who would preach. The students found it funny and many would gather around and ask him to tell them about the homosexuals or the communists because he would go off on these crazy stories and tirades which again the students found funny. One day the crowd grew mean and eventually one guy stole his sweater. I confronted him and had him give back the sweater and the mob mentality feeling subsided.

I sat down and through trial and error, and reading. I got a firm grasp on DNS and was able to set a well thought out DNS setup for my homelab.

I wrote an entire book. The manuscript still needs some editing but for the first time, I’ve never been closer to having a published book

My first bunny passed away in January. He was the first pet I had as an adult who was strictly my responsibility and no one else’s. A rabbit’s lifespan is typically 8-12 years old. My gray boy lived until he was just a few weeks shy of 13 years old.

I’m proud I took such good care of him and proud he stuck around so long. I still miss my fella a lot, but I’ve used what he taught me to adopt and care for 2 rescue rabbits; one who was dropped at a shelter when she was 3 and another young guy who was found dumped in a parking lot. They are going to be just as spoiled as my grey boy was.

Learned that I’m valuable for who I am, not what I can do materially.

I went to a women’s shelter to go over safety planning with a social worker to leave my ex last week. That was a hard step to take. Wish me luck.

Back when I was in a band, we played a show at the same venue I’ve seen some of my favorite bands play (on a Monday, we had basically no audience, but it was still cool). That show more than most is gonna stick with me, it was awesome.

I guess I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been taking Microsoft certification exams since 2007 and literally passed each one on the first try. Literally none of my friends / colleagues have done this.

Not sure what that says about the exams, but shrug

Also proud that I took $2,500 in June, invested it in options, got it to $6,400 in September and withdrew the original $2,500. Now I’m working with House money. I did take a $364 loss this week, but I’m still at $5,500. My attitude and perspective have changed. I don’t react emotionally anymore or make revenge trades that end up blowing up in my face even more like I used to.

Today, along with a non-profit I helped found, I organized a local clothing swap.

I built a water temp monitoring system together with my dad.

It monitors the water temperature at a local swimming hole and publishes it on a website so you can check it before heading down.

I did all of the coding, and had never done anything like that before, but breaking it down into five parts made it decently simple.

We use a raspberry pi zero, a DS18B20 temperature probe, and a webhotel with php and MySQL.

Breaking it down into five parts, the code had to accomplish the following.

1. Get the raw data from the sensor.
2. Format and clean the data to be useful.
3. Error check and possible retry if needed.
4. Send the data to the website.
5. Display the data on the website.

1. Was fairly easy, there are plenty of guides on the internet.
2. This was interesting, the data is sent back from the probe in a variable length, depending on how close to zero C it is, if it reads a negative temp it also shifts where the data is read, I remember it being super annoying to consistently format the data close to zero C so after several attempts I just made the script pretend that the temp was 0c when it got too close to bother with it.
3. Here I remember building an install script that would prepare a database for the system, then I wrote a test submission page for manual testing and proper submission page for the real thing, these were written in PHP. The data was sent from the Raspberry Pi with curl.
4. This took the longest, we went through several versions before settling on the current version.

The script on the Raspberry Pi is written in bash, as we are powering the RPi with a battery through a timer, I configured a systemd service to run on start, run the script, and wait 30 sec then shutdown.

This is to give me time to stop the script if I need to perform maintenance, normally it runs the script, shuts down, and the timer cuts power shortly thereafter.

I didn’t want to consistently cut the power as that might corrupt the file system over time, so we made sure that the Pi shuts down gracefully.

To save power we only run it every 30 min, the power source is a motorcycle battery which lasts about six months.

The internet connection is provided by a kind neighbor who has allowed this probe to connect through their WiFi.

Breaking generational trauma by actually doing therapy and allowing myself to be vulnerable. Shit sucks lol

I’ve built like 1/5 of the furniture in my house, which is pretty neat.