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Lessons Learned from Owning a Tesla
In November of 2022, I picked up my 2023 Model 3 from the local Tesla Service Center. I was ecstatic to finally own an EV, and it also happened to be the first car I bought brand new. After a year and a half of ownership and upkeep, I’d like to share some lessons I’ve…
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The Importance of Documenting Your Work
Don’t trust a… finance department. 3OH!3 paraphrasing aside, I recently learned a valuable lesson in documentation. My manager asked me to change the due date on a batch process we run from a week out to one day out. Suffice it to say, this was an easy change to implement in python, changing a “7”…
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Last Lab
I just had my last lab today, probably for a long time. I’ve been on and off again about finishing my degree in CS for 14 years, and I’m finally buckling down to finish the work. Part of this work was the second lab in the physics series, the heat and optics lab. I enjoyed…
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2023, the year of acceleration
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow…
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My Academic Kit, returning to college w/tech
I graduated high school at 18, back in 2010. I started at Eastern Washington University in the fall of 2010 without any real issues. I had a calculus professor that spoke English as a third language, and her _very_ academic lecturer not a teacher attitude made understanding her explanations of complex and new (to me)…
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2022 – A Review
2022 has been the roughest and, somehow, the best year of my life. Strange, no? I thought, for the holidays, I’d write a little timeline update from this year, discuss the trivial and important things, mostly based on how much they impacted me.
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I’ve Gone Electric, and I Won’t Go Back
It’s taken less than 2 weeks of ownership to experience a fundamental shift about personal vehicles. Electric is the way to go for most, with few excuses. I can understand making exceptions for having to tow heavy loads or needing a utility vehicle for work (using it on the job site, not simply commuting). For…
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Goals From Turning 30: How It’s Going at 31
Last year, I set a few goals for myself. I have attained a few, and others are the reason to get out of bed in the morning and kick ass. I wanted to reflect on the amount of change that can happen in a year
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Using Fix Health’s ‘The Outbreak’ is a Pain
My employer recently started a company fitness challenge in the form of a daily steps competition. They decided to use ‘The Outbreak’, a mobile app that gamifies getting steps. Installing the application was the easiest part of interacting with the application.
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Teams vs Slack (not even in the same tier)
I’d like to preface this rant unbiased and fair comparison with the following: I’m a software developer, and a nit picking one at that. It was immediately apparent that Teams was trailing behind Slack. After years of enjoying Slack (despite them taking 6 years to implement a desktop dark theme), Teams felt clunky, disorganized, and…
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TIL Why Symphonies Tune on the Stage
Money. As explained to me by the director of the SFCC community band, it would cost literal thousands of dollars to have the entire orchestra coordinate to show up early before a concert to tune off stage. 100 some musicians, and the director, would all have to arrive, set up, and tune, to then go…
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The Hell of losing your number in the age of SMS 2FA
I was starving, and I decided to call in an order for burritos (you can usually save a few bucks calling in person, instead of using ripoff middleman services like doordash and uber eats.) when I was connected instead to a Sprint customer service line. The problem was I was a boost mobile customer. So…
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My Setup
Just wanted to share my current work setup. 2019 MacBook Pro 16″ Linux without the hassle, and I get great integration w/my phone and watch daskeyboard 4 w/gel wristpad I used to hate the wrist pad, but it’s necessary for me when I’m standing, and it’s not bad while sitting either Logitech M510 (with Logi…
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My favorite books of that I read in 2020
The Bastard Brigade – Sam Kean, 2019 Despite being released in mid-2019, this book makes my favorites list for 2020 because that’s really when I got around to reading it. You’ll have absolutely no problems finding at least one story from this collection that will stick with you forever. Whether it’s the love of the Curie…
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The Year of “Homework”
Like many in the tech industry, I’ve had the following conversation: Me: Hey boss, I want to work from home. Here’s how I can do all aspects of my job remotely. Boss: No way, letting employees work from home would be disastrous for the company. Me: Yeah, ok. Thanks anyways. If that conversation sounds a little familiar, it’s because you’ve…
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Airplay and RaspberryPi
I’ve had an echo dot hooked up to some speakers for a while, but it hardly works, and doesn’t like pairing to my iMac. So, I recycled an otherwise dormant Raspberry Pi 2 unit and now it’s an AirPlay receiver . Why would you want to do this? AirPlay is a fairly robust media streaming…
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On Previous Jobs
Inspired by Elizabeth Irgens’s note, here’s a brief stroll down memory lane where I’ll touch on previous jobs. The Upsell My first real job was working as a retail clerk for Best Buy. This was in the days before their current CEO (2020) revamped their approach to pricing and customer service. As a checkout clerk, we were…
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Portland
I just got back from a long weekend in Portland, one of my favorite cities. I drove around downtown twice that week, Friday and Saturday night, picking up takeout food both times. Both times, all I saw were a few individuals holding up signs. I also saw a few boarded up windows, as well as…
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No, Universities are not Going Away
Recently on HN, Reddit, and even the New York Times, I’ve been reading articles and comments discussing whether or not COVID-19 is the death knell of in-person universities. They make some decent points: Colleges did make the transition to online Students were able to learn Especially in America, large groups of people in a small room won’t be medically…
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25 Minutes
I just jogged for 25 minutes straight. That’s the longest I have ever jogged continuously in my life. If anyone ever asks if couch to 5k works, I’m going to give them a resounding yes! I’ve been at this for 5 weeks. In the beginning, I was blowing my heart rate up to 176bpm after…
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Hiking from Steven’s Creek to the Rocks of Sharon
I went on a hike this beautiful Memorial Day weekend up to the Rocks of Sharon, a famous hiking destination in the Spokane area. Instead of starting from Iller Creek on the North face of the Dishman Hills, I opted to start at the Stevens Creek trailhead. It’s closer for me, coming from the West…
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Pi Hole
I just got a raspberry pi 3 working with a 3.5″ screen using Pi-Hole and running the PADD status board. My largest concern was in buying a 3.5″ TFT from Kuman, and not from adafruit (official vs. not). Fortunately, Kuman has a repo for all of their drivers and displays that work seamlessly with the pi 3. So after installing…
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In Defense of the Convertible
I’ve come across some articles (this one in particular) that bash on convertibles, and don’t pull the punches. I have also noticed, during my recent search for a new car, that American domestics have all but given up the convertible form factor. Your options, as of 2019, for a new convertible are limited to the…
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Deploying Laravel on DreamHost
I first started using DreamHost shared hosting in college, as an affordable means of hosting web projects. It includes domain management, no hassel SSL certs, MySQL databases, and more. It’s a great solution for most PHP projects. My largest frustration was being unable to host more interesting projects; due to the restrictive nature of shared…