Archive of posts from 2018

Dec 31, 2018 2018 Year in Review

Another year has gone by. It was a fine year. I have no complaints. Took Jack and Annie to Europe and I turned 50. I think those were the highlights. This is also the year that I’ve put the ‘pay off the mortgage’ idea into overdrive. For the past few months, I’ve basically been paying two payments each month to get it paid off. If I make a big payment tomorrow, I think I have around 18 months to go. This makes me very happy. There’s really no reason that I need to pay this off so quickly, but I like the idea of being completely out of debt. Financially-speaking, the year has been good. I’ve saved 37% of my take-home pay, which is good. Not great, but good enough. I’d like to say that I’m about 15 pounds lighter than I was at the start of the year, but I’m exactly 1/2 pound lighter, which is basically a wash. I had been doing good up until my birthday, at which point I proceeded to regain all the weight I had lost throughout the year. Oh well, I’ll try again. Let’s take a look at my goals for the year and see how I did.

Nov 18, 2018 Project Time

I’m getting back into doing DIY projects at home, which makes me very happy. In general for the past few months, I’ve been thinking way too much about work and not doing things that make me happy. I’m shifting things back into proportion that will make me happier. The other day I finally bought myself a new sewing machine. It will get delivered soon, which makes me happy. And I’m going to use it for a big new project, which should be fun. I’ve also made a few stools for my brother’s pub, which was fun. I still wouldn’t call myself a good woodworker, but I’m improving which is all I can ask for. Still haven’t done much welding though and I would like to get into that. But today I spent a good chunk of money on supplies for my new hush-hush project that’s going to be a gift for someone. I’m looking forward to working on that for the next few months.

Oct 28, 2018 Living Life

I just realized that this website has been down. I’m not sure how long that’s been true. Probably since I had to reboot after the last round of updates I installed. Is it a big deal to me? Nope.

Apr 24, 2018 Getting Started with the Google API for Reading Public Calendars

I have a few public calendars at work that we use to show events taking place in various departments. I am creating a digital sign for one of our buildings and I’d like to be able to grab the events for the current day and display them on the digital sign. I’m most familiar with ruby right now, so I’m writing a ruby script to do this.

Mar 30, 2018 Root Logins with Key Required

I love the fact that I still have so much to learn. I was thinking that I should set things up so that root can ssh in to a computer but only if they have keys set up. One very quick google search and I had my answer.

Feb 13, 2018 Splitting a PDF File

I had a pdf file that was too large to email, but I needed to email.  So I quickly broke it up into two smaller files.  I used this command:

Feb 2, 2018 Cost Per Mile

I have some time to kill before podcast recording tonight.  I was balancing my checkbook and took a quick look at the report it generated for last year.  I noticed that all my auto expenses for last year were $2532.10.  It breaks down like this:

Jan 27, 2018 Low-Carb it is

About a week ago, I went to the library to return some books.  Since I didn’t have any other books on hold to pick up, I head over to my usual aisle (the last one with books about learning different skills) to see if I could find anything to read.  Luckily for me, pretty close to the books on making stuff are books on gardening and cooking.  I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but totally based on their covers, I grabbed the book “Unbowed” about an environmentalist in Africa (which I haven’t started yet) and “Why We Get Fat”.  After I read the second one, I thought because you eat more calories than you burn.  How could there be an entire book about that.  I was going to put it back, but I didn’t see a more interesting gardening or woodworking book, so I kept it.

Jan 11, 2018 Let’s Get It Started

The weather has gotten unseasonably warm and melted all the snow. It’s supposed to get cold again, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bike to work a couple of days this week. The second day was in the rain, so my backpack, jacket and pants all had a huge muddy streak up the back. Fortunately, that came on the ride home, so it was good.

Jan 9, 2018 Starting Off Right

When it was below 0F last week, I saw some people out biking and admired them. I thought if it got above 15-20F, that I would ride too. So this morning, I had a nice, slow ride to work to start the year off right. It’s around 27F, so a little chilly, but pretty nice compared to last week. I felt good, though, a second thin pair of socks would have been helpful. But that’s ok. I want to start riding to work more and this is part of the process.

Jan 7, 2018 2018 Garden Planning

Now that it’s 2018, it’s time to start preparing for my 2018 garden. The last two years, I’ve had plenty of success with tomatoes and peppers. Last year, I also got a ton of beans and some great flowers that took no work. I also got some spinach and lettuce. And I got a single pumpkin, watermelon, cucumber and two zucchini. That has pretty much hooked me on gardening. Aside from the food, which is fun. I found it incredibly relaxing to come home after work and pick tomatoes or flowers in the garden. So I want to keep it up.

Jan 4, 2018 Installing Rails 2.5.0 on Mac OS High Sierra

Since I’ve just switched to my new laptop running High Sierra, I thought it would be good to update my rails software. The latest version is 2.5.0. I downloaded it and compiled it and got an error message when I tried to install rails.

Jan 1, 2018 Happy 2018!

Happy New Year! It’s 2018! This is the year that I turn 50. I feel like I should mark the occasion somehow. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do the week of my birthday, but I’m not sure about the rest of the year.