lennys May 09, 2024

Moving on...

So I finished up with the "Beyond" book a couple of days ago, and now I'm about to start on a new Python book. This one is named "The Big Book of Small Python Projects", written by Al Sweigart who wrote the last book I went through. This new book has a lot of programs I'm going to use for code-writing practice. I'm not sure how long it will take me to get through this book, but I bet it'll be a few weeks at least. Hopefully I can devote at least 2 hours or more to it each workday. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of Python, but I still have a long way to go before I can start coding my own programs from scratch. I have my next book picked out already. It's named "Fluent Python" and is huge, so that one will definitely take a couple of months to work through. I haven't ordered it yet, I'm going to wait until I'm most of the way through with my current book. I recently got assigned a batch of IP addresses from ARIN that I haven't done anything with yet, but I'm starting to formulate a plan in my head. I have a /24 of IPv4 and a /48 of IPv6 addresses now, and I think I'm going to assign them to the Cisco gear I have in my cabinet at work. But first I have to figure out how to get NAT working on my Mikrotik router. I have NAT working partly. It translates a public IP into a private IP that is assigned to my big Cisco router, so I can reach it from anywhere on the Internet, but I wasn't able to get the outgoing part of NAT working on my Mikrotik router last year, so basically I can log into the Cisco router, but I can't ping out to the Internet from within it yet. It's strange, I set everything up according to the documentation, doublechecked it all several times, fiddled with it, and even got a friend at work to help, but we couldn't get the outbound NAT to work for some odd reason. That was last year, and I've upgraded the Mikrotik OS since then, so I'm hoping I can get it working this time. I still want to start using Ansible with all of my servers, routers and switches, but that's a more long-term project idea. It'll be neat if I can get it working. I'm going on vacation in June. I'll be driving up to Oregon and staying at Mom and Doug's house for a week. I'm looking forward to it, going to take my bicycle along and hopefully get outside while I'm there. If the weather's nice we'll probably go kayaking on the river too. Mom has already enlisted my help cleaning up the back yard, pulling weeds from the garden and stuff so that'll be fun to do. I have a big Stephen King book I'm going to take along with me, plus my laptop and Python stuff so I think I'll be able to get a little bit of work done while I'm there. Should be a fun relaxing time.

lennys April 29, 2024

Beyond the Basic Stuff, again...

I'm done with my second round of "Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python" now, and my brain is a little fried from it. The last chapter was about dunder methods, amongst other things, and the way they work can be a little difficult to wrap your mind around if you don't pay close attention. Overall I'm liking the books I've read that were written by "Beyond"'s author, Al Sweigart. I have another one of his books on the way from Amazon now, but that'll wait for a bit while I read through "Beyond" one more time. I want to give the material a good chance to sink in before I move on to anything else. Eventually I'll be ordering a Python tome called "Fluent Python". It's so big you could use it as a weapon, or strap it on as body armor. But for the moment I'm going to try and focus on writing code regularly. The next Al Sweigart book has over 80 programs written in it, so it should be good practice for me. It's tough finding time for everything. I have a paid account at datacamp.com which I've been wanting to resurrect, as that site has lots of Python material. I also want to start working with Ansible, which is written in Python, and hopefully use it to manage my routers, switches and servers. I also am spending a few hours every workday going over my CCNA material - I split my day up between that and my Python books, so I'm spending at least a couple of hours on both each day. I don't do any of this on the weekends, at least not yet so I can give myself a bit of a break. Besides, I have old projects at home that are languishing in the dusty corners of my apartment that deserve some attention. And somewhere in amongst all of that I do my daytime job Thursday through Monday, go to the gym three times a week, run errands and do chores, go for a bike ride once or twice a week, and deal with whatever else comes up during the day. Somewhere in there I'm supposed to be developing a business too, that will make use of all the stuff I've learned over the last several years. That's more of a "someday, maybe" project. I have "immediate" stuff, "urgent" stuff, "not so urgent" stuff, "longer-term" stuff, and "someday, maybe" stuff all competing for my attention. I'll be taking some time off in a couple of weeks and going up to visit family in Oregon. I'm looking forward to that. I'll be taking my laptop and a Python book with me to fill in the quiet time, but I'm not going to put any pressure on myself about it. Whatever I get done while I'm there, I get done. Hopefully the weather will be pleasant and we can all get outside for a while. Should be fun.

lennys April 20, 2024

Beyond the Basic Stuff...

So I just finished working through my newest book, "Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python". Good stuff. It covers a lot of more advanced Python stuff, along with best practices and object-oriented Python stuff. I'm going to go through it again just to make things sink in, after that I'll either log into my DataCamp.com account and work on Python stuff there, or get another book. I have a couple of them picked out but I haven't made up my mind which one to get. One of them is over a thousand pages long (yikes!). This is all still a means-to-an-end, since I want to start working with Ansible eventually. I've also been going over my old CCNA book trying to refresh my memory on working with Cisco routers and switches. It's a little frustrating going through that material and realizing how rusty I am, and how much I have to do still to be proficient. On top of that I want to work through another book I have that's about Mikrotik and RouterOS. Since I have a Mikrotik router that's the backbone of my entire setup it would behoove me to learn how to use it better, so I don't have to bug my coworkers with basic stuff when I run into an issue. I have a long way to go. On a side note, I got some work done on my bicycle last weekend and I'm planning on taking it for a ride tomorrow. It'll be the first time I've ridden it in a few months, and since I want to start getting more exercise I (hopefully) will be riding it more often. The weather in the Bay Area is perfect right now so it should be an enjoyable experience. Today is a gym day so I won't be riding today, instead I'll be pumping some iron. Earlier this week I tweaked a muscle in my left arm so I'll have to take it easy a little bit. It's not hurting right now and I want to keep it that way. If I can stop eating like a pig I might actually lose a few pounds this year, but boy it's difficult to hold back when I eat. I've always had a big appetite, which doesn't work in my favor most of the time. Plus I don't regularly eat my vegetables like I should, so losing the padding I have around my waist is a slow process. I have some vacation time scheduled for the middle of May which I'm looking forward to. I'll be driving to Oregon, and this will be the first "big" road trip in my truck. I don't anticipate any issues, so it should be a fun drive. I'm going to take my bike with me, and if the weather is warm enough we might go kayaking on the river there in Eugene. Should be a fun, relaxing trip out of town, and it'll be good to see Mom and Doug again. I'm still looking for a good business idea. I've read some business books over the years about "how to sell", but the part I'm stuck on is "what" to sell. I've got a fair amount of computer networking experience under my belt, but I haven't yet figured out how to leverage that into a profitable business. The best thing I've come up with so far would be to sell my services racking servers, setting them up, doing the networking stuff etc. but that would conflict with my daytime job so I can't really pull the trigger on that yet. Maybe someday I'll figure it out.

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