lennys December 21, 2023

It works!

So I got my new "Contact Us" form working on my main website and on my LS Enterprises site finally. I had worked through a tutorial I found online, but ran into issue after issue, so I tried out a different contact page tutorial I found on mailtrap.io's site (THANK YOU!!), and managed to get it working. So now you can email me by going to either lsenterprises.com/contact/ and filling out the form, or by going to lennyshort.com/contact/ and filling out that form. They're not pretty yet, but I'm satisfied for the moment. Coding blows my mind with all the little details. I would imagine that feeling is rather common among people who do this sort of thing every day, but for a relative novice like me, it's still staggering how much you have to know in order to put a website online start-to-finish like I've done. From getting an AS number from ARIN to setting up a colocation account at the data center to procuring a secondhand server and router and figuring out how to set them up to installing all kinds of software and dealing with the issues that lie therein to the actual coding of the website's backend code to making it look pretty, it's mind-numbing when I try to take all of it in. And I've just scratched the surface so far I think. On a side note, I'm going out to Oregon in a few days for Christmas. My brother is bringing his wife and 3 kids with him so it will be a full house at Mom's this year. I'm looking forward to the change of scenery. I'll be driving a rental car there and back mainly because I don't trust my old truck to make the journey any more. After my birthday comes and goes in January I'll be looking into trading it in on something newer, so I'm looking forward to that too (cautiously). It will be a learning experience for me because I've never bought a vehicle with a trade-in before, plus I'll have to get financing for it. When I bought my first new car years ago I got the financing done through GM which was easy, but this time around I'm hoping to get it financed through my credit union so I can get a better interest rate. We will see.

lennys December 15, 2023

Finally...

So the blog is up and running again after a few days of being broken. I've been attempting to get my Contact Us pages to work, and this necessitated a server move. Well, several server moves. I decided to separate all my domains by putting them each on their own virtual machine, so now this blog has a VM all to itself. It seems wasteful, but I found that I needed to isolate some issues onto their own individual VMs to make any progress, so I made 5 new VMs and now I'm in the process of setting up the domains on each of them. I'm going to keep my original web server VM for future use, and my mail server VM is still the same as before. So far I have lsenterprises.tech, lennys.site and this blog up and running, and tomorrow I'll probably get lennyshort.com resurrected. On a side note, I'm finished with the repairs to my truck, for now at least. There was an ordeal I had to work through with the shop I took it to, we were going to put a new engine in there but that didn't work out. The shop manager hunted down 3 different engines from salvage yards all across the US. The first one got shipped out, but was diverted to Los Angeles and just disappeared, no idea what happened to it. The second and third engines were both shipped to the shop successfully, but upon arrival we found that they were no good - one was leaking oil like a sieve, and the other had a blown head gasket. In the end, my truck's original engine seems to still be running okay even with the issue it has with the sixth cylinder not having compression, so I decided to just keep driving it as-is and plan on trading it in sometime next year. It's too bad, as I still like this truck and was hoping to keep it for a while longer but sometimes things don't work out. At least I am getting my $2000 deposit back, which is what I'm waiting on now. I got the paperwork from the shop that showed it credited to my checking account, and after checking my bank app today I saw it hit my checking account. Yay, I got monies!

lennys December 09, 2023

I have to figure out what to do next.

So I'm kind of at a point at which I'm stuck. I have this blog, which I want to add Markdown to, and also build a sitemap for it. I also have a broken "Contact Us" form in my LS Enterprises site I need to figure out and fix, and at some point I intend to work on building an API for my lennyshort.com site. I also want to setup Ansible on my Cisco gear just for the point of it, which I think requires setting up a separate server. I have a small server I'm not using for anything at the moment. Then there's the Python Crash Course book, which I want to finish working my way through. I'm not sure which project should take priority at this point. I guess I need to do some brainstorming on what direction to go in next, but at the moment I'm feeling tired and unmotivated. What's my long-term goals here? I'm going on vacation again in a couple of weeks for Christmas. This time I'm driving to Mom's house in Oregon for a few days. I'm getting a rental car for the drive there and back again, because my truck is still not really dependable and I don't want to get stuck somewhere in the mountains if it breaks down. I managed to get almost all of my Christmas shopping done yesterday, I just need to find something to get for my nephew. He recently turned 21 and is starting welding school in January, but I don't know what kind of gear he needs yet. The other kids were easy to shop for, they just got STEM toys, Legos and some PlayDoh. Maybe I'll just get him a gift card to Lowes or something. I'm still waiting on the new engine for my truck to arrive. I got a call yesterday from the shop manager who said that it didn't arrive yesterday like he was told. I'm lucky that the current engine is still running. If this keeps going on delay after delay I might just try to cancel the engine swap and see if I can get my deposit back, and just drive the truck until it dies then take it to the junkyard. Had I known what I was getting into with this situation, I would've just traded it in for a new'ish truck instead. Anyone want to buy a 2003 Dodge Dakota?

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