lennys October 12, 2024

Confidence

I'm not feeling too confident right now. Lately I've been working through the statistics and machine learning lessons on DataCamp, and if it weren't for the built-in AI they have I don't think I'd ever figure it out. I haven't studied either subject thoroughly before so I try not to hate on myself for struggling, but it's hard. There's a lot of math, which I know I'm not good at. I can do algebra just fine, and I can even sit down with a math textbook and work through the examples, but there's something about it that just makes me feel inadequate when I don't easily understand a subject in math. It's always been like that with me and I don't know why really. Not a lot else going on lately. I missed the Python meetup last Tuesday, which is a shame but from looking at the Discord channel where they put the lecture slides I doubt I would've gotten much out of it. It covered some software I'd never heard of and I have a feeling the whole lecture would've gone straight over my head anyway. I'm planning on attending the next meetup, but you never know. I finished painting the first coat on my toolbox project. I'm going to put another coat on it, but right now I have to wait on the spray paint I ordered from Home Depot to arrive. It's supposed to take 10 or 11 days for some reason, maybe they're shipping it from China, I don't know. I think I have enough paint to cover the drawers so I might move forward with that part of it this coming weekend. We'll see. My router is still working. I haven't had to touch it since early last week, which is good. I replaced one memory stick in my big server, and that fixed the websites-being-down issue apparently, because everything has stayed up since I did that. Now, I need to figure out how to setup NAT on my Mikrotik router again so I can get my Ansible server up and running. After that, I have to figure out what's wrong with my Cisco 2821 router. It can't talk to one of the switches I have in the cabinet right now, and I think it's a logical error I'll have to figure out. Eventually I'm going to blow up the config on all my Cisco gear and set them up with the IP block I got from ARIN, but that's more of a long-term project. I have a lot to do before I get to that part of it all. I put in my vacation time for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'll be driving to Oregon for both trips. It's time to start Christmas shopping again (ugh), I have a few ideas saved in an Amazon wishlist but I'm going to have to come up with more than just that if I want everyone to have a happy Christmas this year. There's 3 groups of people I need to shop for, and I'd like to find one gift I can get for each of them like I've done before. Last year it was miniature fire extinguishers. the year before that it was big boxes of food, and I can't remember what came the year before that. I'll come up with something.

lennys October 04, 2024

...and we're back!

So I managed to get my router working properly again. I came in on my day off to fiddle with it last Wednesday and got it working, then went home. After I got home I logged in remotely and was finishing up setting some configurations and managed to break it again on accident (argh!), so yesterday I had to sit down in front of it again after work and reset the configuration back to its defaults again. I managed to get it back online, but afterward none of my websites were loading (argh again!). Today I reset the config again (multiple times) and managed to get it right. I had to reboot my web server to get the sites back online though, so I'll have to investigate that. I think I have a bad RAM stick in the server that I'll have to remove and replace, but for now it's working so I'm going to monitor things and see how it goes. This whole thing has been a learning experience for me. I've learned that I should make config backups on the router before I make any kind of change (duh), and I've learned how to reset the configuration and reload the settings afterward. Hopefully this'll be the end of it, but you never know. I still have an IP block reserved for future use, so I may find that I have to go through all this all over again at some future point. The Python meetup on Tuesday was interesting. Because of traffic I arrived a little late which sucked, but I think I got something out of it. The talk was about iterators and generators, and I have a tab pinned in my browser for the Github page they were using during the talk so I can go over it again. I need to write more code, especially code from scratch. Coding on-the-fly is a weak spot for me; if I have some code to start with I can usually cobble something together, I've done that with Django before, but coming up with it from nothing is still difficult for me. I've read enough books now that I think I understand Python reasonably well, but working with it is still a daunting task. Today I'm going to go over metaclasses in one of my books, take some notes and fiddle with the code a bit. Tomorrow, we'll see.

lennys September 21, 2024

Just some stuff...

Well my shoulder is still messed up, whatever I did to it, I did a good job. Any movement that involves me lifting my left arm hurts. I'm working through the pain as it isn't excruciating, just annoying. I haven't had a proper upper-body workout in the last two weeks. When I go to the gym later today I'll just be walking (and maybe running) on the treadmill. I hope this heals up soon, because I don't want to lose any ground in my working out. I'm still painting on my toolbox at home. I may be doing that today too. It's about 70% finished with the painting, minus the drawers. It'll probably be another week before I'll be satisfied with how it looks. Then I have to scuff up and paint the drawers, then reassemble the whole thing. It'll be nice when I'm done with this project as I never anticipated it taking this long. The last Python meetup was kind of interesting. They went over "Python culture", which was about how you render code when you're writing it, what kind of commenting and formatting to use, etc. A lot of it I had seen before, but it was interesting seeing someone else with years of experience talk about it. The guys who run this group are mostly old-school programmers with a lot of experience. I'm just happy I've been able to follow along with the material they've presented so far. I managed to foul up my Mikrotik router somehow so that I could no longer log into it remotely. After discussing it with a few people I had to setup a serial connection to one of my servers in the cabinet to regain access. It works, but since it only works with the command-line and I'm not very well-versed in that it's a pain to use. I have been thinking about it and I think I'm going to have to blow away the whole config and set it up again from scratch. I'm hoping I can import some of the existing config, but for the moment I'm not going to change anything or try to fix the issue. I'll leave it alone until I have time this weekend to fiddle with it.

First Previous 4 5 6 7 8 Next Last