lennys August 23, 2024

Nothing much going on...

So it's been a week and a half since my last post. Nothing much of note has happened in that time. I went to a Python meetup again, which this time was enjoyable somewhat. The talk was about Pandas vs. Polar, which are both software packages for crunching data. Pandas is written in Python and is something I'm familiar with, whereas Polar was new to me. Polar is written in Rust but apparently can be used in Python scripts, and the consensus was that it's an improvement over Pandas. It's faster to run and can get more done in less lines of code, so it's something I'm going to look into in the near future. It's out of scope to what I've been studying, but sounds interesting enough that I think it would do me some good to know more about. In the next Python meetup they are going to build an HTMX application, so we'll see how that one goes. My toolbox project has stalled out. I haven't done anything with it in a week at least, it's still sitting on my patio waiting for me to finish. I've got the primer coat all sanded down and ready for painting, I just need to clean up the sanding dust a bit more before I move forward with it. I still have to sand down and paint the drawers, so it'll be a while before it's finished. I'm hoping there won't be any rain in the near future so I can work on the thing without it getting wet. I went over to a friend's house to work on a workbench project of his a week ago yesterday. We didn't accomplish a whole lot, we just planed down a section of countertop and glued together a bunch of boards. That was as much as we could do since we had to wait on the glue to dry, but I hung out with him and his dad for about an hour and a half which was nice. I hadn't had a lot of interaction with other people in a while. Barring unforeseen circumstances I may be going over there again next Thursday. Not much else to report, other than that I started using a new fitness app on my phone recently. It's got some body weight exercises I've been doing in the morning before work. So far, so good with that. I'm still going to the gym at least twice a week, but I decided to add this app to hopefully help me lose a little bit of weight more quickly than otherwise. I'm getting older, so the bodyweight exercises help with mobility too which I need. We'll see how it goes.

lennys August 11, 2024

Not so fast...

It seems I spoke too soon when I said I had the DNS amplification problem solved. Last Thursday I got another nastygram email that told me the attacks were still occurring. I had to log back into my router and turn off a setting in the DNS controls that allowed outside requests - I thought I had done this previously, but the change must not have taken effect. But this time I noticed a sharp drop-off in traffic as soon as I applied the change, so I think I got the issue resolved now. I just checked my traffic graph and it looks good, so hopefully that will be the end of it. I guess I was being a bad netizen without knowing it, which gives me the sads. I didn't get much out of the last Python meetup I went to last Tuesday. This time they talked about HTMX, which I don't have any experience using and don't really know anything about, other than it's easier to use than React. I'm all for that, because I've used React on a couple of side projects I've made in the last year or so, and it was a pain in the ass to work with. I'm not really a front-end developer guy, so working with any kind of JavaScript framework is a struggle to understand. But this coming Tuesday the meetup is supposed to be about Jinja2, which is also a new one for me. It's used with Flask to develop websites. I haven't built anything with Flask yet so we'll see how this meetup goes. Hopefully I'll get something useful out of it. The last few meetups I've gone to I haven't participated in the discussion at all, which I'd like to change, but the subjects discussed aren't anything I have experience with so far so it feels a bit awkward. I might try introducing myself to a couple of the guys who run the presentations this coming Tuesday, we'll see. This past Thursday I went over to a friend's house after work and helped him work on a project he's doing. We made a Home Depot run to get some lumber, brought it back to his place and cut and planed a bunch of boards for a workbench. I had a good time doing it, but my eyes were watering for 2 days afterward from all the sawdust. I might be going over there again next week to work on it some more. Not a lot else going on right now. I have my toolbox project sitting at home waiting for me to finish sanding. I might work on that a little bit today. Hopefully I can get it prepped and ready for paint this coming weekend. I should have some free time available, but we'll see how it goes.

lennys August 01, 2024

Update on things and stuff...

So it's been 13 days since my last post. I haven't heard anything about the DNS amplification issue I mentioned in my last post, so I think I got that problem solved. I also had another issue with my router I had to figure out - I was informed that it was sending out DHCP requests on the peering network I'm connected to, so I had to find out why and shut that down. I did some googling and found a few forum posts on Mikrotik's site that helped me understand what was happening, tweaked a couple of things on my router, and that was that. I shot off an email to the peering network admin to verify it was fixed but I haven't heard back from them yet. I had my truck in the shop at the dealer twice in the last 10 days or so. The first visit was just regular maintenance, an oil change and such. I brought it in a week after that to get the alignment checked, since it was pulling to the right at higher speeds. I got some bad news about it after a 2 hour wait: the alignment was fine, but the tires were causing the issue. The truck has aftermarket "Ironman" tires on it that were there when I bought the truck back in January. The dealer took it for a test drive after putting it on the rack and checking the alignment, saw it was still pulling to the right, brought it back in and swapped the front wheels from one side to the other, took it for another test drive and found it was now pulling to the left, so they told me it must be the tires. I asked them how that was possible and they didn't know. So I took the truck home after paying the alignment bill (goodbye, $150). Later that day I drove it to San Joe and back, and while it still slightly pulls to the left, it's not pulling as much as it was before they swapped the wheels, so I think I'm just going to live with it for now. I'm not inclined to drop $1100 on a new set of tires right now not knowing if that'll fix the problem. I just keep telling myself to be grateful it's not worse. Because it always could be. I started going to a Python Meetup in Mountain View on Tuesday evenings. It's at a place called the Hacker Dojo, which is just a makerspace for nerds to hang out at and work on stuff together. They have a meetup every Tuesday. I've been to two meetups so far and while I haven't really participated in anything yet, I'm enjoying the environment and learning about a few things along the way too. All I've done so far is sit in the back and watch while they go through their presentations. This last one was about exploratory data analysis in Python, and covered material I was slightly familiar with so I feel like I got something out of it. I'm hoping that eventually I'll get to know some people there for future job opportunities or something. I have also finally started working on the bottom toolbox I've had sitting in my living room for the last year and a half. I got it sandblasted at a local shop, brought it home and started putting on the primer coat, and found that it's really difficult to paint with a spray can when it's windy outside (lol). I've been painting it a little bit at a time to try and get an even coat on it, but I still have runs in the primer. I'll sand those off and give the whole thing a good scuffing before putting on the color. It's been a fun little project so far.

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