lennys July 04, 2024

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th, everyone. I'm at work so I won't get to celebrate anything today, but that's okay. At least I get paid extra for working the holiday. Right now there isn't anything going on, so I'm working on Python stuff like usual. I've made some decent progress with my Introducing Python book, and so far it has been an okay experience. I'm writing out the code as I go along, much of which I've seen before but it's still a good refresher/ reminder of how things work. The book isn't dry or boring, at least not yet. I'm curious to see how far I can get with it this week. I had a CAT scan done last Tuesday. The drive out to the hospital took a while, and finding parking took longer than the actual scan did. I have an appointment next week to go over the findings. I think I'm in good general health, so I'm not expecting any bad news but we'll see. I had another CAT scan done several years ago because I had numbness in my left arm. The CAT scan didn't reveal anything, and the numbness eventually went away so that worked out okay. I think I had a small blood clot in my left arm which was the cause, but I guess I'll never know for certain. It's been so long ago that I had forgotten about it until after I was driving home on Tuesday. Other than that I had a normal boring weekend. There's a heat dome in place over NorCal right now, and my apartment doesn't have air conditioning so it's been a little uncomfortable lately, but I'm dealing with it. I have a couple of big fans blowing all the time so it's tolerable. I've been debating on whether or not to try and setup the portable AC unit I have in the closet at home. I'd have to open a window to use it and I live on the ground floor, so that worries me but it's been warm enough lately that I'm leaning toward setting it up. It's July and it won't cool of until after August around here, so I think I'm going to make a trip to Home Depot and get what I need. I'll just have to take the attachment out of the window every time I go somewhere, which is a pain but I'd rather have to do that than come home one day and find that someone kicked in the panel and broke into my apartment. There isn't anything worth stealing, but some people will just take whatever isn't nailed down so I have to be mindful of that.

lennys June 28, 2024

"Introducing Python"...

So I'm reading through a new book called "Introducing Python" now. I've made it through to the start of chapter 5 so far, and it's done a good job of explaining the basics like the math operations, variable assignment etc. I picked up this book because after reading through the first 5 chapters in my other book "Fluent Python", I saw that I needed to do some more work on the fundamentals before going any further. Both of these book are from the same O'Reilly series of Python books, so they should complement each other pretty well (I hope). I'm not a beginner at this stage with this stuff, but I still need to do some work to understand fundamental principles better. Between this and the DataCamp stuff I'm doing, I'm spending several hours each workday on Python. Hopefully some of it will stick in my head.

lennys June 21, 2024

Frustration...and other things.

So I was just working on some Datacamp stuff. I quit because I got frustrated with it. I got frustrated with it because I couldn't figure out the answer and had to take a hint, which cost me experience points. The points themselves are meaningless except for my ego, so I shouldn't get upset over them but I do. I have trouble letting go sometimes. I've been banging my head against Python for a year now, and while I know I've made some progress I still don't feel like I have a solid understanding of it yet. And I have this book, "Fluent Python", which appears to have been written for people who are well-versed in other programming languages, know the lingo, and are coming to Python with a background that I don't have. It's all frustrating at times, but for some reason the points bother me more than anything else. I'm back at work after some vacation time away in Oregon. We had a weird incident yesterday with someone who wandered onto the property. He eventually left after being told that he couldn't be here. He didn't appear to be homeless but spent a couple of hours sleeping in his car in the parking lot. It's not the first time we've had someone randomly show up here, in the past it's been homeless people with mental issues but this time was different. I'm going to have to be more vigilant about who comes onto the property. I have two switches sitting in my cabinet on the floor that I need to rack and finish configuring. I've had them for a few weeks and haven't got around to doing anything with them yet, but I plan on using them to replace a couple of other switches that I do have racked and running right now. The two on the floor are a newer model and support SSH, whereas one of the racked switches I have doesn't, so it's going to go in the e-waste pile whenever I get around to it. I have an IPv4 block from ARIN that I'm not really using at the moment and I plan on reconfiguring all my Cisco gear to use it, so whenever I can get to it I'll be setting all that up. Hopefully I can find some time this coming Tuesday to work on it. Things are going pretty well overall, I have to say. I talked about this in therapy last week, and it didn't hit me until then that the last few months have been pretty okay. I think I'd gotten used to being stressed out all the time and so I carried tat feeling over into the time when I didn't really have anything to worry about. All my bills are paid, I have some money left over, I have a dependable vehicle and a roof over my head, etc. It's a big difference from years ago when everything was in flux. Used to be, I had a beat-up old car that didn't run very well, I was sharing a bedroom with someone I didn't get along with, and was working at a part-time job that was revolting much of the time. I've come a long way since then.

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