lennys July 14, 2024

Learning

It's another quiet Sunday morning at work. I just finished another set of DataCamp lessons, and started a new section about web scraping. It hasn't covered much Python so far, just HTML and other things, most of which I already know. For the last couple of weeks I've been doing a chapter a day, which has worked out pretty well. However today I had some extra time on my hands, so I quickly worked through 3 chapters altogether: the last chapter in the "Developing Python Packages" lessons, and the first two chapters about web scraping. I'm leaving the rest of the web scraping stuff for tomorrow. I did go to Half Moon Bay last Tuesday (my weekend), but I didn't get a chance to go for a walk in the Murray Ranch park like I wanted because the road to it was closed. There was a sign that said the road was damaged due to a flood or something, so I guess that's a no-go for the time being. I did go for a walk on the beach and watched the waves roll in for a while, which was good. Afterward I got some food from a burger joint there that I like, and drove home early. Highway 92 was closed so I had to go a different route to get there, this time along the coast on Highway 1. It was foggy so I wasn't able to see much, but I could tell on a good day it would be a beautiful drive. I'm looking forward to trying it again with better weather. I was on the phone yesterday for a couple of hours trying to help a customer troubleshoot a BGP issue they had. They had one route that wasn't propagated correctly for a /16 IP block because their customer had made some last-minute changes outside of the normal time window, so it turned out that they had to wait for those changes to spread out across the internet which took several hours. I had to get with two engineers to get it sorted out. It got a little frustrating at times being on the phone for so long, but in the end we were able to give them a satisfactory explanation (I think) of why things weren't working yet. I learned a little bit about how BGP works too, so it was all good in the end. I still have those two switches sitting in my cabinet at work, I might try to install them this coming weekend (Tuesday - Wednesday). I also have that bottom toolbox sitting at home waiting to go to the sandblaster. I don't know if I'll get to either of those things this weekend, we'll have to wait and see. I have a couple of meetings with the VA to deal with first, so my free time is limited. I had a CAT scan run about two weeks ago that I still need to get the results about, so I've got to make a doctor appointment soon. I had blood work done last month, got the results back and found that (as far as I know) I'm in good general health so I'm not anticipating any bad news, but you never know with these things. I need to call my brother and catch up on things. We haven't spoken since last Christmas, so it's overdue. The last I heard he was still having disagreements with his ex-wife about taking care of their kids, so there's some drama going on there. I hope he's doing okay. I visited them last year for Thanksgiving, and back then they had a pretty good deal going there, a nice stable life. Hopefully that's still the case. I'll bet he's still got a garage full of disassembled cars and motorcycles he's working on, that's a big hobby for him. I like to help him with that stuff when I'm there.

lennys July 07, 2024

Cool winds blow...

Well, I broke down and set up the portable air conditioner I had in storage. It's sitting in my bedroom right now, turned off because I'm at work. I had to go get a plank of lumber from Home Depot, cut two holes in it for the vent ducts, and mount it in the bedroom window. I take the plank out of the window when I'm not home. Eventually I'm going to figure out a way to permanently mount it in the window, but for now this is good enough. I've had the AC running at night for the last 3 nights, and I've slept better than I have in a really long time. Last night I actually slept through the whole night without waking up even once, which hasn't happened in so long that I don't remember. I should have done this a long time ago. The Python work is going well. I spent about 2 hours this morning working through some Git tutorials on DataCamp.com, which was a good refresher. I'd used Git and GitHub before for past projects so I was already familiar with most of it, but it was still good practice. I need as much practice as I can get with this stuff. In my Introducing Python book, I made it to chapter 11 so far, which is only about one third of the way through it all. I should have bought this book a long time ago, it's helping a lot in my understanding of things. I'm still not writing spontaneous code like I would like, but I do feel like I'm getting somewhere. That's a nice change from the past with some of the other Python books I've worked through. Not much else is going on at the moment. It's a quiet Sunday morning at work, and I expect it'll be like this for most of the day. I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do with myself for this coming weekend. I was thinking of driving to Half Moon Bay, but I have two switches sitting in my cabinet at work that I need to rack and configure. Plus my truck is due for an oil change, so I'm not sure what I'll be doing yet. Half Moon Bay may have to wait another week or two.

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.

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