Posts by lennys (68)

lennys January 11, 2025

Whoops

So I had a new blog post all written out yesterday, but I forgot to save it and closed the browser by mistake. Oh well, today's another day. It's Saturday at 6:26 am and there's nothing going on at work like usual. I'm thinking about what all I have to do: I need to catch up with Scrimba, there's a couple of quizzes on DataCamp I can do, I need to get the Contact Us form on lennyshort.com working again, and there's always work to do on my routers in my cabinet. Too much to finish all of them today, but hopefully I'll make some progress somewhere. I managed to get the new lennyshort.com design deployed yesterday (after much tweaking and troubleshooting, thanks Google) and I'm happy with it so far, but it still has some unfinished sections in it that I want to figure out. I'll be working on that periodically for a couple of weeks, I imagine. I did manage to get the captcha working properly on the Contact Us form in lsenterprises.tech, and I had it working in lennyshort.com prior to the new deployment, and so far I have seen a large reduction in the amount of bot spam I was receiving via those email forms. I had to fiddle with both websites a lot longer than anticipated to get it all working right, which just shows my inexperience working with Django. I have noticed that since spending a lot of time over the last 12-18 months studying Python that I understand the Django code better, which is good. My main objective in studying Python to begin with was to become a better developer, so overall I'm pleased with the improvement. There's still a long way to go though.

lennys January 05, 2025

Christmas come and gone

So it's January 5th now, and the holiday season is over. People are back at work and life goes on. Overall I had a good holiday, I spent Christmas and New Years at Mom's house in Oregon. I don't know when I'll be going back there again, but I think it's going to be a while. We had a difficult discussion while I was there about my future plans, and since then I've come to the conclusion that it's time to look for a different job. I've gotten to the point at my current job where I don't think I can grow any more there, and I feel like I've been trading water for a long time now so it's time for a change. I've put together a new resume and cover letter, so the next step is to start looking for a suitable position somewhere in the Bay Area. Finding the right position is going to be difficult I think, because I want to work a regular Monday to Friday daytime shift at the new job and those may be hard to find if I want to stay working in a data center somewhere. So I'll be trying to broaden my view with the positions I consider and apply to. I've got a pretty wide-ranging skillset by now, and that plus the certifications I've earned over the last several years hopefully will give me a shot at securing a good job somewhere. I'm starting the hunt today. I finished reading a Stephen King novel while on vacation in Oregon, and now I'm reading a book called The Wager (fiction) about a group of early 1800s sailors that shipwrecked on the coast of Brazil and had to survive some very harsh conditions. I haven't gotten very far into the book yet but it's been holding my interest pretty well. I'm also reading Dune Messiah, the second book in the Dune series. It's very political, but I'm enjoying it so far. I'm reading it on a Kindle I got for Christmas, which is a neat toy. I think I'll be getting some good use out of it going forward. I'm also starting on a new diet plan this week. My mom is on the Mayo Clinic diet now so I had to eat what she prepared while I was in Oregon, and she convinced me to give it a try. I'm working my way through the food I have in the pantry right now so I don't have to throw anything away, so technically I'm not on the diet yet but I'm preparing for it now. I ordered a new bathroom scale from Amazon which will be here tomorrow, along with a salad shooter kitchen gadget. I'll be shredding a lot of vegetables soon with this new diet so I needed to get the proper tools. Hopefully I'll lose some weight with this diet, because so far with my regular diet and exercise regimen I'm not seeing much of a change.

lennys December 16, 2024

Random update for the last week or so...

So I've been working through the Scrimba.com stuff. I've made it through to the "Essential JavaScript Concepts" section, and it's been a little frustrating so far, but I'm slowly "getting it". The projects I've made in these tutorials are a little bit silly, but it's been fun to work on and it's forcing me to think about how the code works, which is good. I'm going to need a lot more practice before I feel like a confident developer. I've also started to put together a new batch of HTML and CSS for the next iteration of my lennyshort.com website. I have the basic design laid out, I'm happy with how it looks so far but it still needs a lot of work. My long-term goal is to create a new Django site and incorporate the design into that, then post it online on one of my virtual servers. I started working my way through a basic Django tutorial to refamiliarize myself with how it works, and it's slowly coming back to me now. I'm going to work through the DjangoGirls.org tutorial next. I did this one late last year and actually got through it all correctly, even posted it online at a free hosting account I setup. I don't remember much of it though, so hopefully this time around will make things stick in my brain again. If not, I'll find another tutorial and work through it, over and over again. That's how I managed to slap together the current Django-based websites that I have running, including this blog. I'm going on vacation for the Christmas holiday in a week, up to Oregon again. I'm looking forward to it, I'm taking a full week off from work so that plus the weekends on either end means I'll be up there for 9 days. Hopefully we'll get some snow and have a white Christmas like we did a few years ago. I bought some snow chains for my truck, but I kind of doubt I'll need them for this trip. They keep the highway pretty clear this time of year, so unless there's a storm I think I'll be okay.

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