Just Some Place

Summer School Begins

2025-06-02T14:31:00Z

Back when I was in school, not quite the stone age but it sure seems like it at this point, Summer School was for those students who - how to put this - weren't the best of kids. Or, at least that was the perception.

Maybe it still is, I don't really know.

The reality, our reality anyhow, is that Summer School is for those kiddos who want to get ahead. Those kids and students who want to have just a tad more flexibility in their class choices for the normal school year.

That is exactly what my two Freshmen are doing this month. They wanted to get into some Summer classes so they could take what they wanted during the Fall.

A wise decision that we as parents are absolutely, positively, 100 percent behind!

Today we just got back from picking up a couple of district iPads for them so they can take their "Health and PE" course online through the local Virtual School program. Things didn't go quite as smoothly as one would have liked, considering that we'd received a couple of emails letting us know the time and place for where to pick hardware up.

Naturally, there weren't a whole lot of people who knew what was going on - but, they were able to get us taken care of in great order!

There is not much going on this week, this evening the kiddos have been signed up for some food prep oriented classes at the local library and that starts up right around dinner time. Good thing it's leftover night at the house!

This Friday I need to have some cupcakes made for a birthday party. They're going with Oreo cupcakes. I've made them before and from what I understand they were a pretty big hit. I wouldn't know, since I can't eat them. Meh. We all make our decisions and get to live with the consequences!

This is post 91/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

The Art of the...Shave?

2025-05-16T17:35:52Z

A few months ago my Braun electric razor had need of getting the head replaced, so naturally I procrastinated the actual purchase of one. At which point, I found a cheap replacement head that had decent reviews.

So I purchased one of those. While it fit the Series 5 body just fine, it didn't feel very good on my face. Tugging and pulling and just generally it sucked.

Then I went on and did what I should have to begin with and just picked up another actual Braun head.

What really surprised me, though, is that it was doing the exact same thing. Lots of pulling and general pain.

Fortunately, at one point in time in my life I had toyed around with the idea of going the double edged razor shave route - so I still had my Van Hagen handle and set of blades.

Let me say, there is just no competition between the electric and the manual. I think about the only way I could get a better, cleaner shave might be to go the single edge barber style. But I don't think I'm quite at that point yet!

The really interesting point here is that I don't think it takes any longer to shave - from start to finish - with the double edge than it does with the electric. Plus, I really only need to do so every three days or so.

It did take me a few times - historically - to learn the "touch" and technique with this. Let that blade do the work. It's not gonna bite. I still find that I will on occasion get just the tiniest bit of blood from some bump or other, but even that's gone down significantly.

I'll probably continue along this road. I've found that I enjoy the process so much more.

This is post 90/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

Antsy and Restless

2025-05-14T21:19:19Z

I really don't like it when I feel this way - all antsy and restless and just way too many things running through my head of what I want to do.

It's tough to keep track of them all.

You start to do one thing, then something new and shiny pops into your head and you make some vain, useless attempt to keep track of what that thing is. Then, when you're ready to start looking into it....everything is black. Nothing. The fleeting idea is gone.

In what I'll say is no particular order, some of the things that are on my mind at this instance in time are:

Run (yet) another mailserver. I don't know why, I just do. I know it's futile, I know it's not something that would stick around for very long so it would be a pointless exercise. Though I did manage to pick up a nifty family-oriented domain name of the dot.lol variety, so who knows....it kinda goes along with the next thing, which is....
Run (yet...) another federated service. Whether that be something along the lines of GoToSocial, Akkoma, Known, whatever. It would be set up for the family unit to take advantage of. Note that I have intimated that I am already running federated services. I've got an instance of GoToSocial. An instance of Known. I've had instances of Mastodon and Friendica. Plus some other micro-styled blog that I don't recall the name of. Snac2 could be interesting as well.
Then I'd also kind of like to move to a different hosted blog or service or something. I'm liking Ghost, so maybe one of the cool providers that use Ghost. Then that could, eventually, take over for whatever federated system I'm in. Maybe.
Of course, I still like my eleventy blog I've got here. It's all plain text and easy to move to wherever. Plus it's cheap.
I've got all the cruft that I still want to do with my Emacs config. Saving all the cool snippets and tips and tricks that I find everywhere. At least I've got an org document saved in a git repo for that.
Couldn't possibly forget that guix system installation that I want to get sorted out. I don't know why, besides the fact that it's flippin' awesome. I've tried nix but I just couldn't get my head wrapped around that domain language. I've kind of gotten to where I can actually grok lisp-y stuff.
Which kind of brings us into wanting to pick up more clojure stuff. Not that I could ever actually learn enough of it to get employment in a clojure job, but man, that would be cool wouldn't it?

That's just the tip of the iceberg here. One of these days I'll get things figured out.

This is post 89/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

Will I make it to the end?

2025-05-12T16:47:08Z

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to make it to the end of the 100 Days To Offload Challenge.

The last year has just absolutely flown by. While one might think that "yeah, I can totally make a hundred posts in a year, no problem!", it's a bit more challenging for someone like me.

Writing up portions of my life every few days is not easy. I work...very rarely go out and do anything...so it seems to me that I've got very little to say.

Not that I'm writing for an audience, I'm not. Just an audience of one - future me. Possibly my family.

I'm not gonna call it quits just yet. I've got until June 15 to see if I can get 12 more posts out.

We'll see.

This is post 88/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

In Which I Write About Self Control And Diet

2025-05-02T14:57:36Z

Specifically my own self control, not so much the self control of others, nor telling you how good or bad your own self control is.

This is mainly going to be centered around what could be termed diet I suppose, but for reasons I actually prefer to refer to this as a lifestyle change.

Because that's what it is. Or, rather, what was (is?) needed.

I understand that a lot of people out there don't want to be reminded about food and relationships with food, so I guess consider the title of this post your content warning.

I don't recall for sure if I've written - on this incarnation of the site - about my lifestyle change when it comes to food and weight. Perhaps a quick bit of history is warranted then.

Never was I ever one to turn down a meal, nor was I ever one to care about whatever it was that I was currently stuffing down my gullet. I never attempted to lose weight, never did the diet thing, just really didn't put a whole lot of thought into it.

I would not say that I ate all the time, but when I did eat it was - shall we say - not the most healthy of choices. Lots of carbs, lots of fried stuff, I loved baking (still do), sweets, cookies, candy, cake, you get the idea. Some of my absolute favorite foods were pizza (from scratch, of course), biscuits and gravy (flour and more flour? sign me up!), pancakes, waffles (round? square? who cares!), pasta, potatoes (all the forms). Stuff that was going to send me on a one way trip to diabetes and an early grave.

Every so often I'd watch either the weight loss shows, or more likely, the transformation videos that people would post on the Tube. Every time I'd think to myself, "Self, that's amazing. Just imagine if you could also do that." Every time, I'd just click on through and go on with my day.

My wife and I had looked into the ketogenic lifestyle over a decade ago, so it was something that we had considered and were aware of the ability of what it could do for ones health. But it would be a large expense to change out all the food in our lives just to wind up failing.

Failure. Failure is never a good reason to put off doing something that is this important. Especially when it's as important as our health.

One day, my wife decided that she was tired of being obese. She had slowly been working towards going the keto route, so I decided that I was going to do the same.

In August of 2019 I too was going to take that plunge. Now, for shits and giggles on the day before I started I was going to use an app to track all the food I ate in a day. After measuring out my morning cereal I have to admit that I "noped!" out of that choice for the day. The next day I started.

I do actually have photos of myself - though I started taking them a couple of days later. I knew that I would want to track my progress visually - you know, to kind of compare alongside with those users who's videos I'd watched in the past.

I find that I'm starting to ramble on this so I'll try to accelerate the story a tad. My weight started out somewhere in the vicinity of 330 plus pounds. I had just moved into a size 50 pants. My goal at the time was to drop 100 pounds in a year.

My personality is one such that I go full speed into whatever it is that's occupying my time. I absolutely "gamed" the keto lifestyle. In well under a year I was already down that 100 pounds. I kept going, eventually getting into "one-derland", seeing the 1 as the first digit on the scale. It was amazing. Within a year I was basically into maintenance mode.

My lowest weight was in the high 160s. I don't think I looked good there, but it's tough when you've had a poor body image your whole life, you still think you need to lose. I'm currently back in the 190 range and really prefer the look of myself in the 180s. It's a challenge.

The self control thing. It's a two lane street. I had excellent self control losing the weight. It's the "stay in the healthy range" part of the program that takes even more self control. I was never one to eat my feelings, luckily, so while I did have to change my relationship with food, it wasn't the drastic change that others have had to go through. I ate out of boredom. Now, it's getting that self control back to only eating when I'm hungry.

Dropping the weight (I don't refer to it as "losing", because I really don't want to find it) was - for me - not difficult. Shockingly easy actually. Seeing the scale slowly work its way back up is what messes with my mind. I've managed to keep in the same high 180s, low 190s for a couple of years now. I look better, I feel better. I no longer have to sleep with a CPAP or BiPAP (my sleep apnea went away after the first few months). My joints no longer ache. My back is so much better.

Even with all that, I still have the feeling that I'm lacking in self control at this point. There are still snacks that I get. Junk food. Granted, the junk food that I eat now is nothing compared to before: peanuts, peanut butter, cheese, silly "keto" bars and cookies. A lot of stuff that didn't exist before we started the life change. A lot of higher than I prefer calorie items. It's a self control thing.

What was the point of this post? I guess for myself more than anything I just needed to get this out of my head. I am proud of what I've been able to accomplish - it's a tough, challenging thing that not everybody is able to do. I can buy clothes most anywhere, assuming I can find them tall enough. Was it expensive? Yeah, it was. In more ways than one. However, the alternative would have been even more expensive.

This is post 87/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

Did you expect an update?

2025-04-30T17:03:06Z

The title of this particular entry, Did you expect an update?, is kind of a funny one to me because of some recent experiences that we've been having with a certain vendor at work.

Working with vendors and being at the mercy of their support system - or lack thereof in some cases - really kind of sucks sometimes. We've got a handful of them that we have to deal with on a daily basis and some of them are certainly better than others. At least they are before they get bought up by an even larger suckier vendor.

One of our products is SaaS, IaaS and all that jazz. It's great when it works, not so much when it doesn't. Naturally there aren't a whole lot of logging options on these things, so we kinda just have to roll with the punches on what can be done.

This particular product has been having some intermittent, very challenging to replicate, user presentation issues. Not widespread, yet, but who the heck knows when that could happen. We decide to open up a support request. We send them the only logs that I can grab - stuff from tailing the systemd crud generated from their application we use as a bridge. These definitely show some communication issues. But again, only intermittently. Usually our people are able to wait and refresh and have things "fixed".

I'll not go into the ordeal that ensued...but good grief it was weeks of back and forth. Eventually, after no updates from their end for quite some time (they had actually determined the problem to be a bug on their side, go figure), they patch one of our development instances. Of course, I was out when this happened and we were unable to respond and test for the last portion of that week. Then there is the weekend. Then I've got a Monday to play catch up with everything else that happens. So I didn't get to check the status Monday.

Tuesday I go to check on it. They've closed the request. We were not stoked about that. Not even a "Hey, we're getting ready to close out your request" email. Remind, it's perfectly okay for them to go a week or more with no contact. We fire off an email to our contact rep, then I call support. Fortunately it was not too challenging to get it re-opened. Just far too many hoops to jump through.

After that, we request that they send the patch to our main testing instance.

"Well, we've just bundled that up into the next big overall patch that will be pushed so you'll get it then." Fine. Just don't close the damn support ticket until after that, which doesn't happen for a week or so.

Guess what they attempted to do? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

At least this time I did receive an email letting me know that a solution had been offered. The hell it was, I think. We haven't even had the chance to test the patch since it's not been patched at this point. FFS.

So, yeah. They kind of expect updates for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I'm tempted to update the damn thing on the daily just for shits and giggles. I'm not, though.

I do imagine that for those of you out there who deal with vendor support probably have similar experiences. It is what it is.

And yeah, I know that none of you actually expect an update from me.

This is post 86/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

Some notes of the week?

2025-04-25T16:11:41Z

So there are times that I think that, perhaps, I should just do week-style notes like some other people do.

Nah, I think that would be far too much pressure on me. Ha.

I think I'll just continue to write on whatever sounds good at the time as a somewhat historical log of my life and times and whatever else is going on around me.

Last weekend we headed down to the Southeast part of the State where I grew up. I hail from Galena Kansas. It's an old mining town, lead infested, seriously poor. Honestly, about what one would expect from a predominately "red" state.

It's always challenging and difficult to go back there and I think that's why I don't make that pilgramage any more than every handful of years or so. I'd love to be able to see my friends more often back that way, but we've all got families and things going on to make our lives extremely busy which makes getting together tough.

We were able to at least meet up for some lunch at a little place called Latin Fusion that was pretty good. Talked about work and kids and geek stuff for a couple of hours - it was a good time to do some catch up.

Of course we did spend a little time at my Dad's place. The whole reason for heading down that way was for the grandkids to meet granddad. While it would be nice to spend more time with him, my Dad is kind of set in his ways (to put it kindly). We don't always see eye to eye on some things, so we try not to broach certain subjects. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what those might actually be. When some of those ideas did start to come up - it was time to get ready to head out.

Fortunately, by that time, it really was about time to hit the road for the three hour trip if we wanted to miss traffic.

On the way down we took the Missouri side. We came back to Lawrence on the Kansas side. I had wanted to show my family some of the other areas that I grew up, so that was the perfect opportunity. We drove through mainstreet Galena, not much to see there, but it does actually look nicer than it used to. Still a dieing town though.

Then it was through the old neighborhood in Riverton where the early years of my life were spent. That old place is...there really are no words for how run down that old home is. Growing up we had a chainlink fence, at some point it was replaced with a wooden fence. Which has never, ever, been maintained. One Christmas we got a Douglas Fir that was decorated and used as our tree, afterwards we planted it just outside my bedroom window. It was super cool to me, but was removed by somebody who purchased the home after we moved. I hate to see the disrepair of the place.

On the bright side, I picked up a physical copy of the Lunar Remastered edition on Xbox. I've got copies of them (Lunar and Lunar 2 - Eternal Blue) on Sega CD. Too bad I no longer have my Sega CD. Or Genesis. Or 32X. Or Super Nintendo. Or Neo Geo AES (2 joystick edition). I could cry.

Needless to say I've also added the remastered version to my Steam Wishlist and will pick up another copy of it when a sale hits. Because reasons.

Why can't I save money again?

This is post 85/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

The Weekend To Come

2025-04-16T15:27:41Z

To say that I have not really been in a writing mood would probably be a large understatement.

Yeah, that sentence pretty much sums up the way I've been feeling over the past few weeks. Writing, reading, pretty much doing anything - I don't know if it's just the time of year or what, but good grief have I just been in something of a meh type mood.

Our past few weekends have felt like they've been non-stop, with hardly any time to rest or recoup and I don't anticipate things slowing down any at all.

This weekend, beginning Friday afternoon, we will be taking off to head to the Southeast part of the State. I've not been back home in a couple of years at this point and we kind of need to get visiting some people. Mainly my Dad. He is getting up there in age and has not actually seen his youngest grandkid (who is 7...yeah, I'm a bad kid I guess), nor is he super mobile which makes it difficult for him to get up this way.

It's only about 3 hours, but it's also about a generation away.

My Dad and I basically get along all right, but there are certain things that we just more or less have to agree to disagree on - and that is okay. Politics, mainly. I just kind of leave it at that.

The hope had been to be able to meet up with some old friends of mine as well, but from the sound of things they've had what was to be an empty weekend suddenly sprout full of stuff to do. That happens, and I totally get it - especially with larger families and teenagers and active kids. We are going to try to at least grab lunch on Saturday, so we shall see how that goes.

I was last down that way a couple of years ago...I don't recall the exact reason for going, besides it having been about a decade prior before that. It was the first time that I'd been back to my old home since before the Joplin tornado. I may not have lived through that, but having family and friends be in the area and experiencing what that was...heart wrenching. Things had definitely changed and I didn't even recognize some of the old stomping grounds of mine. The only way that I could describe it was "surreal".

Last time, I had hoped to be able to bring back a few things of mine from my childhood. Silly things like game systems and models. Yeah, that didn't happen. They weren't tossed, but with a home move and storage not ideal who knows what became of all that stuff. Ah well.

I am looking forward to going, it will be good to have the kiddo's down there with me this time - I'm just hoping that they aren't bored out of their minds. Which, I know they will be. There just isn't much to do in an old mining town that's (while it's doing better than it was) on its last legs.

This is post 84/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

The Kite That Almost Escaped

2025-04-06T21:26:55Z

Growing up, I always loved kite flying season. Not only did it mean that Spring was here, but that Summer was (as Frog would say) just around the corner.

Living just across the street from a cornfield did have its benefits. One of which being that it provided for a most excellent place to go outside and fly a kite.

My friends and I would make judicious use of that field for our kiting excursions - and living in the Midwest provided for plenty of windy days and many opportunities to get lots and lots of elevation for our kites.

I remember one such day, my friend and I were out using a brand new kite he had just picked up. It was your standard delta wing style, I don't remember what design was on it, but that is immaterial at this point.

The string we were using was a ginormous spool of some style of sewing or crocheting thread. Thankfully a very strong string, and ridiculously long.

The wind that day was not vicious, but still a really gusty wind. More than enough to have our kite flying pretty high.

I recall that for some reason my friend had to head inside and had asked that I keep a hold of the kite. You can probably guess where this is heading.

A handful of minutes pass, I'm still letting some string out so the kite can soar higher and higher....when suddenly the spool rips out of my hand.

So, these types of spools aren't really meant for what we are using them for. They kinda flip flop around and are more for - you know - craft type stuff.

There I am, entrusted with my best friends' kite, which has now literally flown away from me. I'm like, "oh crap!". Panic sets in, I take off after the spool, which is being drug along the ground. I almost grab it a couple of times, only to have the thing slip from my not-nearly-strong-enough grasp.

All this time I'm nearly in tears, thinking that I'm going to have to tell my best friend in the whole world that I've let his kite get away from me.

Remember now that we are in a cornfield. Thankfully this field is not currently planted, plus, there are a number of sections that have old - very sturdy - stalk sections and other items that might just possibly be able to snag a line of string.

Which is exactly what happens.

I will never forget my feeling that day, when I was finally able to get that kite brought back under control. Winding that spool back up was certainly a challenge, but I was gracious to have the wing back on the ground.

The more I think about it, I don't believe we ever flew kites again after that.

This is post 83/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.

A Little, A Lot

2025-04-01T22:32:55Z

The end of last week was the end of an era for our household.

Saturday was the final middle school play performance for our twins, as they are nearing the end of junior high school.

I'll admit to being an extremely proud parent of those two. That's not too say that I'm not proud of the other three kids we've got, heck I'm proud of each and every one of them. But it's beyond heartwarming, in that it's something one has a very difficult time to put properly into words. I am not too proud to admit to having very nearly come to tears at times watching these performances: be they plays, musicals, or whatever.

It is bittersweet, though, in that the final play for middle school was not one in which they were able to have larger, more prominent, parts in. However, the roles were very much important to be had.

The play: Little Women. The roles: Professor Bhaer and Mr. Laurence. Both very respectable, and they did fantastic jobs. As an extra bonus the teacher/director is such an amazing and awesome person, who loves all of the kids also really loves our youngest kiddo and does her best to work him into the performances as well - thus we've got photos of all three on stage. Super proud parent moment, that.

As you can tell, I'm one grateful, proud Dad. Quite a lot.

I cannot wait to see them on bigger stages and bigger productions to see what they are capable of.

This is post 82/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.