I've decided, at least for the time, that I will dedicate these blog posts to reaching out to family and friends who might benefit from reading. I'll be the first to admit, I don't know if there's much benefit to reading my words, but my point is if it helps, then it helps, and gleam what seems entertaining, uplifting, or amusing to you, personally.
To begin, I suppose I'll revisit the same practice I upheld over six years ago (dang, has it been that long already?) and throw out a weekly update on here, noting some of the more amusing misadventures and thoughts.
This past week has involved a lot of me spending much of my spare time resurrecting technology that has been deemed "recycle waste material". Some of these include network switches that, at new price value, run about $1300 USD. All I had to do to restore them was take some laptop chargers and do some electrical wiring and they were as good as new.
There was also a server (a server is just a computer designed to host websites or programs to run constantly) that originally ran a proprietary operating system that managed IP cameras- a security camera server. This one took quite some figuring out, and the task was challenging in many ways; but I was able to wipe its memory and repurpose this vendor-specific hardware to run good old Linux, and set up a more open-source camera server for my own home.
To add the the projects list I've made myself this week, I've also taken up an interesting one which I don't exactly know how to label. You see, Windows has its own Weather App that comes preinstalled; but I've recently been veering away (as much as is feasible) from Windows' services, as they continue to strike me as less and less trustworthy. Thusly, I did some looking for an alternative and came across an odd thing called Rainmeter. Knowing almost nothing about it, I downloaded it (Okay, I knew enough to know it was safe and harmless enough to download), and discovered it appeared to be an unusual attempt to echo the Windows 7-style of desktop widgetry. What's more, I discovered that this really was open source; in fact, I had to download someone's implementation of a widget for OpenWeatherMap. This started out as an easy thing, as all I had to do was figure out how to download their widget, figure out how to edit some of the values, and voila, I had a working widget that told me local info about the current weather. But I noticed a frustrating thing- the times (for sunrise, sunset, etc.) were in UTC but unaltered for my local timezone shift- meaning sunrise would show at roughly 1 PM and sunset past midnight. So, I figured I'd try my hand to see if I could figure out how to change that- after all, the text and all these things on the widget were just variables pulled from a website API. What followed was long nights staying up past midnight trying to figure out and learn this syntax- and syntax is the best word I can put to it, as it isn't really a programming language; it's just a ".ini" file that has very little documentation out there to explain its syntax. Yet, somehow, I was able to figure out how to move manipulate and use these variables and values, and take all the fine pieces of the code and perfect them. And you know the funny part of it all? If you were to ask me what Rainmeter is, exactly, I couldn't really tell you. I suppose if there's anything that working business tax forms at the IRS taught me, it's that I don't really need to know the whole in-and-out of a thing to perform work on a part of it.
Shifting gears a little bit here, I've also had thoughts and dreams this week that have reminded me about the way things have been, are, and will yet be in this late age of Earth. In fact, one dream, now that I think of it, was not unlike what occurred between two references out of the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 1:15 8:4), though in a much shorter span of time (but, thus is the fashion of a dream). It's exciting to see so much happening and anxiously looking forward to the beginning of that glorious new chapter in eternity. Yet, there is so much darkness that prevails amidst the light, and it fights like dragons against it, so as to spread doubt and skepticism like a wildfire across land, sea and air. Therein lies what I deem one of the hardest parts of living in this time- amplified light and darkness. But perhaps that's part of the blessing, too.
That said, yesterday was a beautiful reminder that the beauty of the Earth, despite having been lessened in recent times, is still visible and all around us if we'll find it. I went biking in the back hills, and my timing couldn't have been more perfect, as there had been a very brief rain that morning that left the air chilled and the dirt at the perfect firmness for a bike ride, with both sunny and cloudy skies equally beautifying the scene of the quiet woodland. But whether you are exploring nature in a vast forest or driving to work in bumper-to-bumper traffic, look for the beauty- I promise, you'll find at least one good thing.
Well, it's been another good week in my book; and as a good friend of mine has been known to say, "everyday an adventure". Stay tuned- and feel free to comment below on some of your thoughts and experiences. In the meantime, I'll endeavor to remember to post again next week.
And, for your entertainment: Comic of the week