Free at last?

Work⌗

My last day was Friday. Well, technically it was my last day of work. I decided last Monday that I wanted Turkey Week off, so I put in a series of 14 hour days so that I could get my work done. And I am done. The entire company gets December off, which is why we always work so hard in November, so while I’ll get two more checks, I’m officially unemployed.

I’m surprisingly okay with it. Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet, or maybe I’m a fool, but I think I’m going to be better off in the long run. There have been several red flags over the years with the place I work(ed), so I’m taking the view that whatever comes next will be better.

Programming⌗

I continue to make the best damn home page ever. In the little bit of free time I’ve had (usually at midnight), I’ve been working on this:

Homepage

I do have this up on GitLab if anyone wants to check it out. It’s entirely untested on anything other than my homelab, so ymmv.

I’ve also been working a little on a new todo list application. I just started tonight, so it’s not very far along. My goal is to create my own API so that the todo widget in my homepage can sync and interact, with full features, with my todo app on my computer. What I’ll do for mobile, I don’t know.

I did think about starting my own eBook reader app, but so far Kotlin is beyond me. I’m going to have to do a whole bunch more learning to get there.

Reading⌗

I finished a book! It wasn’t the book I wanted to finish, but I finished a book. More, I did it in less than 24 hours. I started the first book of The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone series yesterday and finished it today. I then started the second book. It’s simple, but sometimes it’s nice to read about a badass.

Priory of the Orange Tree has been set aside. I found out that there is a 800 page prequel, and that has totally put me off. That book was already too big, but I was getting along with the knowledge that it was a standalone. Why does everything have to be a fucking series?. I hate it.

I also started and DNF’d a book called God of Fertility. I knew that it would be smutty, but it promised history of Ancient Egypt and a harem. But it was absolute garbage. The smut wasn’t good, the characters were shallow, and the writing was repetitive. Made it about 40% of the way through, which gave it more time than it deserved.

Potpourri⌗

  • I was shit at posting this week. Not a single video outside of the podcast. I did manage one today, though, so I’m going to work on getting back on track. Now that I don’t have to worry about work, I should be able to make videos again.
  • My knee is way better than it was last week, so that’s great.
  • Still working on building out my country music library. This will be a slow process. I have started to listen to music solely with my own music though, and it makes music sound better.
  • I’m still on the look out for a good eBook reader app for Android. Right now I’m on ReadEra, despite the fact that I said I’d rather jump off the Mackinac Bridge than use it. It really is good, but the theme drives me nuts.
  • I’ve been using Booklore as an alternative to Calibre. It’s amazing. I’ve been using it to work on the metadata for my book collection.

Small Web Links⌗

  • Pixel Envy replied to a post on TechDirt. I will probably do a separate post on this one. But TLDR for my post, privacy is dead, legislation isn’t going to fix it.
  • Azuriel wrote a reply to another post, this time about AI Music. Even as an AI user, I hate the idea that we’re going to all prefer AI music someday. Or at least the Music Industry thinks that’s the case.
  • Ava writes about their feelings towards others who aren’t screen minimalists. I resonated with this one because I too judge people on what they do. For me, it’s not social media usage, it’s Linux. It’s something I try not to do.
  • Thomas reminded us that it’s okay to fail at your goals.

Last Week’s Goals⌗

  • Keep working on Priory ✖️
  • Re-Download my country music library and work on the metadata In Progress
  • Clean the effing desk. ✖️
  • Do a better job of pushing videos to TLC as per my new schedule. ✖️
  • Do at least one video for Historic Alley, or a blog post. ✖️
  • Try DankShell ✖️
  • Write emoji script. ✖️

What a complete failure. This week has to be better.

Goals for This Week⌗

  • Read two more Brownstone books
  • Keep working on music library
  • CLEAN THE DESK!
  • Upload to TLC three times and do the LUG
  • 1 video for Historic Alley
  • Keep working on Home Page. I love that project so much.