For quite some time, I've been running a website on my internal LAN where I document all sorts of projects I'm working on. Since I'm the only one who sees it (my wife can too, but she has no interest), I feel like I've been curating this as more of a personal diary than anything else. Today, the Projects section of the chewbode.com site goes live. I'll be posting everything I'm working on. My goal with this is two-fold: To hopefully inspire and motivate others, and also add more frequent content to this site. I update the internal site pretty regularly, and that steals energy away from blogging here. Why should I spend all this time documenting and posting internal blog entries then turn around and do it all again on the public website? So, I don't. Or, I haven't. By moving projects to here, I can consolidate this energy.
Category: General
Rethought This
Let’s continue forward with the discussion of whether or not writing for this blog makes sense. I’ve spent some offline time thinking, and even today I was talking to my friend, Carl King, about it. I feel like I’ve settled on a direction. The thought of writing a blog is an ill-defined, long-term task. You never really get to the end; you never really finish. Even when you’re about to die, there’s a good chance that you won’t have the time, or possibly even the inclination, to “wrap up your life story in the blog”. It’s like an open-ended MMO video game. Never complete. Always grinding. That all sounds daunting, doesn’t it? Yeah, I guess it does. So, if it’s that bad, then why do it? Well, that’s the profound question I’m asking myself, especially when viewing it as writing for the sake of writing. But I’ve come to realize...
Rethinking This
Once again, months have slipped by since I've last blogged. And there's no good reason I haven't posted. As I sit here typing this, I'm thinking in real-time why it is that I don't do this more often. You see, I have a Saturday morning reminder in my phone that pops up every week, but I end up placing it at the very bottom of my priority list in my mind. So, by the time Sunday slips away and the week rolls around, I see it as an annoying, undone task and I ultimately mark it as Completed just to declutter my list. I'm not sure why I do this. Part of me likes the idea of spending a little time each week to document my life, if for no other reason than for posterity. I envision that the posts will be informative and paint a picture of my day-to-day...
Rebuilding
A good friend of mine, Dale Lewis, has been going through a tough spell medically, so me and some friends are trying to raise some money to get him a mobility scooter through GoFundMe. Please take a moment to read Dale’s story and donate if you can. If you can’t donate, please help us spread the word. Thank you! Over the past several months, I’ve gotten back into buying and reading comic books. One of the roadblocks that I had before was time. And that was two-fold as it takes time every week to get in the car, drive over to the local comic book store and pick up your subscriptions, then haul it all back home. As much as I want to support local businesses, I found that Midtown Comics in New York was able to ship out subscriptions monthly. So, I started getting my books through them and...
Post-Ian, Pre-Dominican Republic
I figured I'd finally post up here to let everyone know we made it through hurricane Ian just fine. Since the storm shifted trajectory at the last minute, we dodged the majority of the winds and water. As a result, there was no damage to the house. The only mishap we had was that several trees in the preserve out back fell over in a domino effect, with the last tree landing in our back yard. Since we have nothing in the backyard, there was no damage to anything. The tree still needs to be removed, but since it originate from off-property, the CDD is expected to remove it. I reached out to them on October 9. I suspect it'll be a little bit before they can make it around. A view from the treeline. The opposite view, from the lanai. The trees covering the walkway in the preserve. Carl...
Waiting out the Storm
Ian just made landfall down in the Punta Gorda area. So far, all is good here except for some heavy wind gusts. Friends nearby, including us, have had some power flickers over the past couple of hours, so I think it's inevitable we'll lose power for a bit at some point. I'm the blue dot. Getting a little dirty out there.
The Ian Shuffle
Things are looking better for us with the storm. It has decided to shift and go more easterly which means it'll make landfall about 200 miles south of us. Downside is that, since it's been slowing down and soaking up so much warm water, there's a good chance that it'll turn into a Category 5 hurricane. Here are some of the latest diagrams. We were able to get all of the storm shutters on the house yesterday. All outside items have been stowed in the garage. All hurricane prep-items are at the ready. Generator's ready with 25 gals of extra fuel. All-in-all, we're looking quite good.
Staring Down the Barrel
Oh, Florida life. I've been keeping my eye on Tropical Storm/Hurricane Ian the last couple of days and it's not looking good. This is forecasted to be strong with a lot of storm surge and rain. The house is out of a flood zone and we're not in an evacuation zone, so I feel good about that. There's a decent chance we'll lose power, so tomorrow I have to focus on getting storm shutters up and gas for the generator. I'll keep everyone updated here. Meanwhile, congrats to the DART team! And, oh yeah - Fuck Hurricane Ian for fucking up our view of Jupiter tonight.
It’s February Already?!?
Wow. I just looked and saw that it’s been about three months since I posted last. I guess a quick recap is in order of what transpired during that time. Thanksgiving was great. I took off from December 18 through January 2 to relax and get some projects around the house done, however I was mostly bedridden that entire time as I threw out my back on the FIRST DAY off. As a result of that, and that the girls were out of state for Christmas, Cari and I did very little and postponed Christmas day for a couple of weeks. Last week I got a little bit of the flu. That’s about it. I finally received my Bobcat Helium coin miner that I ordered in June of 2021. It’s up-and-running, but is mining slowly. I intend on replacing the stock 4 dBi antenna with an all-weather 8 dBi one...
A Needed Break
I took Thursday and Friday off this past week to have a long, four-day weekend. And for the first time in quite a while, I went into this break with very little planned. Resting, consuming entertainment, and generally clearing my mind were the top priorities. So as I write this in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, I feel like this was a successful break. But, that doesn't mean that I did nothing. As we slide into the cooler fall weather, I've had a hankerin' for some goulash the last few weeks. It had been so long since I made it, I dug around the internet to find a recipe, and stumbled across this one (original link at the bottom of the page). I made a double batch and have been eating it every day. I did a couple of small projects around the house too. I fixed a...
