I am going to do something that I haven’t done with AltF4.co, I am taking a break. Tomorrow will be the last four chapters of Slaughterhouse – Five. I will still have my conclusion to the book next week as well because I want to end the book with the year. I have yet to decide, I may do some sort of year in review next week. The truth is I would like to, but it is a matter if I can find the time.
Other than that, I am going to break until January 2, 2024. I am tired and I need a little distance to recharge my batteries. Christmas season is hard because just one more thing is pretty much how it goes with everything. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I will see you next Year.
No opinions, BS or anything else today. There is something to be thankful for. I wish everyone a wonderful holiday. This one by far exceeds Christmas for me and I am enjoying what it is all about: cooking, eating and enjoying the fruits of you labor all year.
Despite the fact that most of my daily’s are queued in advance, you don’t need to be spending your holiday reading this. I will be back tomorrow with more Anthem by Ayn Rand.
Just like I said in the podcast yesterday, I got pretty ahead of posts so I could take time off and go hunting. Consequently, I have stuff piling up behind me that I want to write about. Today is really more of an update than anything earth shattering. I feel like I need to get better at following up on things that I have previously stated.
A picture is worth 1000 words. As you can see from the photo on the left, I got my target. I think that it does a good job illustrating the final state without getting too graphic. As it turns out, it was a rat. I kind of feel bad for the guy because I saw very little evidence of the creature other than something was trying to get into pantry items. Usually I can at least identify the species by to poop it leaves behind. Not this guy, he was pretty tidy about his invasion.
In fact, the first couple of days that I had set the traps out, I put them next to the flour that he had spilled by getting into the package. I was going to get around to cleaning it up with the vacuum but I figured in the meantime, he might come back to it. In about two days, the flour was all gone without me having to clean it up.
After I threw away the punctured bag and he cleaned up the mess, he moved on to some sleeves of crackers. I moved the traps in and within three days it was over. I was pretty surprised at how big it was. And fortunately, it was trash night so disposal was pretty fast and easy.
Two days later was the anticipated solar eclipse. You can see from my picture on the right what we had. The forecast was already iffy, it rained most of Friday and it was going to rain at some point on Saturday. My picture was taken at totality, but with the fog and the clouds, no chance. I tried really hard to see if I could even notice a difference with the amount of daylight, but I could not.
I knew it was a risk, the weather that is. In fact, the forecast for the day that I am writing is clear in the low seventies. That is pretty unusual for mid-October, but the reality is that to get that temperature, the wind is from the southeast and with that is also moisture (or humidity). It has been at 100% all morning. Even more so than that, we have thick fog just like on the day of the eclipse.
I haven’t spoken with my dad yet. They were still hunting on the central part of the state during the eclipse. I had even purchased some special glasses to give to them so that they could view the eclipse. But, I forgot to leave them. When I do find out if it was possible, I don’t think that I will update you on that conversation. My point with that is re-enforcing what I was saying in the last post. If it isn’t a lot of effort to see an eclipse, you should do it. But, if it requires a three hour drive for a maybe, then I probably wouldn’t.
End Your Programming Routine: Part of my point today was to say that patience is a virtue. I think that we all hope that pest don’t do a whole bunch of damage. But when they do, we have to deal with it. Funny thing, our pest guy came by before I started going after the rat. He asked “any problems?” and I said no without a thought in my mind. I could have called the service, it is part of what I pay for. That being said, the best person and tactic for the job is me because I am in the basement five days a week. I can observe and react and ultimately get my target.
Yes and No. I am clearly late today and that is because yesterday was a full-contact holiday and we had to run our former exchange student to the airport this morning. Also true is that I don’t have anything constructive to say at the moment. I saw the cliff coming last Friday and was hoping that I would come up with some magic over the weekend. Then on Monday, I knew I didn’t even have a topic identified but was hoping I could dredge something over the holiday. Hence, I am writing about having nothing to say.
By the end of this week we will have our German exchange student. Next week, I am off to business travel for another week. If I don’t have ideas (with pictures) in the queue, it makes it difficult for me to keep up with. That is where I am at.
Does this mean that I am quitting? Not exactly. But what it does mean is that I cannot sustain daily posting along with maintaining my familial obligations, work commitments and projects that need to get done in this short season. This is especially true when I have to travel.
I haven’t fully decided if I just need to scale back for a period of time or just try to do what I can. At the very least, I am going to finish out Lord of the Flies which will take that series into mid-August. I have finished the book and I have begun working on getting the remaining chapters published. I would like to continue doing podcasts as well. This is assuming that I have topics and show outlines developed.
I haven’t talked a lot about this but podcasts take probably four times as long to produce. I need to get better at speaking to a thinner outline, but usually this takes at least an hour. I always listen to the podcast after I record it. I write notes on Castbox and Altf4.co. Right now, an hour takes 4-6 hours for me whereas a typical blog post is 1-1.5 hours. That being said, I would like to keep doing the podcasts more than writing.
Something I have talked about before, sometimes quitting is necessary. We need to quit things that are not working so that we can retool into things that do. We all have a limited time and there is only so many things we can do in that time. Ideally this is what I would like to do with this site; make changes to this site so that it can become what I want it to be.
I love this endeavor. Why else would I do it daily for years on end for no compensation? I have proved the things that I initially set out to do. I have enough technical capability to do this and I have enough discipline to keep doing it. Those were my two objectives starting with Floricane and then moving to AltF4.co. I have failed at my marketing and monetizing portions of it which were supposed to be the next steps. So while I like doing the content and willing to do it for free, I cant afford to prioritize it over other things that need to get done at this time.
As of this moment, no promises. I can’t say what exactly what I will do other than reserve the right to do what I want and have to do. I think this is enough for today. I thank you for taking the time to read and hope this makes sense.
I want to believe in the ideals of this country. I wish it were what it promised. Despite that, enjoy your family and friends and forget about it. There is nothing like living life that puts all of the politics and disappointment aside. That’s what I am going to do.
It is late, late, late. I actually had my podcast recorded, but I didn’t have time to do the editing and posting. So, podcast for tomorrow.
This is on the technical side, but supposedly my SSL auto renews every 60 days. I think what I have figured out is that it renews but it requires me to manually install it. I keep getting blindsided by my SSL certificate expiring and when I go in to check, there are multiple copies being held.
This is what you get with a ‘free’ SSL certificate. While it works, it does require monitoring and maintenance. I am going to try and monitor this period to see if my theory is correct and hopefully, I will proactively deal with this rather than it happen on my first day of a business trip.
If you are reading this, then you went ahead and proceeded after the Security Warning or I have already fixed the problem. Wouldn’t you know that my certificate expired right when I went on my trip.
I suppose that I could probably try to fix this remotely but it is a lot to do when I am at home. So, I will wait. I am going to do my best to proceed as if everything is working like it is supposed to.
This is one of those things that I do not understand. Every couple of months my security certificate expires and I have to generate a new one. It happens infrequently enough that I always have to fiddle around to make it work. I don’t understand why and it really seems like amateur hour to me. Surely not everyone goes through this process. Maybe it has to do with my ‘free’ certificate that comes from hosting?
I live with it because spending more on hosting for no real return doesn’t make a lot of sense. Someday when I make it big that will change. Thanks for hanging in there.
I think that this is circumstantial more so than the new state of being but I may not get to post Wednesday or Thursday. When I talked about Hair on Fire in late April, I wasn’t kidding. We had so many things on the schedule last week that even eating fast food was at 8PM and I left work early Wednesday through Friday.
It doesn’t mean that I am not doing stuff, I am here and there. I did manage to get a little reloading done mostly in 15 minute increments. I also swapped out a faulty sprinkler head that I put off last summer. If you remember my major project was re-siding the south side of the garage. I had the sprinkler off for a lot of that and then when I turned it on, I had a geyser.
I am still cleaning up after the Mother’s Day party on Saturday. You see, I don’t always start and complete one project in a single line. I had to organize the pantry in order to fit the leftovers back in. While the coolers are drying out, I am going to put those away and with that I am going to do some keg prep. I have 15 gallons of beer that are almost ready for serving.
If it is not clear, those things are all related. One trip to take stuff to the basement yields another trip out with stuff for the next phase. My wife thinks I never get anything done. But she doesn’t realize my effectiveness of movement. It appears like I am starting something new without finishing the last thing. To me, it is all a very calculated order of operations.
That being said, I have been super busy but yes I have been doing things. What I haven’t been doing is taking photos or thinking about what to write about. I haven’t been stubbing out articles and I need that planning so that I can write when I get a chance. It is what frees me up to work within my schedule.
End Your Programming Routine: Part of why I started with the warning is I don’t know what topics I might write about this week. I think that if I did, then I probably would get it done. As I eluded, I am continuing to do small things here and there, this is what leads me to the conclusion that I am out of gas. Don’t fear, I love doing this I just probably need a short break as things are starting to clear up on my schedule.
I am back from my vacation. I did survive my business trip. I have more travel in the hopper, but I need some time to catch-up both here and elsewhere. I have half done podcast outlines, chapters read and articles stubbed out so it is not writer’s block or lack of desire but that I need time to catch up here and elsewhere in my life.
It is funny how life goes. Often taking a vacation causes more more work to catch up. I suppose it is the break that allows the energy (or perception) to double your time and output to catch back up? Definitely while on vacation I was switched off, barely a thought was given to work here or elsewhere.
I am going to talk more about the mindset in my next podcast, likely this week. But for now, take a vacation yourselves while I get myself re-organized and reengaged with this machine.
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