admin, Author at iWatson Blog

Inspiring story

Scotty Cranmer

I recently found a YouTuber, Scotty Cranmer, who has been vlogging his life. He is a professional BMX rider that crashed on his bike. It was a pretty serious accident.

“He was shooting a film session with his Monster Energy teammates in Las Vegas on the evening of October 12th and caught his front wheel in a hole that catapulted him into a face plant without time to get his hands in front of him, causing him to suffer several facial fractures, cerebral hemorrhage and damage to his C4 and C5 vertebrae “
Wikipedia

The accident changed his life forever! Scotty has been blogging his recovery and documenting his life and the road to recovery. He has not given up on life, which is very inspiring to me and probably many others. Scotty could have easily just have given up and spent his life in a wheelchair.

Experience

The last video hit me pretty hard and I could totally relate to some of his experiences. I wanted to write about why I can relate.

A little story

On November 28^th 1993, I woke up with the flu and my body was hurting and my joints were aching. The flu got worse and it wasn’t going away, so my mother took me to the doctor on the 29^th. The doctor told me I was dehydrated and to get fluids and to come back if the symptoms got worse. Tuesday, November 30^th 1993, I was in bad shape. I couldn’t walk and I was a bit incoherent. She rushed me back to the doctor. They called the ambulance and rushed me to the hospital where I was given a spinal tap and they found out that I had Spinal Meningitis. I can’t remember at what point, before or after the spinal tap, but I aspirated, which caused me to stop breathing and life saving techniques were used to bring me back to life.

My memory is a little foggy of that time, but I wrote a journal about it after and through my recovery. I have since converted this to electronic format. It is interesting to read and it was part of my recovery. The next 5 days, were spent on life support, which included hallucinations and lots of anger. I was given very little chance to survive my ordeal. The diagnosis kept changing from never surviving, to being quadriplegic, to being limited use on my left side to a full recovery. Using a walker, I walked out of the hospital on December 24^th, 1993. Great Christmas gift, right? The emotions of that day were crazy as I got back to my own bed and my next chapter of life was about to begin.

Never give up

My drive was similar to Scotty’s, where I didn’t want to give up. Learning how to walk again and use my body again was rough, but giving up was never an option for me. A visit with the Dr. early in my recovery, I remember asking “You aren’t going to tell me, I can’t be a programmer when I get older, are you?” The concern of not being able to be a developer was my biggest fear. This dream was never going to slip through my grasp.

I could go on for much, much longer, and go into great detail. My recovery was a very crazy experience. I’m glad I went through it, and it gave me an understanding of some of the struggles he’s going through. I went through this over 25 years ago, so my story won’t help many. It’s good to see his journey and I hope it inspires many people to keep fighting and know they can do anything they set their minds to. I can’t wait to see the video of Scotty running some day!

Out of my shell

I just want to preface this post with: I am not looking for a new job and I really love who I work with and what I do. If it weren’t for the people, I’d be jumping ship, but the group of guys I work with are awesome.

When I grew up, I was always pretty shy. Talking to strangers has always been hard for me, so making new friends was also hard. It was especially hard if the target of my conversation was a female. At some point in my life I started changing. A blind date, and 2.5 years later, my wife and I were married. If I were telling this story it would be 2 minutes long, but if you hear my wife’s side of story, you better bring chips. I’m not as shy now as I was when I was younger and I find people more interesting and curious now a days (as I’ve mentioned in the past).

Meet Ups

For the last several years, I have been attending several meetups. I have been attending the Google Developers Group (GDG) for about 7 years now (A little break here and there due to guitar lessons). I also try and attend the UtahJS or .NET Group. They are all pretty interesting and have unique attendees. The GDG is by far my favorite, because of the people and their interests. Personally, I like going to learn new technology and to get out of my comfort zone by meeting new people. You have to not take it personally when the introvert sitting next to you doesn’t want to talk.

HackerX

I think I received an invite in my email or found a link to an invite and signed up. I thought it was something completely different, because I didn’t go research it. It sounds like a bunch of people hacking away on computer stuff. Fun right? I didn’t find out what I was in for until a few days before the event. Like it says it is a “Networking and recruiting event”. It’s the perfect place for someone looking for a job! The two events I’ve been to have had about 15 companies there looking for candidates.

How it works

The companies are setup in 4 rows with about 4 to 5 companies in each row. The candidates line up on one side and work their way down through each company. “Speed” Interviews take place at each table with each company for 5 minutes. It takes 20-25 minutes to go through each line and it is a 2-hour event, so you do a lot of waiting and you have to scramble at the end to talk to companies you missed out on. The companies are just as tired as you are and they sometimes get a little grouchy if you are just trying to find out about the company and not looking for a job. haha

Networking

If you are shy or came by yourself, you are going to be pretty bored waiting in line, especially if you didn’t rush to the front of the line. You can do the math, and figure out how long you have to wait to see the first company if you are slow. The best part of this event is networking with the introverts (“nerds”) in line with you.

I’ve met some pretty awesome people in line. There are all sorts of people in these lines. Programmers find their jobs pretty interesting, and when we try and tell others about what we are doing, most audiences are bored. For instance, if I tell my wife how I coded up a bunch of unit tests to test my code, she tries to act interested, but I can see her eyes glossing over. When you talk to other nerds, they usually get it, or are truly interested. It’s awesome and that is what makes it fun to talk to some of these people. I also find it interesting to find out about them personally.

Companies

This time around, I got inline and only had to wait 25 minutes before my first interview. The company hosting the event had a guy going through the line talking to the candidates and taking resumes. Of course, I didn’t bring any but we chatted for a bit.

I went through the line and talked some pretty cool companies. They have swag and various things to hand out. It’s fun to learn about the companies and what they do. I made it through another line of companies and talked to a few others at the end.

I survived

It was a great experience. The fear wasn’t as great this time, but I also had nothing to lose. It would be a lot different if I was looking for a job. I could write more about the people I met. I will post the most interesting individual I met here. Is name is Admiral Potato. I’m glad I talked to him. He has a lot of interesting interests. He can be found here on tumblr.com and on twitter.

A few companies that I think would be great to work for are:

https://degreed.com/ – They allow you to work remote and work in C# and Javascript

HireVue – They use some interesting technology. They help companies make better hiring decisions. Video Conferencing Interviews? They use AI to predict information about the candidates going through the interview process.

Parakeet – Vacation Rental Home Automation. I’m interested in home automation. They work in Python, which is interesting. I’ve used it in a few projects and on some pet projects. It’s fun.

Work is fun part 2.

The Quest Begins

I have a bit of an update on the Amazon fiasco I talked about in the “Work is Fun“.

We have been trying to get into that AWS Machine for sometime now. The client contacted Amazon, but they would only do so much unless you paid for a “Premium Plan“. He was on the Developer plan, but they wanted him to go to the Business or Enterprise. The Business price is pretty pricey and the Enterprise is even more! If you have some time, I would check it out. Looking at the Business plan, you can see how crazy your bill could get.

First Attempt

On Monday the Amazon support gave us a link to try, but I was too busy to try. The next day, Tuesday, I started attempting this fix.. Half way through the page, I came to the realization that this is exactly what I tried before and it wasn’t going to help much, but I was willing to give it a shot. I was sure they understood the problem and gave good advice.

I shut down the site and started copying the VM and doing as instructed. The whole process took about 2 hours to complete, due to a lot of paranoia and double checking. The client was contacted and he switch his account to the Business account and summoned someone from support to call me. Of course, when they called it said “SCAM LIKELY” so I was a little reluctant to answer.

Lets try and fix your problem

The person on the other end talked to me and was trying to understand our problem. He wanted me to try the process again, because the tech who send us that list must have known what he was talking about. The support guy even offered to READ it to me. Feeling a little annoyed, I said to him:

Me: “Sir, my goal here is to try and recover the admin password, right? Do you see anything in these instructions that will help me accomplish my goal?”

Support: “Oh.. You are right. Let me check something”

He later came back with nothing that could help. He did see that we were now on the Business plan, which allowed the case to be escalated to the people who have the technical skills to help. Come to find out, He explained that he was in accounting and he couldn’t help anymore than he already had. I had to wait for someone to call me.. .. Oh great.

Trying to sync up.

Tuesday night, We were getting the boy ready for bed and I looked down at my phone and noticed I was getting another call but it was from an “Unknown Number”, so I let it go to voicemail. The voicemail had some guy from amazon saying he was calling about our case. What the heck!? Why would they be calling me from an Unknown Number? That is ridiculous. I turned off all spam blocking on my phone and allowed all unknown numbers to come through. (read: ANNOYING)

The next day, Wednesday, I sat around waiting for another call. About 3 in the afternoon, I emailed the client asking if I should just be waiting for a call, or what was going to happen? He got on the site and summoned Amazon again and they called right away, from an “Scam Likely” number. Of course, I answered the phone. It was the same people in accounting. They looked over the case and said they would put in a note to have the tech call me during MY work hours (9am – 5pm), not theirs so we could hook up. They were informed that the number had to come from a legit number, or it wouldn’t get answered.

The call.

Thursday morning around 10:10am, I was sitting in a weekly call with a client going over some recent changes and I get a call and the caller Id read “2”. Just the number 2? That was pretty odd, but I had to answer the phone. The phone call was from Amazon and he wanted to work through the problem right then. The decision was made to do it right then and skip the other meeting, so we proceeded.

The guy wanted to send me a link so he could see my screen. I’ve heard this before, where they want to steal all your stuff after they take control, but this was Amazon calling and they wouldn’t do that right!? No, they wouldn’t, but the thought went through my mind.

I was sent a link through the AWS Console, attached to the case, and it was pretty safe and actually really cool! He could see my screen, but had no control. He had a pointer that would show up where he wanted me to click. It was quite cool. He guided me through each step to try.

Come to find out, I had found a video earlier that didn’t work, I had a few things set up from that video that helped us accomplish our goal. All we had to do was turn on some Management stuff and pull up a Powershell window and we were on the machine.

Changing the password

The first thing we tried was resetting the Administrator password, but that failed. It looks like the previous company had deleted the Administrator account, which I think is valid. It makes it harder for someone to break in.

The second thing we did was add a new user with Admin privileges. This was super easy and slick. After creating the account I was able to RDP into the machine without any problems!

The work begins

I was able to get in and the client was super excited when I reported back to him. The process of learning the system and making some important fixes begins now. It doesn’t help that I’m super swamped at work, but i’m going to do my best to try and make this client happy. It is a fun project that I’m excited to work on.

I’m super impressed with the amazon support. It may be expensive for support, but it seemed worth it. Especially since I wasn’t paying for it!

The Parking Lot

Back Story

We have the most interesting parking lot. I’ve tried to mark up the map, but it didn’t turn out the best, so bear with me! As you can see we have a big parking lot. We are located on the border of Orem City. If you go down the back hill you end up in Provo. There is a path that leads down the hill, where a ditch runs north to south. If you cross the ditch, you end up in the back of a house and onto a street in Provo. The path is frequently used by people that stop at the bus stop or …something. There is a pawn shop near by and various other places that some might frequent. We use to think it was just a shortcut that people used until we started noticing the same odd people hanging around.

The Fight

One day we noticed an individual, Jacob (I know his name, because one day I went out to question him), come up from the hill with a backpack on and he went out by the Bus Stop and took his shirt off, put deodorant on and put on another shirt. A nice mustang pulled up later and they chatted for a bit. Then the mustang left after giving him some groceries. It was an odd sequence of events, so we were curious what was down that hill. Jacob took his groceries back down the trail.

The Adventure

On April 8, 2019, we decided to go on an adventure for lunch. The spring rain made it hard to explore a ditch, so we had to pick a dry day. The trail down to the ditch was a little sketchy. The hill is steep and the dirt is compacted, but there is a chain link fence to hang on to. We crossed the ditch and were checking out the house (See “Meth House” on the Map). and some lady stuck her head out of the window and said “Can I help you”. We were a little shocked, so I just said “Yeah, where does this trail lead? “. She replied with “People take it to the Mall. You can go through our yard if you want”. It was interesting, but she was the one that we keep seeing on the trail and going to the “Bus Stop”.

Walking up the trail to the “Mall” seemed like the best way to go, and it required us to dodge twigs and puddles. There were several strange things we ran into, and a few are the reason why we call it the “Meth Trail”. We found some gloves, which we thought was very strange! Then we turned around and found a giant bottle of “Fernox Antifreeze Protector Alphi-11”, Bucket, and Broom. “What The!?!?!” It was an interesting find. We finished walking up the trail to find a big tunnel under the road, but decided not to follow it any longer. The tunnel was full of spider webs and bird nests. The mission had to be aborted, so we got out of the tunnel and took the road back to work. The whole trip was about 3 miles, so it turned out to be some good exercise! 🙂

Meth Route

We have put camera’s in our windows to try and watch the activity of these people and it has provided many hours of entertainment trying to figure out what is going on. The lady living in the house has pretty much stayed the same, but there are new guys walking back and forth with her. They tend to do shady stuff in the parking lot on the weekend. I know I’m convinced they are selling drugs and doing other stuff.

Nefarious Corner

We have the Meth Heads and over the summer we started noticing a guy that would pull into our parking lot and sit for hours in his car. Of course, we started getting curious and started watching him. We noticed that there was always a trail of water that would be flowing down the parking lot under his car. We would joke that he was using the bathroom on his tire, because he was sitting there so long. This guy has been coming round for about 6 months or so.

The Confrontation

On Tuesday, the guy was there from 9:30am until 5pm. We were watching him during a meeting. He gets out of his car and smokes and throws his empty pack of cigarettes on the ground. We tried to see if he was relieving himself out there and it looked like he was, but we couldn’t tell. We went to lunch and walked by the car and noticed a puddle, but was it snow? Who knows.

When we got back from lunch, we two down from his car. He was fast asleep in his car with his phone in his lap. Not the best place to take a nap. We were curious about his story!? Why is this guy sitting out here all day? Is he OK? What is going on?

I left work a little after 5pm. He had moved his car 2 spots away from mine and still in there. I was determined to knock on his window and find out if he was OK! As I approached, I noticed that his windows were a little foggy. Something you’d expect when someone was in their car for a long time. I didn’t think anything else. I did start my phone recording audio to see if I could catch anything interesting when we chatted.

When I reached the car, I noticed he was kicked back in his chair, hands on his crotch pleasuring himself!!!! I didn’t know what to do! I knocked on the car and told him we had noticed he was parked there all day and asked if he was ok. He said he was fine. Of course he was, but I had just interrupted him. I turned away and said “BTW. You shouldn’t do that here anymore”. He took off. I was super scared and you can tell in the recording. Here is the recording so you can hear the interaction.

The audio. Lots of dead air at the first due to walking to the car.

…

I don’t think we will be seeing this guy again in the near future. He probably thought he had the perfect spot and I had to go ruin it!

I’m looking forward to more adventures in the parking lot this summer. It’s been pretty slow lately, because it’s hard to get up and down the hill in mud and snow. When spring rolls around again, I bet it will pick up!

Weekly update.

Pixel bites the dust…

On October 5^th 2016, I ordered my Pixel 1 phone. It was announced on October 4^th. I was super excited! I’ve always been a fan of Google phones. I had the first G1 that I used forever! I’ve had a few Android phones before the Pixel. (HTC Sensation and Nexus 5). An iPhone was in there for a little while, which felt like I was cheating on Android. I even enjoyed it!

My Pixel 1 started experiencing screen issues a year ago. After calling support, they made me wipe my phone and it seemed to fix the issue until December when it returned. The screen would jump up (the bottom of the screen was jumping up and down). The screen would show snow and become unresponsive. Being a long-term user, I was way out of my warranty. The warranty was almost up the last time they had me wipe my device. Conveniently, it went out after doing all the trouble shooting.

Shopping

It is impossible for me to show up at a store and pick something out if I haven’t researched it a ton. It took almost a month of research and deciding what I wanted to do, before I could settle on a phone. I paid $750 for the Pixel 1 with all the bells and whistles. I was not going to do that again! The pixel 4 is out and the price tag on that was super high! It has horrible reviews!

The Pixel 3 has an epic camera and phone stats, but the price tag is still high! You can purchase refurbished on Amazon, but the reviews are kind of scary. The price is great, but who knows what you will get and what kind of warranty you get is questionable. I also had a hard time deciding if I wanted an XL or basic phone. The XL is big, but how hard is it to use with one hand? (This will be something I regret. My hands are stubby)

Insurance

Most companies offer a device protection plan. T-Mobile has one where you pay $10 a month. Best Buy has one where you pay anywhere from $8 – 10 a month. They cover a lot of stuff and there is a piece of mind there, but I don’t want to pay an extra $120 a year for 2 years of “Piece of Mind”. I want the protection though. The Google Store the phones for a good price and they only charge $89 for 2 years of protection after the MFG Warranty expires. That seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Google has been fast at replacing my phones in the past.

The Big Day!

On January 4^th, 2020, I ordered my Pixel 3A XL. The bigger screen was appealing to me and the consensus was 50/50 on how good it is. The order said it would take 5 days to get the phone! I was kind of sad, because I wanted the phone now! I checked my email everyday after it shipped. The phone ended up taking 4 days to get to me.

Anticlimactic.

The phone, case, and screen protector all came around the same time. Backing up the old device and installing the new phone was super easy! The phone is much faster and has some fancier specs than the Pixel 1, but the OS version is the same! Using the 3A is just like using the Pixel. Not much changed, so it wasn’t as exciting as when I switched from the Nexus 5 to the Pixel. I’m so glad that I purchased it though. The phone works, and the screen is snappy! I had the 128gb before, but this one only has 64gb. I’m hoping I can get use to it! 😊 This one is already 80% full and it’s giving me heartache! The first time I used the phone one handed, I found that my thumb had a hard time reaching the “back” button without dropping the phone! AAARGH!! So annoying, but I’m going to get use to it. The battery is the best part. It lasts 20h per charge with my normal use! I’m excited about the phone so far.

Work Update

Work has been busy this week. It was mostly boring until Saturday when I got a call from my boss saying the machines were “super loud” and the server room was HOT! The Air Conditioning stopped working. After shutting off the machines, He called the building maintenance and had them come look at it. When the maintenance guy showed up, he said his boss was up on the roof and noticed an AC was running (in the winter) and he shut it off! WHAT?

We have been in this building for 5+ years and the AC isn’t new! We were busy on Saturday night, out celebrating my Birthday, so Sunday was the only day I could go turn everything back on and get the Domain Controller, Firewall, etc all booted back up. IT work is not what I do on a day to day basis, but I understand a lot of the machines and software. The adventure took 2 hours to get everything working again. With Copious notes and trial and error, I have a better understanding of how things are put together in the server room. Everyone should be able to be up and running in the morning when they get to work.

Great times. More celebration needs to be had, because my birthday is January 13^th!

Happy New Year

The new year is here! We had a busy week ringing in the new year and enjoying time off not thinking about the inevitable. Going back to work and school!? I went back to work on Thursday. The boy goes back to school Monday, 6^th of January. I’m hoping it goes well for him. We have been bad about keeping up with reading and some other daily habits that he has been used to. This week hasn’t been that exciting so there isn’t much to report.

We rang in the new year at the Provo Recreational Center. They have a lot of family-friendly things to do from 7pm until Midnight. This is the second year we’ve been, and it is super fun! They have:

A Hypnotist
Bounce Houses
Dog Shows
Acrobatics
Karaoke
Face Painting
Comedy Show
Game Shows (Family Feud)
Dancing
Virtual Reality
Fireworks (One at 10pm and one at 12pm)

There is a lot to do. I may have left some out. It felt like the night flew by! We didn’t get home until 1am and then to sleep at 2am. Jacob and I both slept until 12pm! It was awesome!

He didn’t quite understand how to do it. I may be failing as a father!

One thing I wanted to talk about but I’m a big people watcher. I love the big city. There are a lot of people in a small place. I can sit on the corner and watch people shuffle by. I’ve always found it very interesting. In the past, I’ve been a pretty shy person, so it was always a good time to come out of my shell by talking to complete strangers.

I don’t live in the city or anywhere I can watch people. Where we live, we don’t have a lot of street traffic we can look at, so sitting out on your porch at night watching the world go by is hard. My office window at work faces a driveway into the back of the building. Behind our building, there is a path down into the neighborhood behind us. It is used by a few people during the summer. We are pretty sure there are some shady people using the path. They are fun to watch but not as exciting as the big city.

I have found a few cool live camera sites that are fun to watch while I’m at work. There is a very nice camera in New York, Time Square Cams, that is fun to watch It’s a pretty famous camera, so you see people stopping and waving at the camera. Their Grandparents or Parents are home watching on the camera. It’s fun to watch the interactions.

While watching on Friday, a mother and baby walking one way and another lading coming towards them. The baby tripped and fell. She picked herself up and the lady stopped and helped and showed concern for the baby. It’s a typical interaction you’d expect. Two complete strangers (as far as I know) interacting. Internally, this interaction I’m witnessing is playing out in my head. I find it very interesting. Another camera I watch a lot is in Hermosa Beach at a restaurant. You can see the beach, people waiting in line to go eat, or people exercising up and down the beach. Super fun.

MILLIONS of people live int this world, and we will never meet them all. There are some that you’ll never want to see again, but there are some you’ll want to keep in touch with. Personally, I find it fun to meet new people.

Here is a story about meeting random strangers. We were at Legoland several years ago, and Jacob randomly got on a ride with this girl. They HIT it off and wanted to ride the next ride together. It was just her and her mom and dad. We had to stand in line with Jacob, her, and her parents. The kids were treating each other like they knew each other before talking, laughing, and having a great time! We were trying to get to know her parents. It was slow at first, but we ended up spending the WHOLE day with them. We learned a ton about them, and they did the same with us. We were from two different worlds. We were the Mormons from Utah, and they were Catholics from California. Fortunately, that didn’t matter to anyone. We were all sharing a great experience riding rides and enjoying a theme park. It was great. We keep in touch with them on Facebook. It was a great experience and we never would have met them if it weren’t for two kids making friends.

Life is busy, and it’s hard to stop and talk to everyone you see. A smile, wave, or a quick “HI” are super easy! I’m not much of a “Goal” person. I think I’ll try it out this year and make it a point to meet new people and/or make someone smile. Everyone has a story or something to say. Give them a chance. You should stop and listen to that story sometime.

Merry Christmas

Christmas is officially over, and it’s been a good one! Of course, we were spoiled by everyone. Here is a recap of the week events.

Christmas Eve

Jacob and I wanted to go swimming with my boss. My boss usually goes swimming Christmas Eve with his family and We’ve also gone. The Lehi swimming pool is only open until 12p, so we had to hurry. It is like herding turtles when it comes time to get Jacob moving, so we didn’t arrive until 10am. We found out that my boss had to go into work, so we didn’t get to see them. Jacob and I had a lot of fun swimming though. We got dressed and headed out.

My mother and father are buried in the same city, so we decided to go visit their grave site. I don’t go there very often, and it would be embarrassing to count how long it has been. We have a family friend who goes and keeps it nice and pretty!

After the cemetery, we ended up going to visit Lehi Roller Mills and then home to get ready for dinner with Grandma, Aunts, and a Friend. We had a great ham dinner and opened PJs! One of the neighbors passed out Sky Lanterns to the neighborhood and instructed everyone to go out and light them at 8pm. It was super awesome! I’ve seen them in YouTube videos and pictures, but never in person! It was super cool to see and there were a TON going up around us! They went up and eventually disappeared. I did see one falling to the ground after it has burned out. I’m curious what the aftermath looked like after. Good thing they were biodegradable.

We spent the night wrapping gifts to each other and then trying to get to bed. Jacob doesn’t get up super early, so that is a relief. He once slept until 10am, but he only lasted until 8:30a.

Christmas Morning

Aunt J went and picked up Grandma T and they came over here to have breakfast and open presents. We had a blast opening gifts. Jacob totally got spoiled! We already had a ton of legos in our house, and we have a ton more now. He loves putting them together and I get to help every so often.

I received a Ring Doorbell and I can’t wait to install it! I’m a little scared to install it. Having a camera on the front door will be interesting. Watching the boy in the summer will be interesting. I find my tools out in the front yard at time. Considering where we live, It may be overkill.

After opening presents, we went over to Grandma T’s house for presents and then back to our house. We were instructed by Jacob that we weren’t going to leave the house until the next day. He played..played.. and played with his toys some more. I ended up working a bunch.

Day after Christmas (Thursday)

One of my goals this break was to clean my office. It has always been a dumping grounds for stuff. When the house is cleaned, and something needs to be “hidden” it goes in there. I spent a lot of time cleaning the room, which it still isn’t done, but I’ve made a good dent. My time is usually spent on our kitchen table with my laptop. This allows me to spend more time with my wife while she is watching TV. A room where I can get work done where it is quite would be nice. We headed up to Great Grandma’s (Jacobs) to visit with family. Very cool family with a lot laughs!

Saturday….Dentist..

Jacob HATES the dentist and had to have a tooth pulled and a few cavities filled. We had to be to the Dentist at 8:15am. I woke up at 7:50a (I was the first one up), so we had to get Jacob up, ready and off to the dentist. We have a 15-minute drive to the dentist. I don’t think I drove too fast, but we made it there by 8:20a. The place was a total disorganized and we had a hard time checking in and then had to wait until 10am before they could get him back. It went well, but he ended up biting his lip a ton after surgery and it was bleeding pretty good. His lip is super swollen now and looks bad. The dentist instructed us to keep him from walking and keep a good eye on him. It was hard to keep him from walking for 2 hours. Jacob was on the move after about 3 and that is as good as we could do! He was fine and there were no incidents other than the bloody lip!

Sunday

Pretty relaxing day today, so nothing to exciting to report. Church was pretty good. Our neighbor gave a talk. It was great to hear from him (and the others). Jacob switches classes next week (New Year.. New Class) He had some awesome teachers, and he is sad to be loosing his teachers. I’m hoping he is a good kid during class. We finished off the night with some games. We had a great night until we had to put the boy to bed. I’m hoping we aren’t the only ones who have a rough time getting their kid(s) to bed.

I hope everyone has a great New Years Celebration this week. Keep safe out there and if you drink remember not to drive! You have options with Lyft and Uber.

Christmas Month

I am going to do another blog post this week.

Having the holidays over is going to be awesome! There are a lot of festive activities and parties, but it is one right after another! The weekends are usually crammed packed, so you don’t have much down time. Sunday after church are usually my favorite times. We are chilled around here and take it easy.

I have loved every event that we have attended and done this month. Earlier this month, we attended a Christmas Party with my family. Getting together with this side of the family, usually only happens once a year. My family means the world to me and I wish that I saw them more! As I’ve mentioned, my father passed away several years ago (30 years now). We have since found out that he had a daughter before he got married to my mom. It is a crazy DNA story that I will have to expound on sometime. She fits right in with our family. There are a lot of resemblances with her and my family that are spooky. Each get together, we learn more and more about her. So much fun!

This weekend, we were able to meet with Jacob’s birth grandma, J. She lives in North Carolina, so we don’t get to see her very much. She is divorced and has two adult kids that keep her busy! Jacob’s birthmother has made some decisions in her life that aren’t the best. It’s rough to see her go through this troubled time. We have so much love for her and the decision she made to place with us. We just don’t love her decisions she is making now.

We told Grandma J to meet us at Leatherby’s, so we could have food and desert, if she had eaten, since it was going to be late. We show up and see a sign that says, “We are temporarily closed for remodeling….” There was no mention of this online. I look it up now and it still says it’s open! Am I the only one who relies way too much on the internet to tell me what is going on? We ended up going a block or two over to “Crown Burger”. You can’t go wrong with burgers, can you? We had a great visit with J.

Before the meeting with J, we had family photos taken. I was dreading it, but it wasn’t as bad as I though it was going to be. I’m not much of a suit person, but it went better than I thought.

We went through the Christmas In Color display this week in South Jordan, UT. It is a big parking lot filled with Christmas lights synced to music and it is amazing! It is a pretty fun thing to do as a family. Jacob enjoys it. Hopefully the biggest of scrooges can come through with a little Christmas spirit or a song or two stuck in your head. This year, they added vertical lights have this 3D effect to them.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas this year. I hope you don’t get caught up in the whole retail nightmare of Christmas.

Work is fun.

It has been a crazy week at work and with life. I have been working on several projects at work. I currently have at least 4 projects that I am working on. Each one provides a unique learning experience. It’s always so fun (and stressful). For instance, this week I had to try and recover an admin password for an EC2 instance on Amazon. To make things worse we don’t have the public/private let pairs for the machine either.

I can’t go into too much detail, but a little background on this project might help. The client payed someone to develop a system. They parted ways and now something is broken. They are paying us to try and fix the system. I’ve had to play detective piece a bunch of stuff together. The thing that is broken resides on a machine that we need access to. This machine is hosting a website and has passwords I need, and I’m pretty sure this is where the problem is.

I am NOT a professional IT man, and I can hack my way through things. Acting with confidence when mucking around with machines on AWS isn’t my strong point. This is probably something I need to work on. Full Stack developer? Is IT included in that?

I did a lot of research and looking into how to change the password. I found a lot of options, but none with clearly marked prerequisites. They also use a bunch of terms, I have no idea what they are, so when they do list a prerequisite, I fail to catch it. Needless to say, I ended up finding them after I had gone down the rabbit hole.

One thing you may, or may not know about me is, I am a big worry wart. I worry about things going wrong that may not go wrong. If I don’t own the data, I get this super anxious feeling that everything is going to break or blow up. My heart rate always skyrockets. Hopefully I can post a graph from my Fitbit.

Not much in the way of cardio. Mostly stress.

A few attempts at getting the password was made earlier in the week, but nothing that required powering down the server. Thursday at 1pm was going to be the best time to make another attempt. The client had a few demo’s that he was doing. After about two hours of stress (cloning, moving IPs, installing software, etc), I get to the point a where I can run the software that allows me to change the password. EC2Rescue was suppose to be the rescue, but it failed miserably. There was a read/write permission issue. Nothing in the docs said anything about this. I don’t think I missed it… the stress level was elevated after this discovery.

Now it was freaking out out mode. I mounted the two drives from the machine I needed to get to, and luckily I could see files and I searched and found some of the things I needed

Time was running out, so I set the IP addresses back to the old machine and brought it back up. The client had a demo in the morning, so we tested the site/apps to make sure everything was working. A new plan had to be revised, because I didn’t want to waste any more time.

I was able to find some passwords on the drives mounted earlier. The passwords were useful to make the necessary changes to another system. Friday night the build started working. Excitement was in the air! Emailing the client the news brought me great joy! I have one more task to complete this week, but it requires a Mac, iPhone Emulator, and an Xcode expert. I will talk to that guy on Monday. We should be able to get everything working.

It’s been a crazy project, and I hope we get to work with this client more in the future. Coding is my first love, and solving complicated non-coding issues is second. I’ve learned a ton from this project!

Please forgive my random thoughts/posts.

Memories…

Here is a picture of my mom and dad. My father is smoking in the aunts house. Seems crazy now, but we never thought about it back then.

This week my boy wanted to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas Song. It made me think of my Aunt Margret, who passed away last year. It brought back a lot of memories that I cherish. Memories of hanging out at her house, her laugh, and the many fun things we did with her. When I was a boy, I would hang out at her house a lot. I first heard this song at her house many moons ago. If I could only call her up and tell her how much my boy loves this song, and the memories I have of this song.

While driving to work, I was thinking about the people in my life that try and avoid memories or places that bring up memories about certain people. I’m curious why? My father passed away when I was 15 years old (about 44 days before my 16th birthday). I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a traumatic experience and there was a lot of anger towards his job where he was killed. He died in a work place accident, but of course, I had to hold someone responsible. I wasn’t happy with the place he worked for many years.

My father was a smoker and he smoked in our house (this was the 80’s, it was acceptable…right?). To this day, if someone is smoking around me, it still brings up memories about my father. I hate the smell of smoke, but I cherish those memories of him. A few memories are: Long drives down by the lake to on his way to have coffee with his friends. Sitting in the bowling alley, impatiently waiting while he talked, and talked with his friends. I was an impatient kid. 🙂

My mother has also passed on, from Cancer (as mentioned before), and I’d say there isn’t a day that doesn’t go by where I think of her. The memories are awesome, and I will be sad when they are gone.

All of my grandparents have passed on. My father-in-law has passed. It is so crazy! I’m a bit jealous of my friends that have both sets of parents an grandparents!

One thing I love about Facebook is the memories. We live in a society now where “dropping by” to visit someone is a bad thing. That is one thing my mother and father would do a lot. “Hey lets go see …..”, and we would drive over to their house. No cell phones, and calling their home phone took too long! It was great, but now you don’t see anyone unless you are on Facebook or make prior arrangements.

People tend to only post the “good” things that are happening in their life, but I don’t mind it. I still get to keep up with them. It is hard to tell if they are going through a rough time. If you have a friend who has passed on and they have a Facebook account, it is a bit of a memorial. You have a place to leave memories and photos from the past. There are many times I’ve gone to my parents grave site and spoke to them as if they were there listening to me. If my parents had a Facebook account, I’d probably write a message or two to them. We do have a group where we can post photos of them and share memories.

I asked my wife about this why people try and avoid the memories, and her response was that they may be avoiding the places where they died or the memories about them dying. I can totally understand this. The memories of their death are probably the most traumatic. The experience was tough, but I know that I grew so much from going through my experiences. It was definitely rough, but it is a memory and something I’m never going to forget.

What are your thoughts?