06/14/2024 13:14:30

So it's that time of year and I spent last weekend at SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) 2024 in Charlotte, NC. This was my second year of attending and it absolutely lived up to the lofty expectations set by my first trip last year. This year was less about the sessions for me and more about the people. Which is interesting to say because if I'm being honest about my visit last year, it was also similar.

Let's be up front: The highlight of this year was going to the "Retro Linux Ragchew" and meeting some of the maintainers of the classic distribution Slackware Linux. Fun fact: It was the second Linux distribution ever created and it was also the first one I ever installed on my own hardware as a teenager. In any event meeting Alan, Jeff and Fuzz (sorry, I never actually caught your name my man) and staying up until 3:30 am in the morning partying with them was an absolute blast.

04/06/2024 19:29:50

As some of you may have noticed, I have been rather quiet over the last few months. There are a lot of reasons for my silence. The more observant among you may have even noticed that content has disappeared and reappeared from this site several times over the same time period. Long story short: The nature of this site and how and when I use it to express myself is changing. This change is long overdue.

For starters, I have been working on getting another job. After much soul searching and interviewing, I'm happy to announce that I will be returning to a former employer, Paylocity. I will start my new position there later this month. I finished my two week notice with Urban Electric yesterday and it was a very cordial departure, despite our deep differences of opinion when it comes to the subject of custom software development. They were and are truly wonderful people and I wish them nothing but the absolute best.

12/29/2023 12:04:41

So as most of you know, I tend to take the last few weeks of every year off. Primarily I use this time to celebrate the year and reflect on its events. I also use this time to tie up any tech loose ends that I have... and boy did I have a few this year.

My biggest piece of in-home tech debt was definitely my camera system. For years I have run a hodge podge front door camera which basically amounted to an indoor web cam mounted in my front window which was pointed at the foot door area of the porch. The web cam was hooked up a to Raspberry Pi 4 running an RPI distribution called MotionEyeOS. Sadly this software hasn't been updated since mid 2020 as the maintainer had stepped away and nobody has stepped up to maintain it since.