Sorry it’s been so long since my last update, I’ve been preoccupied with new jobs these past few months and just really haven’t had much to say here. I wish I could say I’ll be more active going forward, I’m just not sure if that’s true. Right now my main goal is planning a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia within the next 12 months and just keep working. Hopefully it will be a calmer year, last year was a year of chaotic good.

Right now my main projects are working on some maintenance scripts for various services and servers I run, getting my ham radio license in the US upgraded and getting one for Canada too.

Sorry for the long time between posts. I’m working on some video content by the years end. I’m also going to finish some of my drafts later this month.

I’m actually surprised and at the same time disappointed with how my New Year’s Resolution went.
This post will mark 13 published posts this year out of the 15 total published posts.

I started out with a goal of posting weekly, but quickly realized that was too frequent and actually defeating the point in some respects. I scaled it back to once a month thinking that’d be the bare minimum, that I’d always be able to write a personal update, a technical how-to or maybe a post about a previous trip I’ve taken and ideally be able to actually do more. I fell short of this in a few ways, which covers the disappointment.

However I’m surprised that I never gave up on this blog, even when writers block kept me away, it got harder with three jobs or times where I felt unmotivated. (I actually made some private posts for some of those days, not a part of the count above)

I’m even more surprised that I wanted to keep coming back, write more posts and improve this blog, it’d have been so easy to scrap it and move on/start over with a clean install.

I kind of hoped that this year I’d have Permanent Residency in Canada, my application is still in process. I’ve hoped to see my family and meet my girlfriend’s family for the first time, as border requirements have changed, risks of those requirements changing mid trip and Covid’s own evolution as new variants occur have all played a role in postponing these plans for the time being.

I’m going to talk about 2022 goals in my next post, partly because I’m still ironing out what exactly I want out of 2022 and partly because I’m considering trying a different format for that announcement.

I was hoping to have some Halloween content to go with this but unfortunately the weather was all gloomy and a real down pour during trick or treating. I’ve gotta give the kids in the neighbourhood credit however, they didn’t let it stop them.

This month was mostly work and self-reflection, some planning for 2022 and working towards Canadian Permanent Residency. Unfortunately it’s too early and/or personal to really share anything in this list at this time. I will talk about my experience going through the Atlantic Immigration Pilot program at a later date, however.

The weather has become cooler, 4°C at night and 10°C during the day. We’re definitely seeing that fall to winter change start, no snow or ice storms yet. (Out west has had at least one already) We roll the clocks back next week, It’s going to be weird seeing the sunset before 5pm on Sunday.

Hopefully I can get a chance to ice skate and go to a hockey game this winter.

I didn’t write a post for July or August. I was focused on navigating the Atlantic Immigration Pilot process, which will allow me to stay in Canada without having to worry about temporary permits all the time. I’ve been working a bit more too, a minimum of 61.5 hours a week (compared to 37.5 when I last posted)

I did migrate all my projects to a single server, utilizing LXC containers. I was expecting issues in migrating over the Asterisk PBX but surprisingly that went smooth. My real issues were a wordpress redirect loop and getting mastodon running a little more smoothly (still working on that one, thinking the redis cache needs some tweaks)

While it’s unfortunate that I broke my resolution, the point of it was to make enough of a commitment and see if I’d actually stick with it or not. Could I write content and maintain the server or would I lose interest? I’ve had enough changes between then and now that this doesn’t feel like a failure, I’m still writing posts (I have technical ones that came out of the migration work mentioned above, getting ironed out in the drafts folder too. Also some travel related ones, but they’re in bad shape. Not even close to publishing that set.) So I feel like the spirit of that resolution is still great, despite a few major things happening I didn’t quit.