TL;DR: I’ve learned things, built things, got employed at a thing, was sad about and thought about things, and am happy about things.

Ohai there. I said I’d post with what I’m up to over my break, so here are things:

• I got a job with an awesome data viz company which cares about the people they join on data (heh, get it?) as much as cool code
• I’ve been enjoying my last summer vacation with plenty of kalsarikännit before moving to (hopefully) consistent adulthood employment
• I’ve been re-discovering and admiring OG hackers of yore and their phone phreaking exploits
• I’ve been pondering mortality and how to effectively convert the data about it into a motivating and humbling visual
• I celebrated one year with my incredible SO
• I’ve begun a homebrew project to make my own batches of one of the world’s oldest libations (yes, Dad, it’s legal)
• I built a tracking and recipe management system so I have detailed and sharable records of said beverage (and, if you ask nicely, I might send you a bottle)
• I’ve been adjusting to my new MBP as a daily driver (my jumbo PC is mostly a game- and compiler-box now, but I’m appreciating the consistency of Bash full-time instead of my usual ebb/summer-flow of CLI speed)
• I’ve been watching the cryptocurrency market frolick aimlessly as my fun-money (shockingly) fails to spontaneously spawn a complete retirement plan
• I’ve been mourning for and with friends for their losses in the sudden and nightmarish NorCal wildfires (please donate money, time, or things to people who are helping; mark yourselves as safe so I don’t come bugging you — I’m fine; help those who aren’t)
• I’ve been learning Solidity, consulting, and contributing to a project to immortalize important texts on the blockchain (here’s to contributing to a blockchain project that ISN’T A NEW TOKEN OR CURRENCY YAYYYY)
• I’ve been serving as Sysadmin-In-Residence for the family business (unsurprisingly, when you teach people to Google well, most of the problems you come home to actually require your attention! Seriously! It’s un-ironically nice to have some puzzles and problems to solve when you come home instead of just rebooting a router and teaching how to use the printer. Fellow geek-children, take note — your parents are, in fact, smart; just show them the tools).
• I finally got around to enabling (and slowly instinct-ivizing) vi-style keybindings in Bash (when I can remember to use and practice them, they’re a Godsend… actually, they’re a pain in my behind, but I’m getting faster and better every time I use them… kinda like Vim… hm….)
• I’ve been admiring and enjoying life as I transition from an epoch marked by quarters, semesters, and midterms into one marked by new jobs, marriages, and children.

I still have a few weeks to go before day one at the new job (first full time job after a decade in the industry — a weird, exciting, and terrifying prospect), so expect a few more frivolous side projects and (hopefully) some alpha releases from projects I’m helping out with!

Always keep your stick on the ice.

~JK