Notes

Kiddo’s third birthday Yesterday was such a great day for me. It was kiddo’s third birthday and I had a lot of fun with him. He too said the same and that made me even happier! In the morning, I was hanging out with him while his mother prepared a little surprise for him - with cake and balloons - in his room. In the evening, I got him a giant “happy birthday” balloon and he was genuinely happy playing with it. For Diwali, we lighted up a few sparklers - his first, wore traditional kurta-pajama, ate chole-puri for dinner and read a book called “How to cheer up dad” which we recently got from the local library. ...

One option is to buy a silicon diffuser with regular strip lights. For example https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B2WMM5WN https://www.amazon.com/Muzata-Silicone-Spotless-Flexible-Enclosed/dp/B08QM6YK7X or https://www.amazon.com/Muzata-Silicone-Channel-Flexible-Enclosed/dp/B0B4FQCB6D Could I use a Shelly RGB with this? Govee’s 1m lights are just $70 though.

Dallas: Proper map: http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/xSE_GoogleMap3.php?Ecl=+20240408&Acc=2&Umb=1&Lmt=1&Mag=0&Lat=32.77642&Lng=-96.79661&Zoom=8&MapT=%27TERRAIN%27 Flights: Resources: https://eclipse2024.org/eclipse_cities/total/tx

I’ve thought this before but still: it’s time for me to move out of Amazon. Why? The current 3x-per-week RTO policy is sucking out time from my life and there are strong rumors that the number will bump up to 5x-per-week. That will be worse. My work in the last month, after getting promoted to PE, hasn’t been fun. I’ve been advising teams on a few different initiatives, and that’s good, but I am not solving complex problems on my own. Partially out of lack of motivation and/or wastage of time while commuting, I am not able to find time to write code or be hands on in other ways. That’s not good. There is a lot of bureaucracy in the company but that’s also kind of covered in the previous point. Things don’t move fast enough. My next ideal company would likely have 2 elements: small enough so that it isn’t too bureaucratic and will allow me to be hands-on. I was also thinking that we take a goal of moving out of US to Europe after X years from now. Wife seemed onboard but we are concerned about 1 thing: lack of friends and social circle. I take it as a given that we won’t be able to make new friends in a new place when we are forty (or even at our current age for that matter). So, will we be okay with that? (As of today, the answer seems “no”.)

Self hosting: I had setup a certificate authority called Step CA on my home server because ai thought it’d be cool. It mostly worked but not reliably all the time. So, I finally ditched it and I am now in the process of replacing it with regular Let’s Encrypt certificates. It’ll also simplify things a bit because we won’t need to install our custom root certificate on every device. I was worried that my sub-domains will appear on the public certificate log and, for instance, I don’t necessarily want the world to know I use the Arr suite of software. So, I used wildcard certificates to protect against those. I am still not sure why the earlier setup didn’t work well for me because I was mostly doing standard stuff on Traefik. The underlying problem was that I had 2 certificate resolvers - Step CA and Let’s Encrypt - and Traefik fell back to the wrong one in some cases. But why, I still don’t know. I am also putting together a new home page which can be configured through code instead of the UI. Yesterday, I thought of setting up Mastodon because why not and because I have RAM to spare. But then I thought no one will anyway read whatever I post there, so why not keep it simple and just write once in awhile here in my personal notes? RTO, i.e. return to office, is tiring. Today, I had to take shuttle back home instead of the vanpool and the ride took a full 90 minutes plus 15-25 mins to/from shuttle. That’s a lot.

Neutral wire: White in color. Last time, I saw 3 bundled together already before I began my installation. I had to take a 4th one and connect that with the bundle and switch. One of line or load can have multiple wires. If so, put all of them in the new switch. Green or bare == ground. Enbrighten: Change LED light behavior by pressing up-button thrice and down-button once. (By default, it is on when light is off and vice versa.)

With kiddo, we’ve reached a point where he does something for the first time in his life and we don’t ask where he learnt that, because firsts happen often nowadays. Instead, we just relish those. Just a couple of days back, he mentioned he took 3 girls in his preschool class to Costco. What did they do there? Well, they bought apples! I told him girls don’t like going to Costco for fun, so, on my advice, he took them to Seattle by monorail but they didn’t like it there! Monorail, because we sat in one last weekend. Often times, when he interrupts a conversation between me and wife, I ask him to not interrupt and wait for his turn. Today, the opposite happened. I interrupted his conversation with wife, so he told me to wait. And, like I do, he finished his conversation, turned to me and asked what I was saying! Sometimes, he speaks a lot, and I mean a lot. In a way, that’s a good thing because that’s how he expresses himself. But it can become tiring at times. Still, I really enjoy his company and I can safely say he enjoys mine too. This many not last, of course, because he’ll grow out of it sometime in future but I am happy till it lasts. I’ve seen parents that tell their kids how much they’ve done for them. However, I don’t think they realize how much happiness their kids gave them by just being. I feel parents get way more out of the relationship than what the kids do.

I wanted to integrate HAOS with our car so that I could use the car without its keys. Here’s why I can’t do that: There is an HA integration but it requires Subaru Star Link subscription. Apparently, I need to purchase 2 parts of that subscription, totaling 15 USD per month and then I’ll get remote lock/unlock capabilities. That’s not worth it.

Details available here. Only applicable to a few buildings. Specific to Nitro North: General:

Last time, in September 2023, we visited Kailua-Kona and Hilo, and its nearby places. We couldn’t go up north or south, so can do that. For stay, I might want to splurge and book some beach resort. I could also stay at some offbeat resort close to the ocean and away from touristy spots, such as something in Kalapana area.