It's Super Bowl Sunday! I truly hope the Philadelphia Eagles win, thwarting the Kansas City Chiefs' three-peat!
#
Show day! My daughter is part of the I Made It! Mine at The Block Northway event today! She's one of over 120 vendors selling all types of wares. It runs from 10:00 to 3:00 today, so stop by! đ
#
I've been reluctant for whatever reason to use ChatGPT to write Python code for me. For some reason, my stubborn old-fashioned programmer's way of thinking kept telling me to write my own code so I would learn from my mistakes. But today I thought I would give ChatGPT a try on creating a command-line app for me, and whoa! I was really impressed! Maybe an old dog can still learn some new tricks! đ
#
Show prep day. Lots of running around to do!
#
Rainy and cold this morning, but at least it isn't ice, like they thought might happen.
#
Doing some running around this morning, then looking into using DeepSeek R1 for a RAG implementation I am currently working on for a client.
#
I have to quit doom scrolling. What's going on in D.C. is horrible and depressing. If they do something to Social Security and Medicare, they are going to hurt 70 million seniors, some of whom surely voted these bastards into office! Someone has to do something about Musk.
#
A much cooler day today compared to yesterday!
#
Today is going to be a busy day between running errands and doing some soul searching about the current state of my affairs.
#
My next hurdle is figuring out how to do subheads in my Drummer script that publishes to my micro.blog site. Right now, it doesn't work at all. âšī¸
#
I'm actually growing used to having my blogroll on its own page on my micro.blog site
here.
#
The more I learn about the micro.blog platform, the more I like it.
#
I've been working on my Micro.blog site
garywthompson.dev today to see how I can change the theme and add features. It's been a bit confusing, but I'm starting to understand the platform a little better. I've made a new page for a blogroll, but I really want to show it on my home page. I need to learn how the short codes work on the platform.
#
It's Groundhog's Day! Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow this morning, so 6 more weeks of winter! I wonder how many times he's actually been correct? đ
#
Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit! IYKYK.
#
It's January 31st, and believe it or not, there is rolling thunder and rain happening outside my window.
#
I have a micro.blog site that I had stopped pushing my content to, but now I'm thinking that I want to start using the site again. I need to learn how to change the theme/style to make it look a bit less open.
#
I want to become a better writer, especially when it comes to my blog. I am currently using Drummer as my writing tool, but may switch to WordLand once Dave Winer releases it.
#
Warm up today with rain that will hopefully wash away all of the dirty snow and salt residue.
#
A very sad night with the plane crash in Washington, DC.
#
It's time to focus on the present and not the past. Positivity and creativity are the goals. Peace of mind will follow.
#
The news about the "mass immigration deporting" is so disturbing.
#
The Super Bowl is set with the Chiefs vs. Eagles rematch from 2 years ago. I think the Eagles can win this time because of Saquon Barkley. I'm really tired of the Chiefs!
#
It's NFL conference championship Sunday! Since I don't have a horse in the race, I'll be rooting for the underdogs Bills and Commanders to wind up in the Super Bowl.
#
Yesterday got away from me, so I didn't have a chance to set up my Raspberry Pi 5. Today is really busy, so maybe tomorrow. đ¤đģ
#
A bit of running around to do, then hopefully setting up a new Raspberry Pi 5 for open-source AI experimenting.
#
It's finally starting to get a little warmer today. đ
#
I discovered that when I am using the web version of Drummer, my script that updates my blog also updates a Datasette database using a shell script that calls a Keyboard Maestro script. It all works, but it annoyingly opens a blank browser tab to make the call. In Electric Drummer, it just made the call, which I'm guessing is because it's an app and not a browser tab.
#
I'm going to start using the web version of Drummer since I can use my Groq scripts from it the same way I have been doing it in Electric Drummer. I like to use my iPad, but couldn't use ED as it was a Mac-only app. I may go back to ED at some point, but we'll see.
#
Hopefully this is the last day of the brutal arctic cold for a good while.
#
The artic cold blast has settled in for the next 2 days!
#
With all of the tech leaders kissing Trump's ring, I think it might be time to explore how I can use Linux more.
#
So TikTok going dark seemed to be all about Trump looking like a hero as it magically came back to life last night. What a douchebag! It's sad that we honor Martin Luther King today and at the same time we are starting the second Trump administration, which is horrible.
#
TikTok has gone dark with a message to users about the big bad US government being the reason. I really like TikTok, but at the same time, there is concern about what data they could be gathering and sending back to China. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
#
We are under an "Extreme Cold Watch" starting at 4:00 AM Monday through 10:00 AM Thursday. It's been a good while since we had this type of cold weather! đĨļ
#
Having lunch with some old CACI friends today out at OTB. đ
#
Positivity and creativity.
#
My ideal workforce re-entrance would be to utilize my acquired knowledge to help solve a company's technical problems. I am very good at finding the right tools for the job, even if it means learning the tool initially before using it. My current passion is using Python to create scripts that work with data, including web scraping and data cleaning.
#
I've come to the realization that my "retirement plan" is really not working as I had hoped. I've chewed through more money than I anticipated, mainly due to not changing my lifestyle. I also was "forced" into early retirement when the company I was working for got sold during the summer of 2020 to a larger company who was just buying customers. I did try to adjust to their way of working, but I pissed off the CTO when I caught him lying about something that I had given them correct information about. It took nine months, but they finally made up some bogus crap and forced me out in June of 2021. I was really in shock, as that had never happened to me during my entire career. I spent the rest of that year feeling very lost and not sure what to do. Plus, it didn't help that I was 68 years old! The following year, I did a fair amount of consulting/contract work, but my main customer's company got sold, and I was out in the cold again. I've spent the last 18+ months learning about AI and large language models and have become pretty well-versed in the subject, but now I need to market myself. I'm looking mainly for remote contract work.
#
Another bitter cold day today, but at least the snow that surprised us at evening rush hour yesterday has moved out.
#