Working for the Weekend

After a low-key but fun weekend with the kids, Monday came around once more as it always does. This week, my work is much slower than it has been for the past few months, and I’m grateful for that. My team is small and burnout is real. I know it’s only a matter of time until things get crazy again, but I’ll appreciate the breather while I can.

Projects this week

This week, I plan to finally finish my recap/review of the Neck Deep concert I went to with my daughter in Baltimore last week. Look for that on the Shrediverse blog in the next few days.

I’ve been experimenting with finding a good backup for my photos in addition to Google Photos. Not that I think it’s going anywhere, and I’ll continue to use it as my main photo gallery, but just in case something were to happen to my Google account, the last thing I would want to lose access to is my photos. I have them backing up to a self-hosted Nextcloud instance using a DigitalOcean Spaces bucket as storage. This is working great, however I would like an on-site backup as well. So I have ordered a 2TB USB hard drive that I plan to use with this Raspberry Pi 3 I have sitting around, and make myself a NAS to back up my photos to using this Autosync app I found on the Google Play Store.

Another ongoing project on my mind is introducing one of my daughters to web development and design. She’s interested in art and a pretty good artist for her age, but she is concerned about the future of an art career with AI becoming so prevalent in that industry. We’ve had conversations with her about other creative careers, primarily web development, and then she can make (and possibly sell) her art as a hobby or side gig. I started by showing her how to set up a basic HTML document with embedded CSS and how to link a stylesheet. She seems somewhat interested, so I think we’ll get her started on FreeCodeCamp soon.

Weekend plans

Friday is my birthday. My wife and I have the day off. Thursday night, us and the kids are meeting my parents for a hibachi dinner at a local Japanese restaurant. Friday, my wife and I plan to go to Front Royal, VA. We’ll hit up this restaurant we like down there, drive along Skyline Drive for a bit (for some reason it has become our tradition to do this around my birthday when no one is up there), and stop at a couple of our favorite meaderies: Saga and Honey & Hops. Saturday we are going out to dinner again but this time with my wife’s parents. And Sunday we plan to head up to Frederick, MD because it’s the first day of Frederick County restaurant week. Nothing too crazy, but I’m excited. Also, I might need new pants after all that good eating.