I was talking to Joy about wanting to read more and she recommended the NOFX book: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories. So I downloaded the Kindle version last night and started reading it. I'm about 16% in so far and it's pretty good. It's like revisiting the 80's when I was a kid in high school. Although they were in LA and the punk scene was way bigger and more hardcore l can still relate to the stories in this book.

I found out about punk lifestyle and music when I was in 8th grade. It's a pretty funny story.

In the 7th grade I was in a small shop class learning about engines and fabrication. I took the class because my dad was a great mechanic and fabricator always working on old cars and bikes. In this class there was this really cute girl that I had a crush on. I never really said anything to here because I was just a shy kid that was more interested in computers than social activities.

When I came back to school in the 8th grade I took the same class. The first day of the class the girl I had a crush on the year before was also taking the class again. But this time she was not the cute awkward girl from the year before. She was completely transformed into a punker. This totally peaked my interest in her and the punk rock culture.

I was always an outcast and different from the other kids. My family totally did not fit into the small town we moved to. I never had many friends while growing up. Just a few core and close friends. So I related punk rock as outcasts that never fit in. I just thought to myself that this is a group of kids that I could relate to. And that's when it started.

By the 9th grade I had transformed into a punk rock poser. I befriended a few guys that were punk skaters and I picked up skateboarding also. I was in love with skateboarding.

I was in electronics class because I was a nerd and wanted to build robots. There was a guy in the class, Jason, that was totally punk. He had a double mohawk, army style jacket, and the boots to match. He could recite the lyrics to many punk songs. One day he was singing the Suicidal Tendencies song Institutionalized. He would skip the fast parts saying, "too fast to know."

I believe it was Jason that gave me my first punk rock mix tape. I played it over and over for days. It had Black Flag, DK, Circle Jerks, and a few other bands on it. It changed my life.

I continued to be a poser in the punk scene for many years. I don't think I ever got out of poser phase. Skateboarding, Punk Rock, and computer programming is what I did for the next 25 years. I still feel like a poser.

I had the Nexus 5 and absolutely loved it. One day I dropped it and it broke inside. I could no longer use LTE with it. So I upgraded to the Nexus 5x.

Right off I didn’t like the 5x as well. It seemed slower and jerky. I did like the fingerprint sensor and the ability to unlock my phone with it. But overall I didn’t really like the phone. I upgraded the 5x to Android 7.1.1 and that fixed all the slowness issues I was having. It made the phone a lot better.

I then upgraded to the Pixel XL and Project Fi. I wanted to try Google’s new phone service. It was also a bit cheaper than the AT&T service I was using. I was also ready to go up to a larger phone. I had a hard time choosing between the 6p and the Pixel XL. Finally the longer lasting battery, the faster CPU, and the great camera won me over. I kinda wish it had a larger screen for reading books on but this will do. So far I’m loving the new phone. I know it’s not the best but I am still pretty happy with it.

I’ll chime in again in the future to let you know how it all worked out.

I like watches. I think I’m going to continue getting them and have a nice little collection. This is just a cheapie watch, but I like it.

PS, I have found the ticking of this watch is really soothing. I just love hearing the seconds tick away on it.

Still a bit sick. Almost a week. Really need to get better soon. I have a lot of work to find and do. Haven't been to the Gym in like a week too. Really need to get back to working out.

I've been working on some Google Spreadsheet stuff lately. It's pretty cool. Working on a auto-dealer Craig's List extension for Chrome also. Should be shipping that soon.

Other than that I've just been looking for more work. I really need to get back into full-time and start making some money. Don't want to run out and my savings is starting to get pretty low. Maybe one of the many side projects I'm working on will give me a break and generate some good cash. Crossing my fingers 🤞.

I've been sick for a few days and it's snowing a lot. I almost could not see my car.
Anyway, I'm going to be really happy when I'm not sick anymore.

Oh, and my new cable came for my monitor. USB-C to DispalyPort. I plugged it in and my monitor came alive! Yay, now I can use my sweet WASD keyboard again on a big screen monitor. I'm so happy.

I'm still going to the Gym and I'm finally starting to see some results. Still have a long way to go to undo the years of sitting in front of my computer working my life away. Still concentrating on eating right and not drinking although I did have a few drinks on New Years. This year I resolve to take control over my mind and body and not let the instant gratification control me. It's really hard. I feel like an addict sometimes.

Got a few freelance offers from Upwork and a job offer of CTO from a company in the Bay Area. The CTO position sounds interesting. It's a cool idea and I'm putting a lot of thought into it. It's a sweat equity position that I won't be getting paid for right away. You know the old rule I have about not working for stock. Well, I should follow it right now. I'm such a sucker for new stuff though.

While I ponder joining another startup I'll be building out a WordPress website and keeping up on my programming studies. I am still reading Confident Ruby and going over the study list on Github.

I'm also working bit by bit on my CMS. Going slow right now but I hope I speed up soon. Working out and having a morning ritual is helping a lot.

I finally got my new monitor cable today. HDMI to DisplayPort. I want to use my external monitor and keyboard. Love my WASDKeyboard. Plugged it in and nothing. So I spent all of my evening trying to get it working. Still not working.

My laptop has a different video card for the HDMI port than what the screen is using. It uses the onboard Intel for the screen and Nvidia for the ports. So I have to install this BumbleBee software to get it working. All night and still can't get my HDMI port to work. The BumbleBee software is working, but I can't get my external screen to show up. Something else I need to figure out I guess.

I didn't get any responses to my job bids on Upwork either. I just hope everyone is still on holiday. Hope to get some jobs going for the new year. Going to be out of money soon.

Started doing some research on building my CMS to replace WordPress today. Didn't get very far since I was messing with my computer all day.

Not a very good day today. Did get to go skateboarding at lunch time for my cardio workout. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Added a few more proposals in Upwork. Had some emails going back and forth for a gig this morning. Nothing more since noon on that job. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll have the gig.

Learning a bunch of stuff. Binary search, bitwise operations, trees, and next is heaps. Learned hashes, stacks, and linked lists yesterday. Tomorrow heaps and sorting.

Did some command line updates to my system and my server. Installed a custom Gnome Redshift that works on Wayland. Locked down my Nginx server after reading an article on Nginx security. Using Goaccess to get server stats from my Nginx logs.

Reading my book is going slow. I should be reading now but I'm listening to a Linux/Programming podcast instead. Gotta get back up to date on stuff.

Getting my new DisplayPort to HDMI cable tomorrow so I can finally get back to my big screen and awesome keyboard. Can't wait.

Just getting back into computer stuff.