No seriously - this wasn’t my attempt at a clickbait title but a change that I believe has been pivotal in my adult life as both a professional and father/husband/community leader.
What would you do with an extra 500 hours a year?
Maybe pick up a new skill, maybe master and existing skill. Maybe donate your time and energy towards your community. Maybe just spend more time with family. Given you are doing something productive most of the time then in most cases you, those around you and your community will likely benefit from it.
I was having a conversation recently about how and why I chose blogging as an experiment that I was going to invest my time and energy into - and it quickly became a sound-boarding session for things I had and hadn’t considered (something I love about growth mindset individuals).
The Pursuit
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to pursue interacting with more people in greater capacities and both communicating the ways of which I think about things at a specific point in time and also sharing my thoughts with others. I had been thinking about this for a while, but I hadn’t really considered the idea of blogging as a way to do this.
For a very long time I have always been fascinated with home automation. It’s soo much more than just turning a light on and off with my phone. It’s about adding intelligence to my home that makes the lives of my family better by removing unnecessary tasks and optimizing how we operate.
Example
For example - take your standard consumer HVAC forced-air system in homes today. It’s an incredibly simple system that reads the temperature from a single point (typically a thermostat) and turns on and off the heating and cooling valves based on that.
Early this year (2023), My family and I were facing an interesting issue. We were expecting an addition to our family with the arrival of our son in April/May and our house (our first) was reaching the maximum capacity that it could handle. Don’t get me wrong, we are very grateful for what we have worked to build and we have more than enough. We love the area we live in, our neighbors and our community.
Especially when the data is fun to aggregate and process. Finally some code!
I’ve been using a free Strava account for years now. It tracks my workouts and gives me some high-level information to share with friends and followers.
Desk Treadmill data
For each workout that I have been recording with the hardware from the previous post, I’ve specifically been naming them “Desk Treadmill” such that I could easily aggregate them in the future.
I will always admit that I love everything that is working for a fully remote company. I’ve battle tested the 2+ hr commute daily for longer than I cared to admit, and that time feels like a huge part of my life has been wasted. Working remotely has offered me time to focus on the things that matter, when they matter.
Focusing on work and the tasks at hand - with zero interruption - while also being able to inject random bouts of family time throughout the day that I would have otherwise not had the ability to do. This is a huge part of my life. Snack time with my daughter when I’ve been banging my head against the wall for hours.
Knowing that I wanted to have data about my use of the treadmill to backup my claims about how I perceived using it day-to-day was one of my goals. Another being, that as a cyclist and general Strava user, I knew that I already had the platform available for storing my data as well as had seen API access available (but had never used it before).
Now it was a matter of piecing the pipeline together.
In the previous installment of the ongoing desk treadmill experiment (linked below), I mentioned that the circumstances of the treadmill I use today was probably not what the sane person would have done.
Rather I honestly had no intention of starting this experiment this year. Instead this experiment was a result of being in the right place at the right time and keeping the spirit of tinkering alive.
Right Place
With my “Always Tinkering” mindset, I was browsing the marketplace one weekend and decided to browse the offerings for treadmills. More of a fluke than anything I found a listing for an Under Desk Treadmill at the price of $0 with a description that it turns on but displays an error.
KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2023 is fast approaching. It is without contest my favorite event of the year.
What I wanted to do was outline some tips for everyone - from first time attendees to experienced attendees - for what I believe contributes to a great event.
Situational Awareness
First an foremost do some logistical planning:
How far are you from the venue?
What will you need to bring based upon that?
What all do you have have planned that may change what you need?
Rarely has the venue ever been hot - and we’re talking November in Chicago so a warming layer may not be a bad idea.
When I set out to created this blog, as noted in my Blogging the hard way article, I had a couple key objectives that I wanted to pursue:
Reproducible and static
Meaning highly portable
Minimal configuration required
Markdown content and generate
And most importantly - Open - as in anyone can look at the repository and see every single detail that makes this site run. If I inspire even one person to have some fun exploring Hugo and the adventure that is serving content to the world from the comfort of their own home - then I’d call it a success.
