What did you do this week?

Needed to get up-to-speed on Python syntax and SQL usage for a potential job opportunity, so I got through the first 3 sections of this Python/SQL course on Udemy. So far, I'd recommend it. The instructor is clear and concise without feeling like he's speeding through the material and shows multiple ways to accomplish certain goals while also warning about common pitfalls.

Here's my Github repo for the first lil app demonstrated in the course. I'm also thinking of rewriting these example apps in Rust as I go along, just for practice. 🧑‍🎓

This week we celebrated my son's sixth birthday. We bought him an RC car, which is a ton of fun. I can certainly see us getting into this as a bit of a hobby, and I've already looked up things I can print to upgrade the small machine he already has.

I played a couple of rounds of disc golf, badly. Shot +2 and +3 on two different nines. Pretty garbagey, but at least I was out and about doing things.

I played some more Elite Dangerous and have almost made my way to Sagittarius A, the Galactic Center. Most of the journey has been done in the evening while watching Silicon Valley, which has been delightful to get into. It's my first watch. A couple of months ago, in huddle at work, people who had watched it were going around and saying which character on the show we matched up with; when it got to my turn, the boss just said "Gilfoyle" and everyone said "yeah" and we moved on, so in episode one when he turned out to be a satanist, I was like, "Wait, wtf" but pretty quickly I just nodded and said, "yeah, that's spot on." I'm a Gilfoyle.

I finally sent my manager an email asking about working remotely on a permanent basis (he had said a couple months ago that upper management was looking for volunteers to do so). My ultimate goal is to be able to move out of state.

My kid's second birthday on wednesday. A birthday party of five people was a little sad but we video called a load of friends and relatives, he had a good time and now he has a balance bike which he is very proud of. I baked him a massive cake with blueberries on (blueberries are his favourite)

My new laptop arrived so I spent a decent amount of time fiddling about with that. Got Debian going, realised nvidia/xwayland is still a shitshow but I don't really need 3D in linux so it's not a huge issue for now - although I do need to figure out how I can use cuda for video rendering and I'd like to tinker with some ML stuff too. I am very enjoying the 4K screen and have realised how slow my old machine had become now I've got some new hardware.

Actually had some paid jewellery work for the first time in ages. One engagement ring and one wedding ring. The pandemic has not been kind to someone whose majority summer sales are wedding-related.

Rode my bike. It's been a month or so but it felt good, even if I did only manage 40km or so.

Went to cut (trim?) my hair. This time I decided to ask him to straighten my hair instead of keeping it afro-ey because I felt like it for a pretty decent while before now. While he straightened my hair, he also gave me a somewhat detailed haircut, probably because most people my age in my neighborhood like that (this is vaguely in the Brazilian urban periphery, although not too deep in.) I should probably tell him next time to just straighten my hair and comb it. In the meantime I'll just wash my hair, comb it and forget about it.

My mother also made some plum cake for us. It's not anyone's birthday so probably because she felt like it which is fair, want doing stuff just because we feel like it is often pretty fun.

My grandma also decided to visit for a bit, mainly to talk with us, mainly about how my father's side of the family is going, (because it's kinda unstable, I've talked about this before, albeit sparingly) but also talk about a digital watch my grandfather got me (it's not from any brand, is pretty simple and I haven't really used it because of the lockdown if you want to know) and other things.