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A space for my thoughts.

I don't write anything too serious on here; these are mostly shower thoughts from an engineer. My new year's resolution for 2024 is to write one article per week on average. Browse on the navigation menu on the left or type in the search bar at the top to look for articles. Click on the links in the footer to view my homepage, send me an email, or visit my other online presence. Enjoy!

  • in Random
  • 3 min read

Speed of Driving

It's a little stressful when you're driving exactly the speed limit (of course, I would never go beyond the posted speed limit) and someone zooms by you at 10, 15, or sometimes 20+ miles per hour. As a bonus, these people will usually weave through traffic too. What's so important that you'd risk your life, and several other peoples', to save some time? Maybe, man's gotta poo. Who knows? But something I do think about, is how much time are they actually saving, assuming they don't get into a crash or stopped by the police?

  • in Project
  • 7 min read

Custom Domains in Gmail

Go to | #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7

I'm reviving an old series here. This one branches off of story #5, where I split up my Gmail account to use a custom email for each online account. But now, instead of exposing my Gmail account, I can use one of the custom domains I own to send and receive emails, directly in my Gmail mail client, for free! For example, I can now send and receive emails from an address like example@nicfv.com. It was an adventure to figure out this project and quite a lengthy headache at times.

  • in Journal
  • 5 min read

2024: A Year for nicfv

2024 was a big year! I completed and exceeded both of my New Year's resolutions, did a lot of running, visited 2 new countries, and worked on a lot of cool projects. Let's go over the 2024 recap for this mysterious individual named Nicolas Ventura.

  • in Journal
  • 8 min read

Owning Property, (Almost) Two Years Later

It's crazy to think, but coming up on two years now, I purchased my condo. I absolutely love it and have no regrets, but there are some things I wish I had considered. Here's a short story of what I wished I could tell myself those 2 years ago, and things (specific to me) that are really important in finding a place to live.

  • in Project
  • 9 min read

Working with an NPM Monorepo

It's no secret that I'm developing a series of npm packages. The primary reason I'm doing this is for code reuse. I want to build up more complex programs using as much of my own software as possible. Second, the packages I'm developing might also benefit other developers. Also, the secret third reason I'm doing this is just for fun. Although there have been times where I really questioned my secret third reason. One of those recent times was when I changed my development strategy from maintaining several independent repositories to maintaining just one monorepo containing all my packages.

  • in Project
  • 2 min read

Connecting to Public Wifi

I'm currently writing this from my laptop running Kubuntu 24.04 in a public space; Peet's Coffee. (The matcha latte here is good.) I had some difficulty connecting to the public wifi. Luckily, I had my smartphone with me, which gave me options.

  • in Journal
  • 14 min read

Supercomputing Conference, Atlanta

Every year, thousands of tech giants, computer nerds, and NERSC staff alike flock to the conference on Supercomputing. Normally, from NERSC there's such high demand to attend that many staff are denied travel assistance. Maybe since it was my first time, I got a free pass. Several of my colleagues went the year prior and only had good things to say, so I wanted to know what it was like for myself, and maybe learn a thing or two along the way.

  • in Random
  • 4 min read

Cost of Driving to Work

I don't think many people like driving to work. Some might - I personally love driving, but not when I have to. It makes me wonder, how much does it cost to drive for work-related purposes? I've developed a formula that takes into account not only the cost for gas, but also the cost of overhead services and opportunity cost associated with the time spent commuting to and from work.

  • in Journal
  • 2 min read

Resolution Update

We just started week 45 of 2024! Isn't it crazy that there are only 58 days left of this year? A bit over 2 months ago, I wrote about my 2024 New Year's resolution progress. I'm pleased to announce that I have made some great progress on this, and I am well on track to fulfilling my resolutions by the end of the year.