Skip to content

Blog

  • in Journal
  • 2 min read

Ice Skating on Wheels

In the morning, I met up with a friend to go for a hike at Tomales Point. It was almost a 10-mile hike and I took a ton of pictures. Our plan was to do the hike in the morning and then meet up with a group at the roller rink in Rohnert Park in the afternoon. I wasn't planning to take it too seriously since I figured I'd be sore after the hike, and I've never skated before. This was the best time for me to go though, since I knew that some others in the group also have never skated. So at least I wouldn't only embarass myself!

  • in Project
  • 3 min read

Managing Passwords

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

Here is the second story in my series on getting digital things organized... although, I have been working on this project for the past year. That means, this series is not in chronological order. Oh, well! So here goes the evolution of my passwords. If you're a wannabe hacker trying to crack open my accounts, don't waste your time here. No passwords are revealed in the making of this story. ;)

  • in Project
  • 7 min read

Raspberry Pi Backup Server

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

I have been working on getting more organized in work and life. When things are messy, I can get stressed out and do less things during the day. I think this will be the first post of several about my 2024 organization strategy. Mainly to serve as a knowledge dump for myself, but maybe someone out there will find it useful, painfully boring, or somewhere in between!

Anyway, this is the story of making a backup server for all my personal computer files. It's good to be secure with your online presence, but also good to have security for your offline presence as well. Computer hardware nowadays is pretty robust, but things happen. Maybe you drop your computer. Maybe you spill your coffee all over it. Or god forbid, one day the battery explodes. I have a few old backup drives, but this post is all about my more permanent solution.

  • in Journal
  • 3 min read

Tryout New Sleep Schedule

After returning from Europe, or any other continent, for that matter, the following few days are always goofy because of the extreme jet lag. For example, the time zone in France is GMT+1 and California is GMT-8, making a total time change of 9 hours. Ever since returning from the trip to France, I've tried to follow a new sleep schedule. The word tried is highly emphasized, because I am by no means strictly following this.

  • in Random
  • 2 min read

The US electoral college has its flaws, but forget about that. I'm curious what the minimum popular vote could possibly be in order for a candidate to win the US general election.

  • in Journal
  • 10 min read

ASHRAE Winter Conference, Chicago

I was lucky to be able to visit the ASHRAE Winter conference in Chicago. ASHRAE is the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers. I went with my coworker and mentor, Norm, and met many people and learned a lot there. There was actually 2 parts to this conference - the main ASHRAE talks and technical committee meetings, and the AHR Expo, where many vendors come to show off their products.

  • in Random
  • 6 min read

Phone Number Verification

Something that always irks me is when a website or app requires phone number verification, often called SMS authentication. Usually, that means whenever you want to log in to, let's call it BookFace, it will text you an automated code that you enter, or a link to click, to verify that the number is really yours and it is really you trying to log in. Many websites are now beginning to enforce this policy. In my opinion, this is a terrible system for several reasons.

  • in Project
  • 4 min read

Contributing to my Favorite Open-Source Project

(And how I almost contributed to my least favorite!)

I've made my first* contribution into a major open-source project!

* Well, actually, I did make a minor contribution into an open-source project called Psychrolib - which my Psychart application is dependent upon, but that could be its own story. Based on the number of watchers, forks, and stars, this next project dwarfs poor Psychrolib in comparison, despite how important Psychrolib is for my work.

  • in Project
  • 8 min read

Website Updates

Over the last week or so, I've been working on updating my website to make it look prettier, easier for a visitor to navigate, and easier for me to maintain. One major (but surprisingly simple!) project was to redirect my "permanent" domain to my "common" domain. Another major update was consolidating all my "main" websites as subdirectories under my common domain instead of using subdomains, which helps greatly for maintainability and uniformity. Lastly, the idea of setting up an Instagram account came about when encountering file size issues in my photography website.

  • in Journal
  • 13 min read

Full of Food and COVID in France

A Family Holday Vacation to France, December 2023

My family and I visit our relatives in France every couple years. We had been planning to travel to France for some time, but to put it nicely, we are very bad at planning. I knew that if we were to go, I would at least need to help to plan our flight itinerary. After some frustration and finesse, I was able to find some good flights which my dad graciously booked for us all.