UC Davis Atrocities
My university and graduate school, the University of California at Davis, has made possibly one of the worst decisions imaginable regarding their email service. You can read all about it here!
Blog
GitHub Repository Cleanup
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In this fourth organization story, I will talk about a coder's paradise, or hell: Github! Github is the web interface for a program called Git, which is a version control software designed for code projects, but can be used for other things as well. I have a link to my GitHub user nicfv at the footer of each page on this website.
Online Presence Minimization
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Remember in my last organization project story, I mentioned I have hundreds of online accounts? Well, there's not that many that I actually use. Especially Google accounts, I have way too many for 1 person. Over time I have accumulated not 2, not 3, but 8 Gmail accounts! This is because every time you get a new Android phone, you have to link your Google account to gain access to a bunch of features. In the past, I primarily used a Comcast email address, and Gmail was an afterthought. So, I would just create a new (unused) Gmail account every time I got a new phone. This story is similar to other stories for why I have accumulated so many online accounts, and I have been working on a major cleanup for the last few months to trim down all this extra digital fat.
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!
Managing Passwords
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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. ;)
Raspberry Pi Backup Server
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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.
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.
Minimum Popular Vote
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.
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.
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.