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  • in Journal
  • 5 min read

New Phone

For almost 5 years, I used the Samsung Galaxy A10e, one of the first-generation phones from the Galaxy A line. It worked great, and lasted for much longer than I expected, and I have practically no complaints about that phone. Unfortunately, the years started to catch up to it. The touchscreen started to lose its sensitivity, the occasional text or call wouldn't go through, and it generally started to slow down, among other minor issues. However, the final push that caused me to begin my search for a new phone was the fact that the A10e was still running on Android version 9. Which, at the time of writing this, has been out of support for about 2 and a half years. That means that my phone has been more prone to bugs, glitches, viruses, and spyware. So, I did what any true American does after about a year of owning a phone - I got a new one!

  • in Project
  • 8 min read

Raspberry Pi Gatekeeper

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Advertisements! I hate them, you hate them, we all hate them. What if I told you there was a way to block ad traffic from ever entering your network? Actually, this happened to me a few days ago by a coworker. I learned about a software called Pi-hole specifically designed for Raspberry Pi's that blocks all ad traffic. Sounds good, right? Now, how are you supposed to set it up?

  • in Journal
  • 2 min read

Red Paint

There was a blood drive at work yesterday! I'd never donated blood before and wanted to do it at least once.

  • in Journal
  • 5 min read

Leg Day

I walked/ran well over 10 miles today - which is not the most distance I've done in one day by a long shot - but today was certainly a leg day, and I'll feel it tomorrow. Today was filled with what I could say are 3 mini-adventures through Marin and San Francisco, which is more than I bargained for! I also took several pictures today.

  • in Random
  • 4 min read

Winning at Solitaire

I've been playing a lot of solitaire (Klondike 3) on my phone recently. My app has a timer, for some reason. It made me come up with some funny ideas like doing a solitaire speedrun. To my delight, it already exists! It's become a mild addiction, but this game has made me come up with an interesting question. How likely are you to win a game of solitaire? What is the maximum possible win rate that the best solitaire player can have?

  • in Random
  • 4 min read

Attempt the 3x+1 Problem

I was introduced to the \(3x+1\) problem in a few [1] [2] YouTube videos, which made it seem like there was no solution. I am here today to prove them wrong! Or perhaps, right, depending on how you interpret this. As I was writing this, I kind of lost track of what I was doing.

  • in Journal
  • 6 min read

SCALE Conference

I got to attend yet another conference for work! This time I went to SCALE - the Southern California Annual Linux Expo - in Pasadena. I was able to justify the travel since there were plenty of talks on the observability stack we use at work. It was a great conference and a pretty fun time as well. My old roommate from college was the one who recommended it to me as he was planning to attend several of the Kubernetes talks.

  • in Project
  • 3 min read

Multi-email

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I haven't written in a while, so I must get something in the books. It's also very late so I'll keep this short. This is an update from my online presence minimization story. I'm now down to just 3 Gmail accounts, I'm still stuck with the one with the Google Play balance. I'll just hang on to that one until I figure out what to use it for. This story was going to contain 2 (short) parts: cool Gmail features that allow you to really expand your inbox, and a frustration I just found out about UC Davis's student email addresses. However, once I started writing, I couldn't stop, so I decided to split it into 2 posts. So, today is a twofer!

  • in Project
  • 2 min read

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!