Slacker

Wow! It’s been over a year. To be fair, a lot of the earlier writing was done on my ol’ PineBook Pro. Ordered back in March of 2020, just around the time of lockdown insanity, it was part of my admiration of the Raspberry Pi single board computer and my wish that a decent simple ARM linux laptop could be made with one. I had a lot of tinkering fun on that laptop, but in the end, it was just a moped of a laptop.

Fast forward to 2025 and its an old machine. A little over two years ago I went onto eBay and bought an inexpensive, 11 inch Apple MacBook Air i7 from the year 2015. You might say it’s my modern take on a netbook. After quickly booting it with its original Apple MacOS, I quickly replaced its drive and put Linux on it.

Month by month it’s steadily become my Daily Driver. Since this site was created on the ol’ PineBook, it was time for me to migrate the setup to this MacBook. I did so today. I had to refresh my brain on mounting my web drive, tweak a few site templates, etc. but I got it all working again.

So … what’s new? Oh, so so much!

3rd Grandson

I wrote in my last entry:

Three grandchildren in 2025. It feels a bit surreal.

and sure enough, another boy was born at the beginning of the year. Unlike the first one, this one did not spend any time in the NICU and could go home on day two. As such, he took to nursing readily and is now quite a cute “chonkmeister”. If past experience is anything to go by, those pounds will likely streamline once he starts walking and keeping up with his older brother.

4th Grandchild

But that writing, “Three grandchildren in 2025,” isn’t quite true. Around the same time that the 3rd was born, my other daughter announced she was expecting. In just a couple of months now, my 4th, a granddaughter, should arrive.

Hard to wrap my head around this shift. Just under 4 years ago I was at my first wedding. Now both daughters are married and a 4th grandchild is close at hand.

Youngest Graduated

Just before summer, I took just under two weeks off from work. I flew out to Chicago. My Dad picked me up the next morning. We drove two days to Rapid City, SD. The very next day we saw my youngest graduate with his Computer Engineering degree, Summa Cum Laude, tops in his class. Two days later we packed his car and my Dad’s truck and drove two days out to Olathe, Kansas and helped him move into his apartment. A couple of weeks later he started his first full-time engineering job at Garmin HQ. I’m so excited at what a driven, independent man he’s become!

Blockhead

There’s a bad joke in the area: “New Hampshire – Don’t Take Us for Granite”. A few years back I had my roof shingles stripped off and had a beautiful standing seam metal roof put on. I love the look. It reminds me of many Vermont homes. I’ve had to do several upgrades because of it. Standing seam metal roofs just about require that you remove your gutters. So I’ve upgraded the garage doors and all the trim work. The last piece of upgrades had to do with replacing the front wooden steps and the back wooden deck. This wrapped up a week ago.

In the front now are two large granite steps to the front porch. In the back there are three granite steps leading from the screened in porch down to a paver stone porch. To say that this is rugged is an understatement. Watching rainwater run off the roof and hit the granite, knowing it can take it, is assuring.

Job Corps

In my last post I mentioned my oldest son returned to Job Corps to train in Facilities Maintenance but mostly in Electrical. That wraps up in just a handful more days. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I pick him up early next week with his certifications in hand.