Domestic Geek

So, the last couple of years have been really busy and this poor blog fell by the wayside. I didn't even realize until last week that my domain wasn't even reachable due to a DNS change I never made with my registrar. I'm not even in a Google search anymore.

Just a few of the things that happened that have kept me from all this:

• July 2016: Got a job working at paper in Custer, SD and quit working at the printer in Denver that I was at for almost 10 years


• August 2016: Moved to South Dakota by myself


• October 2016: Dad passed away


• July 2017: Quit job at paper to run print shop business in Custer that Marcus bought


• June 2018: Marcus moved to South Dakota

It's been over 2 years since I moved up here and I still haven't gotten unpacked. My house is a disaster. We still need to sell the condo in Denver. We really need to find a bigger space for our shop.

Anyway, it's been a crazy couple of years and this just didn't get on the radar. Since I really want to do NaBloPoMo in November, I had better make sure this is all working again soon.I also want to restart my 101 in 1001 days and do a Project 365.

ETA: OK, so looks like NaBlogPoMo is defunct? WTF? I guess I have been out of the game for a while. Oh, well...

I used to be really good at web coding and design. That almost 10 year stint I did at the print shop and not using the skills made me freaking rusty. I thought when I got my current job that I'd be able to start getting them back in shape as in the interview they seemed really pumped that I had web skills. Well, they had hired a web company before I got there and I have no access to the back end (something that I can't seem to make them understand). It's irritating when they'd ask me to try to do something on the web site and I'd have to explain again and again that they'd have to call the developer as I had no password to access the core of their site.

For reasons I can't go into on a public forum, I need to get my skill set back. My poor site here has been broken because I hadn't upgraded EE in so long that when Marcus upgraded his servers to the latest PHP, everything here was broken. I'm back up enough that I hope this will post...we'll see here in a bit. PHP has changed, Expression Engine has changed, even HTML changed (I have no experience whatsoever with HTML5). It's going to be a challenge, but I will relearn all this.

ETA: OK, my little mood guys are broken, but at least I can post. That's a start...

I had planned a longer post for tonight, but it's not going to happen.

With Dad passing on the 16th, I've had to miss a lot of work. I have to leave early tomorrow, as well as miss Friday, for the funeral. I'm really hoping this is it for a while. It's bad enough I took a sizeable pay cut, but I haven't even been getting my 40 hours here. That's why I stayed late at work tonight — to get some hours and to not leave as much work for my coworker who is covering.

OK, quick checklist for myself. Trying not to forget anything:

• I checked in for my flight and have boarding pass both printed out and in my phone.


• As soon as I get some dinner, I'll grab a quick shower, then get the few things I need packed up and into the car. Must remember to take out my Sirius radio, my faceplate and my garage door opener. Don't want to leave those in a parking lot all weekend.


• Must remember to put trash barrel out before I leave in the morning.


• I'll head to Rapid City after leaving work early about 2:30. Must remember to stop and get some cash for the bus to Parker/I-225. Tomorrow night I'll be in Aurora again for the weekend. Wish it was under better circumstances.

Project 365 photo tomorrow - I don't have time to post it tonight. Too much to do.

UPDATE: In world news, I watched the end of the World Series game. The Chicago Cubs finally managed to win one in the 10th inning after a rain delay. Bet it's crazy in Chicago tonight. Felt a little bad for the Cleveland Indians, but Chicago has been waiting longer for a championship.

Well, it's November 1st and I'm going to once again attempt to complete NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). It wasn't until I was looking at my blog last night for something that I realized it was ready to happen again. I don't know what happened last year. I just suddenly stopped after 4 days. I went back through my Facebook timeline to see if something triggered it (like the previous year's health issues), but nothing. Oh, well...

A lot has changed in the past year — I'll try to address a lot of that over these posts. There's also a lot of things I had put on hold (some without realizing it) and I'll try to address some of those, as well. All I know is I want to get the old blog back up and resume posting regularly. I miss this outlet. I'm going to update the Expression Engine CMS this month and try to get the commenting system issues fixed. Then I want to get my CSS skills back and dive into some HTML5. My web skills are rusty and it's time to break out the oil.

The biggest and most important change this year was that I finally found a job in South Dakota. It was the ultimate catalyst to get me out of my comfort zone and away from the soul-sucking job I had in Denver. When my boss there quit for the 2nd time, I was killing myself to try and keep the department from sinking. I was working 60-70 hours per week, my office mate was a dumb ass, my new boss totally inexperienced, they weren't looking for anybody new to hire and I just couldn't do it anymore. Funny that they finally hired 2 people to replace me and now I hear my old boss is back. I'm not going to post where I work now or what I'm doing, but I took a huge pay cut and at least I'm back in a field for which I actually went to school. While I'm pretty sure this won't be a long-term gig and I do still have dreams of my own business (which I may one day share), at least it is good for right now. I am going to have to find some additional income, though. I was working at night for my former company while they were getting their newbies trained (managed to keep that up for 2 months), but even that became unbearable.

So, as of August 1st, I became a South Dakotan. It's weird, because I've never lived in any other state. Seeing South Dakota license plates on the old Baja for the first time was a little strange.

The second biggest thing is my father passed away on October 16th. He's been in bad shape for well over 2 years. While I'm sad that he passed, I am glad he is finally out of pain and hopefully in a better place. I will be flying to Denver on Thursday for his service at Fort Logan. After that, I really won't have any ties to Colorado other than Marcus is still living there. I can't wait for the day he can cut ties there, as well.

I'm also going to attempt Project 365 once again to get it knocked off my 101 in 1001 list that I started up again. The photo below is from the Long Draw prescribed burn about 5 miles southwest of Hill City:

Wow, 15 years ago today, I made my very first blog post back on Blogger.

I know I have been lax lately, but I've got plans to update the old Expression Engine and get back into this. I miss this. Stay tuned...