Reinvesting (in this space)
It's been nearly two years since my last post, and I'm due for a status update. Seems like it's standard practice for me to remember that this exists every couple of years, so I'm glad for anyone willing to read and be patient with me.
What's changed?
2024 was a tumultuous year. Shortly after my last post (still technically 2023) I was part of my second RIF-style layoff, and hit the job market once again. I found my way into a contract job working primarily making a new project scaffolder and CI/CD pipeline via AWS CDK, but the lack of provided insurance, low likelihood for conversion to FTE, and the lower pay range for that company soon had me scouring the market for better options. I started digging around and made the fool's choice to jump into an AI-based startup.
Now I'm not going to name and shame, but that place did not understand the concept of a proper work/life balance. I could tell fairly early on that they were more used to burning out their internal devops people rather than allow them time to prepare useful solutions (also why I think the person before me doing the same work also left? mock shocked face goes here).
I managed to last there for 4-5 months; the same day that I got the notice that my current company was going to hire me, my manager was not asking me, but telling me about the upcoming weekend's worth of work that they were handing me that day (a Tuesday, so not a lot of notice) in order to help replace a core system library within their monorepo. Imagine jacking up the Great Pyramids at Giza, only to replace the bottom layer, and hope that when you drop it back down, it doesn't generate any problems. Fortunately, after informing said manager about the nascent change in employment, I suddenly didn't need to do the weekend work, and they offboarded me the day after, which IMO was fairly abrupt, but I wasn't too sad about having the extra days to ... not deal with their shit. :D
I've been with $CUR_JOB since October, working on an internal portal for
tracking the software created by the company. It's all based in Backstage,
which is something I grew familiar with at Startup #2. The team is solid, if not
a little on the less-experienced side, but that gives me the ability to serve as
a mentor in places (and further extol the virtues encoded in The Pragmatic
Programmer, which anyone in my past work history would tell you I quote
just a little too much).
Any new site features?
I've enjoyed the new styles, so that is sticking around. Page loads are super snappy, it is (or at least seems to be?) easy to follow, and it doesn't involve React. :D
I've added a Uses page to allow keeping an up-to-date list of the things that I make use of on a daily basis. I try to keep this up to date, and it has a timestamp of the last update (so technically I have updated since two years back, just not longform...). I'm hoping that as I surface more of the things that I use frequently, it prompts me to use this space more frequently, too.
The social page also has had updates, as I've moved my Fediverse home over to the awesome omg.lol community. It's a group of people who seem to enjoy the simpler times of the Internet, including IRC, a web directory / link board, and simple approaches to personal content (eg: images). I still enjoy doing self-hosted things, but I may look into ways to more tightly weave those systems and this space together. If nothing else, it's leading me to think about how I use my own internet space, and spurring me on to do more investment in my own domains (like this one!).
Most recently, I've been migrating all of my code that I care about (sadly far less than the total repo count) away from github/gitlab, and into codeberg. I don't need my data feeding AI systems or providing extra traffic to platforms with questionable moral steering (the GitLab exec professing his support of DOGE at the bottom of this article was a pretty quick call for me to exit).
What's next?
I'm currently getting ready to do an internal networking upgrade to boost to 2.5gbps traffic throughout (including at the uplink). Once that's complete, I'll be re-re-re-revamping my homelab (which I'm going to try to do as a public exercise). Hoping that means more content here. :D