100 Days to Offload: Day 1

I sat down approximately 5 hours ago to start writing this post. And then, as often happens anytime I write a blog post, I promptly got distracted making completely unrelated tweaks to how my website works. Therefore, I now have a new theme installed, updated my plugins, and cleaned up my blog post categories. And with that, I am finally starting in on the new post!

I have found over the years that some of the best changes in my life happen when I choose to do something somewhat at random, and don’t put a lot of extra research and planning into it. My switch to the keto diet a few years ago is one good example. Another was the choice a little over a week ago to join challenge to do 2000 lunges in 10 days (1000/leg) with my sister, which turned out to improve my workout habits some while working from home. And that brings us to last night…

Micro-Update: KDE Konsole and tmux

I ran into an interesting issue this morning after running system updates on my main desktop computer (running Arch Linux with the KDE Plasma desktop). For some reason, although I don’t think any behavior was intentionally changed by the developers (and I’m not blaming anyone), Konsole (a KDE terminal app) started intercepting the CTRL+B key combo that is used by tmux. It turns out that this is a standard “Add Bookmark” shortcut in the Plasma desktop environment.

Micro-Update: Happy Easter!

Micro-Update: Recommended Firefox Extensions

I realized this morning that I frequently give recommendations to friends and family on apps and tools to use, books and blogs to read, podcasts to listen to, etc. And so, instead of constantly pulling up my notes and then sending a list individually to each person, I decided to begin creating pages here on my website briefly listing my recommendations, and why I recommend them.

The first (and only) page so far is my recommendations for Firefox Extensions. However, I expect to add more in short order, at which time I’ll add a blog post announcing them as well. My goal is to keep these pages updated and current, as I personally hate it when I come across recommendations that I think sound useful, and then find out that they are years out of date.

2019 Year in Review

It’s hard to believe, but another year has come and gone. And so, to keep with my tradition (is 3 years enough to call it a tradition?), here’s a look back at the last 12 months of my life.

The beginning of 2019 was relatively bland for me. I was active at work, and volunteering at church, but not many noteworthy events occurred during that time. I did, however, make a small change in one of my habits: I quit listening to audiobooks on Audible. I wrote up a blog post about it in early March, so I won’t rehash the details here. But that change did see me begin to purchase and read more physical books than I did in previous years.

Micro-Update: Quotes and Passages Page

I spend what is probably an excessive amount of time researching the art of studying, reading, and researching, driven by a desire to constantly improve not only myself, my skills, and my knowledge, but to also improve how I learn. Earlier today I came across the idea of publishing a “Quotes and Passages” page to my website while reading an article by Ryan Holiday. I skimmed through his implementation, and decided to begin implementing the same type of page here. My plan is for it to contain quotes from books, podcasts, etc than I find particularly interesting, inspiring, or noteworthy.

Micro-Update: User-Friendly Linux Mug

This is the first of what I’m referring to as “micro-updates”, based on the concept of micro-blogging. I occasionally have a short thought, or something I would like to share, but there isn’t enough content to create a standard-length blog post. So I decided to give this format a try.

Earlier this week, a co-worker sent me a link to an amusing mug on Amazon. I’m a sucker for things like that, and so it was added to my cart, purchased, and arrived on my doorstep in short order. While it’s not “accurate”, per-say, I can at times agree with the sentiment. As much as I love Linux, occasionally when troubleshooting something, it can be a tad annoying…