#schmutz #houseStuff #fediverse #calckey

Decked Out

I bought this house 2 and a half years ago. Part of the contract was that the “outer buildings” would be sold “as is”. These buildings include the garage, a deck, and the potting shed (fancy name for a big shed you put plants in from my understanding). They are in rough shape but at least still standing. The garage also has some room for storage and a small shed attached with a workbench. I think the previous owner did some carpentry or something because there are 3 workbenches on the property. The garage works and we do use it. However we do not use the deck. Another quirk of the house is the layout of the property. The driveway is shared with the neighbor for one, but besides that, there is no “front door” and instead two doors on the “side” of the house, which is the side that faces the driveway. Maybe hard to explain via words but I don’t feel like including a picture.

Back to the deck: The deck is where the garage should be if things were done in a way that makes sense for the property layout. So an easy win for us would be to remove the deck and eventually build a garage where it is, then tear down the current garage and shed and have a bigger backyard. Who knows when we’ll get around to that part, but an easy win for us is to remove the deck. My partner’s dad is going to help us tear it up since he has some experience doing these sorts of things and genuinely enjoys it as well. So hopefully by the end of this week we’ll have gotten rid of this deck and we can start thinking about next steps!

Rough Market

I am stealthily looking for my next gig and oh jeez it is rough out there. I have talked about it a bit on this blog already but since I have been seeing others having similar experiences, I figured it doesn’t hurt to share mine as well. To be honest I have stopped the daily grind of sending in applications since it has been less than fruitful and more than a bit harmful to my morale and overall mental health. But before I stopped, I had applied to pretty much all of the places I would consider it a dream to work at and was rejected from each. Since then I have applied to one or two places that seem promising that I may like to work at, but other than that I have only been ghosted or gotten nos.

The junior positions want 5 years of experience and the senior ones want 10. I am a “Senior Software Engineer”, but I only have about 3 years of experience, so even the junior positions instantly reject me. I imagine many people are in similar situations. One thing is clear, tech hiring is still broken and does not seem to be getting any better. For every 1 team or company out there that has a decent hiring practice, there are 50 that have the same terrible one. It’s hard to even understand what I should be working on since there is no actionable feedback ever. If you feel like taking a look at my resume and think you can help improve it please let me know.

The Fediverse Gets a Little Sleepier

I had been wanting to host my own mastodon server for a bit. I tried getting the software up and running on my little homelab but was unable to do so. I don’t remember exactly why at this point, but something to do with the database and the app server not talking to each other. Somewhat recently I tried again but this time with Calckey. Since my homelab already is using some popular ports, I had to reconfigure the postgres and redis ports which didn’t initially work. Eventually I got things working on the 14.0 branch and my fediverse presence is now at https://sleepy.pleasant.rest/@_pear. Feel free to follow me there (or don’t, whatever!).

End

I am still unsure if I should end these posts with a sign off like this or just leave it, but until I figure that out, here it is: Until next time!