So, I guess it’s been awhile since i’ve written a blog entry. Oh, I’ve tried, believe me. I’ve popped open a VSCode Markdown window and just stared at it for a while, numerous times. I assume people sit down to write blogs to either entertain, distribute information or just go absolutely bonkers on what boils down to a public soapbox. See, that’s the problem, I’m not entirely sure what I’d talk about on a regular basis, how to structure my thoughts into any kind of cohesive document that other people would want to read. Then I realized, I don’t have to do that at all! I don’t get paid for it, it’s not a job. I don’t have anyone to edit or proof it, so you’re at the whims of my current blogging skill level. Unfortunately, since there’s been a huge gap between my last entry and this one, it’s not a very impressive skill level. It takes time, like everything else. I guess I just have to find ways to schedule that time and think of what exactly I want to put in the next entry. I DON’T want to make this blog completely about work, I mean, some of it will be work related but that’s not all I do. I have to find a decent balance of that and other things.

I spend the lion’s share of my time managing my family and house, doing errands, food shopping, taking the dog to the vet, chopping firewood and all sorts of boring other real life chores. I won’t bore you, dear reader, with any of the mundane humdrum there as you already do it yourself in some fashion. I have a wife, two older children and one child still in grade school. My oldest has found her direction and has made it out of our house, my second oldest is still trying to find his direction but we won’t be empty nesters for some time. I also have two cats (Hopps and Goose) and two dogs (Hazel and Captain). We live in the frigid Northwoods, Wisconsin where there’s bars and lakes and not much else. It’s been quite the culture shock coming out here from a city. Anyway, moving on…

Gaming will be a big topic here. I’ve been playing games for a long time, my first console was the Atari 2600. I got my first computer in the 80’s, I believe it was the Tandy 1000 TX (Radio Shack!) PC. I’m even writing this blog on my daily driver PC, Lenovo Legion Go. I quite like the Go, it’s a great little handheld and I have it running dual monitors through a JSAux dock so I could use it for work (and I have), in a pinch. I like a few genres of games, RPG and Adventure games, oldschool point-and-click and don’t usually shy away from trying other kinds. I wasn’t very big into sports games, never played FIFA or Madden or anything like that as I’m not a very sports minded person. There’s a whole laundry list of games that I’ve played that I wouldn’t waste the time typing up in this blog. When I can find the time, I’m currently wasting it with: Marvel Rivals, Balatro, Encased, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, Eternal Strands, Sniper Elite 5. This list will change, of course as I tend to get bored unless a game is really engaging (and my Legion Go does not have infinite storage, sadly.)

I also really enjoy watching shows and I have a few streaming services which I subscribe to but there’s a ridiculous amount of content so it can get pretty overwhelming. I find a bunch of shows on my own but have been taking recommendations from the PDQ Discord. I’ve found a few shows thanks to a certain Slovak Cuban Wrap maker. AppleTV+ seems to have a lot of winners and I’m watching Severance and Silo there. Severance is one of those mindfuck shows and it keeps you asking questions so, yeah, a little addicted. Silo just has one of those stories that you don’t want to not know what happens next, so I bet it will win awards, if it hasn’t already. I just finished Skeleton Crew (Disney+), “Space Goonies” and Tales from the Loop (Prime Video), another mindfuck show. I also enjoyed Foundation (AppleTV+) and I think it really needs another season.

So, let’s talk PowerShell. I’m trying to learn it at work and haven’t really tried using it at home, barring one script which I wrote to backup a specific game saves to Google Drive. I did get PowerShell and a Month of Lunches a while ago and should probably endeavor to finish reading it. I do like listening to smart people talk about PowerShell though and try to follow the PowerShell Podcast (https://www.pdq.com/resources/the-powershell-podcast/) as well as attend PowerShell Wednesday: Lunch & Learn on the PDQ Discord (when I don’t get interruped). My work PowerShell persona has basically devolved into, “I want to do this and I need a tool now, time to negotiate with ChatGPT.” and that works for the most part. I know LLMs do make mistakes but I don’t have it write scripts that will nuke AD from orbit and I test things first before using them. I’m also getting up there in years, the last programming language I wrote was Java and it was only for a college class, I haven’t written a line of Java since. I do like a challenge though and will keep plugging away at it as I’ve gotten a few tools that have sped up my work life and kept me out of the GUI more often than not. Note I didn’t say “I’ve written” because most of it is a compilation of things I’ve coerced out of ChatGPT and scripts I’ve modified from the Internet that people have already written. (Why reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to?)

That seems long enough for me for a blog entry, I think it’s time to go and do something not blog related. Until next time!