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This evening’s haiku

Carl Setzer1 Comment
A flower photo with a honey bee
with hints of summer 
watching the vigor of bees
as the springtime fades

This photo was taken in my front yard. The bees were quite taken with these flowers. This was shot with my Samsung S22.

I’m quite pleased with the results I get with this phone. It’s been amazing.

It’s feeling like summer here, just north of Seattle. It’s wonderful. But I’m right at the point of shifting from complaining about the cold to complaining about the heat. The comfortable temperature range for Seattle’s is between 65 & 75.

I hope you’re enjoying your weekend! May it exceed your expectations.

Elements of style

Carl Setzer
white and black motor scooter parked near building

Perhaps I should call this “elements of MY style”. But, anyway, Pinterest served this photo up to me today:

Old man on a scooter

Oh, how I adore this photo! First, years ago, I had a fixation with scooters and, specifically, Vespas. Then you add in the fact I am fond of weathered, aged things. Oh, and I am fond of his satchel. Lastly, I love tweed! Mix that with a flat-cap and *chef’s kiss*.

I’ve had many flat caps over the years. My current arsenal holds two from Ireland (though I expect the fellow above is Scottish). And I don’t wear tweed that much any more. Perhaps I should fix that. Anyway, my closest alignment with this fellow comes with the only scooter I’ve ever owned. No, not a Vespa, but I had a Honda Elite 150 back in the late 80s (before I went to Oregon and Job Corps).

I enjoyed it greatly, but didn’t take it with me when I went to Oregon. It would’ve been handy after I got out of the Navy and lived in Downtown Seattle. But, well, I would’ve had to port this thing around the country. Which wasn’t in the cards.

Anyway, some fond memories here.

Ah, spam, glorious spam!

Carl Setzer4 Comments
man wearing brown suit jacket mocking on white telephone

One of the things I do for a number of orgs is manage social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok). For the most part it’s pretty fun. However, there’s a group of folk I’m seeing more and more: spammers. This crew is bolder and more annoying. They’ll post their spam comment about being a YouTube expert, then keep replying (“did you read my note?”). Initially, I took them at face value and replied saying “thanks, no thanks”. Then I had the guy ping us how we could increase our YouTube engagement, for a client who has NO YouTube presence. I mean, come on, at least TRY with your time-wasting spam.

I have been taking modest delight in deleting these requests. Micro-empowerment, I guess. It is a Sisyphean process, so I take what wins I can.

Reflecting on The Half-Life of Magic

Carl Setzer
person doing card trick

I make it a point to read Seth Godin blog posts every day (well, I try my best). Today, he wrote “The half-life of magic“.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur C. Clarke

In this post, Mr. Godin points out how quickly magic wears off. And, by magic, I ascribe the appreciation and wonder. The rate of change has increased so dramatically that one of our challenges is to find wonder in life.

It is hard when we externalize this. When we’re waiting to find wonder, delight, joy, it becomes so much harder to find. Let me propose another alternative: to actively seek it. Take a moment and consider how amazing our lives our. With my cellphone I can look up almost anything humanity has ever learned. Almost all knowledge is, literally, at our fingertips. but these technological marvels are only a small piece. Look out the window, watch the rain, see the hummingbirds drift amongst the blossoms, or the juncos dark amongst the tree branches. Or the eagle drifting overhead, over this suburban human habitat.

Life is full of wonder if you choose to look for it. And that’s the pathway to a joy-filled life: searching for wonder.

Another Step Forward

Carl Setzer5 Comments
woman working on computer in office

Today I finished Google’s Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User certificate. I have two more to complete in order to finish the Google IT Support course. Initially, it was nice to refresh on a lot of the material that I studied completing my Associates in Information Systems. We’re pushing through that now, which is pretty cool. In particular, diving deeper into Linux is something I’ve really wanted to do. This wasn’t terribly deep, but I enjoyed the Linux focused labs, which took me a bit.

I’m still exploring what I want to do after this cert. There are so many options within the world of tech. I could dive deeper into systems administration, or I could move into data analysis. I really enjoyed my studies into data systems and structures. And I enjoy my current IT role.

More soon!

More Web Dev Projects

Carl Setzer2 Comments
data codes through eyeglasses

I didn’t post yesterday, so I’ll post about the project I did yesterday and the one I did today. Yesterday, the project was for an Animated Countdown timer. Using CSS and JavaScript to create this animation was pretty cool. My consternation came from a bunch of mistyped elements in my code. Finding those little glitches (like typing “igm” vs “img”) gets wearying after awhile.

Today’s project was an Image Carousel. I only made one code error, but it was a sneaky one. The images would not sit well in their frame. Turns out, I tried to set the size to 500px, but I had a stray “1” in there (1500px…opps). Once I found that, viola!

These are rather small projects, where I’m mostly trying to refresh my understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I want to be far better than I am, even if I don’t end up becoming a coder. I really enjoy this and want to grow.

I also am working on Google’s IT Support Professional and Project Management certificates. Both of these are valuable skills, and useful things to understand regardless of role in IT.

Another of the 50 Projects In 50 Days

Carl Setzer2 Comments
Screenshot of 50 Projects in 50 Days Notes App Project

Ok, I got distracted from the 50 Projects In 50 Days Udemy Course. It’s been over a year since my last post with one. I’ve been working two jobs for the past year, so that’s my excuse. However, I want to get back at this as I still want to better my developer skills.

This project is titled “Notes App“, which is, well, a note-taking app with interesting elements. First, we use the “Marked” library to enable mark-down capabilities. Second, it uses local storage. So, this was a pretty cool project!

I still hope to eventually move into web or software development. This is fun, if often frustrating work. But, man, you feel like a wizard when you figure this stuff out. Once I’m done with this class, I’m leaning towards studying Python, though maybe I should dive into other web technologies (React or Svelte, perhaps?). One of my attractions to web development was the ability to continue to grow. There’s always something to learn. Always!