Category: My Blog

This month marks the 20th year of having this website/blog.  There has been multiple occasions of when I thought I’d just I’d let the domain expire and delete the site.  I’m glad I didn’t.

The only people who visit this site now are the ones that accidentally stumble up it by accident.  For me it’s become an online journal. I don’t post much but it’s nice to look back at my old posts from time to time.

For those who stumbled upon this site, “Welcome!”  How were you doing 20 years ago?

It’s been almost 2 years is I last posted. Since then I went through some gnarly things in my life and I’m happy to be able to live through it, but not all of it is bad. In fact, the result of it involve raising chickens.  One day I’ll write a post about it. It’s definitely an interesting story.

Lately, for the past 4 months, I’ve been slowly getting back into shape and trying to be healthy by being more active with exercise.  I got some dumbbells and started to add more miles to my running.  I’ve definitely seen improvements in my fitness.  Progress is slow and it’s consistent so that in itself has been motivating. Being over 40 years old has its hurdles such as the slowness of recovery and more prone to injury.  Just the other day I think I strained my shoulder just putting on my running shoes.  This whole “getting old” thing really sucks.  My mind feels young but my body is checked out.

I have some fitness goals and I hope I’ll be able to hit them in a few months. I’ll be back to let you know if I’m successful.  As of now it looks like I’m on track.

 

It’s been over two years since I posted anything. I’m sure there’s no need to explain what happen since, but I’m still around. Life is slowly getting back to normal.

I’ll be back. I promise.

If you’ve ever washed your glassware and let it dry and end up getting a white cloudy substance that coats it? That’s the dissolved minerals in your water which is referred to as Hard Water.   You may see it on your faucets, shower doors, and anything that can get wet from your water at home.  Our previous home was not far away, so we use the same water company and the hard water broke one of our coffee makers within a year, and it also broke our ice maker from our fridge. The mineral buildup was difficult to scrap off. Using harsh chemicals wasn’t an option.  I ended up getting a water conditioner (rather than a true water softener).  The conditioner didn’t soften the water. The conditioner gives the minerals an ionic charge that prevents it from clinging to itself.  You still get those white spots, but it was much easier to clean off.  Wiping it with a paper towel was all that was need to clean it up.

I recently installed a water softener for our new house.  It’s awesome and it has been great. I wish I did it when we were living at our old house.  South San Jose is notorious for its hard water.  According to the USGS Website water with dissolved calcium and magnesium of 7 gpg (grains per gallon) or 120 ml/L (milligram per liter) is considered hard water. According to our water provider, Great Oaks Water, their water hardness is 18 gpg (grains per gallon) or 307.8 ml/L (milligram per liter.)  That’s the over 250% over those values.

If you’re struggling to clean up the water spots from your faucets and dishware or your appliances getting clogged up with mineral deposits I highly recommend a softener.  There are other benefits such as softer skin and hair.  I find myself using a lot less lotion, soap, and shampoo.  I have a Fleck 5600STX 64,0000 Grain system that I purchased from Amazon, and I got a plumber to install it.  The system requires me to add a 40 pound bag of salt each month.

 

When we finally moved into our new home we noticed the grass was dying.  It seems the previous owner might have stopped watering it after we went under contract.  I had no knowledge of how to care for a lawn, so I did the next best thing.  Watch a bunch of Youtube videos on how to do it.

I got some tools, lawn soil, and grass seed.  I raked away the dead grass and turned up the dirt where there was no grass.  I added some new lawn soil, spread and mixed in the grass seeds into the soil.  I watered it everyday and I started to notice some of the seeds beginning to germinate, but I was disappointed at the rate and sparse growth.

One early morning my wife noticed that we had a few little birds hanging out in our backyard.  Curious to see what they were up to I opened the sliding door to my yard and when I took a few steps onto the lawn, and in that moment, several dozens of little birds flew away.  I was shocked. These little birds were feeding on all the grass seeds that I have spread over my lawn past two weeks.  So back to the Youtube videos.

I spent about 10 bucks at Lowe’s and bought a plastic decoy Great Owl to be used to scare rodents and birds.  I was hoping they had a more menacing raptor but from what I read these Great Owls are quite the predator.  I set the plastic Owl on the kid’s play structure and moved it around the backyard every few days.  I’m not sure if this decoy is working or if the cold weather is keeping the birds away.  Anyhow, over the next two months the grass began to grow and it’s been looking a lot greener.

The pictures below will show the 3 month difference.

It looks like my yearly blog post is due.  I’ve been meaning write more posts but I’ve been busy and being lazy.  2019 was a busy year to say the least.  My family and I bought a new home and sold our old one.  It was quite the ordeal, but in the end it was all worth it.  In December I got a promotional opportunity at work which I accepted and will start in a week. The most exciting news was the birth of our 4th child, a daughter.  It was a total surprise as we choose not to know the sex of the baby during the pregnancy.  We currently have 3 wonderful boys, so we are thrilled to have a daughter.

I’m not making any promises, but I’ll try to at least make another post before this year ends.  Since moving into our new home I’ve been busy dealing with home issues and home upgrades.  I’ll try to write something up about them on this blog.

After about 3 months of studying I finally took my CISM exam and passed. It was tough. It was a lot tougher than I expected even with all the studying I put in. The CISM focus on mainly on management, so it required a different style of thinking compared to many of my other technical certifications I’ve taken.

If you’re thinking about getting your CISM certification I highly recommend the following book. It’s a lot easier to read than others, and it comes with a great practice test software.

(The book is not an ad nor do I get anything out of it for mentioning it. It’s just a great resource if you’re studying for the CISM exam.)

One of the biggest milestones as parent is seeing your child poop or pee in the toilet for the first time.  My second oldest son has finally done it.  He’s over 3 and half years old and up until yesterday I didn’t think he was ever going to stop wearing his diaper.

Now that he’s a “Big Boy” I guess my wife and I will have to plan a Disneyland trip; an incentive for his potty efforts.

So I decided to rebuild my WordPress blog.  I migrated to Dreamhost so long ago I don’t even remember when I did it.  Before Dreamhost I hosted the site myself on an old desktop in the living room.

Over a decade with using WordPress I’ve tested a bunch of plugins and and add-ons and stuff.  Anyways, I decided to delete the whole site and imported only the posts and images making the site cleaner.

Next steps for me is to pick a theme and make a few cosmetic changes to the site.