I’m relieved that this snowstorm did not impact my area significantly. I really did not want to deal with a major storm as I’m exhausted from this brutally cold winter. I could seriously go for some 60 degree temperatures right about now. I’m also really tired today. I think at least some of the exhaustion is just due to how difficult times are.

I’ll feel even better if I could manage to get some things accomplished today that are business related. I’ll make a goal to get something accomplished today – I might do it later this afternoon or this evening. The libraries are closed today and I’m normally most productive in that environment. I know I do best when I don’t work from home. There are too many distractions for me. But simply because it does not work for me, doesn’t mean that it isn’t good for many.

I don’t necessarily work well from an office either. I still need a quiet place to get things done and the library is my sanctuary. I get a lot accomplished in a short amount of time at the library. In 3 hours at the library, I often get more done than 6 hours at home.

I think once I get my planned business started and making money, I will have to get some sort of brick and mortar space for which to operate from. But this is quite a ways down the pike. I still don’t know if operating my own information technology training academy is feasible. I think it’s a good idea but I’ve had ideas in the past that I’ve thought were good; they weren’t.

I had a bit of a late start this morning. I thought it would be nice to have a “special” breakfast with my honey, Denisse. By special, I mean McDonald’s. It was nice for her to have a Sausage McMuffin meal and I enjoyed a Chicken McGriddle meal. It’s a nice breakfast on a rainy morning. I’m so not looking forward to the oncoming blizzard. I hope they fuck up this forecast.

I really want to spend time building my business today. I want to give Claude Code a go. I’ll vibe code themes for my business and store. I really hate AI, but in a lot of ways, it helps lower the entry barriers for new businesses. Web design can be very expensive. If Claude Code could do this for me, I’d benefit tremendously. There’s no way I could afford to pay a web designer right now.

I have the advantage of being an IT professional so I can setup my own infrastructure. A part of me wonders what hiring someone to code a WordPress and WooCommerce theme but I don’t want to give it to an Indian company. I’d rather use AI than offshore. I wonder what US-based independent designers are charging nowadays.

I feel morally and ethically troubled by using AI knowing that I’m putting somebody out of work. But I just don’t have the money right now to consider other options and I need to get things done.

Okay, as the title goes I am going out on a limb here to say I am doing quite well mentally and emotionally this morning. I have to say I am a bit surprised at this because yesterday was such a tough day. I am sad about my mom’s declining health due to Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is a cruel condition and it is frightening and worrying to those suffering from it. My mom is being moved into memory care but her apartment won’t be ready for a bit so I am pitching in to help care for her during the day.

I feel flush with ideas that just might work. I believe I could pull it off and it is somewhat exciting. I admit I had to change my attitude towards AI to make it happen. I am now seeing how I can leverage AI to make some of the things that were impossible for me to do on my own, very marketable. I do have a visceral hatred for AI because it’s making some professions obsolete. But I think I can exploit AI for at least awhile to get a tidy sum of money.

For today, I’m going to be productive. I want to set up the e-commerce platform for my business. I will end up using WooCommerce for its tight integration with WordPress. I’ve got a bunch of other little administrative things to take care of.

I want to do my mother proud. I have some SMART goals in mind.

I woke up this morning feeling in a pretty good mood until I checked my phone and saw that my manager gave away a shift he offered to me to somebody else. Yes, that definitely frustrated me quite a bit because the shift he offered me was on a Saturday night at a location that is peaceful and relaxing. It is a site to work at that makes both financial sense and a positive mental health environment. In other words, it’s simply collecting a check which is the best part!

I just noticed that I am learning to say the quiet part out loud. Worker bees like myself are expected to shut up and take the propaganda. We are only allowed to open our mouths when we are reinforcing or praising said messages. When people are no longer afraid to say the quiet part out loud, real revolution happens. I am also learning, albeit slowly, how I can enjoy manipulating the rigged system from within.

Yes, I am frustrated by a part of the lot in life that I’ve been dealt. I enjoy whining like every other human being that denies they whine and complain. It becomes unhealthy when I do not take steps to improve things. I guess I am kind of doing that. I don’t really know because my brain is still in a depressed state. I cannot fully trust certain feelings and emotions just yet. Maybe I just need to keep my eyes forward and keep moving forward, even if it is just 2 steps forward only to take 1 backward.

One of the things that I am proud of myself is that I am actively unlearning some of the concepts that I’ve been taught. One of these concepts is the notion of absolutes.The world is full of grey areas which are where real ideas get formulated. I now have no problem making a carefully calculated financial decisions that will benefit me over anyone outside my family and friends circle. It’s so freeing once you learn this.

I decided to do some learning this morning with NGINX. For those not in the know, NGINX is a web and proxy server. I use it strictly as a proxy and it’s very powerful for that purpose. At any rate, I discovered that it can do more than simply proxy web connections and thought that this is something I would do.

A proxy is a much more secure way of exposing a service to the internet than doing it at the network level since you don’t have to poke a hole in your firewall. I’ve been chasing a bad actor that seems intent on crashing my blog on occasion but I haven’t been able to pin down the offending IP address. I’m hoping that by proxying the connections I can stop this offender cold in their tracks.

I host my own blog so I can retain tighter control over my own data and the service itself. With that comes responsibility for everything. I don’t mind periodically checking WordPress to see if anything got corrupted as it is all part of the sysadmin game. So now, not only am I proxying all of my web stuff, I am also proxying SSH.