2015 Year in Review

Keeping up with tradition I haven't really done anything I mentioned in 2014 year in review. Notably this year I was let go from the job I've had for 10+ years. It's a little hard to give a real number since it's rather complicated. I was hired back in 2004 as a PHP developer. I was working for a company that was a spinoff the of the main company. Well it then broke off from that company into another one (yes, it's confusing, and made taxes fun a couple years). That company was founded in 2006 or so but I still worked with the same people throughout. At any rate when this company started I was one of 5 people, including the boss. When I left it was over 40 I think. Had a lot of growing pains and put in a lot of hard hours. Anyway this year they did some restructuring (leaving out details as I'm not sure if it's considered confidential info still) and remove my position as well as several others in department. Don't have any hard feelings towards them and I wish that company the best.

The job hunt now was a lot different from back in 2004. Pretty much every resume I sent out I at least got a call back from. Apparently the Cleveland area is starved for Linux Administrators. After only two months being unemployed I accepted a new job. Took like a month and a half to finally get in there (they were recently acquired so they weren't used to the new process things had to go through).

New job operates in the health care industry and has a really interesting part in it. Also this company is a lot bigger at almost 200 people which has been great to not have to do everything all the time, or be on call 24/7/365 since it's spread across like 12 people or something. Have been getting along with coworkers well which was my big worry starting at a new place and doing more stuff that I wanted to do.

Other new things this year is I finally started going to gym. Partly due to pay increase I got from new job and partly not wanting to be a fat slob. I did jogging after work a few years ago but stopped once it got cold out and then when I would get home late from work I didn't want to go out. I compromised and got a membership at a local gym. Not a fan of running in place on a treadmill but I'll be able to do it year round and I've already seen some improvements after only a couple months. Even see a personal trainer for resistance training / weight lifting which was something I always wanted to do but was always too afraid I'd mess up my back or something. Who knows maybe a year from now I'll be saying I lost 50 pounds...

Due to leaving the previous job, which was where I had this server hosted, I had to move things around. Ultimately I went back to using my Dreamhost account. It's definitely improved since I last used it. I'm still looking at getting a hosted server somewhere because they do some stuff with email that I don't like, also can't tweak spam settings like I can with my own server.

I did some updates to permit cookies addon. I'm looking at updating it again because the API it's using is so old Mozilla is planning on deprecating it soon. Shouldn't be too hard to rewrite but still annoying.

I ended up dropping my ".email" TLD. Two years later and still have a lot of sites not accepting it so I'm using toddeddy.com which I've had for a while now. I've even been considering moving this site over to toddeddy.com since it's always been hard to give out my domain name since I have to spell it out and such. Still have to spell out toddeddy.com but at least then someone will know how to spell my name. Not sure if I want to do that though. Also I want to maintain all redirects so even 10 years ago you type in the url of this page and it will redirect you to the appropriate place on new domain. Still haven't done much with site rewrite. Just changes to a local copy of site.

Other things I did this year was go on vacation to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee with parents. It's become a really big tourist trap place though. I did end up doing this blacksmith thing where I made a pretty cool knife out of a railroad spike. Also have made an attempt at trying to get house cleaned up, took a bunch of old computers to recycling place this year. Been hoarding them for close to 15 years so I'm glad to be gone with them.

In 2016 I'm looking forward to being in better shape. Don't have any real concrete goals in regards to working out. Just be in better shape. Things like losing weight are going to happen. I have been considering moving. Current place I live is all right but it's kinda old. If I want to bring it up today, open floor plan, etc it's going to cost a lot. Rather just go somewhere that's newer and have all that done already. Also I've seen enough of those home remodeling shows where they find beams missing or pools of water that I don't want to do work on my place. Probably won't go anywhere but I've been looking at least.

I'm still on twitter and github a lot and probably best places to see what I'm up to throughout the year.