2024 Year in Review

It took until June but I did finally get a job. As usual I won't say where other than it's at bank and I'm managing performance testing software. Developers use this to make sure that a change made doesn't impact performance when 1000's of people are trying to access it at the same time. I wouldn't have got this job if it wasn't for someone I used to work with recommending me. I got really close to getting jobs at other companies, one of them I was in interviews for five hours. Only to get dropped at the very end. A couple other times I had multi hour interviews. I spent all that time and ended up getting a job managing software I wasn't familiar with and maybe an hour total of interviews. Since starting I've become familiar with it and also got familiar with how things operate at banks which is slow. Really slow. Coming from companies that were highly agile and it taking days or even minutes to setup a new server to one where it can take months takes some getting use to. And it's not a regulatory thing since a previous job worked with health records. I think it's more because banks are older and have older systems that need to work with newer ones that's really slowing things down. On the bright side they really encourage applying for jobs elsewhere in the company so maybe I can move to another department that works more on the automation process to make that better. We shall see.

As I mentioned last year I'm starting to travel more now that I have a job. I went to Los Angeles via Amtrak. Was a 3 day journey and really enjoyed it. Was way better than the process of flying back home but it does take a lot longer. I also recorded a lot of video I'm still working on putting together and starting a youtube channel. Not sure if I'll link to here or keep it as a separate thing. Suppose I'll wait and see. First step is to actually go through footage even though it's already been a couple months. This has made me want to start taking a train trip somewhere at least once a year. There's several long distance trains in the U.S. as well as Canada that look interesting.

Just in December I got my amateur radio license. No real goal other than another hobby I have now. Since I just got it I'm still looking in to what I can actually do. Some of the things I can do is talk to the international space station, talk to people around the world by bouncing radio signals off the atmosphere, bounce radio signals of the moon and even meteors, and several digital services. I have the first level of license, technician. This limits a lot of the frequencies used for bouncing signals around the world, but it does open up some. Next level is general class which I've been starting to study for but doesn't look like it's going to be as easy as the first level. If you are interested the cost is $35 plus $10-$15 to take exam. All I did to study was watch this youtube playlist, take a few sample tests, and passed it pretty easy. While you don't have to know morse code any more you do still have to know a lot of electronics which I had experience from soldering some kits in the past. Also you don't need a license just to listen if you want to see what stuff you can pick up. A popular radio to get started with listening is the Baofeng UV-5R. Although for about the same price I'd recommend the Tidradio TD-H3 since you can program it using an app on your phone. There's also a custom firmware for that which adds more features. In Cleveland there's a popular repeater that's setup on top of a broadcast tv tower so can easily reach 30+ miles in all directions.

Main goal for next year, now that I have a job, is to really start looking at moving. I want to have a dedicated area for my woodworking and possible machine shop. Now that I have an amateur radio license I also want to look at setting up some large antennas which I can't do at current location with home owner's association (HOA). So need to find a place without an HOA. Also I'm looking at maybe building new instead of moving in to an existing house. Currently that's all up in the air at the moment.