Bought a desk organizer a few weeks ago to arrange all my micro systems. The NUC, RPi NCP, Odroid and routers all now sit neatly in one space. The sliding shelves are an added bonus and the open back and sides give a lot of space for air circulation and cable management.
JAN M&S did a whirlwind trip to Abu dhabi, Dubai, Chennai. Weddings and why-not? FEB M,S & I hiked up Shenandoah National Parks highest point - Hawksbill summit The three of us did a flying visit to Houston Took Aarav out on a little hike to Little Bennet regional park. Poor kid trusted me enough to wade freezing cold waters. Farewell to the 165/211 STS/SEOs MAR FACT Training Moved to CDMX Pappaji was able to spend a good few weeks with us APR The 4 of us went to the Teotihuacan Pyramids! Work trip to Matamoros. MAY Miss V and Amma visit us. V explores snooker Family visits Basilica de Guadalupe, Xochimilco and the other touristy spots in and around the city Spend a terrific day in Las Estacas. S surprises me with wanting to jump into the frigid waters! S continues zipping on her scooter to El Angel on Reforma Sundays. Gave M a mild scare when she zoomed ahead all the way to the Panda and didn’t bother waiting for M. Prerna visits for a week Work trip to Nuevo Laredo JUN M&S visit Delhi, Parbani for Vinay’s wedding Work trip to Hermosillo JUL Quick trip to Baltimore for Nancy’s Arangetram Beautiful walking trip to Centro Historico, M runs into one of her school friends out of the blue S enjoys her Elaneer near the Frida Kahlo Museum. Lucha Libre. Meh! M&S visit good ol’ Boston! Joined CLO for a trip to Puebla. Also Africam Safari! Work trip to Matamoros S has started using her cycle with training wheels a lot more AUG Bostonians visit us for a week Work trip to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Next time around, I should stay here for a bit longer! Visit Las Estacas again. The kids pool was a major disappointment. Not coming back here Meena goes on the PLP trip to Cuetzalan Ballet Forklorico - Kinda nice. S starts roller-skating classes and school! Sep Hike El Ocotal. Oh, so beautiful! M&I explore the rail trail on the bike Flying weekend visit to Baltimore for Sharath’s 50th! Joing CLO for a trip to Merida. Chichenitza and Cenotes! Work trip to Merida OCT Work travel to Fort Lauderdale. M&S were able to join too. Great 1 week right on the beach in Pompano M’s parents visit us for a week Lead the Girl scouts fall hike in El Ocotal. Too many kids and families. Ouch. Shouldn’t have opened this to the whole group. Appa and Athai visit us for a couple weeks. So glad they came together! NOV Shebani visits us for a week Ashu Bhabhi visits us for a day. She got some terrific green coffee beans M and Athai visit Chingahuapan Took Appa and Athai to El Ocotal. Super impressed with how much appa’s able to walk! Wheelchair helped quite a bit. Work travel to Managua. Didn’t get to visit the volcano. Next time around maybe? Marine Ball. Check. Took Appa and Athai to Teotihuacan and Basilica de Guadalupe. They loved it! Missed being with the extended family … for a few moments. Visited the National Cemetery for Dia de Muertes DEC Malinalco Camping with the daisies. Mesmerized by the mountains all around! Sneha visits us for a month Arvind and Patti visits us for about a week Hiked up San Miguel - Such a terrific birthday gift! Pub crawl with the ESC folks. Great evening! We bid and got our top pick. Yaounde it is in 2025! Started roller skating. This is so much fun! As I write this year-end note I realize how much I’ve not really documented. Some day I’ll get back to being more active in this space! Feliz Año Nuevo! ...
Pulled up an old laptop and setup matrix with the mautrix bridge for WA. Setup was way quicker than I thought it would take. Oddly this was one of those things that I had on the back burner and set to least importance…
A got some green beans when she came over on a flying visit. Roasted these the other day. Super aromatic and flavorful.
We opened gifts a couple days early this year since S’&A/Bonn were heading out to Merida on the 24th. Last night, S set aside cookies (that she’d baked), milk and carrots for Santa and the reindeers. Early this morning, she was beaming with joy the moment she noticed Santa had indeed taken a few cookies and carrots. As she sparkled-eye opened the Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza card game that M had packed last night as Santa’s gift, it was evident she was consumed by the ‘magic’ that was Santa. ...
S & I watched The Christmas Chronicles as M & JP head out this evening to watch the Ballet Forklorico in Castillo de Chapultapec. She enjoyed it and it was a great wrap up to Christmas 2023!
A few things I’d really like to dumb down or sort out over the next few weeks: Site: This site runs on WordPress, has facets of the indieweb, has ActivityPub and a crude implementation of self engineered micropost interface. All cool but needs quite a trim to make the best use of all these features. Hardware/Infra: VPS, VPN, Odroid for reverse proxy, NCP, NUC, Moose, External hard disks…Love the current implementation for the various utilities they serve. However, I see myself spending lesser and lesser time in front of the PC. Which is good? But which also means I need to find a better way to manage these in the little time I want to spend. ...
Early this month we put in our bids for our next posting. We heard back on Monday that we’re scheduled to head to Yaounde next! This was our top bid and we’re super excited! M also heard back on her CA-AEFM position. With all the NCC and NEC moves, the LNA and ConGen training, prepping for Yaounde and a few other things, next year’s going to be super busy and interesting. ...
At 12,220 ft and after a 3-hour climb, it felt like home and more importantly I felt real strong. This was my first decent hike in quite some time now and I was pleasantly surprised my body wasn’t really complaining. Early this month, M and I spoke about getting back into the hiking circuit. It’s been about 9 months that we’ve moved to CDMX and we’ve covered a decent bunch of the touristy stuff. CDMX has so many good hikes to offer and quite a few are reasonably accessible from the city limits. With work-travel, visitors and other schedule conflicts; we felt it was reasonable for us to fit in one camping trip and one exploratory hike very month. ...
Sometime back S’s night light bulb fused out. I replaced it with a tiny flickering LED lamp but she wasn’t very impressed since the switch was super tiny. Went to Home depot today with her and bought a switch that she liked. Spent about half an hour together and came up with this ‘wireless’ night lamp. She absolutely loves how it looks!