Whew! I’m behind again. A busy couple of weeks.

No School

School was canceled due to snow, ice, and trees being down. We kept our power but had a good bit of ice. I ran the snowblower on Saturday to get everything cleared out. However, the snow turned to ice/rain/snow/sleet mix. Sunday morning I felt more like I was running a Zamboni than a snowblower. Fortunately, my neighbor plowed the end of the driveway for me.

The roads were good. Our town and the neighboring ones were good at staying on top of plowing the roads. Thus, grocery shopping was completed.

I used the day of working from home to get some work done.

Keybow 2040

I also spent a little bit of time working on programming the Pimaroni Keybow 2024. It’s a neat little device, but I don’t have tons of Python experience, so it’s proving, well, frustrating. I can get the basic programming to work, i.e. the keys enter numbers or letters and light up when depressed. However, I’m struggling with advanced coding to get a key to open a webpage. I don’t seem to be the only one as I’ve seen several posts asking the same question but no one posts the actual answer. Occasionally, they will say, ah, I got it. However, they don’t post the actual “it”.

So, I’ll keep on working on this as I get time. If you know CircuitPY and would like to shoot me some code on assigning a key to a website, gosh, I’d be appreciative.

Taxes

I’ve completed our taxes, which seems like it is harder than it should be. I’m no billionaire, so I pay taxes. Plus, I get to file in multiple states.

Make People Sad

Sometimes in my job, I have to tell people “no”. Sometimes, I have to tell people that they can’t use a “thing” that they like to use. I heard another Tech Director express this as sometimes my job is to “make people sad”. I laughed. That’s a great way of expressing this. It was also nice to hear that others have to do this as well.

This was part of the Cyber Storm event that I took part in. Cyber Storm is a preparation exercise to help schools prepare for cyber intrusions, network issues, cyber incidents, and more. The training was great. It was nice to know that others are dealing with some of the same issues.

Otter AI

I also shared a note about Otter.AI. Otter AI is a Zoom plug-in that records everything that is said and provides a transcript. It is especially popular for some Special Needs parents. Their pitch is that you never need to take notes. Think about this though. They are recording everything that is said during a meeting for a special needs situation. Think about the potentially private, personal information shared during those meetings.

Caulking

Not my favorite job, but once again this weekend I caulked. The thing is that the caulk removal and cleaning is a ton of work. The actual caulking is pretty quick. Nice clean caulk is now in place though.

52Frames

I scrolled through the 52Frames Photo Challenge. I tried to “like” a variety of photos (that I actually liked). My idea was to give some positive feedback. I know that I enjoy getting a notification that someone liked one of my photos, so I thought that I’d share that love a little bit.

I’ve continued to submit pictures to 52Frames. I’m enjoying the process and the satisfaction of meeting the submission guidelines. I’m generally posting those separately, so I won’t repeat them here.

Oh William!

I did read Oh William! by Elizabeth Stroud. I enjoyed it very much. I document my books read under the Hobbies tab. I probably should redo that as it is currently an HTML table.