Printers have always been flakey a major pain to deal with. I just spent the past hour setting up this Samsung laser printer that I bought back in 2011, but have seldom ever used. Now that I went through this pain, I want to help others and myself in the future, should I ever need to do this again.
The good thing about laser printers, and why I will never ever spend money on an inkjet printer again, is that the ink will never dry out. This printer is still on the original ink cartridges that...
Updated on February 29, 2024
A lot has happened this past year. One year ago, I held a wedding feast in town for those who are dear to me. Then, we discovered that my wife was pregnant. We spent the next few months renovating the house and getting ready for the baby. We got new vinyl flooring and carpet for the first floor, moved a lot my parents' stuff back to their house, bought two pianos and a new car. Then, we had a baby, a beautiful baby boy.
In the three months since the previous update, my baby has steadily...
Written on January 28, 2024
Now that the dust has settled, and a sufficient number of the followers of the Test-Driven Development (TDD) religion have moved onto the next fad, I can crawl out of hiding and voice my objections. I have always been against TDD, as I felt it was a literally backwards approach to coding, which had glaring flaws.Test-Driven Development is the concept that unit tests or automated tests should be the starting point of a project. You know what results you want. You write tests that should produce those...
Updated on December 27, 2023
He's two months old! Glad he's made it this far so far. This past month has been much easier than before as he's gotten fatter and stronger. I'm no longer worried that he might break or die on me. He's a survivor.
He's started to smile, and just last night, laugh. I'm not sure he finds anything funny, but it's more of a reflex or coincidence. These moments are fleeting and are hard to catch.
He's grown accustomed to tummy time and now prefers sleeping on his belly. This is in stark...
Updated on November 7, 2023
My only begotten child has survived one month, and he's still an adorable little baby boy. The first week was the hardest. Here, we had the failure to communicate. It took some getting used to, but I believe we now have a mutual understanding. Usually, he's either hungry, has gas, or has trouble pooping. I can help with the first two, but he has to resolve the last one all on his own. Sometimes, leaving him alone to cry it out, and he'll reboot, and that's the best solution. Babies are strange.Crying...
Written on September 28, 2023
This is one of the most significant and consequential events of my life. Yesterday, my firstborn son, Joseph, was born into the world. We have spent months preparing for this day, and my parents have spent more than a decade anticipating this day.
Praise the Lord that the whole process went smoothly, more or less. It's been a difficult few days. For my wife, she began to feel mild contractions since Thursday. By Saturday morning at 5AM, she woke me up and told me that her contractions were...
Written on August 28, 2023
I've been getting error codes intermittently on my tankless water heater, which causes the hot water to shut off. I finally decided to get to the bottom of this issue once and for all this past Friday. I found the user manual and a video guide online, but my water heater turned out to be a little different, so I ended up having to feel my way around. This guide explains how to fix the issues that cause error codes 12, 13, and P1.
What you will need is a good Phillips screwdriver, a vacuum or...
Written on May 21, 2023
Married life has been busy. This is a different kind of business than being occupied with work or a hobby. It's changed the pace of my daily routines. The days go by quickly.
It took some getting used to. But, I wouldn't say that previously my way of life was better or worse. Just very different.
Since getting married, I feel like I've been preparing a nest for a new family. We moved a lot of furniture around, got laminate flooring over the tile, and replaced the carpet.
We got a piano and...
Written on April 18, 2023
Over the past month, I took a two week trip to Taiwan. During the course of this trip, my newly-wed wife and I took wedding photos - a modern tradition, met her family, held a ceremony in Taitung, where she is from, and had a short honeymoon. It was a rollercoaster of a trip.
The itinerary began as soon as I got off the plane. I got off the plane at 8PM, but had to wait another half an hour before I got my bags, which had the clothes I had prepared specifically for the photo shoot. The wedding...
Written on December 27, 2022
My first serious relationship lasted almost three years. It was a wild three years of extreme emotions and experiences. All that came to an end when we decided to take things to the next level. Parents on both sides disapproved, and after having entertained some fairly absurd demands, I decided to settle. I walked away for the last time, exactly one year ago, with the firm conviction that despite all of our shared experiences and feelings, things were not meant to be.When I came back home, I...
Written on November 22, 2022
Life has been easy. I'm probably in the minority. What's my secret? God's blessing, and simple tastes and basic needs. Due to a combination of the genes I was born with and a modest upbringing, I've been blessed with being content with a lifestyle that is well below my means. In my opinion, this is the key to the good life.Yet, such a life seems to elude most of my generation. News articles and YouTube videos are filled with accounts of unhappy, stressed out people buried in debt and living paycheck...
Written on October 14, 2022
I'm now 36. These last few years have flown by with not much fanfare. Granted, there were potentially life-altering events along the way, but none of them materialized. Thus, I have quietly been living these few years in relative monotony.I've clocked in 6 years on the job at my current employer. In that amount of time, I've been on four distinct teams, working on a single page application, a cloud application, a backend enterprise application, and now, a homegrown inventory tracking application....
Written on September 17, 2022
In the few times I've done this, they have never been fun. My server has now gone from 12.04 all the way to 20.04 (I had intended to upgrade all the way to 22.04, but it seems 22.04 hasn't been out long enough). But getting there involved many hours of painful troubleshooting, desperately searching online for possible answers, thinking hard about what the problem could be, shooting in the dark, and miraculously hitting the issue through this spread fire approach.Here, I document the many common causes...
Updated on August 2, 2022
South Korea is an interesting country. It is very similar to Japan and Taiwan in terms of cleanliness and social norms. The food was very affordable, relatively healthy, delicious, with decent portions, a large variety, and available virtually everywhere at any time of the day or night. Living accommodations can be had for also a very reasonable sum. I could expect a clean room with all the basic amenities, though there were clear differences in quality amongst the different establishments....
Written on June 23, 2022
It's been almost 10 years since the last and first time I went to South Korea, back in 2012. It had been nearly 3 years since the last time I traveled internationally, which was to Paraguay in 2019, shortly before the pandemic began. The urge was strong, and I was constantly checking for places I could travel to. The end of March was when the stars aligned and I booked my trip. Last time I went to Korea, I went with my friend, Joe, to visit my friend, Ed. Ed took the two of us around. This time,...
Written on May 30, 2022
Having been stuck at home for years, I had been periodically checking on countries where I could travel to. With the Covid restrictions easing up gradually, I was quick to jump on some relatively cheap airline tickets at the end of March, booking a flight to South Korea from the end of April until the end of May. The trip, for the most part, was enjoyable, but the Covid restrictions created some extra hurdles. I aim to give a comprehensive list of all the considerations that prospective travelers...
Written on May 30, 2022
That's my goal for this year. I'll update in December.
Written on January 9, 2022
To say that I've been busy for the past half year would be an understatement. While true, I've also had surprisingly little to talk about. Work, hobbies, and life were all the same as before. In some areas, things improved, but these were evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary. Above all else, there were few notable events in these past few months. However, now is as good of a time as ever to mention the few notable events that did happen during this timeframe.My cousin got married over the...
Written on December 9, 2021
It's been a few months since the last update. During this time, I've been incredibly busy. Since mid-March, I've picked up woodworking and this has taken up all of my free time and then some. It's been really fun, and I've built about a dozen pieces so far. They've mostly been kotatsu tables, though I've also made a box, an end table and a few go boards with legs.It all started during the freak snow storm in February. I was huddled in my bed when I remembered that I've always been interested in owning...
Written on June 5, 2021
An update is long overdue. It's been almost four months since the last update. A lot has gone on.
My Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's came and went without much fanfare.
January 8 marked the 2-year anniversary of my long term relationship. This was a train with the wrong destination. I intended to get off a long time ago, but for various reasons simply could not. However, I now surveyed the situation: my girlfriend had a place to live, a stable job, and a car in good working order;...
Written on February 19, 2021