It's been more than a month and a half since my last update. While, historically, that has meant that I didn't have anything to say, this time it was because I was too busy to post.
During this time, I've been working hard on my personal project - a dashboard done using Spring Boot. This involved learning a whole host of new technologies, which I had up until then only heard of: Spring Boot, JPA, Hibernate, MQ (message queues - RabbitMQ, in particular), Stomp, SVG, and D3. In addition, I was able to brush up on technologies I had used in the past, but not recently: AngularJS, Bootstrap, Java and Maven. I am quite the architect, even if I do say so myself. Recently, I've gone back to look at my initial blueprint of what I envisioned the architecture would look like, and the result has had no major alterations. I have a core working prototype. Now, I'm just working on adding more features, tests, and refinements. Soon, I will put it up here. It's been a fun experience, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how good Spring Boot is.
Towards the end of June, my dad and I embarked on a project of replacing part of a fence that had blown down. As that project neared completion, my dad stained the fence on our side the same color as the fence on our neighbor's side, hence screwing up the entire thing. Unfortunately, paint is easier applied than removed, and I don't see any solution short of redoing the whole thing again. Currently, I've just left it the way it is. Then, over the Independence Day weekend (I had taken Monday through Wednesday off of the following week), I replaced our gate (which was in really bad shape), with a brand new one, stained it, and used up the rest of the stain staining about half of the old fence. I've been happy with the results, but having shown my co-workers, they were not impressed. It doesn't actually look impressive, I'll admit that. Judge for yourself.
Then, just as I was wrapping everything up, my beloved Moto X slipped out of my pocket. I caught it with my hand, but then dropped it onto the concrete patio as I tried to put it back into my pocket. I was both devastated and frustrated. I suppose because I was so upset, I splurged on a BlackBerry Priv, for $300. That's the most I've ever spent on a phone. To a certain extent, I regret it. I actually prefer my old phone. Blast!
I guess, as an aside, during this time, I have also been buying birthday presents and stuff for people, including a co-worker, a server at Yama, and a sushi chef. These following pictures are the two last meals he made for me before going back to Thailand.
