October 2020 Update

It has definitely been a while since the last time I blogged…

I have decided that I am going to try to do monthly updates. I figure it will help my writing skills a bit, and it will give me an opportunity to reflect on the month that just past. I figure I will try to get these out on the first day of the month, and the blog will typically talk about last month’s endeavors.

↪ Birthday Festivities

For those who don’t know, my birthday was on October 26th. My friends from college came into town, and we went to some wineries/tasting rooms in the Driftwood/Dripping Springs area. Great times were had. Took my friends to try the taco truck I always rave about, and they all really enjoyed it which means I must have really good taste buds. We also hit up Mozart’s on Lake Austin Blvd. I am not a coffee person typically, so hot chocolate was my drink of choice.

↪ Purchases…or Presents

For my birthday, I try to buy myself a present, usually. When I turned 21, I bought myself a calculator watch¹ that actually just broke :(. For my 24th birthday, I kind of combined my gift with my Halloween costume. The costume was a motorcycle gang member, and the gang’s name is the SoCo MoFos (South Congress Mother F***ers). I bought myself a leather jacket² from FLAVOR Leather. The material is pig skin, and it feels really nice. The stitching seems high quality, and I am definitely warm when I wear it. I have taken it for a motorcycle ride in ~50 degree weather, and the ride was quite enjoyable.

Then I found a link to this non-profit called TheOceanCleanup which aims to take plastics drifting in the ocean, and turn them into products. In turn, the revenue from the products will fund more excursions to collect plastic and R&D for other products. This sounded like a good business model to me, so I dropped some money to buy their first product, which are sunglasses. I needed sunglasses, so the timing couldn’t have been better. I am hoping they will ship soon, so that I can make good use of them, but I am also not in a rush.

↪ Food and Drinks

↪ Beer

The beer this month was plentiful and yummy. I explored more of the Blue Owl Brewing Company selection through my local liquor store, The Austin Shaker. I tried a plum marmalade sour which was really nice. I also noticed that another brewery re-opened called the Central District Brewing Company. I stopped in to to try one beer on a whim and my interest was piqued. I ended up taking a growler of their kettle sour home with me to take to the Halloween party :).

↪ Halloween

Had an opportunity to go to a Halloween party hosted by one of my friends. Was a really good time with friends I don’t see too often. I don’t regret going even in the current COVID climate.

↪ Projects

↪ Heterogeneous-Memory Storage Engine

I continued working on Python bindings for HSE. I am hoping that the bindings don’t need much more iteration, but feedback is always welcome. I am hoping the bindings will be open sourced next month, but that really isn’t my call. It will be sweet to have a professional project on GitHub that has been largely created by me. Hopefully it will gain some traction within the HSE community.

↪ Glovebox

While my friends were in town, “someone” broke my glovebox, so I will be working to fix that next month hopefully. Gonna be awkward if I get pulled over…