id: now title: Now date_created: 2020-01-01 date_last_updated: 2024-08-08 description: What I am up to now. ---

Last updated: 2024-08-08

## Work

Still in Toronto, still working in software at Amazon. My team writes tools to help automate and test new machine setups. Just got a promotion from L4 (entry level software engineer) to L5 (regular software engineer). Was not something that I chased but there is an "up or out" when in the L4 position so it is really nice to have that worry off my mind.

## Life

I am engaged and living with the most wonderful woman I have ever met. Planning our wedding (slowly bit by bit) for next spring.

Actually planning for the long term financially now that I am lucky enough to have a job that leaves me with money to save and invest after the bills are payed. It still feels new to have that cushion and to plan long term, definitely enjoying it.

Got covid for the second time just this week. Not great but much lighter then the last time that I got it.

## Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Got my blue belt just before the new year. Still training as much as I can. The team here at GB Toronto has become an external family. I am so grateful for the community.

Competiton is this Saturday. I have made the weight, however they opened the weigh in on Friday evening which is unusual. Means that I can cut water weight aggressively and re-hydrate before the first match so I don't feel terrible. So putting a little of it back on.

We have a lot of people from the school going. It is going to be a very fun day.

## Learning

I am working to learn Japanese and Portuguese on Duolingo. I love the program and it is 100% worth paying for, but the fact that even when paying it keeps asking for ratings, putting widgets on my home screen, or turning on notifications bothers me. You already have my money now please don't bother me. Finding the lessons really helpful.

I started studying for the CompTIA ITF+ certification test but that has fallen off in the last little bit. I have been learning hardware and networking playing with my home network and a small homelab consisting of my NAS and a few raspberry pis. Just not very stoked on going for certifications and much prefer to learn this stuff by just playing around with it than reading textbooks and doing practice questions.

## Tinkering

Have just finished setting up some self hosted software. Firefly for budgeting and personal finance. Pihole for local network addblocking and as a DNS server. Syncthing to keep all my devices synchronized. Slowly working to have more and more of my digital life hosted myself, and it feels good to have control over these things even though it is more work.

This website is the main thing that I have been working with. I rebuilt it using HTMX and a Rust backend. Added a uses page recently with just a list of the common things that I use every day. Going to add links and other curated stuff next. I love these pages on other personal websites and want to contribute to that.

I am looking at restructuring the site into more of a garden than a stream. It is a structure that I find much more interesting and fits with how I want to build much more. Treating most things as timeless and growing as opposed to a strict timeline. It is how I keep most of my personal notes, dates more of as reference than things needing to be in order. Will see how that works.

Set up my own code forge to be able to share my code without having to post it to github. Can see it here.

Awstin