So, I got my amateur extra ham radio license. December 23, I think.

Then, this past Saturday, I got my first HF contact. That was fun!

Anyway, now that I’m done with that, what next?

At present, I’m trying to formulate… THE PLAN. I think I have most of it lined out in my head, but I should probably get it down.

1. Finish Ham Radio stuff.
   • My boys and I have been working toward getting our ham radio licenses. Why? I don’t know! It probably just comes down to “it’s cool in a nerdy, technical sort of way.” But regardless, on May 29th we went to our first Ham Radio meeting and on June 3rd I officially decided to “go for it,” and we’ve been working hard on it since. I’ve finished The Fast Track to your Technician Ham Radio License.” My sons are working through it and will be ready for the test on Field Day (June 28th). I’m prepping to take Technician and General (but NOT Extra). I’m hoping to take Extra next month. Why? Well, why not?
     • I really like those Fast Track books. 5 stars. Highly recommended.
   • It does feel a bit strange to be pursuing this without an explicit reason for doing so. I don’t particularly want to talk to people on the radio. I don’t particularly want to do model aircraft that’d need a ham license. But it’s been pretty fun to prep for the courses (mostly). Some of the stuff is boring legal things. This particular band is allowed and this one isn’t. Or this one is allowed for CW and nothing else. Etc. But it’s been a great learning spot for a lot of electrical principles that will be helpful to me and my boys.
2. After getting licenses under our belt, I’m planning to work on Calculus again. Saxon’s Calculus (2e), to be specific. I want to work through the book, soup to nuts, every problem, every exam, and see where that leaves me. Maybe retake AP Calculus BC in 2026. We’ll see.
3. Then I want to hit The Mechanical Universe. All of it. Videos. Books. All the problems. PHYSICS, BABY. I had been intending to do Saxon’s Physics, and I might still after TMU, but we’ll see. (I love Saxon.) Maybe take AP Physics C in 2026 or 2027.
4. Then the chemistry book from the Robinson Curriculum. Chemical Principles, 2e. I’ve figured out how to extract the books from the CD copies (which I legally own [I think–purchased on Ebay, they look real]) on Linux using a Python script with the help of AI (which is probably making me stupid). Maybe take AP Chemistry or CLEP Chemistry in 2027 or 2028.

After that, well, I would love to work toward passing the FE and PE. I’m (I think) legally able to given my engineering experience. It’d be super-cool to have a legit piece of paper saying “I know something” after being a “fake engineer” for many years now.

I think that’s it. Enough.

This is subject to change, but it’s what I’m currently thinking.

First, background. This is recent enough that I remember most of it and have a paper trail, if you will.

I first heard about Math Academy from a TLDR email. I looked up the writer and read his story. I found the site and it looked great.

I worked hard on it for a while on whatever they initially recommended. Probably Math Foundations I. Then I switched to Calculus BC because that’s what I wanted to take (yes, adults can take AP exams–I did).

I worked hard on that for a while. It went OK. But at a certain point, it became obvious that by my estimated completion date, I wasn’t going to be done in time. I swapped over to Khan Academy to try to just cram in some of the remaining concepts. I think I took the test at 42% complete at Math Academy. I got a 2, AB subscore also a 2. Ouch. That’s effectively a fail.

I took a bit of time off after that. Examining if I wanted to continue to pursue math. I eventually decided that yes, I do. So I signed back up with MA and got going. I finished Math Foundations II just before the new year, and signed up to take Calculus BC again.

It went OK for a while. I was averaging 70-80 XP per day. Then I got sick. Then work picked up. And it became clear, again, that I had zero shot at finishing their course by exam day. I decided to drop the BC exam as the last thing I wanted was to fail it again. That stung, but failing again would have stung more.

I’ve been trying to put in a little time on it even though I am absolutely slammed at work. Getting up at 5:30am, working until 10 most nights. I just don’t have time and mental energy for math.

Today, I’m thinking about how effective it really is. To adapt Sean Connery’s Celebrity Jeopardy question: “What matters is, does it work? Will it really mighty my math, man?”

I’m torn. On the one hand, I think it probably does work, at least somewhat. I am learning things, and getting better in some areas. What I’m skeptical about is how much faster they claim it is. I’m also skeptical about the cost being worth it. As a dad of a bunch of homeschool kids, there’s just no way I’d do this at this point for them. It feels way too experimental (and expensive).

I like a lot of aspects of it. It’s not trying to BS you as a form of entertainment. It’s hard. It has regular reviews. It has timed tests. These are all good things in my estimation. I’m on board with all of that.

Despite assurances that they review stuff sufficiently, that’s still my biggest concern. I feel extremely shaky about new things they’ve given me. For instance, I was just horrible at series. I can never remember the formulas. But I somehow got beyond the reviews and never see those anymore. I know that if I were given a series question that I couldn’t brute force I’d just flunk it.

The above was written sometime in…the past. I don’t know. Probably the last 2 months. I figured I’d go ahead and post it. I’m no longer doing MA and probably won’t for the foreseeable future.

For each lesson:

1. Watch MathTutorDVD.com lesson.
2. Watch Professor Leonard.
3. Do MathTutorDVD.com lesson sheet.
4. Do homework suggested problems
5. Do homework problems.

A few quick thoughts on this chapter.

First, I generally appreciate his message. I think he’s generally correct that we are essentially being harmed and conditioned by the trappings of technology (what he calls a technopoly). This causes us to be less able to concentrate, more fractured, and what’s more we often feel as if this is somehow good or laudable. And that there is potentially great good that can be done by eliminating or greatly limiting our distractions.

But, that said, I had a few quibbles in this chapter.

First, I’m pretty sure he misuses the word “fungible.” I’m assuming he meant, “ambiguous” given the context, but that doesn’t sound as cool as fungible. I understood what he was meant after reading it a few times, but in context, it made no sense and was confusing.

Second, his example of Marissa Mayer getting cheesed off about the lack of use of her company’s VPN by remote employees was not remotely (haha) convincing. I don’t buy for a minute that most of the employees were primarily using the VPN for email usage. That’s stupid. Unless there’s more explanation given than was, it seems like it could have been a relatively accurate assessment by her. It really depends on how Yahoo implemented their WFH policies. What was actually allowed? Did you need a VPN to actually work? At my employer, you basically do need to use the VPN to do anything work-related from home, at least within the rules. I can totally imagine circumstance where this would not be the case, but I’d be surprised if this isn’t fairly normal.

Finally, I think one of my biggest complaints is that he basically ignores that a major reason employers try to figure out things like “productivity” is that man is basically evil. I’m a Calvinist, so “Total Depravity” is part of my lexicon, even if I think it’s kind of misunderstood based on that term (see here for more). Regardless, the point stands: man is not basically good. In his unregenerate state, man is basically evil. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9 (NKJV). Or Genesis 6:5 (NKJV): Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. I don’t think this has changed since the flood. So, one of the jobs of supervisors and managers, unfortunately, is to recognize this and account for it.

Thus, I don’t buy that the reason people want open offices, daily standups, and some sort of tangible results is invalid. I don’t think Melissa Mayer was wrong to be skeptical of remote workers. I think it’s generally reasonable. But I do grant that sometimes because of this we end up allowing the cart to get before the horse, in part because we don’t want to recognize that depravity is part of man’s nature. And we also forget that man is amazingly good at learning to game the system.

Anyway, despite the above, I really did enjoy this chapter and the book (so far). It seems like one of those books that is likely to end up sticking with me.

I’ve had this happen a few times and it’s seriously annoying.

Basically, I decide to go back to my Debian testing install, realize it’s been a while, so I should run update, and that somehow borks my Grub stuff.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but this worked:

Boot up, but select to boot to Ubuntu instead of Debian.

That should show all of the Linux installs. Log into the correct Debian.

In there, I did the following:

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Then:

sudo grub-install

That seemed to fix it. I don’t know why it’s doing what it’s doing, but it’s annoying. I suspect that Debian testing is overwriting the above location,

Steps on this page worked great for me in the MSP airport:

https://www.makeuseof.com/connect-to-wifi-with-nmcli/

In summary:

nmcli
nmcli dev status
nmcli radio wifi
nmcli dev wifi list
sudo nmcli dev wifi connect MSP Airport WiFi [didn\’t work since it interprets the space as a command break]
sudo nmcli dev wifi connect \’MSP Airport WiFi\’

Looks like I previously had installed another networking package (via ethernet), so it might be reliant on that:

sudo apt install glib-networking-common

After I got online with wifi like that, I could use apt to install the Gnome network-manager app:

sudo apt install network-manager-gnome

I\’ve gotten this to work twice now, but forgot what I did the first time, so I figured I\’d write it down in case I need to do it again.

First, install ClamAV (since I\’m required to have antivirus installed):

sudo apt install clamav

Download the Citrix receiver.

https://www.citrix.com/downloads/workspace-app/linux/workspace-app-for-linux-latest.html

(I used version 23.3.0.32, as evinced below.)

Install with dpkg:

sudo dpkg -i icaclient_23.3.0.32_amd64.deb

(Note that the command above only works from the location where the file was downloaded.)

Copy/link the ssl certificates to the correct directory:

sudo ln -s /etc/ssl/certs/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/

I think that\’s what finally worked, but I had also done the Mozilla copy, too:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts

I was just thinking in the kitchen at work how I want to attack my days and realized I should probably write it down.

• Get up at 5, wake up, get to chair by 5:15.
• 5:15-6: Do math
• 6-6:40: Do math or be available to talk to wife.
• 6:40-7: see boys, get ready to go
• 7:10-7:20: Leave for work, listen to Bible and pray on the way
• 7:45-noon: work
• noon-1: Study.com
• 1-5: work
• 5:30-8:30: Dinner, family worship, putting boys to bed, family worship, reading to kids.
• 8:30-10: Math or study.com; available to talk to Rita.
• 10:30: Bedtime.

My basic plan at present is to continue to work on math at least 45 minutes a day and make progress toward a CS degree at WGU.

I decided to put Windows 10 back on my laptop so I could work on something that requires an actual Windows install. The guides online all looked scary, so after looking around I found out it\’s really easy on a modern laptop.

1. Reboot and go to bios.
2. Change the boot order to have Debian first.
3. Save and boot into Debian.
4. In Debian, go to the command line and run the command \”sudo update-grub.\”
5. Reboot and note that Windows is listed on the grub menu now, but Debian is first.

That\’s literally it. It was that simple. This was on a T470s that previously had Debian 11 installed on two partitions (separate installs). I deleted the one I never use with Gparted, then installed Windows on that partition. Then I did the above to get back to being able to go into Debian.