Activity got a little sparse here over the past few weeks. Part of the reason has been busyness at work. But another part of it has been tackling some personal activities. For the second year in a row, I went to the tabletop gaming convention Gen Con in Indianapolis. Between attending and preparing to go, that took quite a lot of my free time. Much of the rest of my free time has been spent trying to catch up on some new youtube channels and fitting them into my other habits and priorities. First, I’ve been turned onto BosnianBill’s YouTube channel which has 1000+ lockpicking videos. These are absolutely excellent; they’re small digestible videos and Bill talks wonderfully through everything he is doing while giving the viewer a very clear, close view of his work and clear audio of the progress as well. I’ve skipped around a bit to check other things out (I’m otherwise working backwards through his channel), and I found a tutorial video he did about picking spool pins and it’s absolutely invaluable and amazing how well he teaches lockpicking. Definitely a channel to subscribe to.

I’ve long been aware of the Critical Role show on Geek & Sundry since it began, but I’ve never taken the time to watch it since I knew it would be a timesuck. Essentially, the show is a group of voice actors playing D&D. I knew I’ve love it, and I finally started watching it a few weeks ago, and my fears were confirmed: I absolutely love it and need to keep watching to catch up. It’s also stoked my interest in D&D again, but not quite enough to pursue finding a group yet to scratch the lifelong itch. Maybe I’ll find a way to fit that in!

Lastly, I’m also watching some Linux courses over at Linux Academy, partly for my own learning, partly to normalize what I’ve learned over the years (and close some gaps), and partly to satisfy some training expectations at work. I’ll eventually be ready for, but won’t be taking, the Red Hat Certified Systems Admin test. Unless my title has “Linux” in it, I don’t think actually spending the money and time to take the test will be worth it to me, but the learning will be very nice to have. This sort of fills in my allotted personal learning time for the moment with something not terribly hard and with very little overhead pressure for the summer months.

Anyway, those have been my major timespends over the past month.