the cat|grep diaries

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Archives for August 2019

Blocks are great!

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I’ve decided that updates to this site as well as my other sites will be included in these updates too. It’s too easy to discredit these things as legit dev time, and it’s amazing how much time you can burn doing simple back-end stuff. Ok, on to what’s new:

  • My first post on this site had the content of what should have been an “about” page, introducing me and the purpose of this site. So I made it just that, moving the content to an actual page and removing the post.
  • This clearly won’t be a high traffic site, and SEO isn’t the goal here, so I won’t bother with tags. I’ll use categories for organization though.
  • Social links have been added in the left widget area. I’ve decided against using a plugin to include my twitter feed. Those things can get pretty chunky. I’d rather keep things clean and simple.
  • I’ll be using Google Analytics on this site to get familiar with it’s workings. Integrating it using Cloudflare’s GA app was definitely the way to go, easy to set up and ensures accurate results. This site will be the test dummy in that regard, but I’ll be interested to see how my cancer blog performs with GA. It’ll be nice to see if I’m successfully reaching people who need that content and assurance.

Side note: I like blocks. Like really, blocks in WordPress and so simple and dope. No derpy plugins needed.

Getting started has been tricky

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No, it’s not a false start, but I haven’t progressed with this side of things as I’d hoped. I have things separated a bit, so this blog alone doesn’t provide much context. So here’s what all is going on:

  • I’ve been diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. There’s no cure, but it’s treatable. I’m entering the 3rd cycle (month) of chemo treatment, which is going well.
  • This cancer has caused an acute kidney injury, requiring me to do dialysis for a while. This is 3 times a week, 4 hours each time. Very time consuming… I can try to work on stuff while I’m there, but often don’t wanna be bothered with the extra, to be frank. The hope is for the kidney’s to recover soon as the chemo does it’s job with the cancer.
  • As part of the cancer treatment, after the 4th cycle I’ll be undergoing a stem cell transplant, for which I’ll be my own donor. This process involves a 3-week hospital stay, high dose chemo, and all of the fun that comes with it.
  • With that in mind, I need to get some early physical recovery to be as strong as possible going into the transplant, even if it’s just walking and light calisthenics.
  • Blogging my cancer fight is becoming more of a priority. Keeping people updated is draining. Also, there are other people out there looking for a fighter’s perspective of treatment to help with tier own battle. So blogging this will be both helpful to me and to others to spread awareness and positivity. I’ll publicize that blog once it’s content-ready.
  • Aaaaaaand there’s this tech learning blog. While engaged in the fight, I’m determined to sharpen my mind as well, for personal and career purposes. So using courses via Udemy and other online resources, and leaning on my peers to test my new knowledge is going to increase my nerd wallet.

At first, two blogs and some online courses/coding didn’t seem like much, but now add in the physical recovery goal and I found myself a bit scatterbrained. It doesn’t help that the fitness tasks are in direct conflict with how crappy and utterly drained the chemo makes me feel. Doc says the exercise can help, and it seems like quite contradictory… but as a gym rate, I HATE feeling weak.

Anyway… I’ve had to reprioritize things a bit, but the learning will commence, starting with Python. via Udemy. No excuses. Moving forward, I won’t talk much about the cancer fight here. I’ll link that blog on the side once it’s ready.