Month: August 2018

Journal 08152018 – My site

Journal 08152018 – My site

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Lately, I’ve gotten the notifications from my hosting provider and WordPress about my one anniversary of using their services. I never really talk about my site too much; nor I never really though too much about until now and realizing what it took for this site to become what is today. Initially it was a portfolio site so show case my work in Industrial Technology. It was until I got into writing and it changed the site a lot since then! From a small wiki site to a full-blown self hosted WordPress site, I’ll share my though of what were some of the challenges that I faced, what were the things I learned, and where do I see my site going forward.

When I first decided used WordPress I was not sure where it would take me much less what to do or write about. I decided that I would make it a place where I can journal and write about my life and my adventures. Where I would not only share the good, but the bad/challenges as well. My goal is be authentic as possible to those who come to my site and read my stories. I’ve learned that there is a fine line between privacy and what to share online. Like, having someone full name on my site, my house address, or talking about my adventure in New York. Those are the things I have to keep in mind when I’m writing and it’s challenging at times. Earlier this year, I’ve discovered the WordPress community, and it open my mind to read other bloggers stories and hearing there feed back and my post. It’s even helped me with some idea’s on what to write and feed back from the community which has encouraged me grow. Like when a blogger that goes by the named Rosie, explains to me how to resize the images, Or when another blogger helps me out by pointing out my spelling mistakes.

I first hosted my site at my apartment. It was great at first, but I faced many issues such as moving from place to place, power outages, power bills, and maintaining/replacing hardware. It was becoming too burdensome to manage. I find myself having to focus on trivial stuff instead of focusing on stuff that really matters. I looked at hosting providers and cloud services and after much research and though; I decided to move my site to Google Cloud! The process to upload the data and the website itself, took a long six months to a year and there were a lot of bump and hurdles that I had to learn. Like how google charges for storage, compute, or network bandwidth. Instead of using passwords to get into my servers, I needed to generate an keys to login with. When the move to Google Cloud had finished, I felt this huge weight off my shoulders. I can actually focus my goals that I want to achieved from my site.

Do see myself continuing to writing and making better content for people to enjoy. But all so, using my site to help develop my DevOps career path. To explore new tools in the background to keep the site up a running while trying get a 99.99% uptime, writing python code, and hopefully make a small income to help support the site better to help cover some of the cost of hosting the site.

Journal Entry – 07312018 – Back Pain

Journal Entry – 07312018 – Back Pain

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Last month, I’ve had really bad back pain. I remember waking up and feeling this intense feeling radiating on my upper right back between the spine and right shoulder. After awhile it grew very intense. I’ve called the doctor and advised to try a few things like to take a hot shower, try exercising it, and take 200mg of Ibuprofen. Yea, towards the end it felt like it was getting worse! I realized that I need to goto emergency care but there was a small problem once I grabbed my car keys. I can not really drive with a messed up back! Luckily there’s an emergency services in the downtown area were I live and it takes me 20 minutes for me to walk it. I finally got there, and I got admitted pretty quickly. The doctor haved me do some strength tests and she poked my back where it hurts. After she got finished diagnosing me, she concluded that I might haved a pinched nerve, muscle inflame and that I might haved some muscle injury too where the pain is on my back. So she tells me to take it easy, try to stretch it out, and take 600mg of Ibuprofen. In addition, she gives a few sheets of paper with instructions on what exercises that I need to do to help relieved my back pain. For the next few days. I had to try to stay off on my back, take the train(or bus) to work and stand most of the time while in at work.

A week gone by since the beginning of my back pain, and I notice that not only that my right arm still feels weak, but it tinges from time to time I would feel pain throughout my arm as well. So, I schedule a doctor’s appointment and I got to see the doctor see her on the same day. She did the same tests that the urgent care doctor but additionally she tested me to see if I can feel a sharp or dull object. Based on the tests, Not only I still have muscle weakness in my arm, but there might be loss of feeling as well. At this point, I’m thinking great my right is going to fall off my body.

So she refers me to a see a Spinal expert and to get an MRI. I’m all so thankful that my girlfriend helped me out by getting me a Chiropractor. The Chiropractor really helped me a lot! He helped re-aligned my back using various compression and decompression techniques and using some sort of ultra sonic machine as well. I manage to get an MRI done and looking at the report, It looks like one of my disk on my back got slightly out-of-place that might be causing some pressure on my nerve and there is some pressure on my nerve as well. I’m going to see the Spinal expert again soon and I’ll give an update on what happen.

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