Status Update: Wrapping Up Busy Season

Currently

It's a chilly yet sunny morning here in Lincoln, hovering around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. With a brief break from my work, I decided to write a status update.

Work

Busy season at my job has been especially busy this year. While I always average 45-60 hours per week during busy season, I never had a chance to catch a break this year. Instead, I rolled from one project to another, always in a rushed state to complete testing and formally document the results before deadlines.

Luckily, we worked hard and completed everything necessary to issue the audit reports on time and in great condition across the board.

Now it's time to focus on new projects and opportunities, which includes my recent completion of the Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals certification and my current progress in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification - which should be complete in about a month.

Hobbies

I've had very little time for my hobbies, such as programming, homelabbing, and blogging, since busy season started last September. Now that I am in the clear for a while, I am looking to kick start these again and look for fun things to tinker on.

However, I was able to migrate my server from Alpine Linux to Ubuntu - purely for the sake of maintenance ease and software compatibility (musl is not well supported for most applications yet).

Likewise, I moved from Alpine (Sway) to Fedora Workstation (i3) on my laptop due to similar issues. I'm happy with the results and my software now works flawlessly on both server and desktop.

Side Note: Rental Prices Are Insane

I've recently been searching for a new apartment and it is ridiculous how expensive rentals are becoming. I started out with a 1BR 1BA apartment in college for $625/month and no utiliy bills. I'm now paying nearly double that for a 2BR 2BA (plus utilities on top), which was an okay deal but slightly overpriced when I first leased this unit.

However, anywhere I can find with 3 bedrooms or more is listing with a price of at least $1,800, regardless of the condition of the neighborhood or apartment/house itself. More realistically, any decent rental in the areas I prefer will cost around $2,000 before utilities.

To compare (for those readers in HCOL areas), an average mortgage in this area for a nice, recently built house would be in the same ballpark - I just don't want to purchase a home here, so I'm stuck renting at an inflated price for at least one more year while I reside in Nebraska.

Oh well, after another year or so, I can move to any number of metros and will be happy to overpay for an apartment because at least there will be amentities and entertainment.

Seriously, have you seen the movie Yes Man, when Jim Carrey goes to Lincoln, Nebraska? I went to that telephone museum before it closed down because I lived around the block & the football game they showed was from my university. It really is as boring here as the movie suggests.

Otherwise, life is good and I'm looking forward to getting back into my hobbies as time permits. I may even spend some time writing up a post or two about the knowledge I'm learning from my cloud certifications.