You may have noticed that I havenāt posted much since getting the site up and running. Thatās common. It happens on most peopleās sites as they run out of time. I havenāt completely abandoned writingā¦but typing things out on the site has had its hurdles.
So Whatās Up?
Time has gotten away from me. Yes, itās an obvious excuse, but itās true. But writing and time arenāt 100% what is going on. I have had time to write other things. I have a notebook filling up full of religious thoughts, emails full of political ramblings, and other things just lacking any completeness. I do have time to put thing downā¦.just not much time to put it here.
It was another great year in book reading. I didnāt travel as much I did the previous year, but my commutes to work and various other reasons allowed me to keep the words flowing. I bumped up my goal from 40 to 42 last year, assuming that since I wasnāt traveling as much it wasnāt worth moving up to 50+ books. But even with the modest change, I still read 54 book by yearās end, and a number of good ones in fact. Again, GoodReads does such a better job at presenting my books list than I could do, so hop over there are review my year. Then quickly come back and checkout my hitsāand missedāof 2016.
Iāve really be into home automation lately. āHey Alexa, turn on my living room lights!ā Itās been interesting diving into the world of home automation. But the one thing I could not fine (at least reasonably priced), was something that would open and close my blinds. Since Iām currently on parental leave from work and needed something to exercise my mind, I decided to tackle it myself.
Two Step Process
The whole approach was going to be two fold, find out if it is possibleā¦then automate it. The first step was to see if I could get it done with a push of a button. What parts would I need? Do I have things on hand? Etcā¦. From there, I did some digging and came up with this result.
The question of Major League Baseballās (MLB) use of the Designated Hitter (DH) is once again up for debate. ESPN spoke to all club managers and general mangers last winter meeting on the topic. Commissioner Rob Manfred threw out the optionā¦then quickly took it back. This argument is probably as old as the 1973 rule change itself. Itās ALāers vs. NLāers, Progressives vs. Purists, Shift vs. No Shift, Republicans vs. Democrats, Cats vs. Dogsā¦erā¦
The new album from Ft. Worthās own Green River Ordinance (GRO) was released a few weeks ago. Iāve been able to listen to the entire album a couple times and Iām impressed at how good a release this is. I initially found GRO by a random āgive-awayā by NoiseTrade (<- Goneā¦). My son and I constantly blurt out āShe beats right through to the heart of me, to the part of me, that I canāt explain!ā Their new album, Fifteen, dives much deeper into their country roots, which might alienate a few listeners, but the album is still very strong.
I read a ton of books last year. I spent so much time on planes and in travel last year that I was able to read quite a few stories. I set a goalā¦then blew it out of the water! My goal last year was to read 40 books. Somehow I was able to read 48 books the year before and thought that 40 would still be a good goal without being too easy. Only I read 55 books last year demolishing that goal. Goodreads presents my book reads better than I ever could, so checkout that page first and see what I did. Then come back as I highlight of few things here.
Iām quite proud of my homepage. As I said before, I used to use services like Flavors.me and About.me for my main page because they did something particularā¦that gathered my info in one place. From social sites to image sites, these tools did that easily. But I started to realize I wasnāt showing what I really wantedā¦additionally I was having a hard time keeping those connections up as well. So it was time to make my own.
So if you look at my old site youāll see I made one post in 2015. One solitary post in January of that year, then nothing. There was a reason for that. If you read that post, youāll see it was about simplifying my life. One of those things I did, was remove myself from blogging for a time. I donāt know if it helped or hurt, but it was one of the things I did.
I did it! I once again threw off the shackles of the old skin and slapped a new one on. This one is bigger, bolder, better, beautifuler, boomier, ballsier, boisterous, blistering, boilermaking, and bombastic. At least I like to think so. What do you think?
Notebook
The notebook is my new blog. I have cover images, large titles, and embeds. The āhamburgerā icon [ ], yesā¦thatās really what it is called and Iām not a fan either but itās a convention, will get you to all my personal links.
So if I have a new site, new style, new domainā¦youād think Iād scrub all my old content. But thatās not exactly true.
Whereās all my old content?
No worries, it is safely tucked away. Due to the site refactoring, the old content remains in itās old domain: http://blog.traeblain.com/. All your old links will work, and it shouldnāt be that big of a deal.
Below I am including all the links for posterityās sake.
