In the early 2000s, I had spent more than a little time jail-breaking original XBox gaming consoles to run XBMC, now called Kodi. So, I was quiet engaged, as I was recently listening to the Darknet Diaries episode on the XBox Underground. As I listened, something leapt out at me. The discussion of hackers getting XBox 360 Dev Kits. From what I remember from my time at DemonWare, these aren’t supposed to be in the hands of the general public.

In 2013 I started mining Dogecoin as a distraction from my stressful job. At the time, a company was offering a VPS for a one time payment. It was “free for life” after that. Of course, this model doesn’t work and eventually they started charging people an annual fee, which is when we parted ways. The way the model worked is you pay the one time fee for units toward a VPS.

After years of picking away and poking at a keyboard, I have finally published my book! The Sabbatical Guidebook As you can see from the book’s cover image the book is called The Sabbatical Guidebook - The Nuts, Bolts, and Everything Else You Need to Plan Your Sabbatical Adventure. It is exactly that. I have poured all of my experiences, conversations and research into this slim tome. It’s as pragmatic and concise as I could keep it, without being dry.

In April 2017, I was staying at a hostel in Paris waiting for snail mail as a part of my visa application process. During this stay thefts were occurring in our dorm room. There were three of us that were staying in the room for a longer period time. The people who stayed shorter terms were being stolen from. Suspicion was of course on us three. Then we three were stolen from.

Working from home, I take many meetings. During the meetings, it was apparent I was having networking issues. Calls dropping and people saying my picture was very pixelated. Other participant’s video seemed fine to me, however. During my regular work, I didn’t have many issues. After much sleuthing, I figured out the issue: My work laptop’s internal antenna wasn’t adequate to send the signal through all the walls to the router.

When I started this blog in 2013, I wasn’t really planning to. A friend convinced me to keep a place of technical musings and such. Sure why not. Over the years, it grew to include photos and other non-technical posts, such as Matt’s movies you may have missed or my GTD process. While I enjoy writing these posts, they do take some time. However, writing posts hasn’t take as much time as site maintenance.

A few years ago, it came to my attention that British Columbia had a number of old ghost towns. A lot of old towns that sprung up around the turn of the 20th century in relation to various industry such as mining, lumber or the railway. One such place, called the Valley of the Ghosts, piqued my interest. It’s based around the ghost town of Sandon, which is not far from Nelson.