August 2020 Monthly Update – A New Direction
This month, I resigned from my position as a Test Automation Engineer.
It wasn't an easy decision, especially given the circumstances of the pandemic, but it's one I stick by. I've felt for a while now that the job I was hired for was not furthering me in a career path I wanted to go down, and that it was difficult to attempt to shift myself in the direction I wanted to go in. Ultimately, I landed on leaving being my best option in order to take some time to attempt to accomplish that.
Personal updates aside, I leave this in the post to say that there will be a shift in the amount of work I will be able to do and time I'll be able to set aside for both maintaining and adding to Werefox in the future. Since I have no current employment obligations, I'm dedicated full time to improving the services, adding to them, and creating some new projects in order to further my own experience with development. Additionally, I'll be looking to contribute where I can to other projects, as I feel that may be a good way to myself some experience without formal employment.
Updates
I'm still in the process of sending out stickers, international recipients should be having theirs sent out within the next week. Shipping is simply complicated, and it has taken me time to figure out what the best way to get things shipped out it, and what cost I'm able to incur this first time.
I've also taken down the Jitsi instance for the time being. It would seem it actually wasn't working properly, and I have some good theories as to why that might be.
Summary of the month
Most of the month was admittedly taken up attempting to get things together for my job before I left. I've deployed a Kanboard instance for myself in order to help manage the different tasks/projects that I have on my mind for the future. I'm hoping that will help me stay organized.
Xenia Stickers Arriving!
If you are a US recipient, you should have received (or hopefully will soon be receiving) your stickers! I'm going to include a few posts below of some users that have already received theirs and given me a shoutout.
@Sapphiricgiraffic says: “*notices package* OwO what's this?! @shadow8t4“
src: https://snouts.online/@Sapphicgiraffic/104570204558583049
@BestGirlGrace says: “Ayy, @shadow8t4's extremely good stickers came in. Thank you! <3”
src: https://social.illegalpornography.com/@BestGirlGrace/104570369009818788
@david says: “...Thank you for the pretty sweet stickers @shadow8t4!”
src: https://tech.lgbt/@david/104600216330729102
@lazyTechsupport says: Big thanks to @shadow8t4 and @iliana for some of the new additions to my laptop... I have gotten over 36 years of sticker anxiety and now I need more!”
src: https://cybre.space/@LazyTechsupport/104628030430789648
Further Updates
The main things I've taken out of my backlog to focus on this month (hopefully, seeing as I seldom actually complete the things in this section the month I put them out there) are to finish migrating things to containers in preparation for wiping the last server that I still haven't wiped, write this update (mission accomplished), and look into starting something for GatsbyJS. With any luck, that last one will put me on the path to setting up a storefront for the Xenia stickers (and more). The last thing I want to do is make them so limited that people who want them in the future have no idea how to obtain them.
I'm still working on getting an email server set up, but it's a work in progress. I've backlogged it for now, as it's proving to be quite the daunting task.