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  • Linux vs. GNU: Essential Differences You Need to Know

    What is GNU?

    GNU is a software project that was created by Richard Stallman. Richard’s goal was to create a operating system that anyone could use, modify, and share. The name “GNU” stands for “GNU’s not Unix”, GNU was designed to be like Unix, but without the limitations that come with proprietary licensing.

    One of the key contributions of GNU is the concept of free software – not as in free beer, more like free speech. What this means to users is that they have the right to run, study, modify, and share software however they please.

    The GNU project also introduced what’s known as the GNU General Public License(GPL), which guarantees software stays free for all users.

    Many important tools were developed as part of the GNU Project, tools such as the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs. GNU didn’t have it’s own kernel. As a result, people often use GNU tools alongside the Linux Kernel. Which is why it’s commonly called GNU/Linux rather than just Linux.

    GNU laid the foundation for free software and the free software movement and continues to play a major role in operating systems today.

  • How Small Diet and Productivity Changes Can Boost Energy and Focus

    I’ve found that my diet greatly impacts my energy levels. Today I’ve eaten the rest of my coworkers fries from Jack in the Box and a burrito that I had made. The burrito had refried beans, cheese and some salsa. I find that it is more filling than the burritos that are bought from the grocery store.

    The burritos are fairly quick to make, and I am able to put them in the freezer. They stay well. I would like to start making other items that freeze well.

    While I was on my way around the building at work. I saw one of the billboards that we have emphasizing health. It was about gut health. The company I work for emphasizes taking good care of yourself and has billboards posted around the building reminding us to do so.

    This year I’ve been trying to eat more fiber. So I’ve been eating a lot of oatmeal. Before I was eating a lot of veggie burritos from the taco shop, those burritos were good. Not like the ones I used to eat as a kid.

    Getting some good sleep is huge. My muscles have been kinda hurting lately. Last night I got a lot of rest. Today my muscles feel better than yesterday. Tonight I am going to try and get more of that good rest. I wanna wake up tomorrow with no muscle pains.

    I need to be stretching on a regular basis. I am going to get some good stretching in today. I also gotta make those flashcards today. Since I keep mentioning them but not finishing them up.

    I need to at least start making them. There are three more that I need to make. I’ll finish up one of them then see about making the other two.

    We all procrastinate on the simplest of things, even small tasks. It’s stupid.

    Before I left work, I was able to get a small bag of cheezits. I love cheezits. I’ve mostly been eating fairly healthy though. I can still get away with having a little junk food here and there.

    That is how it should be anyway. Everyone needs to have a junky snack once in a while. I had been really diligent about my diet before I had lost about 70 lbs..

    Since I’ve been home I’ve eaten a large bowl of oatmeal, sausage, and a couple of those small tangerines. I still need to to take my vitamins. I’ll do that while I’m thinking of it.

    Alright took my vitamins.

    There is this productivity tip that I just remembered. If a task takes less than two minutes, do it now. How well most people would do to remember that. It’s seems that are a lot of tasks that take less than a couple minutes, that could be done now instead of procrastinating.

    Today I wanna type 750 words. I’ve been increasing the amount typed by increments of 100. Today I just wanna do 750. No need to push myself that hard. I just wanna establish the habit of typing regularly. I am currently at a little over 500.

    I started mentally thinking about what I was gonna type while I was on break today. I am gonna attempt to do the same tomorrow.

    Small changes can amount to a big impact. You just can’t do the same thing everyday and expect a different outcome. I’m gonna go ahead and create one of those flash cards right now.

    Alright I finished another of the flash cards. I didn’t time myself but it did take less than a few minutes. It was another one of those tasks that I should have just taken care of without procrastinating, as long as I did it though. Now I just need to continuously make use of the flash cards.

    I am currently studying for an exam. I had used flashcards and spaced repetition before and had passed part of it with flying colors before. But I failed the over all exam, because of something stupid that was not my fault.

    It was a very frustrating failure that I really had no control over. I went for the exam fully prepared. After I failed, I was so damn mad. One of my coworkers recently failed the same exam, he was pretty damn mad about it too. He brings it up pretty regularly.

    I am over 700 words, so I can stop soon. I really want to use no filler words, but that just does not really seem so possible. I ultimately want to blog with SEO in mind. That can come after I get in the habit of typing on a regular basis.

  • Today I’m a type 700 words… Got it!!

    Ok well today I’ll be typing 700 words. Hopefully no brain farts this time. Those brain farts really do make it take a lot longer. Today was pretty busy, I got back home from work later than usual. I got back around noon. I don’t like that because if I lay down for a nap then most of the day is gone.

    Other than that I like having a roommate. It’s my first time having a roommate. This is not his first time having a roommate. He was apprehensive because he’s not had good experiences with roommates before. It doesn’t seem like any major conflicts. Usually them not cleaning after themselves.

    I’ve never really had issues cleaning up after myself. I have issues if someone nit picky is present. Looking for every little dust bunny that was missed. That gets on anyone’s nerves. But what is really ironic is when people complain about nit picky individuals when it comes to cleaning then they turn out to be nit picky.

    Today was a fairly smooth day at work. Nothing too spectacular and nothing too eventful, which can be good. Days at work have no need to be overly dramatic. Definitely don’t need to be made more difficult by people not pulling their own weight. Oh I’m rambling about work. That’s fine though. I am just trying to get accustomed to typing and sharing my thoughts with you guys.

    700 words seem to be a little hard today. I keep getting sidetracked, at least I was getting sidetracked. I had my phone next to me and was turned up and towards me. But it’s flipped down now. That is something else that needs to be worked on, minimizing distractions.

    Last night, we had Chicken leg quarters and rice for dinner. I made enough for my roommate and his kid. It was a hit, they liked it. Good enough that we are gonna have it again for dinner tonight. Mostly because I ended up making way too much rice. Which I really didn’t think was possible with 3 dudes.

    I still need to to do tidying up around my laptop area. I didn’t end up doing any cleaning since the last time I mentioned it. Not that it is really that messy. It’s mostly items that are used on a regular basis anyway.

    I have some information that I need to be memorizing, so one of the things I need to do today is make flashcards. It’s information that I have to know word for word. So flashcards are ideal. I remember my sister used flashcards a lot when she was going to college. She was always much smarter than me.

    I have been to college on more than one occasion. The first time I went to college, I was going to become an aviation mechanic, but was working 14 hour days at the time. College and work became way too challenging to balance. So I ended up dropping out of class. I was doing well financially so it seemed like a worthwhile sacrifice.

    Next time I attempted college I enrolled in a Accounting program I was doing really well until one of the instructors that I really hit it off well with departed and took a permanent position at another college. Due to the difficulties that ensued. I figured at that time classes would just become more challenging, so I dropped classes again and got a different job. (This is the job I’m currently working. I’ve been there 10 years now.)

    I attempted college again this time going for an Associates in Mathematics, I was doing really well. Until the instructor started embarrassing me in front of the class. I dropped that class.

    It was some time again before I attempted again. This time I took some classes through a continuing education program, they were classes that focused on the material for the Comptia A+ exam. I really enjoyed those classes, and really felt like i found my calling. I was always pretty computer literate. I had a lot of fun in those classes.

    I had taken a few classes before that were computer and tech oriented. I had taken web design classes before. That was when I realized that I probably should have chosen a career in tech or something else tech related. For some reason I had convinced myself that I wouldn’t be interested in working with computers or in tech. But I really had a knack for it and enjoyed it.

    Hah there I am at 700 words, the words eventually start to flow. But I wanna do 800 tomorrow and want to squander no more creative juices.

  • Taking on the 600-Word Challenge: My Blogging Adventure

    Ok… today we are gonna try and type 600 words. Hopefully my grammar and punctuation continues to improve. We are gonna tackle this blogging journey together. One of the things that I have noticed in my reading about others and their blogging journey is that it may take time to find their voice. That is fine though. I wanna be in this journey for the long run. I am willing to learn and continue to try. That seems to be the right mindset to have.

    I have always been willing to learn. I felt negatively about learning in high school. I guess we all take learning for granted especially throughout our younger days. I took learning for granted to the point that I had to stay in high school a couple more years, eventually graduating from an adult school.

    I had to correct my headline because I did not like the score that I was getting on it via AIOSEO. I am thinking of paying for AIOSEO but we’ll see once I see the proof of concept works with the blog. Once we start getting some traffic, we’ll revisit that decision.

    I am still learning the UI of wordpress. It seems like it’s easy once you get used to it. The learning curve doesn’t seem to bad. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done on the website as of the time of this post. Every page needs a lot of work still. But we’ll take our time, get some posts on the page and work on it as we go along.

    That seems to be the really cool thing about blogging and having a website, it is a very easy learn as you go process. I do wanna incorporate best practices. That is something I’ll need to read about too. I’m already at a little over 300 words. This seems to be a little more challenging today than yesterday. I really seemed to crank out those 500 words.

    I guess that is just how it is. Sometimes it will be easy to come up with something to type other times that may not be the case. I just have to keep at it. I have read about others having challenges typing too. I have been spending time on the blogging reddit. Reading about others experience with blogging, it seems to be a universal issue. Coming up with something to write.

    Well I guess once the mind get’s going, finding something to type becomes effortless. I have been spending a lot of time on reddit actually. I like the fact that your able to find information and responses written by real people. Talking about their real experiences, and their journeys.

    I really spend most of my time on Youtube though, everyday. I watch such a huge variety of videos. Some for educational value. Some for entertainment. Some to make me really think. I’ll go from something philosophical, to something about Ancient Rome or other past periods. I like to watch videos about medieval times. I find a huge variety of videos amusing on youtube.

    Well I’m over 500 words now, so I’ll be done soon. This was more challenging than yesterday. Since I felt like I was having a bit of a brain fart. Yeah I used a lot of filler words. Apparently that’s not so much of a problem, I just need to get used to writing continuously and publishing something that I’ve written on a regular basis.

    Thank you for going on this journey with me though as I push myself to do something new.

  • My First Day – A Commitment of at least 500 words

    I need to write 500 words a day. This needs to take place everyday no matter the cost. Whether I am talking about how the day went, how I’m feeling that day, writing about video games or anything I’m writing about. I need to be practicing the show don’t tell aspect of writing. I need to be practicing writing everyday no matter what. I need to clean up my work space some at least a little bit today. It doesn’t need to be made spotless, it is something that I need to work on though.

    Once I am comfortable writing 500 words a day I can work that up to 600. That way it doesn’t feel like I’m pushing myself too hard. I am already at a little over 100 words. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and one of the things I’ve been reading about is procrastination and motivation. Some of the things I’ve read implied that I just can’t be waiting for motivation. If there is a task that needs to be done I need to just start it, then everything will just come along.

    I’ve finished reading Star Wars Into the Void for the second time. It continues to be a book that I really like. I might just read it all over again for the third time. I think I’ll just go ahead and start that since I like the book enough to read again. I’d like to use these musings and typing as a platform for starting my blog posts.

    I have always been interested in blogging. Both for the creative aspect and the potential for financial benefit once my voice is found. I have continued to read about blogging, always reading about it, never actually putting it into consistent practice. I’ve noticed that I think too much about things in practice as opposed to putting that practice into action.

    I’ve recently got myself a new place, renting a room. It sure beats sleeping out of vehicle which I did end up doing for a little too long. Even my roommate slept out of his vehicle for a period of time, not as long as I did. I ended sleeping out of my vehicle for a couple years. One of my friends thought that I was going to go mad doing that for as long as a I did. Blogging seems like it can also be an outlet for thinking and clearing the mind. Getting thoughts out of the mind and somewhere solid, where they can be reviewed and clarified.

    Blogging has been around for some time I remember when I was in high school one of my friends talked a lot about her blog. Now this was a long time ago now that I was in highs school. I do remember that she posted on a fairly regular basis. The concept of the blog was weird in those days. But I guess the early days of digital platforms always seem a little weird, because those early platforms especially on the internet were still gaining acceptance. That’s it just like that I have 500 words.