Getting near the end of the year and realized that I had a lot of vacation still to use up before I lost it. IBM pays Paternity Leave, so I didn't have to take any when my third boy was born back in June. Was so busy after that, I plain forgot. Put in for the whole of Thanksgiving week (the day of and the day after were already off as they are site holidays). Put in for the week of Christmas and the week of New Year's off too. Still had days left over. Sprinkled them around here and there over the other weeks of October, November, and December to give my mother in law a break here and there too (she's the baby-sitter for the baby).
Decided I need a "Me Day". (no. I did not inform the wife of this as she can and will find things for me to do regardless if I have other things planned, so I feel no regret about it) Took last Friday for that. Very nice day overall for Michigan (it wasn't actually raining) and drove to the other side of the state to the closest Micro Center to me. Got 4 spools of PLA, a spool of PETG (not fun stuff to work with it turns out), some cleaning filament, cheap Micro SD cards, and since I had cash, a bunch of Raspberry Pi Zeros and Ws in multiple transactions. Was told about the upcoming release of the Google AIY kits the next day. 2 options for it though: Buy the kit itself for $24.99 or buy a Raspberry Pi 3 for $34.99 and get the kit for a penny. The second option was in-store pickup only. Crap. Too much stuff going on to make another trip the next day. (that and it's like 2 and a half hours from my house one way)
Ordered the kit itself and received an email an hour later that it was on backorder. I was able to reserve one in-store though with no issue. Hmmm... I had co-workers on that side of the state and knew one of them could pick it up for me. The start of this week however, I received a new laptop as I had had my other one for over 4 years now. I lucked out and scored one of their "Developer's" machines. i7 processor, 500gb SSD, 32gb RAM, and 15" display (which means I get full keyboard layout.. yay!!) It is a HUGE leap from what I had too. Problem is, they didn't send me the instructions for setting up the new workstation via their network and one of the things I was told over the phone to try, flubbed the whole thing. I ended up having to take it to the other location they have in Michigan which has Deskside support to restage the machine. It also happens to be situated a short distance from the Micro Center I went to last week. So score. Got the other AIY kit with a Raspberry Pi 3 to boot and nabbed one more Pi Zero W.
Other than being frustrated with figuring out PETG settings, a very fulfilling last week and a half and I'm stocked up to about Christmas now with goodies.
