Data, donuts, and detours

Clouds forming an incredible pattern with what looks like a crevasse down the middle, through which sun rays can be seen.

Agency

2024 in review
personal
professional
new years
Content warning: language, discussion of mental health struggles, and pet death.
January 4, 2025
Shannon Quinn

Picture of our black cat Zippy sitting in a chair intended for our 4yo, looking like she's the most relaxed any cat has ever been.

December Adventure: That’s a wrap!

Didn’t I just start this thing?
personal
december adventure
magic the gathering
reverse proxy
Welp.
January 1, 2025
Shannon Quinn

Picture of our white bunny Clover enjoying a rare snowfall, from back in 2018. She was our little snowshoe hare.

December Adventure: Oh that’s how DNS works

Day 20. How did I get here?
personal
december adventure
traefik
dns
Ok, I’ve been barking up the wrong tree.
December 20, 2024
Shannon Quinn

Meme showing a haiku: 'It's not DNS / There's no way it's DNS / It was DNS.' Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/6qhih0/its_always_dns/

December Adventure: How does DNS work

How could something so simple be so complicated
personal
december adventure
reverse proxy
traefik
dns
I always feel like I have the dumbest questions, mostly because I cannot seem to find answers on the internet.
December 17, 2024
Shannon Quinn

Two-paned meme image of Mark Hamill, with the first pane normal and the second pane showing indented blocks of Mark Hamill with the undertitle 'Mark Yaml'. Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/hwxsgi/ah_yes_mark_yaml/

December Adventure: Exploring YAML

It’s full of whitespace
personal
december adventure
yaml
reverse proxy
traefik
vs code
Whew, that week went by in a flash. I’ve actually been working on this #DecemberAdventure project these past few days and have made some strides; I just kept running out of…
December 13, 2024
Shannon Quinn

Meme image of Obi-Wan Kenobi in a fighter from the Star Wars prequel trilogy, stating that he has a bad feeling about this.

December Adventure: I have a bad feeling about this

Messing with what works never works
personal
december adventure
yaml
helm chart
reverse proxy
traefik
Back from the weekend. In general I suspect weekends will be consistent blank spots in my #DecemberAdventure-ing, as activities and parenting and napping make it challenging…
December 9, 2024
Shannon Quinn

AI-generated image of a Python snake breaking out of a monitor that was previously showing broken Python code.

December Adventure: Y yaml tho

Day 6 bites like a snake
personal
december adventure
yaml
helm chart
reverse proxy
traefik
Today was also a pretty minor update, but what felt like a necessary one to making forward progress (and which reveals just how much of a kubernetes neophyte I am, despite…
December 6, 2024
Shannon Quinn

Artist rendition of the MtG planeswalker Ajani Goldmane. https://magic-the-gathring-lore.fandom.com/wiki/Ajani_Goldmane

December Adventure: Ajani Goldmane

Day 2…ish
personal
december adventure
magic the gathering
Not much of an update today: work was busy, and we’re still putting the house back together after having contractors here for the better part of the last three weeks.
December 5, 2024
Shannon Quinn

AI-generated image of a snow-covered pine forest with a pathway of footprints leading into the distance, suggesting an adventure ahead.

December Adventure, 2024 edition

Day 1, 4th attempt, of ???
personal
december adventure
magic the gathering
homelab
Geez but I have a backlog of posts to write. Yeah, I’m back. Been a bit! I’m sorry for the radio silence over here these past nearly-six months; it’s been anything but dull…
December 4, 2024
Shannon Quinn

An adorable senior white bunny with dark shading on her ears enjoying a treat while sitting in human Mama's lap.

Desolation

personal
professional
Content warning: discussion of mental health struggles, burglary, and profanity.
June 13, 2024
Shannon Quinn

WeblogPoMo2024, Day 23: Nearing the Finish

All [good?] things must come to an end
personal
writing
weblogpomo
We’re at day 23 of #WeblogPoMo2024, and this is post number 7 for me—one every three-ish days, give or take. And in today’s post, I’m here to say: I’m not sure how many more…
May 23, 2024
Shannon Quinn

 

WeblogPoMo2024, Day 16: Python Profiling Rocks

Lack of profiling is the root of all evil
professional
writing
weblogpomo
programming
python
Today I was digging through some code written by somebody else and trying to establish benchmarks against some new data we had just received. In doing so, I noticed the…
May 16, 2024
Shannon Quinn

WeblogPoMo2024, Day 13: Return to Hiigara

May the burden remain
personal
writing
weblogpomo
gaming
Today, Homeworld 3 went live. I’ve actually been playing the game since Friday, May 10, when backers of its original kickstarter got early access.
May 13, 2024
Shannon Quinn

 

WeblogPoMo2024, Day 10: Homelab extravaganza

Run ALL the apps!
personal
writing
weblogpomo
homelab
For today’s #WeblogPomo2024, I wanted to delve a little more into my current Homelab setup, which I’ve only alluded to previously. The series of blog posts I wrote over a…
May 10, 2024
Shannon Quinn

 

WeblogPoMo2024, Day 7: The importance of personal projects

Pay no attention to the wasteland of unfinished endeavors
personal
writing
weblogpomo
I don’t think I’m alone in having a menagerie of personal projects. The constituents of said menagerie morph (some slowly, some quickly) as time passes, but it’s never…
May 7, 2024
Shannon Quinn

 

WeblogPoMo2024, Day 3: mutter

Who knew a hitching command line could be so irritating?
personal
writing
weblogpomo
open source
Today, as I was getting back up to speed on work (just in time for the weekend, lol) following travel in the first half of the week, I noticed…something.
May 3, 2024
Shannon Quinn

A flatscreen TV showing the words 'Welcome, Shannon' with a flowery background.

WeblogPoMo2024: BEGIN!

Daily blogging is a high bar to clear
personal
writing
weblogpomo
It’s been two months (to the day!) since I last posted here. Not a long stretch, relatively speaking, but a respectable one. It’s been a busy couple of months to be sure…
May 1, 2024
Shannon Quinn

Landscape photo of stringy cirrus clouds near sunset.

Burnout Marathon

The least fun race you’ll ever run
personal
burnout
This post contains references to recent events at the University of Georgia involving the deaths of two undergraduate students.
March 1, 2024
Shannon Quinn

A picture of the Ubuntu landing screen for logged in users, on an ultrawide screen monitor set on a small desk.

The Legend of Makar

The mostly long and some short of building your own desktop
personal
professional
news
makar
I built my first desktop from components when I was 15, a sophomore in high school. With the exception of my college workstation (laptops hadnt’t quite reached ubiquity…
January 25, 2024
Shannon Quinn

A picture of a forested landscape at sunset, the sun coming through the bare tree branches.

2023: A year of extremes

Unmixed Gaussians but very mixed emotions
personal
professional
news
new year
Where 2022 tried its hardest to kill me, 2023 merely put that killer instinct in neutral. A vast improvement to be sure, but it requires substantial context to fully…
January 5, 2024
Shannon Quinn

A gritty image from behind a small group of heroes, facing down a massive robotic army, in a shattered land that looks a lot like Mordor (generated by DALL-E).

Advent of Adventure

The Venn diagram of life, job, and hobbies is three nonoverlapping circles
personal
professional
advent of code
december adventure
rae
retropie
dall-e
This past Monday evening, from a tiny cabin in Dahlonega, GA, I turned to my wife and said: “What a week, huh?”
December 8, 2023
Shannon Quinn

A photo of me crossing the finish line at Ath Half 2023 this past October, holding up my arms in exhausted triumph.

Rebuilding

Nowhere to go but up
personal
covid
running
weightlifting
food
health
Content warning: discussions of body image, eating habits, diet culture, and long COVID. Also, language.
November 9, 2023
Shannon Quinn

An in-game picture of Link from _Tears of the Kingdom_ with pink hair and dark lipstick, and wearing the Cece hat. Picture from this Polygon article: https://www.polygon.com/legend-zelda-tears-kingdom/23725926/tears-of-the-kingdom-totk-best-hat-outfit-cece-mushroom-hat-how-to-get-slay .

The Hero Of Everything

Apparently it’s not enough to merely save the world
personal
video games
zelda
tears of the kingdom
This is the first of two Tears of the Kingdom related blog posts I’ll be making. Don’t worry—there won’t be any story spoilers in either one. But my wife did just beat the…
July 30, 2023
Shannon Quinn

My home office desk, with the GamersNexus rubber mat, along with all the hardware materials for the cluster upgrade, including: a stack of PoE HAT boxes, a Netgear 8-port PoE switch, a small power brick from Anker with two 2-port USB-to-outlet adapters, and my laptop.

Upgrading the Raspberry Pi Cluster

Nothing bad has ever happened in the history of planned upgrades.
personal
raspberry pi
kubernetes
k3s
mastodon
hardware
As I write this up, I’m sitting in my SciPy hotel room. It’s a nice way to relax and unwind after a long day of travel and tutorials, but I also apologize for any timezone…
July 10, 2023
Shannon Quinn

Midjourney-generated image of an art easel with a picture of a raging fire, anthropomorphized with a giant smile on its face. Meant to convey a ham-fisted 'this is fine' metaphor.

This post is about burnout

Metaphor is a tool best left to those trained to use it
personal
professional
burnout
movies
books
…but before I get to that, I want to talk about a movie I saw recently and a book I read recently.
June 6, 2023
Shannon Quinn
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