This was definitely a fun issue to run into over this week. So it started with an update to my openSUSE desktop and was greeted with a frozen plymouth screen forever. I tried reverting, and got my box to boot again so I knew it was an issue with this update. I don’t update very often so it didn’t do me much good to read the snapshot release notes because a lot had changed from the last time I updated and the latest.
I noticed that openSUSE MicroOS (and Aeon which is my daily driver) started supporting systemd-boot in 2024. Because of this I’ve read that systemd-boot is more efficient and faster than grub2 as a bootloader so I decided to migrate my Aeon RC1 to systemd-boot manually. It should be noted that when I installed my version grub2 was the only supported option, the newer RC of Aeon actually offers systemd-boot as an option during the installation process, but still defaults to grub2.
Today I decided that I will try setting up my own email service at home using a combination of Stalwart, SWAG (an NGINX w/ some extras baked in), and AWS SES. Now the method I’ve chosen mixes a lot of technologies; It also took me a few days of banging my head on the desk and running into numerous roadblocks, but I think I’ve found the solution that I’ve been after that is both functional and secure as well as low maintenance with minimal headaches.
I recently met with a colleague from Honeywell over the weekend to reminisce about old times working at Honeywell and see how things were going for him. While discussing our gripes, new tools we’ve used, and the current state of the job marked; he mentioned that he was going to try a tool that allowed you to write and generate a resume using only YAML. This intrigued me, because I had only seen tools that allowed you to write your resume in JSON.
I’ve decided that I need to use my blog more, unfortunately life has been really busy the last few days so I am decided to post about something small and quick today.. Books!
With recent news that Amazon is limiting everyone’s ability to Download your Kindle eBooks I am trying to move away from Amazon services where I can. Even though I don’t own or use a Kindle ( Let’s go Kobo!) or the amazon platform for eBooks, I still used Amazon’s Goodreads app to track my reading. Because of them further closing their environment even I have decided to move to The StoryGraph instead. It’s an Amazon competitor that, arguably, provides better book recommendations and a cleaner and more modern interface to Goodreads. So below is my StoryGraph Stats so that you can see what I’ve read, what I’m reading now. I also will have that on my menu bar above for easier future access.
Today I’ve taken it upon myself to create a new blog that I can use to show my proficiency in technologies as well as be able to say that I have a blog!
I’ve decided to use Hugo as the Static Site Generator because:
I previously tried going down this road with Pelican, which uses Python as the language to power it. But I found it rather clunky to get started with and lacking any themes that I liked. I will leave the old depreciated code up in my personal repo here: https://gitlab.com/retsnom513/retsnom513.gitlab.io. I will also be open-sourcing this blog as well, so the source code can be found here: https://gitlab.com/connorgrout/my-personal-site.
