That's really cool. I've considered welding, seems really neat. Good luck, build something awesome!

Honestly, that's really beautiful. I can tell you have a lot of passion for your hobby. I am going to look into this and subscribe to the youtube channels you listed. Thank you!

I know that feeling. You and I are on a mission to find what gives us purpose and happiness. I hope you find it, friend.

All good points. I make time with friends when I can, getting laid off from my job really messed me up. I had been there for 11 years a lot of my closer friends are tied to that job and people I worked with. I still go out to lunch or for coffee with them when possible, but I don't see them every day like I used to. I am going to double my efforts to spend time with them.

That sounds really cool. I am going to look into this some more.

What other side projects do people have? Like the type of thing you do, just to do.

Also, going to be available on streaming services after Feb 14, wanted to give it a couple of weeks to stew on Bandcamp first.

A little bit of self promotion, since you asked. My bandmate and I started a tiny record label named Paraluna as a project and decided our first release was going to be a charity compilation of 80s covers named Retronomicon for Charles Levi to help with his recovery. It came out yesterday and is doing okay in sales. 100% of proceeds go to Charles Levi's medical bills. If anyone is interested, it's easy to find with a quick Google search. So this weekend is promote, promote, promote.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Hola. For me, I started getting a cough and feeling under the weather. I came home from work on that Friday and I hadn't eaten at all that day, was super hungry. It was Friday! I'm going to treat myself to some Mediterranean from this delish local place. Got my food, took a bite, bland af. Couldn't taste anything. Finished eating and fell asleep watching the simpsons on the couch like I tend to do when I'm not feeling well.

Woke up the next day and couldn't smell or taste anything. Immediately took a home test which came back positive. Made a appointment for a test through my doc on Monday which of course came back positive.

Things got worse, brutal cough for at least a month. Complete brain fog for over a week, couldn't put thoughts together, which made it so i struggled to complete regular day to day things. Super fatigue for a could of weeks. After maybe 10 days my sense of smell and taste came back.

Happy holidays.

Hogwarts Legacy please. Not my type of game, but I know my partner would love it.

Quick story. In my adult life I've always been into charity. A couple of years ago a friend created his own 501c non profit. He was getting stuff together but then got overwhelmed and depressed and just couldn't focus on it anymore. Fast forward to a couple of months ago. I hit him up to see how he was doing and he felt inspired but still overwhelmed. Didn't know where to pick things up.

I started giving pointers (from my background in project management) and he asked if I would help him get this charity off the ground. Of course I said yes. He voted me in officially and that has been my whole world since then. Yeah I still have my regular job, and yeah the charity thing is solely volunteer, but I'm playing to my strengths and I'm conducting this thing the best I can.

We finally did our first utility relief from donations just a few weeks ago and it felt good. Going to really kick it in high gear in 2024.

From 2005 to 2008 in South Florida I created and ran a permit expediting company. It came from my mom managing a construction company, them having too many contracts, and not enough contractors to run their own permits. I saw a need and got together with a couple of friends to incorporate.

We pitched it to the owner of the company my mom managed and got a contract from them. We eventually picked up other companies as well.

So the job went like this: one of us be assigned to a specific geographic area or company for the day, we would stop by the office, pick up the paperwork for whatever permits had to be filed, retrieved, delivered.

We would visit the city building department and depending on the city (each ran things in drastically different ways with no consistency) we would be there for 15 minutes or all day. Some permits would be a quick, single day turnaround or could be in bureaucratic hell for a month or two. We'd charge based on the complexity and time involved in getting permits approved. Then we would either deliver the permits to the contractor or the job site. On occasion we would deliver liens to customers who didn't pay their bills which could sometimes get dangerous.

The only people I've ever met that did this exact type of work were people I met within city building departments. It's a relatively boring, but uncommon profession.

The job came with all kinds of weird knowledge that I've never had to use again, like how many palm trees on the property equal a shade tree for the purpose of landscaping requirements. Than answer back then was 3.

The company was born out of a construction boom after Hurricane Katrina and died during the housing market crash of 2008.

Edited for spelling and sentence structure.

Also edit: sometimes getting permits approved would involve meeting with city engineers, making corrections on engineering documents, and just having a good rapport with the city.

Also, currently I am a change control analyst for a telecom company. My job description literally says "protect the network". Essentially network engineers submit projects to me, I check the projects for accuracy, impact risk, importance, etc. A lot of the time, I reject work because of errors, cutting corners, not enough preparation, etc.

My job is to balance the projects being done VS how many customers I want to piss off because their services get taken down. My engineers either absolutely love me, or would like to have the opportunity to stab me in a dark alley, there really is no in between. Generally the ones I reject often for crap work are the ones that also want to stab me.

I submitted a song and also submitted a form to be a dj. I'm a musician and did a radio station on twitch for a while (I really should start that up again when I have time).

Mostly I'd be spinning synthwave, industrial, electro, future pop, etc if accepted. Stuff like that.