An Update: Between the Workbench and the Classroom
The first few weeks of school have been… interesting.
Year 11 physics, though, has been kind of a letdown so far. I was hoping to work ahead and asked my teacher, but apparently, that’s not allowed (unless you’re someone else in my class, who got handed work from Year 13 without even asking for it). Meanwhile, I’m stuck going over concepts I learned on my own years ago. It’s frustrating, but I guess it’s just another reminder that school and learning are two very different things. The system isn’t really designed for people who actually want to push ahead, which is ironic considering how much emphasis there is on "achieving excellence." But hey, at least the material isn’t wrong, just mind-numbingly slow..
Well, on the flip side, at least I’ve been able to talk to her quite a bit still. That always makes things seem better. Probably because of her positive outlook on everything, a pretty stark contrast to my general outlook on things. Call it pessimism or realism, but whatever it is, my outlook is never the happy one. She doesn’t even try to change my mind about it, just keeps being herself, always focused on the next step forward. And somehow, that makes it a little easier for me to keep moving too.
Outside of school, things have been a mix of progress and standstills. The 3D printer is finally back to running flawlessly after I swapped out a bad Z stepper motor, which is a small but satisfying win. My laptop has been great, and even my family’s Frankenstein’d PC running on that old laptop motherboard I transplanted has been chugging along without issues. That project could’ve gone horribly wrong, but against all odds, it’s been rock solid. I still feel a little smug about making that work as well as it does.
On the other hand, my mini server rack project has completely stalled. Not because I’ve lost interest, but because I just can’t justify spending the money to kit it out when I don’t even have the time or energy to use it properly right now. I want to keep working on it, but at this point, it would just be me throwing money at something I wouldn’t have time to enjoy. It’ll happen eventually, just not today.
Oh, and in a fun new development, my school decided to block all of blogger.com. No real reason, just a generic “this is a blog, therefore bad” filter. Because, you know, reading and writing about my own projects is obviously dangerous. Maybe they’re worried I’ll be too focused on thinking for myself instead of absorbing whatever worksheet they put in front of me. It’s more of an inconvenience than an actual roadblock, but still, it’s annoying. I can still access it at home, but being able to draft posts in spare moments at school was nice while it lasted. Maybe I should start self-hosting my own blog just to be difficult. (Yes, I’m aware I could write these in a Word document or something, but why should I have to make my creative process more inconvenient when I’m already being held back academically?)
Also, blog posts won’t be as frequent as they were over the holidays. I’ve pretty much written about every past project I’ve done, and with school taking up most of my time, I’ll probably just be posting one or two “life update-y” posts each week until I get working on another major project. That might be a while away, but who knows? Something always seems to come up. This kind of post is my favourite to write though. Very little thinking, just getting words on the screen. As I mentioned earlier, I'll be doing one or two of this kind of post every week just talking about how life is going and any interesting projects. How about we say one update on Wednesday, and one on Sunday? We can rely on that as our new schedule.
I won’t lie—things feel a little stuck right now. Between school being tedious and not having the energy to tackle my bigger projects, it’s a bit of a weird lull. But I guess that’s just how things go sometimes. Maybe in a few weeks, I’ll finally cave and start another ambitious project that I definitely don’t have time for.
But for now, 73.
Daniel