I’ve been naming these posts as “Yet another friendly HR document”, but now that I think of it, these really should be called “Yet another manager friendly document” instead. But I digress.
This time around, I successfully passed and obtained the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification. The majority of the exam overlaps the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), however what makes this certification apart is that it is more administrator focused, hence it is a little more difficult to pass. If you plan on just taking this exam with only course training material for the CKAD, then you’re most certainly to NOT pass the CKA exam.
I found CKAD to be a relatively easy exam to pass. The CKA in contrast, while it wasn’t to difficult, so I thought until I saw my actual passing score (73). The exam does require a higher knowledge of Kubernetes. One thing I really like about these hands-on lab exams is that either you know the content or you don’t. Exam crams of memorizing things is practically irrelevant, compared to other normal question and answer certification exams. There aren’t any trick gotcha questions, all questions are straight forward. Thus said, I did had one exam question that I’m convinced there was a mistake on the actual question or there was a problem with the cluster where I had to complete the task in to get credit.
People seem to get shocked whenever I tell them that I don’t watch any movies, this also includes regular (live acting) TV shows. Over the last 20 years, I’ve gone to a movie theatre no more than 5 times (at least that I remember), and I had some fairly good excuses to do so. All of which I didn’t wanted to take the initiative to do so but was to oblige given the circumstances. Like needing to kill off time while my car was having some major lengthy service, and accompanying friends while already being in a semi-drunken state.
Back Story
I really didn’t paid much attention why that was cause, but now analyzing, it’s quite obvious why I don’t find movies (or any sort of live action television program) interesting. The most obvious, I didn’t grew up watching them. Sure, I did watched the classic 90’s Disney movies (I’m a 90’s kid), but these were mainly in school or because of a family member that happened to own such movies. Again, it never really wasn’t my initiative to willingly go about to watch a movie, it was just the mere circumstances that made me watch them.
Movie/TV Alternatives: Music and AM Radio
So I didn’t watched any movies, the one thing I did do was to obsessively listen to music and AM radio. While both of these are polar opposites, the medium of such entertainment was listening and not a visual approach like a movie or TV show. For music it was mostly heavy metal, and for AM radio it was mostly soccer talk radio. The latter having the most profound impact on me. For starters it made be love the sport but more importantly, during the 90’s and up till the last 2000s, the only way to consume live soccer matches was through the radio. Not knowing this at the time, but this alone would have such a profound impact on me. I would literally picture the game in my head, where in my mind I felt like I was watching the game. Nowadays, practically all live soccer matches broadcasts are available (free or paid subscription), yet I still prefer to rather listen to YouTubers call the matches, similar to the old traditional radio format, than rather watching the match on TV!
Music is an interesting one as I no longer listen to any new metal music. But rather, I now obsessively listen to Epic and Neo Orchestra music. The beautiful irony with type of music genre is that this is what gets used on movie soundtracks! I found this type of music to be extremely beautiful and I also get to build a story in head based on the music that I’m listening too. It’s somewhat difficult to explain, but whenever I’m listing to this type of music (I can literally listen to the same song on loop for hours!), it stimulates my imagination up to a point where I can create a story with the help on what I’m listening too.
(A beautiful song that made me shed a tear to two)
Impact on me
The whole notion of creating stories (or soccer games) in my head has lead me to some rather weird hobbies. Like watching random YouTube Vloggers on mute, while listening to music in the background. All of this to build a story based what I’m seeing (YouTube) and what I’m listening to (music). Another quirky hobby that I enjoy is “people-watching”, again to also build stories in my head based on the behaviors that I see people doing. Lastly, the last weird hobby, and to me the most important, is just simply creating and writing stories.
The Exception to the Rule
The only movies that I willing sought to see were the Lord of the Rings, and Hobbit trilogies (both of which I own on Blue Ray). These movies are interesting. I can see why people love them, and I agree they’re visually great films. However, I found these movies to be “meh”, and lackluster compared to the novels. In fact, I now tend to believe that these movies are doing a great harm to the novels, since people tend to watch them first prior to reading the books (that’s even if they decide to read them!), and by doing so they’re letting their imagination be subjected to Peter Jackson’s vision rather than J.R.R. Tolkien.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the best form of story telling can only be done in a book; outshining anything a movie, TV show or even a video game to certain point (technically not all video games are live action, so it does have that layer fictional element). Even though movies or TV shows, may be visually beautiful, in my opinion that particular form of story telling does not stimulate my imagination the way a book does. I don’t watch any movies, nor am I planning to do so. At least not anything live action.
I only know World of Warcraft by name, so obviously I have no idea of the lore of this iconic video game franchise. Thus said, I do appreciate beautiful art. I first learned about the Sylvanas World of Warcraft statue by watching a YouTube review. This was back in late 2017, now fast forward four years, I finally managed to purchase this awesome looking statue.
While I can’t say that I’ve “hunting” for this statue over four years, I’ve definitely been keeping an eye for it for quite some time now, and what kept me from buying it, was the price. One interesting thing about this statue (and other statues made by Blizzard), is that technically it doesn’t have an edition count, and Blizzard would occasionally do small re-runs of their statues. So I knew, if I was patient enough, I would be able to get it at retail price and directly from Blizzard. As luck would have it, Blizzard had a really good pre Black Friday sale on the Blizzard Gear Store, so I was able to finally purchase it for a really incredible price.
This is such an awesome statue, it begs to say that even at it’s original $399.99 retail price, this statue is still completely worth it. The amount of detail the sculpt has, complete blows out of the water any other 1/6 scale statue that I have. It has a near perfect paint job, and the texture of Sylvanas armor is extremely good! Although the pose of Sylvanas is not that much dynamic, her cloak is so well done that it very much looks like she’s in windy castle ruin, about to shoot an arrow to an enemy.
Speaking of her weapon, the bow that she has is is so well done. Made from what it looks bones, it adds that additional empowering element that makes Sylvanas look like a fierce warrior.
Her head sculpt is both good and bad. Starting with the good, the detail on it is incredible. I’m even shocked that it has such a sculpt because her eyebrow look extremely delicate and prone to breakage, luckily Blizzard packaging was rock solid. The only problem this statue has is that mine does have a minor neck seam. This is not a deal breaker for me since the way I have it displayed, I can’t even see it.
As of time of this writing, the statue is no longer available on the Blizzard Gear Store website. Hopefully they’ll be back in stock soon, so other collectors can own and appreciate this beautiful statue.
The Yennefer of Vengerberg Alternative Outfit statue was my first choice for a Yennefer statue to complete my Witcher statue collection. From the time it was first revealed, the face portrait was in my opinion way better than the original Yennefer of Vengerberg Prime 1 Studio statue. Originally, when the statue was first available for pre-order, it was only available for purchase on the Prime 1 Studio store (besides third-party resellers). A number of months passed by and seeing that it wasn’t available on Sideshow Collectibles, so I decided to purchase the statue directly from Prime 1 Studio directly. Funny enough, eventually the statue became available for purchase on Sideshow (and it’s still available for purchase as off the time of this writing). Ultimately, purchasing the statue directly from Prime 1 Studio was cheaper than buying it directly from Sideshow Collectibles! The only caveat was the economy shaping method took almost three months for me to receive the statue.
This second version of Yennefer is based on the DLC outfit that is available on the Witcher game. While it is a little more revealing than the original outfit, the character doesn’t loose any elegance whatsoever. Yennefer is absolutely beautiful and the alternative DLC outfit definitely embodies the character’s role and personality. This statue also has a lot more simplistic base, unlike the first set of Witcher statues which have a master slaying theme, this particular base still tells the story of Yennefer being a sorceress by showcasing a Megascope and potions. However I’m not quite sure what’s going on with the treasure chest.
I decided to purchase the regular version, because I really dislike the Uma character. I won’t mention why because it will involve giving some spoilers on the video game’s main story.
This is my seventh Prime 1 Studio statue, and like all other statues, this one isn’t the exception. The level of detail on the statue is incredible.
Part of my 2022 New Year’s Resolution was to obtain some tech certifications. My new first shiny certification for 2022 is the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD). I choose this certification because it’s probably the easiest one for me to get. I’ve been using Kubernetes on a daily basis for about two years, both at work and on my personal projects. Practically all of the exam objectives for this certification covers concepts that I’m already well knowledge in. Thus said, I did use the Udemy Course Kubernetes Certified Application Developer (CKAD) with Tests as a training resource, which I think helped considerably in my preparation for the exam.
The exam itself is hands-on, it is completely done remote. It was my first time doing an exam while someone remotely monitoring my activities both computer screen and webcam. I must admit, it felt a little awkward at first, knowing that someone was monitoring me, but after the first 15 mins, it became something that I didn’t noticed. The exam itself was fairly easy, however the 2 hours needed to complete all of the tasks was just barely enough time for me to complete the exam!
Almost two years into a world-wide pandemic, is not stopping us from the yearly tradition of having a New Year’s Resolution list. In no particular order, these are my 2022 New Year’s Resolutions:
Loose all the weight I gained in 2021
Write book reviews of the 30+ books I’ve read during the pandemic
It’s been four months since I purchased an M1 MacBook Pro. This new Apple Silicon M1 is a replacement to my old 2012 11 inch MacBook Air, so this was the primary reason why I decided to fully spec the new laptop to 16GB RAM and 2TB hard drive as an attempt to make it my main computer for at least 8 years like my old MacBook Air. With the addition of 2 years Apple Care subscription and my work employee discount, the total price was over just over $2,600.00. It’s no cheap price tag but was it worth it? This is a hard question to answer. First we start with Pros and Cons regarding the machine. As far my setup is concerned, I opted to start from a clean slate. I only copied certain files, other than that I opted to install my applications as I went along with my usage. Obviously everything started with installing iTerm, and Visual Studio Code – Insiders. A very interesting thing I noticed is that most of the *.nix tools I use, do not have a native arm64 Apple Silicon binaries, while Linux does.
Pros: By far, the extra long battery life to me is the number one reason to buy an M1 Apple Silicon computer. It is absolutely amazing the battery life you get with a single fully charge cycle. I’ve literally gone a full week without charging it! Thanks to COVID, I haven’t had the chance to take my shining new laptop to a coffee shop and study there, but I definitely do look forward to not have to worry about my battery charge running out. I’m comparing Apples to Oranges (no pun intended) but the awesome battery life I get with an M1 machine reminds me of the really long battery life I get with my Amazon Kindle, where I literally do not have to worry about battery life. The other glaring benefit of using my new M1 MacBook Pro is the laptop cooling. I’ve yet gotten the fan to trigger, let alone notice any sort of heating change. Having to juggle between my work Intel MacBook Pro and personal Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro, I can say that I’m having to dread to use my work Intel laptop because of the fact that it gets extremely hot!
Cons: By far the lack of an open source Virtualization application is the biggest limitation of an M1 Apple Silicon computer. To a smaller scale, it also includes containers. So far, I’ve managed to get way out of this limitation by creating a simple Ubuntu VM on my network and VNC into it, whenever I need to use virt-manager to manage my Virtual Machines or to use certain containers that work within Docker’s X86/amd64 emu layer on Arm64. Of which Varnish is the only container that doesn’t seem to work on my M1. That’s really it, those are the only cons for me!
The 2020 13-inch Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro is by far the best computer that I’ve owned. To me, the chassis size is perfect (11-in MacBook Air replacement), the keyboard is awesome (a million times better than the garbage butterfly keyboard), and the touch pad is the best in the market. The stupid, and flat-out useless touchbar I can live without, so changing the keyboard layout config to use the actual function keys, make it slightly less annoying.
I first heard of Amadís de Gaula while reading Don Quixote as it was Amadís that Don Quixote modeled himself as too. So given this, I was naturally interested on reading the source material that caused Don Quixote to go mad. Aside from Don Quixote, this is my very first dive into the world of classic Chivalric Romance literature. This version is divided into four volumes, and written by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo. Although it was published in the early 16th century, the actually origins of this fictionally story can be dated back as far as the mid 13th century. Even the author mentions what parts of the story date to the original myths and legends and what belong to those that he wrote and extended.
In this introductory volume, we read about the origins of young knight and prince named Amadís. Like all other heroes, Amadís upbringing is rather spectacular. In this fictional world, Amadís is destined to be the greatest knight in the world, so in it we get to read his adventures from his birth to his service within the different realms. While being quite unique, Amadís de Gaula is medieval Spain’s own interpretation of Arthurian legends. So in here we get to see different British kingdoms as well as other mythic characters like giants, wizards, sorcerous, and even dwarfs. As well as the typical setting of royal courts, knights and damsels.
I read the English translation by Sue Burke, and I think she did an excellent job translation the novel. Keeping the archaic Spanish elements to its English equivalent, all while still having the writing be easily comprehensible.Overall, if you don’t mind the traditional “damsel in distress” trope (which can get rather repetitive at times), and you want to learn why Don Quixote loves Amadís de Gaula, then this is a highly recommend read.
Due to my endless appetite of acquiring knowledge about the Reconquista, I happened to stumble across The Library of Iberian Resources Online (LIBRO) by the University of Central Arkansas. This awesome site gives us access to a decent collection of scholarly works about the Reconquista, completely free of charge. I think what makes this site invaluable, is the fact it give us access to out-of-print university press works, that otherwise we wouldn’t gotten a chance to read.
Some of the books, are provided via PDF, while others are completely online. If you happened to own a Kindle, I seemed to get a better formatting book experience by merging the PDFs into one, then convert to a Word doc, and finally use Calibre to covert the Word doc to a Mobi file. I’m currently about a 1/3 on the book The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia by Robert Ignatius Burns, and the book looks and reads like a normal book on my Kindle. (The book is fantastic thus far!)
It is refreshing to see English scholarly works regarding the Reconquista, since most of reading I’ve been doing lately has been completely in Spanish, which I don’t mind. But given how awesome the history of the Reconquista is, I feel that large segment of the English speaking world doesn’t know the intricate details about this important point in history. Mainly because of lack of access to works like the ones provided in this site. What seems to me interesting that of all places, Arkansas a state with little to no Hispanic culture or history. Yet they’re given the world access to learn more about the awesome history of medieval Spain.
Like the rest of the world, I was in complete shocked when I heard the tragic news of the passing of Kentaro Miura. My introduction on his amazing work of Berserk, was mere recently. I started buying the omnibus’ Berserk Deluxe Editions by Dark Horse Comics about two years ago. It wasn’t until I had the 6th Deluxe Volume Edition (manga Vol 16-18), where I actually started reading the manga, and to say the least, I absolutely love it! Berserk has been my introduction to the manga world, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Kentaro Miura has managed to create such an incredible fictional universe, that I think it’s even superior to those popular in the west. A Song of Ice and Fire, I’m looking at you.
I would put the world of Berserk next to The Witcher as my favorite fictional fantasy universes (behind Tolkien’s legendarium). Amazing character development and story arks, bundled with an extreme level of well crafted mature content. Berserk stands out from anything that I’ve read. I’ve even come to love the 90’s anime adaptation. I’ve literally been rewatching them every single day for the last month or so before going to sleep.
Berserk was still an on-going manga, so with Kentaro Miura death, it will be saddening to see if this amazing story doesn’t have the ending that he envisioned. Or if it even has an ending at all.
Like the rest of the world, I was in complete shocked when I heard the tragic news of the passing of Kentaro Miura. My introduction on his amazing work of Berserk, was mere recently. I started buying the omnibus’ 