Random Update

     Wow, it's been nearly a year since the last time I updated this blog and quite honestly it's been a trip! I've since left Amazon, moved to a different city, and got hit with a lockdown. This year is definitely shaping up to be quite a wild ride it seems, but I'm still hopeful about the future. Especially more so now that I've finally moved out of Las Vegas. Hopefully I get to complete my degree at some point next year, but then again at this rate I probably won't 😂. This streak of luck probably won't last me long so I definitely need to get it together, especially if I want to move up to any position here at Intel. I really don't want to be stuck doing my current role for anything longer than a year or two. I'm not sure if anyone really looks back at this blog or not, but it's fun to browse through the posts just to reminisce about the stuff we were up to! Anyway, hope you guys are doing alright, good luck!

Learn You Sumthin

After discussing career advancement with my coworker a while back ago, we ended up agreeing to sharing study materials related to our jobs. Unfortunately, what he gave me was pretty lackluster to say the least. However it's not really that big of a deal because apparently the pack that I put together for him is pretty substantial and covers a lot of the topics that would pop up on a future test I can take. The guy liked it so much he even told the rest of our team and had me send the files to them as well, although I'm not sure how many of them will actually take the time to read through the books I've got stored in there (because I know I didn't lol).

It makes me wonder, though, how come I never bothered to read through these books that I found so interesting merely from the title? They all cover the topics I love to work with: programming, electronics projects, robotics. Why can I never bring myself to just sit down and follow every lesson and project from these books? I feel like I could've learned so much more at this point in life if I just bothered to set aside time solely to pursuing a new goal every single day instead of haphazardly picking what I want to obsess about for the next few days, only to forget whatever it was I learned and go back to idly playing video games or watching YouTube videos until my next obsession comes along.

I've amassed probably around 30 e-books and multiple video courses at this point, and I've yet to go through any of it completely. That should probably be my goal for the year, just choose one book to learn from and stick to it until the end. I know it's going to be hard considering my tiny attention span, but it's something that can hopefully advance my career and spark something in my head to want to learn more.

With that being said, for whoever ends up stumbling back onto this blog, and being lucky enough to read this post, I'm going to leave a link to my folder of e-books in case you're find something interesting. The folder doesn't contain every one of the books that I have, but it's most of them. I might end up making another account to dump everything in there, but for now this will do!

Have fun!

Free Software is (not so) Fun Software

So considering how often I have to interact with Linux at work, I've decided I'm going to try to switch my daily operating system from Windows over to Linux. I really want to get comfortable using it and understanding how it works so that I can get better at my job. It's not entirely new to me, I've played around with Linux multiple times (recall the arcade machine I built a while ago), but I've just never used it extensively in any capacity besides for random projects.

With that said, I'm currently using a Linux distribution called Solus on my main computer (dual-booting with Windows 8.1), however I'm currently having issues with getting it to detect the PCI wifi card (Archer T6E) I installed in it a month ago. The system detects the fact that I need to install a driver for it, but when I use the built-in driver tool to install the driver, it still doesn't detect the card. It could just be something I'm not doing right, but I might just have to connect to the internet with a cable in order to download drivers from some other random dude that had this same issue.

Anyway, hopefully I figure out the problem soon or else I'll have to switch to some other distribution and go through the install process again. 😒

Work Weeks

When I first heard we were going to be doing four 10hr shifts a week, I honestly didn't know if I was going to be able to handle it both physically and mentally. Surprisingly, I think I'm dealing with this new type of schedule pretty well. Plus, my mid shift fits PERFECTLY into my natural sleep cycle, I haven't woken up to an alarm in more than a month and I love it! The 3-day weekends are also pretty swell, there's just so much time to unwind and do anything I need to do!

On another note, I was almost given the chance to promote to Tech 3, but unfortunately it was a false alarm. I am glad, however, that my own tech 3 pulled me aside to personally tell me to take the tech 3 test. That brief conversation gave me a ton of confidence in my abilities to do my job and I feel like it validated my strong work ethic. Hopefully the next time I get this chance it's legitimate so I can advance my career and start doing more interesting fixes!

Moving Out! (again)

Thanks to my new job, I'm finally able to move from my dinky home in the suburbs to a snazzy apartment downtown! I've always wanted to know what it's like to live somewhere "happening", plus I get to experience living on my own and understanding what it means to become independent. I'm hoping this move gives me fun experiences and important knowledge going forward. I'm especially hoping that this move helps me decide if living in a city core is right for me, or if I even "fit" in this city!

New Job!

IT'S OFFICIAL GUYS, I'VE SIGNED ON WITH AMAZON AS A ROBOTICS TECHNICIAN II AND I'M EXTREMELY EXCITED. I am absolutely shaking with happiness at the moment and have this giant feeling of relief now that the long interviewing process is done. Supposedly I'm going to be sent to Georgia along with the other new techs for training, but I'll have to get confirmation on that from the actual tech team leader, so we'll see!

Attempt @ Automation

Lately, I've been thinking about getting more sunlight into my room, but having to climb over my bed with dirty street clothes just to open my blinds isn't ideal. So I'm going to try to automate opening my blinds, that way I don't have to worry about doing it manually!

At first I wanted to get the blinds to open and close with by clapping my hands, but after being unable to get the tiny microphone sensor I have to actually detect the sounds from farther than 1 inch, I figured it was probably a dead end.

My second idea is to make an IR remote instead, this should allow me to set up two codes on the remote. One code to open the blinds, the other to close them, although I'll have to research that a bit more because I'm not really sure how I can make the Arduino I have to remember the last state of the blinds. Apparently the ESP8266 wifi module I have can create IR codes that the Arduino can decode, but I've yet to mess with this

The third idea I'm throwing around now is to just have the blinds open during daylight hours, and close at night. This path requires the Arduino to read data from the light sensor I have and use it to determine whether or not the blinds should remain open, which is kind of easier than trying to do IR codes. However, I still need to figure out how to memorize the state of the blinds, as well as figure out how to only get the motor to spin the blinds opener for a certain length of time. I think I might have to just get a servo motor instead of the simple DC motors I have on me since they can be turned to a precise angle, but we'll see.

I've already got some code libraries downloaded from inside the programming environment, which could probably solve some of the issues I'm having as well as make it easier to program this project, I'll just have to experiment and figure out how everything works.

New Horizons

It's been quite a long time since I've posted on here, doesn't even feel like a few weeks! Anyway, I've been making strides to improve on my career goals, with the first being to apply for a different job. Although I enjoy the friends I've made at my current place, I feel it is time to move on to bigger things, and they've been very understanding about it. I'm currently pouncing on an opportunity to be a robotics technician for Amazon, so hopefully that goes well! In the unfortunate event that I don't make it through, I will be lining up a slot technician opening over at a casino on the strip, which should become available soon. I hope everyone from IS101 is doing great with their classes this semester as well as at work!

Semester Is Almost Done

Unfortunately, I don't really have anything too exciting to blog about today, after finishing up my previous project I've been kind of feeling unmotivated to do much else. Although, we finally emptied out a new room at work this week, so now we're just kind of wondering what we're going to do with it. I've been chatting with my fellow coworkers and most of them are saying we should turn it into a break room, however us techs think we should place more games in it, maybe even make it a room dedicated to virtual reality. One of the managers wanted me to personally research VR platforms for arcades and help her make a sort of sales pitch, but I'm not that invested into how the room gets used in the future 😳. I just hope it doesn't get turned into storage!

Bar-top Arcade Cabinet Pt. 2

The cabinet is pretty much complete at this point! In total, there about 6000 games loaded into the Raspberry Pi, only taking up about 16GB out of the 32GB SD card that's in it. This was a pretty fun weekend project that produced something any gamer can enjoy! We'll definitely be bringing the fun at the next family party.

Completed build

Emulates multiple retro systems and arcade machines

A seemingly never-ending list of games that has something for everyone

Items and resources used for this project

• The kit for the cabinet itself and controls: https://gameroomsolutions.com/shop/bartop-arcade-kit/
• Raspberry Pi Kit (runs the software)
• Storage for the Pi: PNY 32GB microSD card
• Monitor (hardest to find for me): old 16in Dell monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio I found at a pawn shop
• Speakers: Sonaverse CRS cubes
• Build guide (although I found it really subpar)
• 16GB Raspberry Pi image by Damaso (Software package including games and OS)
• USB SD card reader
• Setup Guide for Retropie (used as reference for flashing the custom image above)
• Cheap wireless USB keyboard/mouse combo off Amazon (for file management and settings)

Bar-top Arcade Cabinet Pt. 1

Hey guys, so I finally got my bar-top arcade cabinet kit delivered today! At this point in time, I've already finished all of the wiring and every single button gives out a proper signal. Unfortunately, the breakout board uses only one USB connection for both button sets, so I'll have to add a couple snippets of code into the configuration files in order to get my Raspberry Pi to read them as separate. Other than that, I just got done playing Metal Slug, King of Fighters, and SNK vs Capcom for like a solid 30 minutes after configuring Player 1 only. I can tell this little cabinet is gonna be a time sink after it's all done! I'll try to get some screencaps of the software once it's ready to go, but for now you guys can look at a few photos from the building process!

At-Home Testing

Lately I've had a renewed motivation to finish up an old project from a while back, as well as prepare for an exciting new one! Over the past week, I've been rushing to add the leftover components for a DIY oscilloscope kit that i meant to have finished up months ago. I figured the little project would help keep my soldering skills strong for work while also adding a new tool for my own at-home electronics workbench.

Overview of Equipment

 In this photo you can see my soldering station with flux, solder, and tip tin on the top right. Followed by my solder sucker, helping hands, and leftover components on the top left. The bottom two items are the oscilloscope board (in red) with the schematic diagram.

 Oscilloscope Board (In Progress)

A close up of the board, I forgot to give it a scale in the photo, but most of those components are barely even bigger than a grain of rice. They're extremely easy to lose, and unfortunately I only really have backup resistors (those little striped blue pills) in stock at home. Fortunately, the kit came with the Surface Mount components (tiny black rectangles with shiny metal ends) already on, I probably would've never finished if I lost one of those considering they're even SMALLER than most of the components on there.

Schematic of Oscilloscope Board

I'm constantly double checking the schematic to make sure the right component is in the right slots. Unsurprisingly, the diagram is not an exact mapping of the actual board layout. Every single symbol corresponds to a different type of component, luckily I haven't forgotten which ones they belong to!

Finished Build

This is what the build should look like when completed. It will allow me to look at the electrical signal flowing through different parts in a circuit.

This is just a bit of a glimpse into what I sometimes do at work, this is probably more complex than what I do there, to be honest. My biggest fear is that it won't start after soldering all the components  in, luckily there's some testing points on the schematic that I can check for proper voltages. If I'm following the schematic as closely as I think I am though, I should be perfectly okay. Hopefully a couple posts from now I'll have it done, as well as have my next project ready to showcase (it's a bar-top arcade cabinet for my dad shhh don't tell him).

Unit 1 Exam

Tomorrow I will be taking the Unit 1 Exam and hopefully I will pass it so that I can complete my IC3 certification! I'm nervous and yet very excited to take the test, hopefully I won't need to take it again. After earning this certification, I hope to become more motivated to acquire my next certification, which will be Associate Certified Electronics Technician (CETa) from ETA. I'm going to try to get it before I graduate so that I can be better prepared for my career path as soon as I get my degree from CSN.

AlphaGo

I've been watching a lot of tech-related entertainment lately, with most of it grounded in reality. I'm not talking about like Matrix-esque media, more like documentaries. One of the movies I've watched recently, AlphaGo, was particularly intriguing to me for some reason. It's a documentary that follows the London-based team, DeepMind (acquired by Google in 2014), and their ambition of creating an artificial intelligence bot that can beat the strongest human Go player. Go is one of the oldest and most popular board games in the world being played today, with most of its players concentrated in Asia. I don't really want to spoil the movie since the entire film had me filled with awe, the outcome was highly publicized in the media too though, so be careful of that as well if you've never heard of this event beforehand! You can find this movie streaming on Netflix, by the way!

Thanksgiving Update

This was probably the shortest Thanksgiving I've celebrated so far, only because I had to go work a closing shift (at least we closed hours earlier than usual). Luckily I still go to spend time with family before and after my shift, plus the kitchen manager also cooked up a really delicious buffet for us workers, so it wasn't too bad of a shift!

Anyway, the real purpose of this post is to let everyone know that I've moved my website from a subdomain into its own full top-level domain! You can still use the old website link, however it probably won't be updated anymore (carlosraygoza2018.atwebpages.com), from now on every update I make will be for the main site at crtechnician2018.dx.am.

Which brings me to my next point: server side scripting was a headache. In my last post I mentioned that I was going to add a "contact" button/form in order for visitors to easily send me an email without having to leave the site, well I'm proud to say it's finally functional! It took a lot of reading and testing in order for it to come together within the past few days, so unfortunately the form doesn't look too pretty, but pretty enough for now. I'm still trying to iron out a few kinks in the code, but I'll fix them up over time, I hope. Also, before I forget, the info you guys put on the contact form doesn't really have to be legit in order for it to send, however it does still check for proper formatting!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Troubleshooting Website Troubles

Alright, so  it turns out the PHP script that I wanted to use for the "contact me" page is sort of restricted by AwardSpace. Fortunately though, tons of people had this issue before, and their FAQs page has the entire process of setting up an email service for personal websites. Although it required me to upgrade from a subdomain to a top level domain, which isn't too much an issue since AwardSpace also offers that for free too! I'll let you guys know what my site name is later on when I can post on here again as I haven't tested how the script acts with my website yet, plus I kind of want to add some form of authentication for the emails to cut down on spam just in case. Hopefully it works as well as I hope! Also, Silicon Cowboys is a pretty cool movie to watch if you're interested in computer tech from the 80s, just my opinion!

Website Update

Considering that I want to keep using the website I made for class afterwards for my career, I've been thinking that the next logical addition for it would be a "contact" form. This way, anyone interested in hiring me or whatever else would be able to send me an email without having to leave my website. However, I'll now have to learn another facet of web development, the "back end"(server-side code). Currently, my website isn't doing anything too complex, the pages are just fancy arrangements of text to be honest. In order to get a contact form to work correctly, I now have to not only format its look, but also give it an actual function besides looking pretty. This contact form has to be able to take the information inputted by the user, format it into a proper email, then use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to send that email to my inbox. There's various options I can use, but I'm going to stick with the most common path and use PHP, which is a scripting language that the majority of the web development industry uses. Hopefully I'll be able to actually get it working on my website soon!

Bought A New Game

So I recently bought a new game called Transport Fever. The entire premise of the game is building transportation networks and supply lines to cities, which sounds pretty boring, but man do I get sucked in when I boot it up! I spend literal hours planning out routes and deciding what mode of transportation would be best to use. Then I just stare at my creation to see how well it works (sometimes not at all how I thought it would) and wonder how I can make it better! It's a constant cycle of me laying down a route and then trying to make it somehow more efficient and cost effective. It's so much fun to me, I lose track of time so easily with this game, literal hours down the drain working on a single route sometimes. Anyway, hope you guys are being more productive than I am!

Academic Pursuits

Currently, I am pursuing an Associate of Applied Science degree in Electronics Engineering Technology with the concentration of Bench Technician. I studied at Southern Utah University beforehand, but over there I was majoring in Computer Science, which involves a lot more software programming compared to my current emphasis on hardware repair. At this rate, my projected graduation month should be May of 2019, I'm so close to graduating I can almost smell the degree paper. I'm hoping this degree will help me in acquiring a job working with complex robotics!

I've been very interested in electronics since I was a small child, most likely because I loved to play video games on my computer so much. My dad actually studied here at CSN, he didn't tell me specifically what he was studying here, but it was related to Information Systems. My dad and I frequently went window shopping at electronics stores, checking out new hardware and imagining what we could do with it. He actually kick-started my knowledge base of computer hardware, eventually giving me the confidence to research and pick out upgrades for our own outdated (at the time) PC. So far, I've put together multiple computers for our family, made a small personal arcade machine and fight stick using a Raspberry Pi and the Retropie software, as well as messed around with the Arduino UNO microcontroller. I actually have a simple bench setup at home for messing around with circuits, currently I've been trying to solder together an oscilloscope kit, but I haven't made much time to finish it up in a while.

Anyway, even though I'm technically already working in my desired field, I feel like I'm not really using the skills I've learned in class all that much. So, hopefully the next job I get will be more complex and satisfying to perform!

New Guy

Apparently my coworker and I had to train our new tech today and it caught me off guard. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to teach the guy considering most of our machines are doing pretty well compared to when I started. Unfortunately, all I really did was give him some basic safety advice and had him dislodge a puck jam from one of our air hockey machines. Honestly he just kinda disappeared for a couple hours and I had no clue since we got swamped with customers, which means I was completely in charge for every single call out on the game floor. I couldn't even finish one repair before being radioed for another. Oh well, I think I handled the volume of calls pretty well, hopefully the new guy gets up to speed ASAP because it's gonna be abysmal once the holiday parties start happening!

Understanding and Solving Problems

One of the things I really enjoy doing is figuring out how an end product is put together. For example, how an arcade machine contains buttons, switches, lights, mechanical devices, and whatever else, all inside its shell. Nobody really gets the chance to see inside the various things we use very often and understand how all its parts combine into the final product. In my trade, products often start out as a broad idea, then it turns into a simple block diagram of what functions it needs to do, followed by more block diagrams of how to carry out the functions, until we get to schematics and blueprints which cement the bare minimum of getting these functions working on their own. I try to follow these design principles when I tackle problems at work, so that I don't end up getting off track with my solution or try to solve a problem that's completely unrelated to the situation. First, take note of the obvious: "The machine isn't starting." Cool, now I can move down into what the machine requires to start: "Sensors must be cleared of obstructions, seat belts must be fastened, credit has to be loaded". Now I have a checklist I can quickly run through before I try taking anything apart or attempt the wrong repair. Usually that's how deep I need to go, but occasionally I can find myself surrounded by various components, deep inside a machine trying to solve a very specific problem. It's extremely frustrating at times, but I absolutely enjoy that rush of relief when I solve a problem I spent so much time on. It feels great to be "the guy" your coworkers rely on to solve issues, and I feel like I've chosen the right career path for myself!

Website Creation

So, all the talking we've been doing about uploading website designs and creating our own webpages has brought me back to a website I used to learn some HTML and CSS called codecademy.com. It's a free website that quickly walks you through various programming languages and concepts in order to get programming at the most basic level. It's pretty fun (at least for me) to just go into it every now and then to learn a few things, and garner appreciation for all the work that goes into just creating a relatively "good" website. I recommend you guys at least check it out to see the underlying framework of websites and how it interacts with users. You'll probably be able to pinpoint some familiar things when you right-click and click "view page source" or "inspect element" in your web browsers!

Commutes

So I just recently bought a skateboard over the weekend and to my surprise, I haven't broken anything yet. I just kinda had the idea of reducing my car usage for short distance trips and impulsively acted upon it. As strange as some people think it is, I actually really hate cars, so much so that I wrote an essay on it last semester for my English class (although, it was about urban planning for the most part). Anyway, I think I'm doing pretty okay at learning how to use it so far, I'm currently just struggling to maintain my balance on it since I rarely ever do anything besides drive or walk! Kudos to all you skaters out there, I don't know how you make skating look effortless. Hopefully I won't look like a bumbling buffoon for long!

Presentation Day

So I'm gonna be real honest here, I really don't like giving presentations. I tend to have a hard time keeping my energy throughout presentations and notice every single little hiccup I have during them, which makes it even harder for me to continue with it. However I am completely wired on caffeine right now and will probably speed through it so fast that I won't even recognize what I'm saying! Another good thing, in my opinion, is that I'm somewhat interested in the topic this time instead of having to choose from a list of drab and boring topics like usual. I think this will help me keep my focus and help relieve a bit of the stress from presenting. I'm not sure if I'm feeling nervous, excited, or terrified right now, it's probably a mixture of all three! Anyway, good luck everyone!

New Stuff

So I'm back on yet another impulsive learning spree with regards to programming. I tend to have these random desires to just learn a lot about a single subject, and then subsequently forget about everything I learned about said subject all the time. So far, this is probably the millionth time I've somehow convinced myself that I'm tooootally gonna learn a programming language and use it frequently enough to be "good" at it. To be fair, I used to somewhat know Java back in 2014 because I had a class on it, but most of that material is locked away somewhere deep in my subconscious mind. However, this time, instead of diving straight into deep waters and picking programming languages that barely even resemble anything we actually say as humans, I decided to dedicate this impulse to learning Python. Supposedly it's the easiest language for programming newcomers to learn, and surprisingly versatile. Hopefully I can actually retain at least a LITTLE bit of information I learn with this episode because it can possibly help me further my career in the electronics field, and I need every advantage I can get. So yeah, good luck to me 🙃

Post IC3 Test

Honestly, I think I stressed myself way too much in preparation for our first IC3 test. My biggest worry was that the simulation environment would be too unforgiving with how many times I click and where I would click. I've had people tell me that the slightest misclick would completely ruin your answer or whatever, but it looks like they were just blowing it out of proportion. Of course, I still tried to keep my path to the answer clear and concise with as few clicks as possible, just to be safe. That alone was what had me nervously sweating throughout the test. I've had a networking class years before that would use a similar simulated desktop environment for its questions, and that one was a lot less lax on the user compared to this one. Anyway, now that I've gone through the first test and got an idea of how it goes, I don't think I'll end up being swamped with as much anxiety anymore.

IS101

In my experiences with higher education, there are very few professors I can honestly say I enjoyed learning from. The majority of the professors I've had were very dry and boring to say the least. Their content was usually heavy on PowerPoint slides with equations and definitions that were hardly ever fully explained because "you would understand it if you read the book". Unfortunately (or fortunately, I don't know) I learn best by doing hands-on assignments that require me to use the material that's been taught in relatively realistic scenarios. 

It seems like Professor Wu will completely meet my expectations of being a fun and engaging teacher that will actually try to help me learn the content instead of regurgitating lines from the books and expecting me to just "get it". I look forward to working through this class and finally feeling like I'm not just drudging through out of necessity, but because I want to learn!