Categories
Samuel Thoughts

Dreaming

My first 2 attempts at dreaming about you have not worked. But tonight I can feel your presence. I’ve herd your voice in the back of my head lately, more almost as a manifestation of my own conscience. I’m not sure what to make of this.

Its undeniable though. I feel your joy about a decision my mom and I made tonight, about a direction we took. I could here your words “good boy Sammy, thanks for listening” you also offered to help guide us through the process which I gladly accepted and appreciated. When I asked you if you had any other advice you had the following. “Steven Don’t do it alone”. Alex “its about time”….Time for what? I didn’t catch that last part or I did I just forget…. “Linda enjoy the twins they are a blessing” (did you mean triplets or were you trying to warn us about something?)

—Update—

Maybe you were telling me to talk to Alex, that its about time I do that. After a conversation with Steve tonight this dot connected for me, I think you were saying “Alex its about time” as in its about time to reach out to him and talk with him.

Categories
Twenty Somethings

Breaking Life into 1 day chunks

I wrote a little bit about breaking life up into smaller chunks in my ideal week post. But I just wanted to elaborate on this feeling a little bit more.  This is an ideal I actually got from a counselor who is working with a family friend of ours.  The councilor was helping the person feel that they had the power to “not do” an activity.  This is something that I think is common in “addict” counseling, however it was new to me.  The idea is simple: “you don’t have to not do this activity for the rest of your life, you only have to not do this activity TODAY“. This is obviously a very simple idea/concept but for whatever reason it really resonated with me, only I interpreted it as: “don’t think about progress towards your larger goal, instead think about what progress have I made for this goal today“.  (yea my wording needs some work on that one haha).

It is actually something that is hard for me to articulate, but this thought process just really resonates with me.  Tying it to my goal of exercising has been especially effective.  When you think about something that you want to do every day, it feels so daunting.  However when  you just break it up into 1 day chunks, aka “what have you done for me today” it feels very easy.  I couple that with “grading” myself on a weekly basis. 2 friends and I started a workout challenge calendar that really helps as well, I will be added a post detailing that workout calendar and a link to an example google doc.

Categories
Samuel Thoughts

loss

sometimes, usually late at night, I stop and think about how you are gone.  How the world just keeps turning and life continues on.  I don’t know if I will ever get to see you again, and that scares me.  The finality of it all is hard to fully comprehend. In my normal day to day life I don’t feel like you are gone.  I feel like I simply have not hung out with you in a while. I get the urge to email you every now and then.  I think deep down I really just can’t believe that I wont be able to ask you any more questions, won’t be able to get your input on life…. there will be no more thanksgiving dinners with  you trying to weasel me into bringing a date….. its all pretty overwhelming if I let myself stop to fully embrace it.  I have grief, and regret that I didn’t spend more time with you.  But mainly I just miss the future fun times we would (should) have been able to have.  I catch myself thinking about my Mom and You a lot as well, I know you were her best friend.  I’m not sure how to help her or comfort her.  I’m not really sure how to help or comfort Steve either. I want to, I should have asked you how I could help Steve and Alex the last time we hung out.  That visit was so much fun.

I’m going to try to keep living with purpose, and not float through days.  The last promise you asked me to make (well the second to last one at least) I’ve been working on that a bit.  Its still kind of scary and I’m not positive if I will end up doing it, but at the very least I have a little bit of a plan in place so that’s something.

 

 

Categories
Samuel Twenty Somethings

My Ideal Week

So this is somewhat of a continuation to my “morning ritual” blog past.  Except this is expanded into a full week.  I was told by a good friend to  life and schedule w/purpose, don’t just float down the easy path of least resistance”.  I think all of us, at times get caught in floating down the path of least resistance.  The monotonous grind of day to day life has that effect on everyone, I know that it is a constant struggle for me.  This will be an ongoing series of posts pertaining to my “ideal” week, and my “ideal” day.  I’ve found the key (for me) to living purposefully is to break things up into small amounts.  I don’t look at large goals like “get in shape” or “exercise more”.  Instead I’ve moved to treating every week (and actually even every day) as its own event.  And what I mean by that is I simply ask “have I done ____ today”.  So working out goes from “Oh I’ve had a good few days working out, I can take today off” to “have I done any exercise today”.  The same thing goes with work, and a few other things I’ll outline below.  But this “the only day you have to worry about is now” idea actually came from a counselor a family member of mine goes to.  He was telling my family member how “you don’t have to do xyz activity FOREVER, you only have to do it today”.

 

My Ideal Week (2015 edition)

Monday:

  • 7:45 – up
  • 8:15-9:15 workout
  • 9:30 – 11:00 (airplane mode work @ standing desk)
  • 11:00-12:00 answer emails/make calls (set 1 hr. timer)
  • 12:00-1:30 lunch
  • 1:30-3:30 (airplane mode work) also (optional time to meet if someone has requested a meeting)
  • 3:30-4:30 answer emails/make calls (set 1 hr. timer)

Tuesday:

  • 7:45 – up
  • 8:15-9:15 workout
  • 9:30 – 11:00 (airplane mode work @ standing desk)
  • 11:00-12:00 answer emails/make calls (set 1 hr. timer)
  • 12:00-1:30 lunch w/moms
  • 1:30-3:30 (airplane mode work) also (optional time to meet if someone has requested a meeting)
  • 3:30-4:30 answer emails/make calls (set 1 hr. timer)
  • optional evening happy hour w/moms if lunch did not work

 

Wednesday:

  • 7:45 up
  • 8:15-9:30 workout
  • 9:30-11:00 (airplane mode work) also (optional time to meet if someone has requested a meeting)
  • 12:00 – 6:15 onsite consulting work
  • 6:30-8:00 sparring/private lesson

Thursday:

  • 7:45 up
  • 8:15-9:15 workout
  • 10:00-4:00 onsite consulting work
  • 7:00-9:00 softball + happy hour drinks

Friday:

  • 7:45 up
  • 8:15-9:15 workout
  • 9:30 – 12:00 maintenance day (see full list for details)
  • 1:30-4:30 optional work (if behind) else (optional reading, optional golf, racketball, biking)

Saturday/Sunday:

  • read book from white shelf
  • buy groceries (smalldi/farmers market)
  • spend 1 hour freethinking about anything that directly effects my life or I find interesting (set timer/no distractions)

*pick one event and go early every week

Categories
Laravel Samuel

Initial Laravel Setup Checklist

This post is merely a checklist reminder for myself and not meant to be a tutorial. If you are looking for a tutorial on setting up laravel for the first time please go to:

http://www.nowordsbarred.com/setting-laravel-4-first-time-onwamp-server/

 

    1. install laravel 5 via composer (composer create–project laravel/laravel —prefer–dist)
    2. make deploy script for server (chmod +x script after uploading it)
    3. connect server to repo with deploy keys
    4. clone repo onto production server manually
    5. create symlink to public folder of laravel
    6. install composer in laravel directory
    7. create database
    8. define DB creds in .env file

Thats all the needed steps for getting a laravel site configured on the server.

 

1.) To allow the server to connect to the Code Base repo we need to run (cd ~/.ssh). Then run (cat id_rsa.pub) and copy the pub key file (control + insert + c to copy from terminal)… maximize the SSH terminal window if getting invalid key warning from CB, spacing seem to effect this. (If no file present run ssh-keygen). Next step is login to CB, hit the repos page, then hit the gear icon > deployment keys > ad new ssh key > past key into this window and save.

2.) When you upload your deploy script file, to give it proper permissions to execute we need to run (chmod +x script-name)

3.) To create our symlink path to the public folder we want to run:
ln -s /home/user/git/repo-name/public /home/user/public_html/public_html

or if you want to install laravel in a subfolder you can run:
ln -s /home/user/git/project/repo-name/public /home/user/public_html/directory/folder-name

**Notes**
-you must delete the public_html folder if its is already present, most systems will make this folder by default when the account is created.
-you must include the full file path, including /home/username if your are on cpanel

Categories
Fixing Stuff Samuel

limiting wordpress logins via IP server wide in WHM

This post is just for my own future use so please excuse the lack of polish. The goal here was to lock down all the wordpress sites on our server for 2 main reaonns:

1.) Our Server was working way harder than it needed to, and this was in a great deal due to the fact that several popular wordpress sites we have on the serve were constantly getting bombarded with bad login requests
2.) This greatly increases the security of your wp-admin section

How to do this:

-login to WHM/cpanel
-navigate to Service Configuration > Apache Configuration > Post VirtualHost Include
-Select “All Versions” of apache
-Add the following code snippet:


# Restrict wp-login

Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 0.0.0.0.0.0 (replace with your IP address)
ErrorDocument 403 "Not allowed from your IP."

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