In the pursuit of me trying to figure out why I'm so goddamn tired all the time, I asked the internet "can improper breathing lead to fatigue", which led to the response that yes.

Yes it can.

My particular issue is one known as shallow breathing, and it's the default mode my body/brain/both have decided to assume for regular daily breathing activities. It was particularly difficult to isolate this, as well, because once I focus on my breathing, I don't know if that's how I've been breathing, or if it's just how I'm breathing now that I'm paying attention to it.

Long story short: I take short, tiny breaths as opposed to the longer deeper breaths that most folk regularly do.

That's the second thing I've gotta be cognizant about now; the first one being that I need to dedicate brainpower to correcting my damn duck-footedness.

...Stupid body.

Making an appointment for a sleep study. Hopefully this one is more positive than the bullshit one I got from Balboa.

Navy's greatest medical facility by butthole.

But not for the regular "I don't wanna" reason.

Well, not entirely.

Turns out that Symfony is designed right out of the box to be far more scalable than Laravel is, and consequently has a slightly steeper learning curve.

I'd read this, but as per the norm with my developer hobbies I was arrogant and thought I could overcome it.

And who knows? With the right motivation and enough time, maybe I could.

...But I don't wanna chance it.

So I opted instead for Laravel.

Finished a four hour course of sorts on YouTube and was feeling invincible. Tried to then go and immediately apply what I'd "learned" on an overhaul of the FOXWERX site, and... nope. As with so many other tutorials that come in video form, I absolutely data dumped that stuff almost immediately. I'll give a shot to the Laracasts version and see if that turns out any better.

In other news: cleaned out the garage. Mostly. Been putting that off for months (if not years), and my god it was an amazing feeling.

Just gotta get the workbench built and I'll be good to go to continue with my side hustle dealies.

Also: The Last of Us Part II? Amazing.

Chef's kiss, even.

When something I ordered a month ago that's manufactured in China was marked as shipped.

...With a delivery date the next day.

To be clear: I was briefed on the expected timeline for production, but beyond that it was pretty vague. And as with all things shipped from overseas—and China specifically—I can understand the amount of time involved.

I was more than a bit incredulous about the delivery estimate, but I checked the UPS tracking link and it was indeed in China with a scheduled delivery of today.

Went to bed, and woke up with notifications that the package had hit Anchorage and then Louisville.

I didn't pay for next-day delivery.

I was content for it to get here sometime near the end of this month, or the middle of next.

Sorry not sorry for the gushing, but that's some incredible logistic gymnastics.

In other news.

Decided to stop dragging my feet with web development and learn a couple technologies I'd relegated to not just the back burner, but the cabinet above the back burner: Symfony and Bootstrap.

I've been somewhat abhorrent about learning new things in recent years, but... as my time in the Navy comes to a close, it's time to diversify the shit outta that portfolio.

Excited.

As much as I hate on Leidos as a corporation, not all of their folks are pains in the backside.

One of them reached out yesterday and suggested I take a look at BrightCloud for re-categorizing the FOXWERX site. Most promising at the outset was that it was the first site I'd found that even had a gambling tag applied to my site, so I went through with the request.

After a few hours, the folks at BrightClown decided that though they weren't going to fully comply with my request, they'd give my site a boost to its credit rating, essentially. Moving it from risky to legitimate.

Gambling stuck, though.

So I reached back out and challenged them to either send me a link to an iota of gambling content on the site, or remove the tag.

Overnight they replied that once again, they'd not fully complied with my request, but that they had removed the gambling tag.

...So they fully complied with my request, while saying they didn't.

Nonsense aside, managed to confirm that it was a true statement.

Can now access FOXWERX on the work network, and... yep. Good stuff.

Dental here shortly.

Joy.

Last week, I submitted an exception request to the folks responsible for greenlighting websites to be viewed on the Navy's unclassified network, as FOXWERX had been flagged as "Gambling, Business and Economy".

If you're able to see the site, you'll see that there's absolutely nothing to do with gambling on there.

...Though my LPO told me that "it's a gamble whether you'll be able to get quality made etched glass".

Touché.

That said, it was amusing to watch as the ticket escalated through various people within the organization before finally ending with them sending an email to the FOXWERX support inbox.

"Hello," it read, "We are reaching out to you due to several users wanting access to your site and being unable due to the site's categorization of 'Gambling, Business and Economy'. Please confirm that your site is not gambling related."

I replied that there was indeed nothing vaguely resembling gambling on the site.

...To which they replied that I needed to update the site to remove the block within their proxy.

That's... that's not at all how this works.

At least, not in this particular case.

Dafuq, Navy.

Dafuq.