 Hey guys, I hope everyone had a great holiday season for those of you that celebrate Christmas I hope you had a merry Christmas and of course I wish everyone around the world a happy new year for me the holidays were great had a Some some time off spent a lot of time with the family for for Christmas and New Year's of course I haven't done any video content here in the last few days. I did the live stream the end of the year live The chat with patrons on New Year's Eve on December 31st I haven't made any content for 2024 is because I really have been kind of under the weather I've been sick for the last few days with some sneezing and coughing you guys can probably till look a little sick. I actually I hadn't shaved my head in about five days until this morning So I actually was starting to look a little bit like a hippie I actually had a full head of hair and I almost put that on camera But you know, I want you guys to still be able to say DT is bald, right? DT is not bald though, but anyway, I wanted to make a Quick little video today to share with you guys what's going on what my plans are for 2024 because one of the things I want to do I'm gonna go ahead and announce that right now is I'm gonna take a little bit of time off here at the beginning of 2024 I've been thinking about this actually I was thinking about this About a month or so ago. I decided I'd probably take at least a couple of weeks in January off And then you know once I got sick and I missed some time here at the office What I've decided to do is I'm probably just gonna go ahead and take the month of January off because I've got a lot of Projects a lot of things of both channel related and also just life related things that I've been Procrastinating on things I've been putting off some things. I need to take care of For one thing just some general tech stuff that I need to do I have been doing this YouTube channel now for about six a little over six years Not quite six and a half years and I've never had any kind of vacation actually haven't taken a vacation Probably in more than 10 years, right because none of the jobs I had you know, I just never took vacations I have never been a vacation kind of person, but here lately. It's kind of been draining on me I feel like I feel like I need to go somewhere So the first thing I'm gonna do here in January is probably take a trip somewhere for a few days Maybe a week you go somewhere, you know out of state, you know, do something fun Do something maybe outdoorsy something. I I don't know I may share that with you guys on a YouTube community post or I may not I don't know but I you know, I'm gonna do a little bit of a vacation But when I get back what I want to do is I need to actually reinstall The operating system on all of my computers because honestly my computers the workstation here at the office has had the same instance of Arco Linux running for three and a half years maybe four years Now it's been that same instance for a long time And I really need to do a fresh install on that thing because here in the last month or two Especially I've been I've had some issues So I know I need to wipe that machine out and do a fresh install My Arco Linux installation on my home computer has actually been running for two and a half years Probably on that machine. It could probably use a fresh install as well So, you know, I need to spend a couple of days doing that and it will take me some time doing that kind of stuff Because honestly, I've got got a couple of hundred gigabytes of data on each machine That I need to back up before doing the fresh installation because I've got a ton of music I've got over a hundred gigabytes of music that I always back up and take with me to the next installation I've got a lot of music saved plus I've got also a lot of other data PDFs and things that I've saved over the years And, you know, those backups do take a lot of time, you know, backing up to an external drive And then putting them back on the computers after installation So I need to do that. I also need to spend some time. I've been putting it off forever I need to spend some time on my GitLab projects because I have so many GitLab repositories And I haven't really checked in on any of my GitLab stuff Probably in nearly two months now. It's probably the last time I even looked at an issue Or, you know, any kind of bug reports or merge requests I've got a lot of merge requests sitting there And one of the things I want to do, I need to make my life a little easier I've got too much stuff going on, right? I've, you know, a lot of you guys want me to do these random projects, you know And then, you know, I share a lot of stuff just for educational purposes on my GitLab So I'll make a video on a topic, for example, like my videos on how to create a GTK application in Haskell And I'll make a repository on my GitLab for that But honestly, I'm never going to actually properly develop a GTK application of any kind I'm not interested. I've told you guys this before I don't want to be a dev, I don't want to really be a programmer This is a hobby, but I don't like doing that stuff, you know, that much So one of the things I need to do is I'm going to go and probably just archive a lot of my GitLab repos Because some of them I never work on, I never plan on working on Because some of them, for example, I've got one repo that is a GTK2 theme that I created like 15 years ago And, you know, I've got that on my GitLab, but I get issues about it because it's GTK2 Hey, when are you going to update this to GTK3 or GTK4? Never Like, never, no chance, I'm never going to do that So I'm just going to archive that, I'm going to archive some of the Haskell GTK stuff that's on my GitLab Mainly just for reference for the videos I did on those topics And some of my other projects that are really not stuff I'm actually interested in continuing Most of my GitLab projects are actually stuff that I do enjoy working on But I'm going to archive quite a bit of that stuff You know, it's just one of those things that I need to do a lot of cleanup work And then, of course, I've got real life stuff I need to focus on Again, because I haven't really taken a proper vacation I've got a lot of things around the house, around the yard that I need to do One of the things is, you know, I've never really taken a break from the YouTube channel Like a real break of any extended time The longest period of time I've gone without making a video I went eight days one time between making videos But that wasn't a vacation The reason I went eight days without making a video was because my area was devastated by a hurricane And that wasn't a vacation because, you know, those eight days That was probably the worst week of my life ever Like it was the middle of August, it was like 110 degrees outside And there was no power for eight days here in my city You know, National Guard was having to helicopter in water and food and MREs and things like that And it was just so not a vacation So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a proper vacation So I'm going to take probably, we'll play it by year But I'm probably just going to take the month of January off And I'll catch it back up with you guys in February One of the other side projects I do want to briefly mention Because I may mention this when I get back I've got a book that I've been working on It's not Linux or tech related at all But you know, I've been working on this side project Trying to get a book written and published And I have pretty much written the book as far as I've got the manuscript done, but I really need to go in And work on formatting and spell checking and things like that And then of course creating the artwork as far as the book cover and everything I'm nearing the end of that to where I really need a good couple of weeks To dedicate to that, to get that thing done Again, it's a side project, it's not related to Linux in any way But you know, I've got these other things in life That I've kind of been neglecting because of YouTube So again, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off I wanted to make a video about it just to let you guys know Because any time I take more than three or four days off I start getting messages from people all over the internet And emails and mastodon or wherever you guys YouTube comments, hey where's DT? Anybody know what happened to DT? Is he okay? Is he sick? Is he in jail? You know, what happened to DT? So now you guys know, just taking a little time off I'll catch back up with you guys here in a couple of weeks Peace