Peter Sanchez

Books I read in 2025

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:30:00 +0000

For years I did the Goodreads annual challenge but I found myself trying to race against the number of books (which I set for myself) I needed to read and that took a bit of the enjoyment of reading away for me. So now I will just read my books, jot them down, and leave a small snippet about my thoughts on them and post them to my website once a year.

So, here are the books I read in 2025 along with some short notes for each.

Migrated to hugo

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 13:41:19 -0600

After 17 years running this site on my original Django platform I finally decided to migrate to hugo and the Chota css mini framework.

This post will discuss the why, the how, and well not much more honestly.

Books I read in 2024

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:30:00 +0000

So, here are the books I read in 2024 along with some short notes for each.

Slow coding

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 16:37:19 +0000

I often think of myself as a slow reader. I don’t know how quickly most people read an averaged-sized book but I feel like I probably am a lot slower than the norm. When I’m reading I don’t feel like I’m reading slow but when I hear people say they read a few books a week, the record usually screeches for me
because my pace is more like one book a month.

The other day I spent what I felt was way too long to write some fairly simple code. I’d start writing it, then scratch it, start over, scratch it, bite my nails and think about it for a while, start again, scratch it. You get the point.

Books I read in 2023

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 14:29:31 +0000

So, here are the books I read in 2023 along with some short notes for each.

Easily host Go modules on your domain

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 21:42:43 +0000

I wrote a simple app to host your Go modules on your own domains.

I'm now a South Dakotan and you can be too

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 13:00:00 +0000

As you probably know I moved to Nicaragua full time over a year ago. Well I never moved my US residency out of California. That means I was paying California state income taxes. Now, normally I don’t mind paying taxes. Even California’s pretty high taxes because I’m using the services provided by them.

But since I no longer live there and don’t work from there, it didn’t make sense to continue paying them. So I had to resolve that and move my residency to a no income tax state. There are quite a few of them but most require a set amount of time in state to establish residency.

My love affair with Nicaragua

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 13:00:00 +0000

As of July 13th 2021 I’ve officially moved to Nicaragua. I’ve sold or donated most of my things in Los Angeles, put a few more items in storage, and made the jump down to this gorgeous Central American country.

What 2020 taught me about gratitude

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 18:25:53 +0000

Obviously 2020 was a terrible year. Not only did I get sick with COVID, but so did my mother, brother and niece. Also my company Netlandish had the worst year financially of it’s 12 year history. Protests, election madness (at least in the United States), and finally the storming of the capital (which I’m chalking up as an extension of 2020) was the cherry on top of a horrible horrible year.

Why I use a Linux workstation

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 22:13:44 +0000

My very first computer ran Windows 3.1. Not long after that Windows 95 was available, so I installed that. A few hacker movies later I decided that was my next move. I was going to be a hacker.

A few days of reading and searching and I had my first steps. Apparently to be a hacker you need two things. You have to know how to write code in C and you have to run a Linux workstation.

HTML emails are annoying

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 19:06:47 +0000

There are few things in internet and technology that I consider to be more stable than email. I’m not saying email is perfect but it’s extremely reliable and has been in use — virtually unchanged — for decades.

It’s decentralized and fault tolerant, and damn near impossible to actually lose an email; at least in transit.

There is something that’s been annoying me more and more, and that’s the use of HTML emails by companies in their newsletters and marketing email. Now, I don’t have an issue with HTML email in general but if you’re going to send it, at least respect the end user and provide a compatible plain text copy.

COVID symptoms after recovery

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 13:00:00 +0000

As I sit here to write this I am annoyed at the scratching along my stomach and chest. See I have a heart halter attached to me to monitor the irregular heart beating and shortness of breath I’ve been experiencing for the last few months.

I recently wrote about passing the pandemic in paradise where I talked about being trapped in Nicaragua when COVID arrived and started trashing the Americas. I also wrote about how I had COVID in March of this year.

Look back and cringe

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 13:38:24 +0000

For a very long time I’ve neglected this blog. I’m not sure why but lately I’ve felt like writing again. Out of no where my drafts folder filled up with 15+ new post ideas. I guess when I haven’t said much for many years I have a lot to get off my chest.

There’s this thing that software developers do when looking at our older code. We cringe. Reading any code of mine that’s 6 months old or more, I’ll cringe and think “What was I thinking?”

Passing the pandemic in paradise

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 14:42:08 +0000

It was February 26th when I last saw my youngest daughter. It was early January when I last saw my oldest daughter. As I write this, it’s September 2020.

On Feb 26th I traveled to Nicaragua. I live in this Central American paradise half the year. I’ve got a whole life here: girlfriend, house, truck, friends, etc. I was supposed to return to LA in early April. Well, COVID-19 had other plans.

Four Decades In - Thoughts On Turning 40

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Normally when February 1st rolls around I treat it like any other day. This year I spent more time, than I expected I would, thinking about what it means to be 40 years old.

I spent the weekend before my birthday partying in Nicaragua. Day drinking, turning into all night drinking, followed by all day drinking - at the beach. This is just the way things are done in Latin America.

Hindsight Is 2020

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 14:00:00 +0000

I have to say that 2019 was a very odd year. I’m not fully sure what to make of it but there were a couple really big things that happened that I think shaped my near future in big ways.

Right now as I write this, it’s roughly 5:30pm (PST) on Dec. 31st, 2019. So with the new year arriving in about 6.5 hours I figured I’d do a little thinking out loud on my year.

Be An Adult. Do The Work

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 23:36:15 +0000

Here are the top 5 things you need to do in the coming year to be more productive.

Be an adult. Do the fucking work.
Be an adult. Do the fucking work.
Be an adult. Do the fucking work.
Be an adult. Do the fucking work.
Be an adult. Do the fucking work.

Every now and then I need a reminder. Usually at times like now when I’m busy procrastinating doing the things that I consider to be unbearably boring but absolutely necessary in my businesses.

Looking Back on 2017

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Looking back on 2017 and forward to 2018.

What's In My Bag - 2017

Thu, 29 Jun 2017 00:45:16 +0000

What’s currently in my backpack while I travel. Useful tips for remote work

A Decade of Django

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Ten years ago I wrote a blog post about starting to learn a web development framework named Django. At the time it was a simple way for me to toy around with ideas I wanted to pursue. I even mention a social network project I was working on at the time. I can’t even remember what that project was.

Back then I considered myself a System Administrator who also knew how to write code. By that time I was pretty decent with Python and knew a handful of other languages as well, with C being my favorite. But I never wanted to spend my days as a computer programmer. I used my software development skills to help me manage systems and servers.