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September 21, 2026 · meta · career · life

an update: content creation and certifications

some recurring shower thoughts

  • 80% complete is 100% complete
  • slow progress is still progress

daily brain thoughts

  • making content is one thing. it's another absolute time sink to get it post-worthy for my Instagram or on my portfolio website
  • I'm at a weird crossroads right now and I'm not sure what direction to take. I'm continuing to train and grow as a diver in my Divemaster certification with YSS Dive in Hoodsport, WA. but I don't have money coming in right now and I need a job. the commute is also rough traveling 2 hours from Bellevue to Hoodsport for classes, but our lease doesn't end until mid-February 2027. even then, I don't have a job so I can't just rent a new place that's closer to the shop, because they would ask for at least 3 months of paystubs or proof of employment. so maybe in conjunction with the training and pipeline into maybe dive technician work at the shop, I've invested in making myself into a small business working on making products and an inventory to set up an online shop, but since I'm in pre-production, I'm only seeing money go out and it's discouraging. more updates on that later! maybe I should take out loans and go back to school for my Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering and pivot into a systems engineer kind of role for APL-UW or similar ocean engineering laboratory setting. I'd really love to work for Blue Robotics or similar industry experience so that I can get to play with underwater electronics!! I've been in the interview loop for a few different part-time/contractor roles in web development/software engineering just to keep my skills sharp and have some kind of income, but nothing seems to work out. Probably the effects of AI being used to replace people instead of simply as a tool to be used by people.
  • I regret missing the volunteer diver application deadlines for Seattle Aquarium and Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. I know Seattle Aquarium will open more applications in October though...
  • I really need some steady income.
  • regardless of where we may be moving, we have a lot of stuff to clean up and pack up. good on me for starting that process now.
  • missing my hubbie, he's been on a Camino de Santiago pilgrimage since late August and won't be back til mid-October.

what I've been working on lately

  • A personal project that I started back in 2023 that I hadn't touched in 3 years but finally wanted to complete this year as a birthday gift to a friend.
    • I've been programming in CircuitPython and flashing the script onto an Adafruit MatrixPortal board that controls a 64x32 LED Matrix Display, laser-cut an acrylic diffuser panel to size, and redid the housing chassis for the electronics.
    • initially, I laser-cut a wooden housing for the display, but it was poorly estimated and the electronics had so much room inside to jostle around. I tried to stuff bubblewrap, but I was very unhappy with how it looked.
    • so the past month, I decided to find a 3D printed housing case. found this one that fits it perfectly along with the diffuser panel!! shout-out to Fractional Lemon for this awesome guide and CAD model.
      • I'm gonna put a compilation video together of the work I did on this project and post it to my YouTube later, but the overarching steps were: printing for 26 hrs with Overture Starry Blue PETG filament (Pascal, my Prusa MK3S+ 3D printer is a workhorse albeit slow), spent several hours over a few days manually sanding it with sandpaper grit from 120 through 1200, doing a wet sanding after reaching ~600 grit, spent another hour buffing it with a dremel and buffing wheel attachment. at this stage, I tested the diffuser panel I currently had and it was too small and would pop out of the front, so I needed to laser-cut a new piece. tested the new one, and it went flush with the case. finished testing to make sure everything fit in the chassis, so I cleaned it with rubbing alcohol before spraypainting 3 coats of glossy finish. after letting it cure over the course of a week, I finally found some spare time to continue filming and assemble everything together. another hour later of struggling to get the dang thing in, when it all finally clicked, I got that hit of dopamine and felt victorious. The guide mentioned using M3x18 hex socket cap head screws, but I could only find M3x16 or M3x20 at The Home Depot so I bought 6 of both to try. The M3x16 worked perfectly, and now I'm just wrapping up polishing the software and final touches of making a 3-frame animation BMP files that will alternate with the main display.
    • what I've learned from all this: I hate abstractions of lower-level systems. I found myself trying to dig deeper and understand what Adafruit CircuitPython's libraries were actually doing under the hood, because when I ran into issues, I'd get frustrated and go, "just let me control the bits and pixels, damn it!"
  • divrnaut as a small business!!! stickers, 3D prints, laser-etched functional items such as stamps, and preparing them for shipping. I'd love suggestions, so contact me if you have ideas.
  • Divemaster certification. I have another WIP blog on my first training session as a DMC. again, not posted yet as of this blog.
  • fiddling around with an ESP32 board and following a list of projects that I had Claude design for me. my end goal is to learn Rust alongside how ESP32 talks to peripheral devices and how RTOS collects data on the CPU. this has been slow-going, mainly because I feel like I'm learning a lot of different new skills in just the first few Labs and I really want to slow down and understand the hardware.
    • the same can be said for my work with the TI MSP430FR6989 series. I was going through a refresher Lab series to re-teach myself embedded C and flashing firmware directly onto the MCU.
  • the usual interview prep like Leetcode, but honestly I'm finding so much more enjoyment in playing with my hardware stuff.

anyway, I'm keeping busy as usual and it's crazy how busy I can stay despite being unemployed. I hope by continuing to work on these skills, a work prospect will find me interesting and I will be ready for that opportunity.

Taniya