Following the footsteps of people bigger than me, like Mike Elgen and Dries Buytaert, I've decided to focus this year on my personal blog and spend less time on my other websites and social media networks. This has been a long time coming but probably the straw that broke the camel's back was Google's decision to shutdown my favorite social network, Google+. 

This winter I'll be relying on my newly purchased EGO Power+ Snow Blower to clear the snow off the driveway. However, this EGO snow blower isn't my first battery-powered snow blower as that honor goes to Snow Joe's first two-stage 80V Cordless Snow Blower, the iON24SB-XR (Amazon affiliate link).

I'm not that big of a fan of people calling pets "their children". Yet, here I am reluctantly admitting that our Miniature Australian Shepherd has become part of the family since she entered our home in early 2016. By my estimation Jasmine has already traveled across six different states with us as she has accompanied us on family vacations and family visits. She's still a "teenager" and like most teens even has her own Instagram account. I'm not joking, her account is jasmine_the_mini_aussie.

The below video of Jasmine was produced automatically via Google Photos.

Given my continuous obsession with the EGO Power+ product line, I couldn't resist buying this new product by EGO. The new EGO Power+ Nexus Power Inverter just arrived at my doorstep. This new 150 Watt Inverter should be a nice convenient addition for whenever I need need backup power indoors to run my smaller devices.

All of EGO's current line of 56 Volt Batteries will work with the Nexus. The power inverter provides two USB ports and one AC port. While 150 Watts isn't a huge amount of power it's enough to power a tablet and laptop while out and about, lamps in the house, and even your TV and router in a power outage. While run time will vary, there are a number of reviews showing people powering their television for a few hours off  a single 5.0 Ah or 7.5 Ah EGO battery.

Earlier this year, I started a new blog in hopes of me getting back to dedicating more time for my writing. The goal was to write one article a week as I had finally broken free of my burnout from blogging. In the first few months of the blog, I wrote about half a dozen posts but by Spring new articles were no longer being published at Fifty-Two Posts a Year. I once again found the demands of work, family, outdoor hobbies, and managing my other websites were of higher importance. So, time marched on and I now find myself with one more website that started with good intentions but now resembles a ghost town with too few visitors and too little new content.

My son recently finished another season of hockey. This year he was on one of the traveling Bantam B-teams of the Sioux Falls Flyers.  For those that don't know hockey, the "Bantam" means that he's playing with a team of 13 and 14 year old's. Some of his teammates he's played with since he was six years old (they were called Atoms back then).

For the past couple years I've had an obsession with battery-powered cordless tools. While I've bought a number of cordless power tools and even a cordless snow blower...what has been missing in my garage is an all-battery lawn mower.  For the past couple years, I've had my eyes on the EGO Power+ 56V Lithium-Ion Self-Propelled Mower.

Two years ago, I made an attempt to distance myself from CMS Report. The ability to shutdown ten years of work proved more difficult than I thought so I eventually compromised by rebranding the site to socPub. Since then, I've been working on a number of additional side projects. I'm still trying to throw new ideas against the wall and see which ones stick. 

For those curious, these are the personal projects I'm working on for 2018: