Sunday.  29th.  Dinner was leftovers I brought home from the club. DS9 4.18 then Lego Masters 7.9.

Monday.  Early night, but took ages to get to sleep then woke up at like 3:30 for ages. Did eventually get a bit more sleep but not much.

Spent the day staring at the rules in a dev environment that are a mishmash of several versions of things including imports of prod. It's a complete mess. I've been wanting to clean it up for literally seven years and finally had a good excuse because I need to do it to prep for a project that will require us to actually do real work in there (and I can't see anything in there at the moment). Andor 2.10 then Lego Masters 7.10 (semi final - a Harry Potter build which was a heap of fun!).

Tuesday. 

Acts 2:21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved... Originally from Joel 2:28-32. After the apostles receive the Holy Spirit.  Just a reminder.

Slept mostly ok. Definitely had energy this morning more so than other mornings recently. Had my morning routine done by like 7:40 instead of after 8. Not quite the whole day cleaning up dev (too many people wanting things) but I did delete nearly 1360 policies that weren't in use - winning!!

It was perfect soup weather on Tuesday

Cooked a tuna bake (forgot the dill) with brussels sprouts and broccolini for dinner.

Andor 2.11. The second half of this series has definitely picked up quite a bit, I'm enjoying it a lot more. Then it was sorting out Mum's photos, removing some duplicates and getting a "definitive" version for picking later.

Wednesday.  

Acts 3:19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out .. after God heals a lame man through Peter, and Peter is telling the onlookers about Jesus.  What he said.

Slept mostly ok. Deleted more crap today. Went into the city after work to get a filter for a new lens I'm hoping to get because Ted's said it wouldn't be available til like September. Turns out it was the lens not available not the filter.. which makes more sense but FFS now I have two filters and no lens. Sigh.

Leftovers for dinner. Andor 2.12 (season finale) then Lego Grand Masters of the Galaxy 7.11 (season finale). **spoilers** .. I reckon Trent and Alex's build was totally win-worthy, but obviously Brickman preferred the art of Henry and Cade's.

Thursday.  Slept okish. More deleting crap and tidying and documenting what's left in the dev environment I'm working on.

Good Games vending machine!! 

Good drinks although not many people. Pizzas then DS9 4.19 then the Bomb and the Cold War episode 8. Before it started I was telling Stu that I'd really like to watch a documentary on some thing I was thinking about.. but we started watching the show and forgot about it. And then for the life of me I couldn't remember what it was that we were talking about. And neither could Stu. All we could remember was it was some engineering thing, because I remember telling him that I liked engineering stuff like dams, bridges and towers, but I never could have been an engineer cause I'm dumb and no good at advanced maths. Oh well.

Friday.  

Acts 4:12 - Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved .. Peter talking about Jesus to the High Priest, elders and the teachers of the law in Jerusalem after he was arrested for talking about the resurrection.

Slept relatively ok. Did a bit of tidying/documenting but not as much as I'd have liked. Found this video by Kurzgesagt quite depressing.  Chris didn't have Kievs so we had some chicken pieces but they were a bit too spicy for me. I did make a nice dipping sauce of yoghurt, garlic powder, lemon juice and dill though.

Death in Paradise 14.7 then Flying High because I needed something light.

Saturday.  Awake from like 1:30 til after 5 or so. Stressing about All The Things. Hurray. Surprisingly unzombielike though. Mostly Lego filing all day. Annie came over for a while in the afternoon which was nice and she brought some nice peanut butter and choc chip cookies she made. Dumpling Inn for dinner then we watched Rogue One, which worked well after just finishing Andor.

Sunday. 

Acts 4:32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.... oof yeah that doesn't happen much anymore!

Slept through til ~4 before waking up and never getting back to sleep. Stressing about All The Things. Got some stuff done during the day but not nearly enough.

Food shopping in the afternoon.

Sunday.  15th.  Kievs and brussels sprouts for dinner. Must be Friday. Wait, what?

DS9 4.14. Another episode to be endured. Then LegoMasters 7.3. Yayyy Karen!!!! haha

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. Gave Mum a call before work for her birthday and heard more about her trip. Sigh. Did a few tickets at work but mostly scripting which was nice. Google AI helped with one problem but sent me on a wild goose chase with another and needed Nick to help me fix. Pizzas for dinner, must be Thursday. Wait, what?

Andor 2.4 then Lego Masters 7.4.

Was impressed how well these things lasted - like a month!

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. 

Happy 3128!!  Whenever I see my clock/watch at around 13:52 I wish @Aquillaaudux a happy 1352.  So my step log at 3128 two days ago was pretty cool!

Stoopidly busy day. All. The. Tickets. The last week or so has been quite pleasant, so this was quite a shock to the system. 

Nissin miso ramen that I had for lunch.  Not miso-ey enough.  Next time I'll lump in some miso paste

Cooked up some leftover pork with some veggies for dinner. Andor 2.5. People are calling this like the best show ever, but I'm all what the actual f#$& is going on all the way through it. I have no idea who's who (I struggle with names and faces at the best of times, but no one has names that mean anything to me, and some of the cast look fricken identical), who's on who's side (hurray for espionage stories), or what anyone is doing. And that end scene?? What??? Fricken hopeless. A real estate agent (I guess) came to Kit's place today. But instead of turning off the lights in the kitchen that have been on for two weeks straight, they turned MORE lights on and left them on too! What a retard.

Wednesday.  Slept ish-ish I think.

Baby fish!  Not sure who's babies they are.. either from the very unwell big female I took from the four foot a couple of weeks ago, or maybe one of the super young females I took from the two foot..  There's only like three babies though so who knows.

Not quite as crazy a busy day but still pretty busy. I tried multiple times to do some scripting, but whenever I started someone would interrupt me. Even after 17:00 when most people were offline, people came to talk to me in real life and I *still* didn't get any scripting done hmmmm. KFC for dinner. Whoops. Andor 2.6 (somewhat better episode, easier to follow), Lego Masters.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish.

Fairly busy day again.

Saw these guys at lunch attacking a new grass seed mat

Good drinks, heaps of people, and even a whole heap of pizzas (thanks Timmy!) so I had dinner before I even got home. Lego Masters .. awwwwwwwwwww so sad to see Owen and Gabby go. Someone must have come to Kit's place again today because most (not all) of the lights are off now.

Friday.  Okish sleep. Took an RDO. Got some things done in the morning. Went out before lunch to do a couple of things, but ended up being out for nearly four hours #grunt. There's a couple moving into Kit's today, including a dude with an actual truck. Leftover beef from the freezer for dinner. DS9 4.15,  urgh another tedious episode. Then The Bomb and the Cold War episode 7.

Saturday.  Ok sleep I think. Semi productive day. I asked the sweetie what he wanted for dinner and so he got Dumpling Inn haha. Had that while watching Jaws, on account of it being fifty years ago yesterday that it was first released in cinemas (in the US). Also because Stu has never actually seen it. !!

Sunday.  Slept okish. Less productive day today. Did get some photo culling done and some food shopping, but a lot of the day went on a horrible jigsaw.

Windoze Explorer has been continuing to drive me crazy.  This week it refuses to honour settings I've previously set like sorting and icon size.  I was trying to file email attachments and it would reset the settings to whatever it felt like EVERY SINGLE TIME I NAVIGATED AWAY.  Or it'll just randomly jump to the top of the window and I have scroll back down to find where I was working.  FFS windows is trash.  Tonight it actually remembered my blog photo directory by some miracle, although Chrome reset itself.  I hate windoze.  

Sunday.  8th.  Leftovers for dinner.  Had to endure DS9 4.8 Too much of DS9 is like this, just something to be endured. Didn't feel like doing anything after. 19:30 is bed time right?

Monday.  Awake from like 1-4 or something silly. Ridiculous. Had a quite productive day though, alternating between house stuff, photo stuff, computer stuff and I finished a jigsaw. Leftovers for dinner then watched DS9 4.9. Somewhat better episode, if a bit silly. Did some Mum photo picking after dinner.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok. Was both XL and NEIL at work, but also had time to figure out a PowerShell problem and get my pretty report working. Leftovers for dinner then DS9 4.10. Then culling of Salzburg photos from 2016. I really do need to make an "ultimate" Sound of Music location guide one day. It'd have more on it than literally anyone else.

The mini capsicum is hanging in there even in the sub-zero temperatures overnight!

Wednesday.  Took a while to get to sleep but then slept mostly okish. Another day of tickets and scripting and not too much BS, which always makes for a pleasant work day. Also played with Copilot to get it to tell me what some regex did, and write me a regex for something else I wanted to do - and it actually worked!! It was actually pretty amazing.  Kievs and chippies for dinner because the sweetie wanted comfort food so had that instead of leftovers.

DS9 4.11 and a bit of Salzburg culling, but mostly getting distracted by Sound of Music locations.

Thursday.  When I first did my Pixie it was quite warm.  This past week has been sub-zero in the mornings..

Slept okish I think. Just tickets mostly at work. Good drinks - several groups came which was good. Pizzas and DS9 4.12.

Friday the 13th!!  Awake for hours on and off *sigh*. But did turn the heater off in the hopes we'd be able to turn it on again in the morning - and we could! Winning!! Tickets and scripting day, quite nice. Did more playing with Copilot - gave it a problem and got it to solve the PowerShell for me. Pretty awesome. Lunch with the Chrises and Tony at the Burns Club (not that one, the other one!) which was nice.

Dinner was a blue cheese cabbage bake and brussels sprouts with some pulled pork I dug out of the freezer.

DS9 4.13 then new Lego Masters!!! Lego Grand Masters of the Galaxy!

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.

Ok morning, but not really super productive. In the afternoon we ran a couple of errands then went to the Handmade Markets at EPIC. Had to get potato on a stick of course, and TRBC was there too!  (the food hall was more fun for me than the hand-made stuff)

Potato on a stick!

Tempura mushrooms

Musk stick, and lemon meringue pie

New Ginja Ninja!!

Dropped into the Green Shed, sorry Vinnies, sorry Goodies Junction on the way home. 

Sunbow?

Leftovers for dinner then we watched The Holdovers, which was quite a nice movie.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok. Quiet day, bit of house stuff, some jigsaws.  It was cold and wet and miserable, nice day to stay indoors.

Sunday.  1st of June.  1st day of winter.  Although feels like it's been around a little while longer.  Heater is permanently on because we're too scared to touch the controller in case it dies and never comes back again.  And the peeps at Heating Cooling Warehouse STILL haven't acknowledged that we bought a brand-new-second-hand controller off them.  Will need to call them.

Ahem.

Turns out if you fry sour dough in bacon fat it turns out amazingly..

The sweetie did a pea and ham soup for dinner.

DS9 4.2 then The Bomb episode 2.

Monday.  Photos and jigsaw kind of a day.  

Did a slow cooker lamb shoulder for dinner with a bunch of veggies.  Slow cooker lamb sure is a winner.  I separated the fat out though before making the gravy with it - got a whole small decor container of fat out that we might otherwise have eaten.  

DS9 4.3 then The Bomb episode 3.

Tuesday.  Slept like crap.  Didn't get to sleep til like midnight, and then an ordeal to get comfortable. Back to work. Stayed "offline" all day to avoid the questions. Spent the day catching up on emails and doing tickets. Cooked up the last of the mince I cooked the other day with some tomato and cheese - simple but tasty. DS9 4.4.

Wednesday.  Slept okish. I think. Another relatively quiet day at work - the calm before the storm really. Leftovers for dinner. DS9 4.5.

Thursday.  Slept okish. I'm now XL for a month. Did a few tickets but distracted waiting for responses from people. Pizza for dinner, must be Thursday! DS9 4.7 (what happened to 4.6??) and recognised James Cromwell even under all his prosthetics! Then episode 5 of the bomb (don't know what day we watched episode 4).

Friday.  Awake from like 3:30 or so. Hurray.  Got some tickets done and had some time in the afternoon to work on my reporting script. Even got it to do what I wanted which was nice. Kievs for dinner, DS9 4.6 (labelled as 4.7 in Netflix - so the wrong way around compared to IMDB) then episode 6 of the bomb.

Saturday.  Slept okish. Quiet day of All The Things. Well, some house stuff, jigsaw, scanning, photo stuff and listening to the Classic 100 Piano.

I asked the sweetie what he wanted to do for dinner. We got Chong Co. Heh.

Watched Inglorious Basterds after dinner. It was .. "interesting" .. hrmmm!  

Sunday.  Slept okish - even slept in til nearly 7!! Went out by myself to do food shopping (Stu's back is having a week since he went into the office a couple of times during the week and had to sit up straight for too long). Forgot it was Sunday at Jamo - usually parking is a nightmare on Sundays. Fortunately the rain kept the crowds away so parking wasn't an issue.

I haven't been to Coles at Jamo since December and the entire store has been completely redesigned and refitted. Very stressful. Super quiet day, mostly just jigsaw and listening to Classic 100 Piano.  Beethoven made number 1.  Again.  How many times has Beethoven won?  Must be a few heh..

Sunday.  Star Wars Day.  Stu cooked a cauliflower and feta bake with brussels sprouts and zucchini for dinner.  

DS9 3.9 then Andor 2.1.

Monday.  Slept okish. The guppies downstairs I think are doing ok, but I think the ones in the four foot got eaten. I think one might have survived overnight (but didn't see it again later in the week). Catching up at work (not too many interruptions hurray). Cooked very nice salmon for dinner (huge pieces though), with salad for me and leftover veggies for the sweetie. DS9 3.10 which was pretty silly.

Sunrise.. sunset..

Tuesday - Slept okish. All over the place day. Did manage to do a change I'd been planning though. The sweetie cooked the mince I cooked the other night with olives and tomatoes and fake fettuccini which was very nice.

DS9 3.11. Had to LOL at a Riot-ACT post from the other day. They were all spruiking the "first Malatang in a food court in Canberra" in Civic. The first comment on the page was literally from someone saying the people in Belconnen must be shocked that they don't live in Canberra (there's been a Malatang at Belco mall since pre covid). I just reloaded the entry and got a 404. bwahahahaha.

Wednesday. Awake from 1:30 to 5:00 or so. Hurrah. Distracting day again. Did get some decom work done in the later afternoon. Pizzas for dinner. Was going to make slow cooked lamb shanks, but, life. DS9 3.12.

Thursday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night. Managed quite a bit of decom work due to not being interrupted every five seconds. Was actually a fairly peaceful day. Put the lamb shanks on at lunch, they turned out really well. Too often in the past my slow cooker lamb shanks have super watery sauce, so this time I didn't cover the meat - I only used about a cup of liquid with a stockcube, as well as a heap of fresh rosemary and some gobs of minced garlic. At the end I made gravy like I do with the pulled pork - take the lamb out to shred, pour all the stock/juices into a saucepan with some cornflour (in a slurry with a little water). Boil til thickened. Mix back in with lamb. Enjoy!  I didn't get an "after" photo.  DS9 3.13.

The veggies didn't make it to leftovers..

Friday.  Early night so woke up at 4. Hurrah. Got a bit more sleep and in the end woken from a dream (wherein I was drifting over Sydney in what appeared to be a massive cruise ship, but I was also weightless. I held onto a handrail tightly (in case gravity came back suddenly) and just floated. Nice :) ).

More decom work. Kievs and a cauliflower bake for dinner.

Then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Don't know why it rates so highly in IMDB - pretty much most of the entire movie takes place on one night in the story. And it's just so damned *dark*!!

Saturday.  Slept okish. Awake for a while here and there though.

Just a day of all the things. Started back into culling of Europe 2016 photos again so I can get them online.

Made butt sorry beef cheeks for dinner with lemon garlic broccolini which was very nice.

Watched Andor 2.2, Fantasia 2000, and The Movies That Made Us on Back to the Future.

Sunday.  Awake from ~1:25 to ~4 hurrah. Bit of a slow start. Quieter day, but did do some Europe photo culling.

Saw this on Neil's a while back and thought it would be cool to do.  One of those old-fashioned "blog memes" that people used to do twenty years ago.  I stopped commenting on Neil's blog forever ago because when I tried to catch up with him when I was in York in 2010 he completely ignored me.  His blog went dead for years but my feed reader still had it and notified me a few years back of new posts.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Vic said I should.  I was doing unpaid work at CIA/Host1 at the time (well, helping out with windows hosting support and answering support mail in exchange for free internet and web hosting).  I'd heard of blogs by then (January 2003) but had never read or subscribed to any.  Vic probably wanted to spread the word of his ISP a bit, so I did it.  But it very quickly became a place I could brain dump and I only wish I'd started the thing sooner so I could have recorded my life better.  Not that the early years were much good at recording events.  Too many times when I've been sorting my photos I've wondered what I was doing the day I took them, only to find no useful record.  These days are much more betterer.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

Movable Type.  Been using it since day 1.  I started using it because it came as part of the cpanel setup Host1 had so it was easy to start with.  There was one big upgrade a few years in that changed the whole directory/post/file structure layout, and the one that started inserting images as assets, but otherwise it really hasn't changed much.  I'm still using the last free open source version before it started costing $500 USD .. PER YEAR..!!  WTF!??  I really do need to modernise, not the least of which is because it uses http not https and I still haven't figured out how to *fully* sslify it (eg, canonical links)

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I did put a few entries up on blogger.com for some more private stuff, but it never really went anywhere.  Same with the "This Day in History" posts I was trying to do here.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog?

I just use the Movable Type web interface.  And only ever from my computer, or laptop when travelling.  Phone is too hard.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Back in the day I would blog nearly every day and sometimes more often.  Usually in the evenings.  For several years now I've only blogged on the weekends after I've downloaded and processed my photos for the week.  I definitely post a lot more photos than I did twenty years ago.  Really my blog now is a place for me to post photos.  With a little bit of filler about what I've been doing.  It's also a bit less cryptic.  Reading my old entries now I have no idea what I was talking about half the time.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I always publish immediately.  Usually on Sunday evenings.

What are you generally interested in writing about?

Nothing.  My blog's byline is "Boring Life Of a Geek" - BLOG for short.  My life is boring.  My photos are mostly of flowers and food.  I do like my travel blogs though.  There's even at least one holiday blog (USA 2000) that I wrote up from literally a paper notebook of notes I took during the trip.  And my USA 1983 blog was written entirely from my memories of the trip thirty years after the event!  When I was 9 years old!

Who are you writing for?

Myself. There's maybe like half a dozen readers that I know about, and maybe a few more I don't.  My mother and brother care most.  The sweetie might read things if they happen to show up in his feed reader.  Mostly I do it for the record of my own life.  And it's been quite useful for that.

What's your favourite post on your blog?

Don't have one. 

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

This thing really needs to move to something more modern.  One that bakes in https naturally.  But the idea of moving it is just too daunting.  Maybe if I retire and have more time to think about such things.

Who else do you want to tag?

Ha.  Who even does that anymore??  The only two active bloggers I know that might even still read my blog from time to time are Dave2 and kapgar.

Monday.  21st.  Did I mention I'm doing low carb again for another few weeks? Except the day got off to a rocky start because I'd forgotten about an apple that needed eating. There goes my carb limit for the day.. whoops. The sweetie prepped a cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts for dinner and I chucked a chunk of beef in to go with it. I got my blogging done quite early. Funny how writing up notes properly during the week makes blogging a lot quicker on a Sunday.. or Monday in this case. DS9 2.24.

Tuesday.  Awake from Dentist Time for hours and only broken sleep after that. Sigh. NEIL at work, as well as trying to figure out the API of our IP management system to help someone with something. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 2.25. After dinner started going through Dad's photos (from when he switched from slides to prints and onwards) to get photos of Mum. Annoyingly Dad had a really bad habit of over-enhancing his photos. At least with the prints I can go back and rescan them, but for digital photos once they're enhanced at all they're destroyed because he didn't keep the originals. Which is odd in itself because he used to make backups upon backups upon backups, just not of the original unaltered files. #grunt.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok. Really wanted to get through some decom prep but the interruptions Would. Not. Stop. All. Day. So damned hard to concentrate with Teams and Outlook popping up every five seconds. Seriously considering turning all notifications off. The sweetie cooked creamy mushroom chicken for dinner which was very nice.

DS9 2.26. Then more photo picking. From 2010 and some of 2011 Dad saved the raw camera photos off separately to the enhanced photos. That was nice of him. Maybe there were other copies of the rest of his digital camera photos elsewhere that either he or I lost. More likely him. I spent an entire week one Christmas trying to sort it all out, and would definitely have kept any raw photos if I'd found them. Knowing him he probably made several backups, thought he had a backup, didn't in fact have a backup, and deleted the original. Or maybe he just never thought he'd need his originals. Silly Dad.

Thursday.  Slept okish until about 5:00. Mostly decom work at work. Bar 59 for drinks which was quite pleasant, although a lot more expensive than work drinks! Made pizzas then DS9 3.1.

Friday.  Anzac Day.  Lest we forget.  Awake from 1:45 for hours sigh.

House stuff mostly in the morning. Happy that Stumpy is basking more and is more enthusiastic about food.  Did some camera testing in the afternoon. Only to realise later I had it on the wrong mode. Sigh.

I need to find a spot to plant out these chrysanthemums.  I accidentally uprooted one of the ones out the front the other month and chucked it in a pot out the back.  They're now happily flowering while the ones out the front are barely hanging on to life.  These things like a lot of sun but our garden is completely hopeless so not sure where I can put them.  

Kievs for dinner.  With half a cauliflower and most of a capsicum.

DS9 3.2. Then watched Blackberry which made us both a little nostalgic. Also, it's Anzac Day but I've only worn a jumper like twice all year. Usually by now there would have been days where we'd be wanting to put the heater on in advance of the Anzac Day allowed starting date. Instead I had a window open in my room to cool it down so I could sleep.  hrmmm.

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish.

Cooked cheese kranskis and miso scrambled eggs for breakfast.  Although Stu just had eggs because he needed to only eat soft food to not break his temporary tooth crown again.

Started a jigsaw. Went for a several hour drive with the sweetie, checking out previous houses, family houses, the church we got married in etc. Was a lovely way to spend a few hours with the sweetie (and we drove like 70km!). 

Made a small share platter for lunch (although I did get hungry later)

Finished the jigsaw. Got Chong Co delivered for dinner (after the MenuLog driver finally turned up) and watched DS9 3.3, then The Princess Bride :)

Sunday.  Awake from ~3:30 and never got back to sleep. Sigh.  They promised many millimetres of rain.  We got about three drops.

Went and saw Constellations at the NFSA with Tony which was a bit of fun. House stuff mostly for the rest of the day, and some food shopping.

When you realise you have 15 different cheeses in the fridge.. whoops...

Filled with rage in the afternoon at Optus who FORCE you to use international roaming because there's no way to disable it. Their only workaround is leave the phone on flight mode and use wifi. WTF??? I think I did read somewhere that if you have a second sim you can disable the Optus one. Which would work unless I needed to receive an SMS for two factor for anything. But there's a heap of horror stories out there from people getting charged the $5/day even when the sim wasn't even in the phone!!!

Hi.

Sunday.  13th.  Apple cider pulled pork and lots of veggies for dinner. I didn't measure out the apple cider vinegar this time so it was a little tangier than last time, and I also added less water in the gravy which made it a lot quicker to cook. Yum yum yum. DS9 2.18. Then watched the start of a new season (for me) of Air Crash Investigations. First time I'd watched any since 2021!!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. Busy morning before work, busy day at work. The new version of Outlook sux donkeyballs. They shrunk down the ribbon so my quicksteps are now hidden behind a drop down menu. So now my quicksteps take twice as long because I have to click the drop down then click my action. And no way to customise it. They broke the categories/colours on our shared calendar so everything is grey and I can't create a new category to match the common ones. And every time I move a mail to a folder it pops up a stoopidly annoying "You've moved a mail, Undo" message RIGHT OVER THE NEXT MAIL I WANT TO READ. Microsoft is so trash. Ok got my ribbon and action buttons back by choosing Classic Ribbon. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 2.19. OMFG this is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!!!! Don't even know what I did with my evening. I know there was some looking at optional tours for the Greece cruise. The extra tours practically double the day cost of the cruise. hrmmm.

The second half of the ramen pack, with leftover pulled pork

Tuesday.  Took *ages* to get to sleep :( The Old Reader's CDNs are working again today hurray (they'd been broken for a few days). Found another bug in new Outlook. I only have one mail rule. It wasn't working. When I went to look at it I got the error "This rule can't be edited or viewed in Outlook for Windows". Found this page which said it was to do with the "mark as read" rule. So I turned that off in Classic, sure enough it can now be edited in 365.  Nearly had a meltdown over how much time I've wasted on Microsoft TRASH. Another "feature" is they've turned off the nice little count down the bottom which shows you how many messages you have in a folder. Ok at least you can see, but you have to hover over the folder to see it. Meeting notifications are dumb. Old version you could just hit snooze and it would automatically popup again at the five minute mark, hit snooze again and it would pop up at meeting start time. New version you have to hover, then click on snooze, then click a time to snooze. And even then it doesn't work properly, repeating notifications. Also whenever I even look away from Outlook, it navigates me to the top of my inbox, which are my oldest messages. So I'm constantly having to scroll all the way down to the bottom to see my newest messages. Went to get a Covid vaccine at lunch (been like eighteen months since I got my last one). Also spent a 50th birthday gift card. I probably should have looked around more for some cool games or something, but ended up just buying a couple of jigsaws. The sweetie cooked cabbage and bacon for dinner. DS9 2.20.

Wednesday.  Took quite a while to get to sleep and still woke up before 6. First meltdown of the day - the barrel fell out of my locker again at work, but no Connor around today to help me fix it. Took like ten minutes to get it back in. Second meltdown of the day - losing my mind over some proxy configs - turned out Wardie did a sneaky add and remove of a policy which confused me no end. All the middle of a MICROSOFT problem on the proxies that we spent literally all day on, and still haven't resolved. Microsoft is utter TRASH. Third meltdown of the day - YELLOW LIGHTS. I did have a nice birthday lunch with DC though. DS9 2.21.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish. More trash today. Gave up and went back to Outlook Classic, which made me feel a whole lot better. Microsoft is almost entirely responsible for my very strong desire to retire early.  Super quiet drinks, just our group. Pizzas, DS9 2.22.

Good Friday.  Not so great for Jesus back in the day.  Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk then mostly holiday planning. Tuna bake and veggies for dinner. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk then mostly holiday planning. Finished my galah Diamond Dotz and did one of my birthday jigsaws. Steak and salad for dinner. DS9 2.23, then Death in Paradise 14.6.

Easter Sunday.  Christ has risen.  So did the sun in a nice way.

Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk. On the way back a group of kids (and parents) were out in their pyjamas doing an Easter egg hunt around one of the playgrounds. Funny.  Mostly house stuff in the morning. Mostly holiday stuff in the afternoon. Leftovers for dinner then Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Monday.  Somewhat restless sleep and thermoregulation issues. Another quiet day - bit of house stuff, bit of holiday stuff, food shopping (which was super quiet which was nice).

I really could get used to four day weekends....

Sunday.  6th. 

Had some leftover lamb which I dug out of the freezer for dinner.  DS9 2.13.  20:00 is bed time right?  Well that's 21:00 in old time so I guess that counts.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got like 9 hours sleep or something. Hurray. Still woke up early though. Went to take out the recycling this morning and saw all the neighbours' cars were gone and everything looked neat and tidy. Yup, they'd moved out. They're off to New Zealand. Maybe for just a year. Unless they love it and stay haha. Spent half the day (it felt like) on the phone today blerf. Cooked sausages and two big zucchinis I got at Chris' yesterday for dinner, then watched DS9 2.14. Interesting episode, but it's never answered how they know right from the beginning.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish, but still woke up before 5:30 (at one point I guessed 5:30 - it was 5:26!). Busy day evaluating doco and rules for a big change. Neighbours' friends came over to put the bins out. I'll still take the rubbish that's in their recycling bin and put it in our rubbish bin haha.  Went with T/J to the Shine Dome for the AI Science talk which was quite interesting.  What we heard of it.  For the start of the second speaker (which was recorded) they couldn't figure out the audio so it was super quiet, and they couldn't figure out how to take it back to the beginning.  So missed like a quarter of the second talk.  

Wednesday. Slept mostly ok I think. 

Almost there!

Busy day, including being NEIL for some of it.  Late home, DS9 2.15, backing up the NAS to one of my lesser used drives - backed up more stuff from Mum's computer from the last time I was there.  Also started backing up David's America masters again.  I have them on my little holiday drive but that's raw, not rotated or renamed, and I might need space on that drive for the next trip.  Only got up to about day 9.

Thursday.  Restless sleep.

Super excited to pick the first two of the mini capsicums!!

Pretty busy day I think.  Super quiet drinks sadly - just our group and two others.  Pizzas for dinner.  DS9 2.16.  You'd think they would have learnt from literally the last episode not to both beam down to a planet by yourselves.  Odo said noone was interested in him, clearly he forgot about Lwaxana Troi just a few episodes ago.  And I was thinking the little kid looked familiar - she played Dylan's little sister in 90210.. haven't seen her in thirty years but still recognised her!!!  Early night.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.

Got pissed at the ANIMAL that ripped off the third mini capsicum which was not quite ripe.  Didn't even eat it, just put claw/teeth marks on it and left it on the ground.  #grunt.

Day of all the crap and all the interruptions.  Did get some documentation done though.  Leftovers for dinner - finished up the leftovers in the fridge.  DS9 2.17 and Death in Paradise 14.5.  Why didn't they just test them all for GSR?  Would have saved them all a heap of time.  Sheesh.

Saturday.  Woke up at Dentist Time, only got maybe 3/4 hour more sleep.  Sigh.  Climbed Mt Rogers.  In a vain attempt to be healthier.  Sigh.

Black and white on blue

Brown

Didn't end up going to Cypher at lunch, which was a bit of a relief, on account if it would have taken up much of the day, plus trying to be healthier and all that crap.  Instead I spent much of the day doing holiday planning.  Also food shopping. 

We won't mention the "breakfast raclette" I had for lunch - leftover roast potato with raclette that I bought like two months ago and really needed to be used!

Steak and salad for dinner.  Pretty much one of my favourite easy meals - just make a salad and fry some meat.  I might even convince the sweetie that steak is good m'kay? ;)

I would like to point out that I only ate half of this rather huge steak - the rest I sliced up for cold meat snackages.

Then watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Sunday.  Slept fairly well.  Climbed Mt Rogers again.

Grey

Spent the rest of the day on holiday planning.  Up to Slano.  Did put on some pork at lunch and a heap of veggies for dinner...  while the sweetie is on holidays.. hrmmm... 

Sunday.  30th.  Had Jenn over for dinner, wherein we cooked up a huge vegetarian feast.  Stu cooked his miso mushrooms.  I did a potato bake, a blue cheese broccoli/cauliflower/onion bake and brussels sprouts with hazelnuts.

We debated how long it had been since we saw Jenn last.  I looked up my blog and said April 2023, which seemed way too long, but I do remember taking a photo of her hair, and the date on that was April 2023, which pretty much confirms it.  We're such slackers at keeping up with people.  Watched DS9 2.7 after Jenn left.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok I think.  Got to hand back over the NEIL job back to Neil hurray!!!  Leftovers for dinner then DS9 2.8.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep #grunt.  Did a bunch of analysis of some catchall rules so I can put in some more specific ones so we can get rid of the catchall.  

I tried feeding Stumpy today.  He's still being lethargic and not basking, but he did eat a blueberry and some food which was good.

I'm always suprised how quickly the COLD hits in Canberra.  It'll be 30C for days on end, and suddenly it's 5C overnight and leaving the windows open makes for a very cold house.  Decided April 1 should be close up all the windows day (several are left permanently locked open over summer).  In the afternoon I was cold and hungry so had a cup of tea in our fancy Cunard tea cups.

Luv-a-duck for dinner which was very nice.  All. The. Garlic.  !!

DS9 2.9.  After dinner was watching a video Dave2 linked to on living without a smartphone.  Yeah I literally can't even remember how friends and I would meet up without being able to text each other updates or issues.  Like what if a train was late, how would you tell who you were meeting?  Navigation is another big thing.  Nowadays I can turn up anywhere and use GPS on my phone to navigate (except that one time in Switzerland when I had to pay more for a car with satnav because the esim I got didn't work in Switzerland).  I can't even imagine the paperwork you'd need to cart around to try and do the same thing with maps.  Don't get me wrong, I love maps, and I like navigating, but they're damned heavy and more often than not I'm doing the driving not the navigating, and I can't imagine Mum would have much luck navigating me around European cities.  Having said that, we did manage to navigate our way around the USA and Canada in 1983 and 2004 before phones.  But for the most part we stayed out of big cities.  And the USA is literally designed for road tripping.  Signage is way way better there than in Australia or Europe.

Wednesday.  Second night in a row dreaming about toilets.  I have this bizarre thing where I stress about finding a clean/usable toilet.  And not even when I need to actually pee in the middle of the night, it's just this weird obsession I have.  Bizarre.  

Somewhat busy day.  Late home.  Stu had had a day so we got KFC hmmm.  DS9 2.10.  

OneNote is trying to force me to upgrade to Office 365.  It's already upgraded itself from the old Technet version I've been using for years AGAINST MY WILL I might add (apparently there's a way to turn off automatic updates so I might try reinstalling it and do that).  So now it says I have 90 days of free usage.  Well I can tell you that there is no way in HELL I'm going to pay to use it.  I will NEVER get an Office 365 subscription.  I'll rip everything out of it and use LibreOffice and Notepad if it comes down to it.  Which is a shame, because OneNote is actually quite a good product.  I like how it keeps different groupings of notes together and you can easily password protect sections.

Thursday.  Late getting to sleep, then awake from 5:30 sigh.  Went out to put a few things in the recycling bin before it got collected, only to find two big bags of RUBBISH in it!?!  WTF!?!  I pulled them out and raged for a while.  Messaged the neighbours but didn't get a response.  In the end put out our bin (which only had one bag of rubbish in it so wasn't worth putting out) and put their rubbish in it.  As we were leaving for work neighbour's Dad was out there and I asked him and he said he did it.  Sigh.  Simon was sick at drinks so if I get sick early next week we'll know why.  Pizzas for dinner then DS9 2.11.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Busy day - put in a heap of those firewall rules which took me all afternoon to do.  Kievs and veggies for dinner then DS9 2.12.

Saturday.  Awake from like maybe 1 til 4.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Spent a chunk of the day photo picking from "other peoples photos" and trying to sort out what backups I have of Mum's computer. I'm definitely missing a few years worth from 2015-2017 where I just haven't had the time during visits to get it all copied. Debating a trip to Sydney to do that, as well as sort out the mess they made when they built her a new computer and didn't transfer all the files. Luckily she has all the photos (I hope!) on an external hard drive that has a snapshot backup I made her do some years back. In the evening we went to Bar 59 for an "antiball" but it was a bit of a fizzer really. People forgot or double booked or just didn't turn up, so there was only seven of us there in the end. I tried a few cocktails just for a bit of fun. So it was nice enough night, but dunno if I could be bothered trying to organise another one. Neil very kindly gave us a lift home.

Sunday.  Awake for maybe an hour or so in the middle of the night - from 2:27, but the new 2:27, so didn't get to watch the clock go from 2:59 to 2:00. Still pretty tired though. Finally managed to setup SMTP on my iPhone using CloudLoop. Optus is flaky as hell for sending SMTP mail through, plus I get SPF softfails with them because I don't have their mail servers in my SPF records. Did a bit of house stuff, and started thinking about some holiday stuff. Tried again to add my Qantas frequent flier number to my Emirates flights, but I kept getting the error:

Warning:
Sorry, we`re unable to save the changes. Please check all the information and try again.

So I tried their online chat. It was quick and they just did it for me. Unexpectedly quick and painless! Not that I know why I bother really - Qantas expire all my points before I can use them. Then did some other holiday planning.

The Windows 11 Explorer trash is really pissing me off.  I have an in tray where I have all the photos that I post to this blog.  I update it every week when I'm processing my photos, and when I've posted them they get moved to Done.  I sort this folder by date (in reverse to what windows likes to set it to) so that when I'm blogging them I can see and post the photos in order.  Every time my computer reboots this setting is lost.  I have to go Sort By -> Date (twice to get it in the right order) not just in Explorer, but in Chrome as well.  Every damned time.  But lately it's gotten worse.   Tonight I did an experiment.  I had the folder set the way I wanted it, and copied the path to clipboard.  I closed explorer on this desktop.  Opened up again and pasted the path.  Folder view was reset to default.  So did it again, this time by navigating manually to the folder.  In this method the folder view is retained.  And it's repeatable. 

I also epic hate how Explorer collapses all explorer folders that you've had expanded whenever you insert or eject removable media.  Like WHYYYYYYYY????

I hate Windoze SO MUCH!!

And suddenly the weekend is over. hrmmm.