July, 2022
2022-07-01
Went to the office this morning with toddler. The car wash was operational. We had our managmenet meeting so thankfully some of my lovely co-workers offered to take care of him. After 1 hour I had to change his nappy and from the sounds of it he had marshalled half the office to do things for him. That kid loves getting people to do what he wants. He was eating marshmallows and drinking apple juice. I love him so much.
After the office I went to the doctors to have my foot looked at, the doctor did a quick check of my foot and based on how localised the pain appears to be, he diagnosed it as Retrocalcaneal bursitis, it's an inflammation of the soft tissue that sits between the Achillies tendon and the bone of the heal. He gave me some Prednisolone so fingers crossed it helps. It's really affecting my day to day ability, not to mention other parts of my body are starting to ache because I need to compensate for the pain while walking/moving.
I'm getting really excited about Snapforms and see it becoming a crucial tool all over our business. I decided to just rebuild the broken form yesterday and will be contacting their support to see if there are any tools available to automate the process of creating repetitive fields. This form has over 900 fields and it creating/formatting/making rules has been one of the most tedious processes in my life.
2022-07-02
The Prednisolone has helped a bit, at least I think it did. Hard to tell if its placebo.
I went deep on Snapforms today. Like... very fucking deep. I spent all morning doing tedious form creation work, then the afternoon diagnosing Javascript. I sent a detailed email of my story to their support email and hope we can find some sort of solution. Otherwise all the users of that particular form will be getting an extension on their browsers to redirect requests.
Holy shit, I literally worked for 16 hours today. I need to take tomorrow off.
2022-07-03
I've had enough of this foot pain, it's bloody irritating. I'm so thankful not to be doing the milk delivery job anymore, this would have been terrible in that job. I'm going to call the doctor tomorrow and start some more strecthing.
Didn't do much today, tried to switch off and relax. Wife and bub went over to the in-laws before lunch so I had some free-time to catch up on TV shows, have a nap. Still ended up doing some work in the evening.
My approach to nutrition has reverted to old habits. The voice that used to tell me that I was consuming food as a way to mask negative feelings has been much quieter lately than the voice of desire/pleasure/devour. I have to give permission for that other voice to be louder.
Still have the Windows icons/asset project in mind. My goal is for that to be my mid-morning work tomorrow.
Made a fret to end the day. I'm feeling structured, ordered and not very creative today. I expressed this through predictable lines and plenty of whitespace.
2022-07-04
Doubled up the Prednisolone just to see if it would start working, unfortunately it didn't. I didn't end up calling the doctor but I will be tomorrow morning.
Snapforms got back to me about my support request, they've enabled a beta feature for exporting/importing forms and began investigating the issue about slow field calculations.
It's absolutely bucketing down here at the moment, have to go 20km slower than the limit just to feel safe.
I ended up doing a small bit on the Windows icons/assets project in the mid-morning, but not as much as I would like. Tomorrow... tomorrow.
Office was quiet today and it was quite refreshing. More fun with Snapforms and even introduced our marketing manager to Microsoft Power Automate, look at her go.
Made sausages, veggies and creamy mushroom sauce for dinner. Today went so damn quick.
2022-07-05
My intention was to have a day at home today, but everybody needed a spare laptop at work this morning. It was non-stop today.
Was naughty at had kebabs for dinner.
2022-07-06
My foot has settled into a routine of pain: It's worst in the morning and gets gradually better throughout the day, least in the evening and then a bit of aching at night. The doctor I saw doesn't have a booking available for 13 days so the best I can hope for is to get on the cancellation list.
Had fun with Adaptive Cards today and used them to drastically improve a process that our management team uses. Instead of being notified on Microsoft Teams and manually having to modify a Sharepoint list, they can respond from things directly in Teams and it automatically updates the Sharepoint record. Sooo much better. This no-code stuff is pretty good. However I find after using it for a while I miss actually writing the code itself. Tools for different purposes, I guess.
Life has very much been about work lately, and I'm finding it hard to allow myself time for other things. I think I'm using my foot pain as an excuse; part of me thinks that if I just bury myself in work (which involves a lot of sitting), I'll be able to ignore the pain and get that sense of accomplishment. All the while, things in the home are starting to get behind and I'm probably not spending as much quality time with my family as I should be.
I'm having tomorrow at home so I can focus on some programing, but will take the morning to do some non-work related things. I'd really like to get that old Windows assets project finished as it has been hanging around in a half-finished state for too long.
2022-07-07
My foot is actually feeling a bit better today. Oh god it's such a relief.
Worked from home today and did some tasks, I needed to take it a bit easier than usual. I also did some really exciting work on the Windows assets project and starting a new recipes section of this website.
Did induction training tonight.
2022-07-08
Forgot to fill out today.
2022-07-09
Foot is getting better.
Went shopping and visited mum today.
My cousin came down from Sydney with her two young kids tonight and we went to visit at our grandparents.
The Windows asset project is getting closer now, I'm almost finished and I'm happy with how the actual article turned out as well.
2022-07-10
It's finally done! Old Windows Assets is online. That was a longer than expected process and I'm glad it's out of my consciousness for now.
My foot is getting better still, and I've started to do some light stretching.
2022-07-11
Didn't write anything today
2022-07-12
Didn't write anything today
2022-07-13
Didn't write anything today
2022-07-14
Didn't write anything today
2022-07-15
Didn't write anything today
2022-07-16
Didn't write anything today
2022-07-17
Didn't write anything today. And realised I hadn't written anything in over a week. My daily habits have gone to shit and I'm starting to feel quite stressed about it. My foot has basically healed now but I've once again become addicted to sugar.
I am determined to go for a short walk tomorrow morning and get back on the bandwagon.
2022-07-18
I did it! I set an alarm for 20 to 6, got up, stretched and went for a little walk around the block. Building better habits once again :)
My foot was a little tender this morning but I think this may be something I have to learn to live with.
Work was alright today, feeling a bit overwhelmed with how much I have going on, especially with my team member being on holidays. The little issues are starting to really grate at me and have me asking why people don't learn the skill of searching the Internet to help them solve their problems. Thankfully my managers are going to help me prioritize my workload and help me shed off some of the more boring and tedious activities.
2022-07-19
No walk today, I attribute it to not getting everything prepared the night before. I've made sure to get my shoes, clothes and music player ready for tomorrow morning.
Toddler had swimming this morning and he is really starting to improve, he has started to use his arms as well as his feet. Really proud of you mate.
I had a really good meeting with my managers and got everything sorted. I have been putting way too much pressure on myself and need to learn to let go a bit and not take it so seriously.
That being said, I'm still powering on with the power automate work and have started to look into some sort of accreditation or formal training I can do. Also started investigating Power Virtual Agents. This tool may be really useful to smooth out some clunky workflows that require switching between Sharepoint and Teams.
Had some time to do some Stack Overflow answers over the past few days.
2022-07-20
Bad habits
2022-07-21
More bad habits
2022-07-22
My bad habits lead to late nights spending alone,
Conversations with myself how could anyone know?
Swear that it will be so different but it probably wont
I got lots of things to lose, I lose, I refuse.
OK I'm no Ed Sheeran but the bad habits in my life have run rampant.
2022-07-23
It's amazing how many things in my life are built around my healthy morning walk habit. On the days I do that habit, I feel better, I eat better, I am better. It has been so easy to let these bad habits consume me and just run on auto-pilot, journeying from addiciton to addiction. It's so fucking annoying. I need to be better for myself and for my family.
Poor toddler started showing cold and flu symptoms and a RAT and PCR confirmed he's got COVID-19. It's going to be a long week. Stay strong little man.
2022-07-24
It was a long night. I ended up sleeping in bed with toddler, he was crying every 10-15 minutes before I got in there with him. He seemed to sleep well after that.
I decided to undraft an article I've been working on that is a cheatsheet of the things I've learned working with Sharepoint and Power Automate. I found myself referencing it quite a bit so it makes sense for it to be easier to access.
2022-07-25
A sick and bored toddler, a 6 month old and working from home is a laughable attempt at futility. Wife and I have split parenting duties as we want to try and prevent her and bub from getting sick as much as possible. To say this child is needy right now is like saying the sun is mildly warm on the surface of Mercury. I love you child.
I'm feeling quite run down today. Sniffles and a shit load of sneezing.
Oh yeah, it also rained, hooray for rain and not being able to allow child to run around in the backyard.
2022-07-26
Woke up feeling a little bit better but still crap.
There was a few emergencies at work I needed to firefight. It's a good distraction to be able to be consumed in it, until a pair of little hands tug on my shirt and demand full attention within microseconds of announcement.
Also played a bit of Stack Overflow here and there.
I love you child.
Wife made a delicious roast tonight, thanks sweetheart, love you too.
And bub, I can't forget you and the love I feel for you. I just want to kiss and cuddle and hold you but will have to resist for a couple more days.
I'm feeling gushy so decided to meditate on those feelings with a fret:
Also I hate to say it but I think I'm already tired of this design, it didn't last long.
2022-07-27
Feeling a bit better today.
Had a PCR test this morning with wife and bubba, fingers crossed things come back negative. Toddler is doing better today.
Work was quite routine today.
Went for a walk in the afternoon with toddler, need to get back into healthy habits on the regular!
Made a tasty dinner thrown together, like a tuscan chicken curry-esque meal? It was something with what was left in the fridge.
Also quite excited about this thing called Live Coding. I used to make music years ago in university and the thought of making music and videos with code is pretty bloody cool!
2022-07-28
My aspirations for this morning while I was in bed last night and the reality that met me were two different universes.
I wrote a TODO list last night and got 2 of the 7 things on it done.
I took it easy at work and instead of flipping between multiple things I concentrated on one thing, while I felt less productive overall, it's a good approach as that 1 thing I did do feels complete and "more done".
Had a look at one of my side projects tonight, a disability support guide for the Illawarra. I had left this a while ago because the javascript library I was using to filter and search the dataset, itemsjs had some funky behaviour where selected filters would automatically be added to the top of the filter list. To me this feels weird, so I made a pull request! Hopefully it gets approved. Before I started working on it, I had biases against npm and doing things "the javascript way", but after working on it a bit, I'm definitely curious to do more... It was just so damn easy.
I also had somebody make a pull request on my one file uploader script. These two things have me feeling inspired about open source!
Made a tasty fritatta tonight and watched The Orville, really enjoying that show. Seth McFarlane has done a great job.
Toddler still going through COVID, poor guy coughing in the morning and night, but he's full of energy otherwise. Here's to hoping he'll be getting over the hill in the next few days.
So while the day didn't start off on the right foot, it sure ended on it.
2022-07-29
I forgot to write something for today.
2022-07-30
It was a rough night. I fell asleep about 11:30 and woke at 2:30 with bad stomach cramps and a fully congested nose. One toilet trip later and 3 hours laying awake I decided I'm fucking fed up with feeling like shit every day.
Sure I can blame toddler's COVID and the isolation caused by it, but that would be attributing blame to only a couple of causes, two of which aren't at the root of the problem.
The reason I feel so shit all the time is because my addictions have once again become prime motivators in my life; Mainly shitty food and excessive computer/internet use. These two things have such profound impacts on my daily habits, including; No morning walk and stretching, crappy sleep schedule, less time with my family and friends, over-working, neglecting hobbies and interests other than the computer.
Well after that shit night I've fucking had it. I need to get back into the mindset I had a few months ago, and be mindful that just because life threw some hurdles my way doesn't mean I should give up and lean into negative patterns of behaviour.
I got out of bed and went for a short walk around the block. And by doing that, felt motivated to come and write this. Already there is evidence that positive habits beget positive habits.
The pull request I made on itemsjs the other night had been accepted which felt really positive, so I added another useful feature this morning. It was also merged. It feels great to contribute to open source software.
2022-07-31
I fell asleep at 9:30 last night and woke up this morning at 8:30, sleep straight through the alarm and somehow even slept through toddler jumping all around and yelling my name. I'm bloody tired.
We did RATs this morning and we all came back negative. You can hear the crowd cheering, hooray!
We went out to the park and toddler loved being somewhere not at home, as did we. Then we went to the shops and he had meltdown after meltdown because he wasn't getting his way. Oh boy, this child is going to be a challenging 3 year old.
Came home, had a short nap then started working on my companion card directory project, it feels good to be doing some Python again. While the majority of states and territories required updating, Python and the BeautifulSoup library make web scraping so easy that I completed a bulk on the work in one afternoon.
I also made some fun additions to the index. I can't believe it's almost been 8 months of doing this blog. My perception of time is so skewed, it feels like such a short length but also such a long length of time. I wonder if that's someone everyone experiences.
Wife made a tasty dinner tonight: rissoles and veggies, yum yum!
This was a bit of a temultuous month. I've been reading back to my blog during March and April and find myself wanting to feel like that again, the unbridled motivation and positivity. My foot injury, then having COVID, then toddler having COVID has really flushed my overall sentiment about life down the toilet and I gotta pull myself out and dry myself off.