January, 2022
2022-01-01
Happy new year! (Apologies to any phone users)
2022-01-02
Well that was a fun time-off period, back to reality!
Chores, tasks, things to do. I did some of them. It's very hot today.
2022-01-03
Holiday period over, and a new work year begins.
Did some programming and watched the casenotes come through.
Tidied the house a bit and did some washing.
2022-01-04
Need to figure out a way to get back into the morning walking habit again. And generally back into good routines. Feeling off and it doesn't feel like a good start to the year.
Worked this morning, helped my wife out with some of the things she had to do.
Found out about pixray this afternoon and it looks really interesting. Whipped up a VM and going to play around with it tomorrow.
2022-01-05
Again no walk this morning. Starting to feel a bit discouraged by it but I won't give up.
Weather was up and down today. It was overcast so hopeful for a cool day, then the humidity came, then the rain came, the humidity remains.
Did some tech support calls today and fixed a few bugs.
Got rained on when I went grocery shopping and almost slipped and sprained my ankle. Fun times.
Had no success with pixray so far. The list of dependencies is intimidating.
2022-01-06
It was absolutely bucketing down this morning, and it was a rough time sleep-wise. So I only did some light stretching this morning.
Did some good work with Microsoft Flow today, creating a better Staff Intake process for RLA.
Getting ahead early on birthday presents this year, inspired to do a bit more Perl work.
Baby is due in a little over 1 week, exciting!
2022-01-07
No walk, more work. Nothing too out of the ordinary today.
2022-01-08
Mother-in-law came over today and we cleaned out some of my wife's grandad's stuff. Slowly getting there with organsing the chaos that is our garage.
Spent a few hours with HP support as one of the RLA supports has lost HDMI output. Doing videos to send the support agents highly recommended as it saves a lot of back and forth questions.
It was bucketing down last night and ended up being very hot today. Gotta love summer.
Went out for a BBQ tonight to a place with a pool. The water felt amazing and it was really fun to watch our son swim, laugh and play. Good night overall. Also got slightly tipsy.
2022-01-09
I read an interesting article last night about "Breaking the Chain" and realised that I had been giving myself excuses on breaking the chain for my walking. This morning I decided not to break the chain and got out there and walked. It was difficult but well worth it. My singlet is drenched with sweat, my breath is heavy and my heart satisfied. I will endeavour not to break the chain again.
Troubleshooted an issue with one of the RLA laptops today. It appears that the HDMI port has gone kaboom. HP's support was nice enough, but the requirement to use Whatsapp was very disappointing. Regardless, a video uploaded to Youtube showing the issue expedited the process somewhat.
Went shopping for the Sunday roast at the in-laws and to go to the pharmacy to pick up some 1ml syringes as my wife is now expressing colostrum. Every other shop there were signs "No RATs", "RATs are out of stock". The pharmacist said he was glad I came in with a request that wasn't a RAT. Poor guy must be getting hit pretty hard right now.
When I got back a rainbow lorikeet had gifted me with one of it's feathers. Thanks birdy.
2022-01-10
The weather is pretty miserable this morning so my semi-conscious mind was very tempted to stay asleep. Channeling my inner Tony Robbins helped me say no to that negative thinking and to get up and walk! Just over 2km walk. Very humid again this morning so my singlet was as drenched as yesterday. It feels good not to break the chain.
Started provisioning some brand new laptops today and finally have been forced to use Windows 11. I'm extremely disappointed in Microsoft for taking away the ability to easily install a system WITHOUT the Internet. It turns out it is still possible but requires a few steps:
- Press SHIFT + F10 to launch the command prompt
- Enter taskmgr
- Click "More Details"
- End the "Network Connection Flow" process
- The computer will go to a black spinning screen and reboot
The vision that these manufacturers and Microsoft have for the future of computing devices is scary; A device that has no local capabilities at all. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Also did a fret to wind down the evening. I think I need to start using odd-numbered dimensions, I think they produce more interesting patterns. This one is a little bland.
And after naming the following image, I noticed that I had been naming all these days with 2021, woops!
2022-01-11
Struggle to get up and exercise but got there in the end this morning. A smaller walk than the day before but a walk nethertheless.
Been flat out with work this morning, management meeting and plenty of issues to keep me occupied.
I donated platelets in the middle the day and recommend everyone who is willing and able to donate as well.
Went to ALDI this afternoon and the stock levels were abysmal, I wonder how long this shortage will last.
Fixed a pretty glaring problem in the casenote processor this evening.
Logging off now, that was a full day.
2022-01-12
I seem to have lost the blog entry I did for today.
2022-01-13
Went for a walk this morning. Thinking about getting up just to stretch worked well. Luckily I decided to do a smaller walk as when I put a foot through my front door, it absolutely started to piss down. phew
Taking my son to swimming this morning and they will assess whether he is ready to advance to the next class. He made it after the first exercise we did!
Did some support work and sent son to sleep at his grandparents so we can go to the hospital in the morning.
I did a fret tonight to meditate about tomorrow. Also starting thinking about how these frets are designed and how they could be generated. I haven't thought much about HOW I make them, I kind of just.. make them.
2022-01-14
Our son was born today! He was a healthy 3kg and mum and bub doing beautifully. My wife had to stay overnight as she has gestational diabetes and they ask to do observations of baby.
2022-01-15
Wife spent the day in hospital. Ran around getting the house ready for mum and bub to come home this afternoon. My oldest son is excited to meet his little brother.
Things went really well, they are acclimating together and my eldest is excited to be a part of taking care of him.
2022-01-16
Oh boy, I forgot about the waking every 3 hours during the night.
I'm so appreciative of our families for being so supportive. Wouldn't be able to do this without them. I love you all!
So much washing, the little guy has been vomitting a bit after feeds.
It's now 9 PM and I'm exhausted. I really want to get back to doing a morning walk as well.
Looks like COVID and other maladies have hit RLA hard so I need to be in the saddle tonight and in the morning to help get the casenotes processed correctly.
Also with the number of photos that have been taken of me today, I can safely say that it's time for my hair to go. The baldness has well and truly won and I need to start living my life as a person with little hair on my noggin.
2022-01-17
New bub is acting like a little alarm clock rising at 5:30 AM. My wife encouraged me to go for a walk but my brain was already back on the pillow after changing bub's nappy. I will endeavour to do it tomorrow.
Casenotes are a bit hectic this morning. I am meant to be on parental leave but it was a bit of an emergency as a few people are out sick with COVID.
My wife got me a nice surprise breakfast this morning as thanks for being a husband. We had some tasty waffles, pancakes and cannelonis!
The weather this year has been humid and conducive to apathy. It's difficult to stay motivated to do chores and such.
We walk for a small walk as a family this afternoon. It was really nice, albeit I was dripping sweat afterwards.
2022-01-18
Went for a walk this morning. It felt really good.
Eldest son had his first go at swimming lessons without either his mum or I in the pool, he did a great job!
Another humid day in south west NSW. Really hoping for a southerly buster one of these days..
2022-01-19
I didn't go for a walk and regret it now a couple of hours later. I feel crabby and irritable and unfairly treated my son when he was just being a toddler. I need to work harder to do that morning exercise for everyone's sake.
It was a fairly chill day today. I whipper-snippered all my hair off and took a few support calls from work.
I've been having a lot of fun filling up my NAS with rips of legitimately purchased DVDs of my favourite TV shows and movies. I've seen the likes of Sonarr and Radarr and I think I may need to start using it... to help keep my digital copies of media organised.
2022-01-20
Bub was out of routine this morning so we awoke at 4am instead of 5. It was pissing down buckets so I decided against going for a walk.
We had a newborn photo shoot this morning and had some special Taco Bell for lunch, yum!
Visited an old friend for the first time in quite a while, it was really good to catch up.
2022-01-21
Went for a walk this morning. It's so much easier to handle a toddler after a little bit of activity to wake me up first!
Did a few chores around the house that have been sitting in the procrastination pile.
Tested out some monitors that I have laying around and to my delight they are still functional. I have plans to upgrade my battlestation to include them.
Lots and lots of baby cuddles throughout the day.
I spent the afternoon and evening working on a Simple Perl Image Gallery Generator. It was fun to do a bit of programming that wasn't work related.
2022-01-22
Didn't feel like I slept a wink during the night. Woke up an hour later than usual at 6 and went to go for a walk. Suddenly my toddler arose and demanded my full attention. We are going to go for a walk later in the day to make up for it.
Found some Rapid Antigen Tests at our local pharmacy thanks to Find a RAT. A 20 pack for $295.
My grandparents came over today to meet new bub. It was awesome.
Bought myself a 500GB SSD from Facebook marketplace for $40 and will be replacing the 100GB one in my desktop that I use for backups. I will then transplant that 100GB drive into my media consumption laptop as it seems to be freezing and going slowly lately. The spinning rust seems to be rusting a bit hard.w
The summer heat really picked up this afternoon so I spent most of it laying around in the loungeroom.
Unfortunately the hinge clip on the left-hand side of my Audio-Technica M50X headphones has broken. There are a few guides on how to fix it so that's going to be fun journey.
2022-01-23
Went for a walk this morning and it felt great. It really makes a difference in how I can deal with toddler in the morning.
We hung around home this morning.
Went to the in-laws so toddler could play in the pool they got him for Christmas, we had lunch there as well.
We had pizza for dinner.
Our internet went down tonight. Should be back up by the morning as Aussie Broadband are pretty reliable.
2022-01-24
Woke up earlier thanks to bub waking up a bit earlier for a feed. It was actually really nice to start my walk before 5. It was still dark and there was literally nobody else around.
Unfortunately the internet has not come back online. Aussie Broadband says it is an issue with their upstream provider (Telstra). groan
Also some other terrible news today. I found out that Google is removing their free G Suite Legacy product. I've been using that for my domain email for over 10 years now. Luckily we have until the end of April to set up some new type of email. Quite upsetting as Google promised it "for life", but then again we weren't paying for it and got a really good product for all those years, so it feels hypocritical to complain too loudly.
The outage is still ongoing for almost 24 hours so I set up Launtel on UNI-D2. It only took 5 minutes from signing up on their page to having an active NBN line. I'm extremely impressed.
2022-01-25
It was raining this morning so no walk for me.
The Internet outage seems to have cleared this morning. I am going to wait until tonight so switch back over to Aussie Broadband just in case.
Son went and did his second week of swimming in the pool by himself, he's doing so good, love you mate.
Did a couple chores around the house during the day and did a support call.
Brother and his partner are down for a few days while they pick up my brother's dog. We are having dinner together and they are meeting bub.
I've now had my Synology NAS for about 2 months now and I'm really happy with it's performance so far. I still have an article about it in draft state that needs to be completed... eventually.
Speaking of articles, I finally kicked my butt into gear and finished off the second half of the My Waste My Future article.
2022-01-26
Happy Australia Day! 🇦🇺
Went for a walk this morning, at a decent pace as well. I came home feeling invigorated and motivated. An hour later my toddler was awake and I was dozing off on the lounge because I stayed up late finishing that article last night. Thank god for Blippi because it meant I could get in a half hour snooze.
We went to my grandparents for lunch, always fun when we go over there.
Spent the afternoon lazing around and my friend came around for dinner.
Overall a pretty relaxing day :)
2022-01-27
Walked again this morning, felt good to get back into the groove of things.
Played with computers for a good chunk of today. Transplated SSDs into their respective locations and worked towards getting my HP MicroServer N40L up and running with a few 4TB and 2TB hard drives. I think I will try unRAID on there.
Running into some trouble with my DVD/media ripping PC "Hephastus" (named because of it's ability to really burn if needed). Booting from USB doesn't seem possible and there are driver troubles with Windows 7. There are also issues with getting Handbrake running on the older system. Going to try Windows 10 tomorrow and see how things go.
Mum, dad, brother and his partner came over for dinner again before my brother goes back home tomorrow morning. It was really good to see them.
2022-01-28
Went for a longer walk this morning, just shy of 4km. Bub got up an hour earlier than usual and I said "fuck it, I'll walk anyway". Turns out walking this bit earlier is actually much nicer because it's darker so the weather is cooler, I feel less self-concious and there's less people around in general.
Performed a Google Takeout to prepare for the possible upcoming De-Googling event. I had a look at my Youtube history to see some of the earliest videos I had liked back in August 2009, here's a sample:
The Internet used to be so fun before the corporate interest infection and me getting old and jaded.
I unsuccessfully put Windows 10 on Hephastus as USB booting on that motherboard just... doesn't work, and the ISO is too big to burn onto a DVD. I opted to go with Windows 8.1 instead. The machine is not network connected so it's not a big deal that I'm using an older version of Windows.
I spent the evening researching how to set up a site-to-site VPN between my parent's house and my house.
2022-01-29
I tried to go for a walk this morning but my eyes were practically glued shut. I spent 3 hours sleep-parenting after my son awoke earlier than usual. He had a pretty unhealthy breakfast of snacks this morning.
Went and did a platelets donation again today. Afterwards I felt extremely drained (combined with the relentless humidity today) and had a nap.
Got my media ingest PC up and running with Windows 8.1 and installed all the necessary software. I have begun to rip a VHS for a friend this evening.
Parents-in-law came over for dinner as they were back from their fortnightly holiday. It was really good to see them.
2022-01-30
January is coming to a close. Unfortunately I did not go for a walk again either today. I could feel it in my back later in the day. I need to find something deep inside to help keep me motivated. I think I need to have a goal to feel attractive.
Spent the day at my in-laws so toddler could go swimming in the pool and we could take advantage of the air conditioning in their house. I'm about ready for summer to fuck off at this point.
Watched the case notes come in this evening.
2022-01-31
It's the last day of the month and I forced myself out for a walk. Only a short one this morning as nature once again called. I did a lot of thinking on my walk this morning about my relationship to food. Thinking about how much I ate yesterday combined with the candid photo of myself that I saw in our family group chat. This led to thoughts of how uncomfortable I've started feeling in my own skin; Bending down is getting more difficult (especially if I'm bloated), running after toddler is getting more difficult, having energy to do the daily required chores is getting more difficult. In other words, I need to be smaller so life in general is less difficult.
Sure I've been doing this walks semi-consistently but it is not enough. I need to fundamentally change my relationship with food. I need to eat less and eat better. I am a Pepsi Max fiend and that will probably be one of the most difficult things to restrict intake.
My toddler woke up just after 5am so I slept with him on the lounge until 7:30 which was really pleasent. We rushed to get him off to daycare and then started work. It's been a fortnight since bub was born so I'm back to work proper from today.
I spent the morning dealing with casenotes, the process becomes really icky if somebody either doesn't send theirs in or if there are unforseen errors inside their spreadsheet.
My wife and I got some sneaky KFC for lunch. Was presented with a fun situation at the drive-thru:
We went over to the in-laws again for dinner because it's my brother-in-law's birthday today.
It's the end of the first month of the year already. It truly has just flown by.
I made some great progress on a script to help audit our staff folders.
See you next month!