2017

Dec 2017 : This year I tried to fix everything. Everything. I bought a house. Found 2 boys. Found a handbag. Lost my job. Prayed. Found a job. Made fire... a lot. Got sick and wobbly just before Xmas. (twitter.com)

Stop reading now if introspections offend you.
Everything?
I probably set out thinking anything can be fixed, the physical or built things that break often that-is. I mean in the old days they made stuff to last. I still recall the old SONY set my mum had, it looked a lot like this one, and lasted for years and years, just like her refrigerator. 

So why does so much break, and what can I do about it? Fix it faster than it breaks? Just get on top of it, it requires loads of tools today, just to be able to work on stuff, but why all the throwaway stuff? Youtube is great for teardowns on almost anything you want fixed, and guides to fix it. So give google a try first. Anyway, my solution is superglue, the good superglue. Get it here http://softcircuitry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/how-to-repair-stuff.html

Bought a House
This was the painful part.
I at one point started making a mental list of things to fix, while we were in the buying process (which was drawn out and clearly shows also that property law in the UK needs fixing.) Basic things we knew, like the roof neede re-tiling, and the kitchen floor, the kitchen splash-backs, and the bathroom,... anyway the list went ape.  I stopped after hitting about 30. New things kept on coming up. however once we got moved in, I had already learned to put in a floor. Thanks to Peder Peterson (a Belgian who plies me with great imported beers) and his reciprocating saw, I got trained up in chipboard flooring. 3 slow days, one room, many plasters and scrapes.

The house buying was something I prayed about a lot to be sure, it was a long drawn out process, the owners were not divorcing themselves of each other and the house very well. At one point I was about to walk away. In retrospect, I should have put in an offer 5K lower, possibly 10. This is the part about life where I wonder if I have short-changed myself. l always assume that if I am good to someone, that they will return the favor, not this time. I am probably too trusting.

Found 2 boys
It is easier than you think to loose contact with teenagers, they go through a stage where day is no longer cool, and that will hurt, trust me it will happen. 
http://zaphodikusrealm.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/proud-of-my-son.html . More on this, as we go along.

Found a handbag
I found a handbag, belonging to M it turns out, it was really strange, I got home one afternoon, early for some reason, and just a few yards from the front door, on a pretty quiet high street was a holdall. It is on an A road, but that just means that more cars use it than makes sense. I left a message at the post office, and left it at a nearby respite center and at and the next day, we got a thank you note. Samaritans +1

Lost my Job
I'm not allowed to talk about this, but despite the process being painless, it was stressful to me. I got demotivated during the process, despite telling myself over and over, that it's not my fault.

Prayed
Well, not me, I want to send out thank you to Esther and Rosemary. It was always going to be a worry, a worry that nobody wants to hire you, or that you get hired by the wrong crowd for any reason. But having someone on your case with the Big Guy is just a guarantee that it's going to work out if not to my own plan, at least to a better plan.

Found a Job
This required a bit of examtime cramming to start off.

(post updated in Dec '24)

new job started, new bathroom

updated Dec '24

New job started at arm

That's with a small "a", something all the hip tech companies are doing. But that's not all that is new once you start working for one of the most invisible yet totally huge tech companies in the world. Apart from being very cool to work at a place that had almost invisible products everywhere, is the "in" jokes around 3 letters, a r m . I'll not spoil it, you have to work here to hear them all, and even understand them all. It's a very creative and hard working crowd.

New bathroom

Almost done , it looks brilliant, but some small things I did not expect.
- the grout colour gray needed to be a little bit lighter gray
- the towel rail radiator starts quite near the ground, which means it's less of a towel rail, but it should be fine
- the towel rail is bigger than thought, so the basin kinda lines up or does not centre well in the remaining space
The missus is wondering about where to put the toilet roll, so I'll have to sort that out pretty pronto myself. I had fun getting downlighters onto a string of lights this weekend, just hope I can get holes into the ceiling without cutting anything by mistake under the flat roof. Limited space and other cables in there too.

Boiler instruction manuals http://www.greenbrook.co.uk/eshop/files/files/T205-Ins-June-18.pdf

Updated - that job lasted a whole year, I think I struggled a lot with the traveling and being a bit lonely.

Singing rehearsal pieces

Nobody will know:

A note I made back in April of '23, long before I had to start takign singing seriously, but this is jsut a note, so here goes.

A Gaelic Blessing Deep Peace to You - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lF56VahTa0gn2JqLnJcUiK4lU2R-5Z6g/view?usp=sharing

Bridge over Troubled Water - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e0D6ul5nZ_wsfvUDGI8D005DxnZcOlGs/view?usp=sharing

BQQ recipe update

A note for future me (I write this in summer of 2023, and it's almost 2025 now)

I have said this before, I hate recipe websites. So I like to write up my version of a recipe and stow it someplace. I suppose that's a bit old fashioned. Almost like a circular technology shift.

Anyway, going to do a repeat of the BBQ with fish soon. I'm going to be adding aubergine and plantain.

A History linkup

(Wrote this during the great shutdown - but never published this at the time, so the date is wrong, but it needs sharing now.)

I'll have to find an old picture or two of us. This is a history lesson, it's not long in terms of years, but it's long in terms of miles. I'm sitting here writing this today, crying. My good friend Marinus has lost his best friend this week.

Marinus van Zyl

Marinus actually has many middle-names, he once recited them for us, there is a family tradition of giving each son and daughter in the family, successive names from the fathers middle names. A way of holding your family names which curiously would mean that sometimes your grandfather would have the same name as you. Marinus son, Manie holds this privilege, I hold the benefit of having met both of them. But let's start at the beginning. A bit of this is my history, just in my writing.

1991

Johannesburg city center. I'm pretty sure it was raining as I queued up to register for a programming course. I was a bit self-taught at programming at that time, but since I'm not university material, a practical course run by a certain company called "Van Zyl and Pritchard" was my way into the industry. It was a Cobol Programming Foundation certificate and going to be my ticket into programming. One of the training company directors was, Marinus father. A short course, co-incidentally also attended by one of his children, Marinus. I made one other friendship in that course in between lectures on a large yet packed second floor room. Craig Austin now lives in London. After lectures we would walk across town, run really most often to catch a train back home, and after that, a bus.

Nobody reads these

It occurred to me, that some people blog as a self-branding or portfolio building activity.

I probably should have started writing more of these personal signposts a bit more regularly, since there are very few landmarks here, marks I'm leaving for future me, almost like a diary, because nobody reads these, but almost like a personal wiki or a self-help guide. I tried making my own wikimedia wiki once to store all the info I had about transistors and odd electronics I collected, it was a lot more work to write up than I originally hoped. But it did teach me to be super comfortable with writing markdown. glad that this blog does not require markdown.

Interestingly the saying goes, that "our future is written in our past". And that's largely true, as knowing what you did before, lets you know more about what you will do next, but. Big but, when truly looking for change, honest change we might too often use the past to beat ourselves into a kind of submission to all of our past wrongs. 2 years ago, as parto f a change I wanted to drive, I started a bit of a writing exercise. Now this blog was always an inspiration outlet, but I was writing about computer games, and the audience and context did not fit, but the goal, was to start writing more clearly and purposefully. So I wrote my creative pieces as game reviews on Steam, and grew to 99 followers over a year, and am now at 150 followers. I wanted to learn to "Write-like-you-are-paid-to-write". And so now I am hoping that my writing style becomes more deliberate, because next up is a bit of blogging with more purpose than usual. So do stay tuned.

Let's see if this becomes another one of those new year resolutions.