Kids cricket is winding down as the sun sets. Yay summer! 🏏
Microblogvember: A pet peeve of mine is when people describe an asterisk as either an asterix or a star.
Watched Episode 1 of For All Mankind and enjoyed it. It brings to mind how fragile the success of the Apollo missions were, despite how much we take it for granted now. 📺
Over the last 24 hours I’ve been running on a brand new 27" iMac 3.1GHz 6-core i5. Compared with my old 2013 MacBook Pro this thing screams. I know it’s not an iMac Pro but this is plenty enough for my needs. Also glad that I swapped out the default Fusion drive for SSD only.
Work
Day 7 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available.
All in all I have a pretty great job. I’ve been doing it for long enough that I feel I have well and truly mastered the fundamentals.
With my interest in personal productivity I have constructed a range of efficiencies into my process flow to make things easier for me. This enables me to increase my overall productivity, do more with no more effort.
Despite all of this I am still working with people, and they can’t be automated, and the margin for error is greater than that of machines and systems. As a result, sometimes I have days where I turn up for a scheduled meeting only to find out that they are no longer available or that there was a ‘diary mix-up’.
When this happens, I don’t get upset. I see it as an opportunity to either recover some bonus free time, or it unlocks the ability to get ahead on some other piece of work.
I enjoy the responsibility of self-management like this. I think I would struggle having to return to a job that was micro-managed, or doing something that was a small cog in a larger wheel. I like owning the process soup to nuts, and making things work the way I think is best.
Microblogvember: We tend to think that we always have complete agency over our lives. If you stop and think how much is actually left to random chance, it can be a bit frightening.
Adobe Technical Support chat was so slow in linking me with somebody, that I was able to trawl forums and test random solutions. Just when somebody got to me, I had solved the problem. Great work, Adobe. 🤔
Microblogvember: I take my kids to the park and inevitably they find a stick to play with. Trees make the most versatile toys ever known to man. A stick can be a proxy for any number of imaginary things.
Family
Day 6 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available.
I am most comfortable within a nuclear family. I grew up in a family with my Mom and 3 siblings. We had a few extended family members, but most lived in different parts of the country or overseas.
As an adult the nuclear family is again the structure we are living in, except now I’m the Dad. My two sisters live in the same city, while my brother has recently moved to Switzerland. There’s no animosity between any of us, but we simply don’t see each other that much.
My wife has some family on her side, and those are the people we see the most.
In reality, we live our life as a small nuclear family of four. This is generally fine, except for when we would like to have a grown-up night out, or have some respite from children. Without the babysitting potential that comes from an extended family, we have to go to the open market and find a babysitter. That added cost and inconvenience does mean that we don’t get out as much as we might like.
While that’s not ideal, I also know that we are creating a strong and safe environment for our kids. They don’t have any fears of violence, abuse, drunkenness or any of the other things that occur behind closed doors that can lead to the destruction of a loving and peaceful childhood. That is a wonderful gift we are giving them, and I’m sure, as adults, they will appreciate that more than not having enough uncles and aunties to visit.
At the checkout of the IGA grocery store three employees and I each claimed our childhood James Bond. We had Brosnan, Moore and Connery. Plus one, “no idea”. Friendly staff for the win!
I’ve escaped from Migration Assistant hell!
I’m in the midst of Migration Assistant hell.
Nature
Day 5 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available.
Right now in Perth we are in the perfect time of the year to enjoy nature. We are moving into nice spring sunshine with temperatures in the mid-twenties. This is a time to enjoy, before the Perth furnace gets cranking for summertime and I can’t step outside without getting burnt. The grass is still green from winter, before it browns off over the summer months.
I visited Queens Gardens in East Perth. Nature was in full bloom. Multiple groups of ducklings were running after their mothers. A group of cygnets were sitting under the shade of a tree. The cygnets were a grey colour, before they grow their unique black feathers; black swans - a feature of Perth’s naturescape.
There is a downside to Perth nature, and that is the flies. A few years I have a recollection of our then State government cutting the amount of funding dedicated to fly management by dung beetles. Over the last few years I am convinced that we have more bush flies than we used to. It’s frustrating, but if I want to take the good of nature I suppose I have to accept the bad.
You do get used to doing the what I know as the Aussie wave.
I’ve bought an annual subscription to Harmonizely as my replacement for WhenWorks, which is shutting down at the end of 2019.
Microblogvember: When I was a kid my friends and I would typically play sport on the street. Cricket and tennis were the two typical games. I don’t see kids doing that anymore.
Food
Day 4 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available.
Over the past year I’ve been enjoying food a bit too much. Concurrently I’ve stopped playing sport. This has led to an imbalance in the food in/energy out equation.
In turn, I’ve seen the growth of a generous belly for the first time in my life. I’m not particularly pleased about this. My kid calling me ‘fat Dad’, is jesting that cuts a little too close to the bone!
I’ve been trying to do a little more exercise but time is a constant challenge. Plus, if the exercise in question doesn’t involve a ball, I have a hard time maintaining interest. While I’ve done gym work plenty in the past, I’ve never loved it and have a hard time sticking with it.
What I can do instantly is reduce the input side of the equation by changing (and reducing) what I eat. So I’ve put myself on a diet. I’ve turned to the service of Lite n' Easy to deliver portion controlled, dietician planned meals. The food is okay, albeit somewhat repetitive.
I miss the more flavoursome fattening food but hopefully the changed diet will pay off over the next few months. I reckon I need to lose about 10kg. That will get me back to what I consider my ‘standard’ weight. I don’t need to lose it all in the next month, but I need to lose it over this next year.
Catalina has filled my drive with hundreds of wifi diagnostic files for no apparent reason. Cool.
Microblogvember: If you want to be arithmetically precise, don’t say average; instead say mean.
A shipwreck from 100 years ago is still stuck at the top of Niagara Falls. Wow!
Failing
Day 3 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available.
It seems that part of the human condition is to view failure as an end in and of itself. I think it’s better to consider it part of the process towards success.
A life well-lived encompasses a procession of trade-offs. We necessarily fail to do all the things we might want. We can’t be good at everything. We don’t have time to do everything. Are we failing because we don’t manage to do it all? Are we failing because we’re not multi-tasking our way to success?
That kind of thinking is probably a path to depression.
“Failure is not an option.” — A phrase credited to Gene Kranz and Apollo 13, but never said in reality - probably because he knew failure is part of the equation.
Failing is a trade-off. Failing is inevitable. It’s not possible to achieve the highest goals without accepting failure along the way. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up over our failures, because they are necessary to build success.
Time is limited. A failure to do something can represent a successful engagement with something else. I think I’m making the case for a Mr. Holland’s Opus approach to life, failure and success. Our greatest success might be hiding behind what was first thought a massive failure.