Category: Personal

List-o-mania

I have, once again, felt stuck, spinning my wheels in the mud. There is an unpleasant, and possibly vicious, cycle at play here in my head: my planning falls apart, I feel like I am not getting anything done, my anxiety spikes, I cannot plan cogently. Repeat and repeat and repeat like some damned overwrought Philip Glass piece. I am trying to look at this dispassionately, because if I can understand how this happens, maybe I can head it off next time.

There are a few factors – health, political chaos, and too many months of uncertainty at work. Having a work and personal phone, and a work and personal computer, and disconnected accounts across both is really not helping either – I keep dropping things between the various calendars and todo lists, which has been exacerbated in the last few months by traveling. You would think that separating work and non-work would be easy. I can partition off my 37.5 hours and leave it at work, can’t I? Well, no. Because I’m trying to juggle calendars and waking hours and mental effort between work and non-work, and I cannot just turn off my brain at the end of the working day. Increasingly I feel like I would do very well if I cloned myself at least twice, so that different instances of myself could live full and uncomplicated lives. And I really resent the 3+ hours tied up each day in commuting, even while I know other people are doing the same or worse.

Continue reading “List-o-mania”

An Open Letter to Australia.

If you believe adult asylum seekers are not, entitled to their claims, to they should be “sent back to where they came from”, or they are “queue jumpers”: If you do not say to the elected Australian Government that this is wrong, then you are tacitly supporting this treatment of children

Would you like your children, or your nieces and nephews, or your friends’ children to go through this?

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing .

Journalled Out

I’ve been thinking in recent days that I could use something journal-ish. There are two aspects to this thinking. For one, I tend to accumulate documents and links to things that will probably be useful someday, or I want to remember short-term, but they get smeared everywhere. Bookmarks across several machines and browsers, text documents tucked into folders optimistically labelled ‘to-do’ or ‘in progress’, stuff in various note-taking applications. All of which leads to a definite sense of mental clutter which I really want to eliminate. I have identified that one of the things that makes me anxious is physical and mental clutter, a sense of being overwhelmed by Stuff To Take Care Of Right Now.

It would be nice just to declare mental bankruptcy, throw all this in the bin, tear off my clothes, and run naked into the woods to live as a wild man, feeding on berries and roots. Regrettably while this simple life has certain attractions – not the least being an opportunity to dispense gnomic wisdom and entirely fabricated home-spun philosophy to unsuspecting passers-by – it does not appear to be paid particularly well anymore. Besides, brambles, briars and badgers are not a good match for running naked through the woods at my age.

Initially I’ve been thinking about something like Day One, which has the attraction of being somewhat insulated against future obsolecence (as far as I can tell, the data is stored in individual PLIST files), as well as having a frictionless interface. That’s important. The benefit of pencil and paper is that it’s always on. The disadvantages for me are that I cannot read my own handwriting, and generally cannot fit a usefully large notebook in my pocket. Also, so much of what I need to refer to comes with a URL or an image associated with it, there’s friction arising from needing to manually link together disparate data repositories.

The elephant in the room for all of this (see what I did there) is of course Evernote. I was startled to discover how many apps I already have on phone, iPad and desktop natively link to Evernote, and the environment Evernote occupies is rich and varied. Which makes me a little nervous: if I went this way, would I then still have different bits of data scattered across multiple interfaces? Additionally, even though they appear to be an honest and reliable company, the product still revolves around having my data on servers for a ‘free’ service.

Sigh. Thinking is in progress.

Going Backwards

So one of the things that showed up in the bundle of mail I received on the weekend was the annual statement from my Superannuation fund. In Australia there is a compulsory scheme, where part of your salary is stuffed into a super fund, locked away until you retire (or die). This has made a lot of people very angry, and a very small number of people very wealthy, and is probably indirectly responsible for the obscenely high rents in most of the major cities.

Then there’s the insult on top of the injury: my money that they claim to be carefully invested lost somewhere over $8,000 in the year. And they charged me a bit over $1,000 to carefully manage my funds backwards. Any other business would be out of business if they tried that, but the Super funds are hallowed, sacrosanct and politically immune.

Let’s just say that I intend for the fund managers to be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Sharpening the tools

Before I packed it all up, I had a workshop habit that I suspect other makers of sawdust shared. Before embarking on any work, I would spend some time cleaning up the workshop area. I would make sure the bench was clean and clear, sweep the floor, check that tools were sharp and sharpen them if necessary. I’d check the tables on the big tools for rust, and the tracking on the bandsaw. Sometimes I would get out particular tools and lay them out on the bench, ready to go.

And all the while I was doing this, I would be thinking about the work I was going to engage on, think about the processes I was going to follow, the pattern of work. I find this enormously relaxing, and a fantastic way to focus. I found that I would be trimming away, sweeping away, everything in my head that I didn’t need for the job at hand.

Over the past few years I’ve been trying to take the same approach to programming work, with a similar resultant focus (and one day I hope that I find it relaxing too). Thus, today, I’m re-reading Better Builds with Maven. Sharpening the tools and cleaning the bench.

One nice thing about re-reading books like this, particularly well written ones, is that there is always something to learn, some nuance that pops out that was previously invisible, highlighted by fresh experience. Even the import of a simple statement like “convention over configuration” can change over time.

Just like buses

You wait forever, and then two turn up at the same time.

Which is what happened with job offers on Friday. In a couple of days time, when contracts have been signed, I’ll tell you which two companies, and why I chose one over the other, but suffice it to say that I found myself in the remarkable position of having two really good offers come in within a couple of hours of each other.

I’ve dealt with a lot of agencies and agents while I’ve been hunting for work in London. Most of them have been ok, a few of them have felt incredibly dodgy, and three of them proved to be very good. Maybe I’m biased since these were the ones that got me the best chances, but it did feel that these three companies seriously thought about my reported history and interests, and made intelligent and dedicated attempts to match that against client needs. So, some free advertising for them. If you’re looking for work here in London, I strongly suggest you talk to these guys and gals:

  • ABRS went out of their way to put interesting things in front of me;
  • Salt have a good focus on marketing candidates and helping candidates market themselves
  • Bearing have an excellent understanding of the market sectors they aim to service, and a good understanding of technology

I’d also like to throw some laurels in the direction of BITE Consulting. They’re a small shop, with a fairly specific aim – placing people into contract roles, generally folk sourced from the colonies – but the products they offer to contractors are extremely competitive and sensible. If I’d been pursuing contract work (which I would have turned to if these permanent positions hadn’t popped up), there is zero doubt in my mind that I would have worked through and with BITE.

We now return you to regular programming.

Boxing On

Today’s goals are to cart boxes up to the storage unit, inventory the storage unit (a task which will be made difficult by it being full of boxes), and cart things in boxes off to Lifeline.

Oh, and a lot of washing, vacuuming, dusting, vacuuming and washing.

The infuriating thing about boxes is how difficult and expensive they are proving. So far we have found exactly one place – Bunnings – that has left-over cardboard boxes for the taking and using. It’s called recycling. This morning, not wanting to make the lengthy drive over and back, I went down to our local shopping mall. Not one, but three stores that I approached told me that it was not their policy to recycle boxes this way, that all their boxes had to be flattened according to policy and placed in the recycling bins according to policy. And that I could buy some archive boxes made out of recycled boxes. Well done Coles, Kmart and Choice.

I estimate I’ve spent around $250 on cardboard boxes, tape, bubble wrap and sundry packing stuff over the past couple of months. I shall treasure these boxes when they arrive, and carefully preserve them for re-use. According to policy. Maybe I can sell them at a profit.

Now I’m counting

There’s less than a week left now, and I would like to feel more excited and enthralled, rather than inanimate and slightly broiled. I’m blessing the air conditioning that has been repaired, and hideous expense, just in time for me to leave, as every opportunity sees me sitting in shorts and shirt in a room chilled to 20 C, hoping that my brain will soon start working again.

Our departure party was quite successful, and I was pleased that we drank or disposed of a very large amount of mead, and that the locusts swept through the box-of-stuff and took most of it away.

The packing is almost complete, although it appears completion can only be approach asymptotically and never actually attained. Some critical point was passed in the past few days, a phase change, a crisis, as the number of items on my to-do list fell rather than rising.

Giving away items has proved to be one of the most complex parts of this whole exercise, although spending a disturbing amount with tradesmen to make the house liveable has not been fun either.

What has bewildered and frustrated me most is that people who are getting Free Stuff can be so difficult about actually coming and picking it up. Ok, I do know that I get a benefit from them taking it away, it’s stuff that otherwise I have to lug off to Lifeline or St Vincent de Paul, but the lounge is still an Aladdin’s cave of items with name tags on them, waiting for someone to come and pick up whatever artefact the tag is attached to.

Frankly it’s going to be a relief tomorrow when I take whatever is not being packed for shipping, and not being packed into our backpacks, and take it to some charity. So if you were totally gonna get it sometime real soon now… too late.

Not Counting Down

Still not counting down. It’s been a productive week, helped along by having set myself a calendar of tasks for the week, and having met all the goals so far. Today’s effort is a good example of the sort of day I”ve been having for a long time, but particularly this week as we get very close.

Up early, coffee, left over paella. Check how much paint I have, walk down the street to buy cheap brushes and some decking oil. Spent the morning in the heat painting the front porch, the back stair rails, and the rails around the front porch. The nice thing about the heat was that it dried very quickly, and I’m pleased with how much of an improvement to the appearance of the house such a simple thing has made.

Then I went mad with the decking oil and drenched the front and back stairs – both are unpainted natural timber since I had them repaired, and the oil will keep them as protected as paint ever will. I also managed to get oil and paint in my hair, up my nose, in my ear and all over my clothes. But it’s done.

I also cleared out the study, other than the remaining computer, and we carted boxes up to the storage unit, boxes to Delia’s parent’s house, and still had time to stop for Gerbinos for gelati on the way back.

Finally I sat down with everything that was potentially to be packed into my daypack, put it in, took it out, reduced it, put it back in again, and poked around to confirm that it was actually functional and that I was not taking things too phenomenally dumb.

Now, the sound of crickets and cicadas, and possums thumping on the roof. Barking geckos, finally a cooling breeze, a glass of wine and some goats-milk cheese.

This is going to work.