Yearly Archives: 2024

Read more about the article Walking in a winter wonderland

Walking in a winter wonderland

I’ve been trying to restart my aborted ‘go for a walk each day’ habit. I could not say I have been successful: I’ve managed two days in a row, and feel like that’s plenty of walking for the rest of the year.

The walks are lovely despite my quickly fading interest in my physical health. We are having our first ‘real’ snow of the season at the moment: it started falling early this morning before I woke up, and I’d wager it will still be falling when the sun sets in a few hours. It makes the world look strange and freshly-born, and with an accumulation of perhaps 8 centimetres so far it does nothing to make the walk any harder.

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Read more about the article Email accounting
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Email accounting

I can tell when a holiday is near based on the volume of spam email in my inbox. I receive twenty or so spam emails per day throughout most of the year: this is the curse of having a 20+ year old email address. But when the taps open wide in holiday season.

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Read more about the article Finding things to be grateful for

Finding things to be grateful for

I mentioned in October that I was not yet practicing daily gratitude. I decided to fix that and, as is the routine for me, I felt compelled to buy a couple of things to get started. Thus far I’ve managed to find several things each day to feel positive about.

I probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to start this, though. The next four years of craziness and likely despair across our Southern border are going to be challenging to set aside each morning. But I am making the attempt, and finding it is a helpful habit to work on.

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Read more about the article MeOWch…

MeOWch…

Our cat Pie (Magpie) has been under the weather for a few days. He was hiding and a couple of the times we saw him try to eat he hissed and ran away from what we were feeding him at the time.

The ‘food’ he ran away from was a treat- a little quarter-sized dollop of milk. We decided to get him to the vet pronto given his reaction and the fact that this happened twice on two days. It was a bit of an adventure and we learned a few things in the process

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Read more about the article Not the end of the world… hopefully

Not the end of the world… hopefully

Trump has won the presidency again. The American people have proven once more that they are, in the majority, outrageously poor judges of character as well as full of hate, fear, and bigotry. The Republicans now hold the Presidency, the Senate, the majority of state Governorships, and the Supreme Court: the House of Congress is almost certain to end in their hands as well. I am, to put it mildly, disappointed.

So what now? What can we expect in the upcoming four years starting in January of 2025? I have no crystal ball, but I have some thoughts. And think it might be interesting to look back on this post in a few years, assuming I survive to 2028, to see how many things I worried about came to pass. My thinking here is based on what Trump has said, the contents of Project 2025, and my own speculation.

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Read more about the article The wheels on the Roomba go (not very) ’round and ’round…

The wheels on the Roomba go (not very) ’round and ’round…

Irene and I have three Roombas in our house, two of which are in working order. I spend a fair bit of time and money maintaining these bots, but maintenance on these machines is generally a rather satisfying process for reasons I’ll get into.

This was true until very recently, when our s9+ started throwing ‘uneven surface’ errors and stopping mid-clean pretty much every time it ran. If you have ever owned a robotic vacuum, you probably know that a big reason for having these machines is to magically and automatically keep the floor tidy. Failing on nearly every clean is not a happy situation.

This post is about the problems I had with our s9+, the great service I ultimately got from iRobot support, and some suggestions for the future

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Read more about the article Jeff Bezos is a pathetic coward

Jeff Bezos is a pathetic coward

There is a lot of anger and anguish pouring out on the internet over the past 48 hours. The Washington Post, a bastion of the ‘old guard’ news media, has chosen to be silent on their recommendation for the 2024 U.S. election.

Their stated position is that this is a ‘return’ to historical political neutrality. But they haven’t been quiet about their recommendations in previous elections for the past several decades. Why the sudden shift? Because Jeff Bezos is a narcissistic and pathetic little pissant coward. The editorial staff of the Washington Post had an endorsement of Kamala Harris ready to print, but Bezos stopped it. One of the richest men in the world is cowering under his $200 billion dollars of wealth against the possibility that the Almighty Trump might win the 2024 election.

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Read more about the article Online anonymity

Online anonymity

Is it possible to be truly ‘private’ while still having some sort of online presence? How much sharing is too much? What can the ‘bad guys’ find out about a person online?

These are all reasonable questions to ask. I respect that some people make a conscious choice to be ‘anonymous’ online, and aim to separate certain aspects of their personality from their ‘real’ identity. There can be any number of perfectly valid reasons for having such concerns and working to retain a degree of anonymity.

I read some good thinking on this topic from Lou Plummer and from Vixiss on the Viscissitudes blog a while back. As for myself, I don’t really attempt to hide who I am behind different presences online. I’ve had chats with people over the years who seem surprised that a ‘savvy’ technical person would be so seemingly unconcerned about their personally identifiable details being available on the internet. I’ve tried to explain my thinking with varying degrees of success, and this post is another such attempt.

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Read more about the article Practicing gratitude…

Practicing gratitude…

It is Thanksgiving here in Canada this weekend. I really don’t think much about this holiday: Irene asked if we were making a special meal, and we agreed to order pizza later and save the big dinner thing for Christmas.

But I do often think about being grateful for what I have. I haven’t made a commitment yet to practicing daily gratitude or anything quite so progressive, but I do feel that making an effort to account for the benefits I receive in life is worth while. In that vein, here are a few things I’m grateful for at this point in 2024.

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Read more about the article Making the OceanWP theme behave

Making the OceanWP theme behave

I recently updated this site with a new theme and a few other changes. I had a few struggles understanding how the basics work, and since then have been working on some fine-tuning. It has been somewhere between frustrating and fun, but I feel like I understand a bit better now how to get the OceanWP theme to do the things I want it to.

It is all done via magic… er, no, actually it is done via CSS. And a lot of help from the OceanWP support folks: being able to get prompt support makes paying for the theme seem a bit less painful at least.

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