21 years ago today I got together with my wife to-to-be.
Today we shared a large measure of Dooley’s toffee cream liqueur – around the 21st anniversary of my first sip from my favourite whisky glass. It’s a Glencairn (thistle-shaped) bought in 3 days time 21 years ago from a little shop in Edinburgh.
And today is also the 20th anniversary of my proposal of marriage, in the romantic setting of a ferry ship cabin on the way back from a mini cruise to Bruges. She says I did it in international waters to avoid future complications. š
Narrator, “There were many many future complications.”
Have you ever proposed a solution absolutely guaranteed to fix a computer user’s stress levels to someone who continually cannot remember where they saved stuff, why they cannot figure out the contents from the names of their documents?1
And had it rejected because they know where to save stuff and know from the documents names what’s inside?
Yeah.
I know some of it’s from the stress of the demands of the task they’re involved with, a need to complete the work, but why ask for help in the first place?
In this case my lifetime2 of experience, both calculated and gained from bitter experience, counts for nothing.
A 2017 photo of a work desk with old-fashioned phone, simple mouse, chocolate muffin, plastic cup, family photos, computer system unit, pieces of paper, and a folded towel embroidered with the words “DON’T PANIC”.
Vent venty vent vent.
Slightly-related link to ‘Computer assistance required’ – not my current stimulus. It’s from February 2 2014 and definitely not about the most challenging now ex-colleague I’ve ever had the pain of dealing with for 11 excruciating years: https://bt3.com/2014/02/02/computerassist/↩
Since 1981 (when I started work) I’ve possibly owned more computers and set up and administered more systems than most. ↩
This post is a shamelessly opportunistic stream of consciousness follow up to Larry’s Why I Hate Working From Home and Jeremy’s Why I Like Working From Home. Larry’s is a response to his employer’s unwelcome shift from office to remote working across the board, and Jeremy’s more of a summary of a self-employed life. (I’ve never been able summarise, so this might be unfair; read their words first).
Like theirs, mine is a personal view. Unlike theirs I couldn’t have written this without standing on the shoulders of their giant-ness.
Ermā¦ there’s aren’t any indications from my employer that it’s likely. Winter’s pretty much over here and there are no stay-at-home mandates, thank goodness.
Then
My experience of working from home (or working at home as I still think of it) is limited to a total of 6 months enforced by the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. 6 years ago now. I was lucky enough to be loaned a laptop, so I could choose where I worked. Dining room table it was, spread out but stopping the proliferation of newly folded clothes we usually see.
A dining room table repurposed into a working desk. Laptop, mouse, headphones, reading glasses, phone stand, notebook, 4-colour pen, opened beer, telescopeā¦
What
I’m pretty tech-savvy so already had links to everything I needed – apart from paper records of course. And in fact I prepared the guides for the department to make their transitions easier. SharePoint, at least for me as a content creator and user, holds no scary corners now.
Teams, the Microsoft thing, was a godsend. I’ve heard other services are somehow better but I integrated SharePoint and Teams and built something useful we still rely on.
Free of casual interruptions, although my productivity didn’t exactly soar, I found my focus on even complex tasks was easily maintained. I hacked hours off jobs, created new methods that made things sustainable, and checked out all the major productivity/project planning methodologies/sites until I found one that clicked for me.
I found a comfortable niche.
Oops
My wife hated my constant presence. Hated the fact my posh headphones leaked the other side of conversations (and the music I used as a daily crutch – from bands I’d never previously have listened to). Hated my muttering when working through stuff. Hated the simple fact that she still had to travel into work.
My daughters were off school too, compounding the strife at home. I attempted to enforce a framework of study and rewards. Eventually the schools caught up and imposed some order to their education. I discovered I can’t teach, not as bad a thing as I’d thought when I began.
Now?
Not sure. I wouldn’t want to do any of it again, but if circumstances dictated I could. My girls are older, one’s at university and away most the week. The other in her final year of high school has a degree of independence I simply didn’t at her age.
We had the garage converted from a dumping ground into a room (with a heavy fireproof so sound-deadening door) and so I have choices.
We started a new contract with our broadband supplier, so speeds are easy multiples of what we had 6 years ago. 6 years ago I had to set up a supplementary router to work around a wireless bug in the ISP’s device. Again a validation of my expertise in areas unrelated to my work. (I use the term ‘expertise’ here, I think it means what it might not mean).
Bottom line
Anyway, if my employer decided to retain my services as I head towards retirement and thus obsolescence, I’d do it, sure.
What it’d do for our mental health, who knows.
When I started my working life, and even though I acquired my first home computer that year and bought into the ‘computers are our future’ ideal, no way could I have envisaged doing my job at home.
Would I want to?
Not in the same way, heck no.
And I would rather not prepare for the chance it might happen.
A cupboard full of sauces, condiments, cans and stuff to be cooked. Of particular interest are the sweet chilli and garlic sauce, chipotle sauce and Tabasco & sriracha sauce bottles.
For the first time in years I’ve lost weight to the point it shows – to others and to the waistline of my stretch jeans. Sure it’s only 10lbs/4.5 kg so far, but I’m impressed. I don’t care how long it’s taken.
The only negative for this Brit, I’ve one less thing to moan about – that I can’t lose weight no matter what I try. š
A prepackaged, microwave/oven-cookable veggie burrito. Beans, cheese & roasted peppers.
So how?
More frequent and longer dog walks, and I’ve started jogging with Pumpkin dog (1 year old now) during them. The jogs are only a few hundred yards/metres at a time though, mainly because she needs to stop to sniff things. It’s honestly worth the aching muscles.
Although I’ve eaten more healthily for a couple of years now (health scare) this time around there’s been no measurable change in diet.
At the start of 2025 I’d intended to blog more frequently. And here we are, 2 months since my last post and back to being a content consumer.
I’m not disengaged but yet again there’s too much happening in the world for me to offer up my opinions without offending someone/everyone, so I’llā¦
We’re 2-1/2 weeks into a garage conversion – having a garage too small for our cars and previously full of 18 years of stored crap turned into a room suitable for our girls to entertain in. Or maybe one to escape to and shut the world out.
A partially cleared garage prior to conversion into a second reception room.
Apart from the tradesmen breaking our hot and cold water and central heating system (after they’d moved the boiler out of the room for a reason I still cannot fathom) it’s gone well so far, but we’re now at the snagging stage. It’s not a small list.
We also had new flooring laid for 50% of the downstairs area, and apart from being unable to shut the kitchen door that’s oh so nearly done.
The house is dusty throughout and strewn with stuff we can’t really put back yet, not until we’ve had the job completed and we’ve signed it off – and yeah, paid what’s left.
Today I’ve got a bad back, the worst pain in years, so everything is making me grumpy – especially today’s New York Times ‘Spelling Bee’ puzzle and its inability to allow ‘eutectic’ – which is somehow not in its word list. Bah!
On Thursday I signed up to the Butternut Box dog food delivery service and was pleasantly surprised to see they’d deliver an introductory pack of 2 weeks of food the very next day.
The sign up and variety selection process was pleasant enough I suppose, and I looked forward to getting, erā¦ told Pumpkin to look forward to some lovely new food.
She’s been a very fussy eater of late, probably because she’s started the transition from puppy to lady dog. So we’ve tried introducing her to new varieties of biscuits, wet foodā¦
Anyway, as soon as their delivery partner’s email dropped in my inbox my heart sank. dpd have a well-deserved negative reputation. But hey, how difficult is it to deliver a box within a 1-hour window?
Bear in mind I’d instructed Butternut Box that our safe space is to the right of the house behind the bins. In the shade. Bear in mind I’d already informed dpd too. Easy.
I arrived home just after my wife had returned with daughter1, to a box dropped upside-down at the front door in the heat of mid-afternoon sun. The contents had started to defrost but at least Butternut Box said they could be refrozen if still cold to the touchā¦
So I complained.
I tried to complain.
The reply-to email address is a ‘no-reply’. The from email address was returned to me with AI instructions to try another one, which elicited an AI response letting me know that I could save a safe space location in my Butternut Box account and with dpd.
Sigh.
Right, let’s close the account.
That’s not possible without a message to either an AI or via a telephone call. So I asked the AI to delete my account. Nope, had to wait for a human to contact me to do it.
So I waited.
Just tried signing into the account in the app and on the web site. Nope, it’s now an invalid email or password.
Erā¦
They shut the account without a request for feedback. To be fair it’s what I asked for, but it all seems just so impersonal.
No, I cannot recommend Butternut box and I emphatically cannot recommend their delivery partner dpd.
But hey, at least Pumpkin has a new branded bandana. It’s too small to fit her, but hey we can’t have everything.
A Butternut Box branded bandana in a table with, in the background Pumpkin, a female black cavapoo dog. She’s waiting to be let out to chase a neighbourhood black cat invading her back garden.
The advice I was given was it was over-watered. Or under-watered. Or needed more light. Or had contracted a plant disease (despite not being close to any others for a couple of years).
So this is what I’m left with.
A sad and utterly bedraggled peace lily plant.
After cutting all the dead stems off I teased the dead half of the root structure away and threw it out, worked some compost in and around the roots, gave it a light watering and will leave it a week before its next feed.
Oh, the pot liner had drain holes in the base, and I’d simply not thought to empty the stagnant water out again – which is why I got a big mug full last time. Yes, of course I sniffed it this time!
The worst that’s going to happen is it dies and I buy a fourth. Or a cactus. But after seeing a couple of recent new leaves I’m hopeful I can assist in resurrecting itself.
Or, maybe I’ll do a search for “un-killable house or office plants”!
Pumpkin puppy had her first major haircut a few weeks ago, going from this delightfully shaggy dog:
Pumpkin puppy, a cavapoo dog in need of a haircut.
To this somewhat severe poodle-styled cut:
Pumpkin looking surprised after a rather over-zealous haircut. It’d be fair to say none of us are happy with the cut – making her look more like a poodle than a poodle-Cavalier King Charles spaniel hybrid.
Though we’ve used the grooming place for 10 years (with Ruby dog), and though Pumpkin’s first trim was fine we probably won’t be going back again. They completely ignored my wife’s instructions to give Pumpkin an overall trim, just clearing her eyes and arse of the longest hairā¦
To be fair, she can see now. And her hair will grow to look more like her ‘breed’ should.
My wife bought me a CD (Compact Disc) for Valentine’s Day, for my car, to be played when she’s not in it. Though she respects the influence the band had on the music recording industry she’s not a fan of Talking Heads. She’ll listen to other people’s cover versions though, and is especially fond of Simply Red’s ‘Heaven’. Weird.
But I have a shiny new CD.
Talking Heads ‘The Best Of Talking Heads’ compilation album. Pumpkin puppy wonders if she can chew the case. No Pumpkin, over my dead body.
It took way longer than I wanted to fight my way through the plastic wrapper, the pull tab on the strip running around it was completely hidden. Fingernails scrabbling at the wrapper overlap at the top edge of the case used to be the way I got in, and today was no exception.
Extracted it, placed it in the DVD player under the TV, closed the tray and pressed ā¶ļø.
And this is what I see.
A useless CD track listing in a TV, indicating only Track 1, Track 2, etc., though it does show track durations.
What century are we living in?
Well, right now I am living in the nineteen-seventies and eighties – matching the dates of the tracks (from 1977 to 1988). And do you know, it wasn’t a bad time to grow up after all.
Anyway, for me there’s just one track missing from this 18 track album – and it’s ‘Making Flippy Floppy’.
My favourites on this disc though?
All. They made enough to leave a tremendous legacy, but not enough to get tired of. And while I like to think after all these years I’ve heard all of their stuff I know I haven’t.
Ok, ok.
‘This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)’. It’s on right now.
I wanted it to be played on the last App.net social network’s Monday Night Dance Party, but making the request spelled the DJ’s @ name incorrectly.
