Happy New Year!

— Posted inCulture, Nature — 1 min read

Today we here in Aotearoa/ New Zealand celebrate the holiday of Matariki – the customary event to mark the beginning of new growing season.

Marariki (Pleiades star cluster))

Marariki (Pleiades star cluster)
Image by pbkwee – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rimuhosting/8311767303/, CC BY 2.0, obtained via https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107406838

Te Ara/ The Encyclopedia of New Zealand tell the story of Matariki:

Twinkling in the winter sky just before dawn, Matariki (the Pleiades) signals the Māori New Year. For Māori, the appearance of Matariki heralds a time of remembrance, joy and peace. … From 2022, a public holiday marking Matariki will be held in June or July each year.

Story: Matariki – Te Tau Hou Māori (https://teara.govt.nz/en/matariki-maori-new-year; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand licence (CC BY-NC 3.0 NZ))

Notice anything different in the photos of Matariki there?

Excruciating!!

— Posted inBrowser, Recent, Technology — 1 min read

“I used to know these things. I used to be good at this. C’mon!” said SecUnit1

I’m so out of practice.

Having come back to the Viv community after the decision to start a retirement life early, I am somewhat feeling lost. I have:

  • Made irrelevant posts to the developer blog about new Chrome releases. (They were very nice about it, gently correcting me that the Desktop versions use Extended Release Channel versions, not Stable. Thanks, gents. But, as SecUnit said2, having people being nice about your shortcomings can be so excruciating)
  • Submitted bug report under the wrong category and got told off3. (At least they didn’t try to be nice.)
  • Realised I don’t even know how to show images in forum post. (OK I suppose I can upload to a third party hosting service first and upload from there. But I don’t want to use a third party service if I can help it.)

I used to know how to do those things. This must be how SecUnit felt in System Collapse.

Ah well. I’m a retiree. Who cares. :coffee:

  1. Murderbot Diaries book 7, System Collapse (link to Overdrive elibrary general collections) ↩︎
  2. Murderbot Diaries book 7, System Collapse ↩︎
  3. “Thanks for your bug report. Note that this was reported as a security vulnerability, but it is not related to security. Crashers are stability issues, not security issues, unless they cause a controllable memory corruption, data loss or compromise, and if they can be triggered by a remote attacker and used to abuse Vivaldi users. For details of what we would consider to be a security issue, please see the following link: [1]https://vivaldi.com/security/how-we-rate-security-issues/#products Your report does not suggest any way for this to be triggered by a remote attacker, and cannot be used in one of the ways described above. Therefore, this is just a crasher. As a result, your report has reached the wrong team. We have converted it to a regular bug report, and passed it back to the team that handles regular incoming bugs.” ↩︎

Vax Day #2

— Posted inHealth & Fitness — 2 min read

I have COVID booster booked for this morning. Turning out wet and chilly. I’ve a big decision to make on what to wear. It has to be weatherproof, warm, but easy to take off. Hmmm.

Last year I had the 1st COVID booster and Influenza seasonal vaccinations at the same time at the work. But the work didn’t organise the 2nd C-booster; and I had to book myself, ended up later than I’d have liked. So I now I have to have the flu shot and COVID vax weeks apart this .

Turning 65 in Aotearoa New Zealand means I will become entitled to free vaccinations for a couple otherwise expensive shots. (source: NZ National Immunisation Schedule) So I will have four more shots to have this year:

  • Tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough vaccine (Boostrix)
  • Shingles (Shingrix)
  • COVID booster
  • Shingles (Shingrix)

I suppose I can reduce those to two vax days by combining the first two and the last two. More decisions for later.

:coffee:

PS: I’m guessing the chance for this post to attract attention of the Ant-Vax bots/zombies is small, given I only restarted this blog and has no regular readers. It may happen, though. See how it goes.

I’m Going to Retire!

— Posted inPersonal — 1 min read

Been a while since I last posted more than a line. There have been some rough patches in my life.

The latest bump was a workplace injury – very minor for office workers but rather disabling for a hands-on healthcare assistant. As I am turning 65 in a few months and have enough saving to get by; I have decided to resign altogether and ease into an early retirement life.

I’m not making any promises. But I may say I now have time for antiquated activities like blogging. See how it goes.

PS: The cat is still with me. Still a silly little monkey, though not much rodent hunting or tree climbing these days.