Month: October 2025

Update: Alone, Bacon-Deprived, and Productive

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This is an update to my being bored at home alone post published on Tuesday.

Spoiler: still bored at home.

I’m writing this on Tuesday, editing it on Wednesday, and by the time it posts on Friday, everyone should be home again. With any luck, I’ll be wishing for quiet by then instead of complaining about how quiet it is now.

Funny thing, my kids and I all like American bacon. I’m a fan of bacon, period. British back bacon? Excellent. But there’s something about really burnt American bacon that’s just perfect. The kind so overcooked it disintegrates or shatters in your mouth. My youngest and I both love it that way. My older one just likes normal American bacon, no ash involved.

While they’ve been in the States, they’ve been getting up ridiculously early thanks to the time difference and sending me pictures of their breakfast buffets. Massive trays of bacon, easily a couple pounds of it, taunting me through email. It’s cruel, really.

My revenge? I send back pictures of me with the cat. Either on my lap or in his little hammock. It’s our counter-bacon alliance.

Anyway, I’ve found what to do while they’re away.

Aside from the boring domestic bits, laundry, tidying, a little TV, I’ve actually been writing. Or more accurately, dictating. I’ve been dictating for years, but I’ve been terrible at doing it consistently. I’ve had dozens of unfinished drafts, half-formed notes, and “ideas for posts” that never became posts. Recently I started clearing through all of that. Some of what I’ve been publishing lately was written a year or two ago.

But now I’m finally catching up, and I’m actually writing new things again.

The big change is simple: the quiet. When people are home, I can’t really dictate. It’s not like typing. Talking to myself while someone’s sitting nearby feels weird. My wife’s totally fine with it, but I still feel self-conscious.

Now, though, the house is empty, so I can just grab my iPad, look through my notes, and start dictating. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the rough draft is done. Editing takes longer since it is actually typing, but that part feels different, it’s quieter work.

So that’s what my week looks like: I eat dinner, the cat eats dinner, he climbs onto my lap, and I sit there petting him while writing. Earlier tonight, I edited a batch of stuff I’d written Sunday and Monday. Now I’m writing again, getting ahead, and planning what to post next.

I’m aiming to do more writing Wednesday, maybe a bit Thursday after the office, before everyone’s back home.

So that’s the update: still bored, still quiet, but at least productive. And surrounded by fewer pictures of bacon.

This entries picture is one of the bacon photos they sent me earlier.

Quiet Is Overrated

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This week is school half term. M is taking the girls to the States to see her dad. Originally I was going to take off the week, but I only took one day off. Last time they were away and I took some time off, I was extremely bored.

I don’t know what other people do when their families are away. Everyone sounds like they’re extremely productive and do lots of things that they wouldn’t do with their family around. That is not me at all.

M and the girls left first thing in the morning on Saturday. I was up to see them off and then proceeded to make a lazy morning breakfast and coffee and puttered around on the computer. I didn’t shower and get dressed until close to noon.

I spent the rest of the day doing projects on the computer and some things around the house on my to-do list. So on one hand I felt pretty productive. On the other hand, I didn’t leave the house all day.

On the Sunday I was woken up by the cat or else I probably would’ve slept later since it was the day that the clocks changed. I did more work on the computer and lots of research for some projects I was working on and I did tidy up a bit. But any hopes of going anywhere or doing anything exotic didn’t happen. I did go out to the market to get some food for the week, so it was an improvement on Saturday.

I do have plans to go do an activity on the day off I planned on Monday but like I said, I don’t know what people fill their days with when their family’s away. At the idea of it I’m excited for the free time. Then as the time gets closer I realise it’s gonna be way too quiet in the house and I’ll be bored since I say constantly my children are my entertainment budget. They really are. I’m writing this and they’ve not been gone two full days yet and I already miss them all.

Mmmm??? 20-Year-Old Bread

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After Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, I realized I needed to do some basic disaster planning. I didn’t live anywhere near Louisiana, but I had friends who were affected, and it got me thinking about what I’d actually do in an emergency.

So, not long after, I bought a full case of U.S. government MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. Technically, they’re not supposed to be sold, but plenty of people on eBay had them. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have some emergency supplies. At the time, I tested one meal to see what it was like. It was fine, edible if uninspired, though a few of the options weren’t things I’d ever eat by choice.

Fast forward to when we moved overseas. The MREs came with us, naturally. I packed them up as part of the emergency stash. By that point, they were already ten years old, but I’d read stories about people eating 20 or even 30 year old ones that were still fine, just a bit bland. They’re vacuum sealed, built for long shelf life, and if you store them in a cool, dark place, they can last far beyond the stated five years.

Of course, I didn’t exactly follow that advice. They spent years in the eaves of the loft, cool for most of the year but pretty hot in summer. Recently, while clearing out storage, I found the entire case still there. And that’s when I thought, maybe it’s time to finally get rid of them. Even if they’re technically still edible, it’s hard to justify eating something that’s older than some of my colleagues.

Still, curiosity got the better of me. I opened one up, planning to cook it just for fun. I didn’t go as far as heating the entrée. Using the built in heating element would have required to goto the garden outside but I tried the shortbread cookies and the flatbread. The cookies were perfectly fine, and the flatbread, other than a faint aftertaste, was totally edible. No mold, no weird smell, just “slightly” vintage bread. I may open another one and try heating it up someday soon.

The package I opened even had a 20 year old pack of M&M’s, which I may let the kids test in the name of science. Overall, I’m impressed. The stuff really does last. It even made me hesitate about throwing it all out, replacing it wouldn’t be cheap. Then again, the original case was meant for one person, and with four of us now, it wouldn’t last long in a real emergency. Plus, I’m not sure anyone else would agree to eat 20 year old flatbread.

Still, credit where it’s due: the U.S. government sure knows how to make food that refuses to die.

You Get What You Get And You Don’t Get Upset

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When the girls were in nursery school in New York, they learned all sorts of things, as you’d expect. But a few stuck with me because they were catchy little rhymes meant to help them remember. One of those has stayed with me all these years, and I still use it as a reference today:

You get what you get and you don’t get upset.

The teachers would say it when the kids were picking teams, or snacks, or whatever else was being handed out. Naturally, some kids would get upset if they didn’t get exactly what they wanted. The rhyme was a simple way to set expectations and keep things fair.

I love it because it’s so blunt, so true, and surprisingly useful. These days I use it now and again at work. People often want to do things that simply aren’t possible, and they’re not thrilled with the alternatives. That’s when I’ll joke that I learned long ago from my kids’ nursery teachers: you get what you get and you don’t get upset.

It always makes me laugh. Not everyone finds it as amusing as I do, but it’s one of those little truths of life that’s hard to argue with.

That Time Apple Air Tag’s Did Save The Day

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In recent years I’ve seen plenty of people recommending the use of Apple AirTags when travelling. Some airlines even let you share your AirTag location with them so they can help track down lost luggage. Looking back, I guess I was a bit ahead of the curve, because as soon as AirTags came out, I bought a bunch and put them on our bags.

In 2021, we flew to Madrid on British Airways and I had AirTags on all four pieces of luggage. The flight was delayed leaving Heathrow due to BA issues, and when we finally landed and were waiting at the carousel, I opened Find My to check. Three of the bags showed as nearby, but the fourth was still pinging from Heathrow. Immediate red flag. Sure enough, someone from baggage claim walked around with a list of names, and my bag was on it. The one with all my stuff, of course.

We filed the paperwork, went to our Airbnb, and I made do with what I had. The next day, baggage services still claimed they couldn’t find it, even though by then the AirTag clearly showed it sitting at Madrid airport. The people on the phone were rude, unhelpful, and not even located at the airport itself. After a full day of frustration, one finally suggested I go to the airport in person.

So I did. It was a 15 to 20 minute cab ride, not too bad. The crazy part was how I got in: I was told to knock on a door past customs, explain myself to security, and they just waved me through with no checks at all. As a security-minded person, that was insane. But it got me in. I showed staff the AirTag location, they asked for a photo of the bag (which I barely had), and after 20 minutes of searching in the back, they found it.

I was relieved. Without the AirTag, I doubt I would have seen that bag for days, if at all. It had already been two days and I’d had to buy clothes just to get by. The phone support was useless, and it was only the tracker that made the difference.

Since then, I’ve been completely sold on using AirTags whenever we travel. I’ve also learned to always take a photo of the luggage beforehand, and to make sure the AirTag batteries are fresh. It’s the only reason I got my bag back in Madrid.

The Story of The Office Space DVD

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Back when I was doing a more operational support role in New York, many years ago, late nights in the office were a regular thing. We’d be doing maintenance on call centre equipment, phone systems, or routers. Later at Thomson Reuters, it might have been after an incident, a big release, or some other late-night work. The difference from today is that back then you were mainly physically in the office. At Partsearch especially, we had to be on site to plug into things and get the work done. At Redcats, we did plenty of late-night releases and I likely had the DVD with me, though I don’t recall ever actually using it there.

When we worked late, it wasn’t all bad. We’d order dinner, build up for the work, and there was a kind of social element to it. Somewhere along the way, I started keeping a DVD or two in my desk. Yes, actual DVDs. No streaming, no downloads. One of them was always Office Space. It just felt appropriate. Not that the movie was really technical, but it resonated. Every now and then, if we had time to kill, we’d put it on and watch together. It became a kind of techie ritual.

When I moved on to Thomson Reuters, the tradition came with me. Office Space lived in my office alongside my work gear. Eventually, we took it a step further and started planning actual movie nights. It wasn’t tied to late-night activities, we planned the movie nights just for the fun of it. We’d grab a conference room, order snacks, and watch something together. For a few months, this became routine: we would wait for those working the shift to finish at 8pm, then we’d grab dinner and head back to watch a movie. The first one, of course, was always Office Space.

Looking back, it was a fun little ritual that made the grind easier. Nowadays, it wouldn’t work the same way. My laptop doesn’t even have a DVD drive, and everything’s streaming so I do not know were that DVD is now.

The Story of Collecting VPS’s

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Back when I was working at Thomson Reuters in New York, maybe eight years ago now, a friend told me about LowEndBox.com and the cheap VPS you could get on subscription. At the time, I was mostly doing my hosting at home, maybe just running this blog, so I filed the info away and didn’t do much with it.

After moving to the UK, I started checking the site periodically, and he wasn’t wrong. They had some wild deals, like a decently powered VPS for under $20 a year if you caught a special. Considering I was used to paying $15 a month for fairly limited hosting, the idea of getting a whole VPS for the cost of one month, but for a full year, was too good to ignore. Most of the big offers came around the holidays such as Black Friday, Christmas, or New Year, but there were deals sprinkled throughout the year too. Eventually, after seeing a Black Friday promotion, I thought: for $20, I waste more on random stuff, why not try this? I grabbed one hosted in the Netherlands and liked it a lot.

That was the start of my little VPS collection. One of them now runs hosting for my blog, set up with YunoHost on Debian. It’s been my favourite self-hosting stack: simple to install WordPress and other apps, stable, easy to back up, restore, and even migrate. I’ve moved my hosting from the Netherlands to Ireland with no real issues.

Since then, I’ve picked up a few more in different places. I’ve got a couple in Texas I’ve been using as VPN endpoints, another one I pay about €8 a month for as a remote node in my backup network with around 2 TB of storage, and a handful of ultra-cheap hosting plans that cost me less than $15 a year. Some of those I don’t even really use anymore, like CPanel hosting for multiple domains, but the VPS setups are still going strong.

At this point I’ve got three or four VPSs running different services, plus a couple of extra hosting plans I may or may not renew when they come up. I’m tempted to add another storage VPS just to play around with Borg backup, though I still keep Resilio running for sync backups. Between the VPN endpoint in the US, my regular hosting, and the backup nodes, I’m definitely collecting VPSs.

Will I pare it down someday? Maybe. But even with all of them, the cost is still half or less than what I used to pay for a single hosting plan ten years ago. Pretty crazy, really.

W Sisters and The Minecraft Experience

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Over the term break before school started, I did a bunch of day trips with the girls. One they were especially excited about was the Minecraft Experience.

They both play Minecraft on their iPads, and one even shares a realm with the other so they can build together. Most of what they do is in creative mode, so this experience was right up their alley. I was curious too. I’ve played Minecraft, but not often. The motion and movement on screen usually gives me a headache, the same way first-person shooters like Halo used to. That’s a whole other story for another time.

The Experience itself is near Canada Water on the Jubilee line. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be pretty cool. You’re given these glowing orbs (Bluetooth or NFC, I assume) and as a group you complete tasks to save your village. The first couple of rooms ease you into how the mechanics work. From there, you move through different spaces where the walls and floors themselves are interactive, with lots of projectors, sensors, and some interactive tables thrown in. You use the orb to trigger actions, and it changes colours as you go. The whole thing felt very Minecraft in style.

The girls loved it. It lasted about an hour, which felt a little short given the price, but the experience itself was worth it. The only disappointment was the merchandise shop at the end. Everything was overpriced and nothing really stood out as worth buying. We skipped it and went on to do some shopping, grab lunch, and make a day of it.

Overall, it was a fun trip, something different, and it definitely delivered the Minecraft vibe the girls had hoped for.