Today a courier dropped off the wrong package – I assume he mixed up my street name and another local street starting with the same letter. But I don’t know that, so I’m waiting for the courier company to sort it all out.

Fun games.

Real first world problem here, I know, but it’s still frustrating that after two years of doing BTTR (not to mention the 15 years of tech journalism before that), there are still so many PR companies not communicating with me. Makes it hard to write about those products…

I have so much tension in my back and shoulders right now. Repeatedly find myself hunching and have to consciously correct my posture.

Ended up in the Wayback Machine for the Giz AU archives today looking for something, but I wasn’t prepared for the grief seeing my old fur ball smiling on an article…

Before Christmas, I got to the final mission in Star Wars Outlaws. Instead of playing it, I decided I would explore and do some extra side missions.

Friends, I haven’t played it since. Instead I’ve been playing FC24 and WWE 2K24, and enjoying both way more than I should.

I feel guilty about it, too.

I feel very much over it all today. Had a phone call from a recruiter last week about a role. She was lovely and suggested I make a number of edits to my CV to better suit the role. 3 hours of updates later, I sent it off and received good feedback. This morning she called to say that the client … read more

This week our washing machine stopped working, two days before school went back. Turns out the circuit board was fried.

It cost $600 to repair, including call out and parts. A new, equivalent model would have cost at least double that.

It was an expense I really could have done without right now.

I am all over the place this week. It’s Friday and I haven’t done any planning for the weekly BTTR newsletter, which sends this afternoon.

What should I write about?

The kids are back to school tomorrow. Thank God.

I love my children, but they don’t make it easy to work from home when they’re just hanging around.

The other day I thought I’d try to create a single-page portfolio site to help with the job hunt/freelancing. Got version 1 up and running by leveraging a free template.

I didn’t realise I was going to have to learn React and Javascript to make any meaningful changes, though.

Played Harry Potter House Cup Competition today. Took much longer than needed because everyone was getting up and down.

But once we got into it, had some fun. The boy was grumpy at the end because he made a choice based on a misreading of a card’s symbol. But ultimately, I won. 😊😊🎲

Gorgeous day for a stroll around Sydney…

Huge game of Ark Nova with the family today. The boy won by a point after an epic final round where he played two animals that gave him the victory.

Yesterday I accidentally added “teh” to my browser’s dictionary while editing a story, and I have no idea how to fix it.

The kids are with Nanna, so we had a date night tonight, a simple dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. Just as we finish eating the texts start arriving: “are you at the Italian restaurant without us?!?”

Kids were stalking us with Apple Find My. 🤣🤣

Had a quiet year on the board game front in 2024. Need to try and make more time for it this year.

My wife got Wingspan for Xmas, and we just played through for the first time all together. It was so good. Such a beautiful game. Can’t wait to play again.

The past few years has been like real life Rainbow Road. I keep thinking I’m doing well, then I fall off the track. I get picked and I keep going, somehow still out in front. 2024 has been like getting hit by a blue shell every single jump. Again and again, blue shell after blue shell. Today I got … read more

I don’t have a deep understanding of code, but I know enough to mess around. That makes it really easy to mess things up.

Today, I was messing things up in a big way, but then I worked out why. I felt good for solving the problem, but bad that I’d made such a basic, basic error.

Last full working week before Xmas, so all the HR teams are closing the loop and sending job application rejection letters today.

My inbox is brutal.