ODAY will be our last “normal” day. After this we rest a bit, take it easy, and are formally or informally “on vacation”. It’s partly a mental state of mind… and partly a policy thing, which means not bothering with E-mail, all sorts of “work” (or “chores”). We’ll instead spend more time outside.

In September we’ll return (back to normal).

The latest press coverage about (or which mentions) Daniel Pocock is useful because he’s invited to comment on ethical and technological issues, such as social control media.

Like me, he quit all those things and will not ever bother with them. They’re a total waste of time and potential cause for problems.

HIS evening I wrote about why people at Debian became jealous of Daniel Pocock, who was once one of them. A friend has asked, is this the “Debian cult or Microsofters having infiltrated Debian and established
an arm of their cult within Debian?”

Well, Debian’s financial strings now include Google as well.

Google controls a lot of the hosting of Debian. Yes, a surveillance giant was entrusted as such!

The friend continued.

“AFAIK,” he said, “the same thing has happened with in Ubuntu / Canonical and all the *buntu subprojects.”

GAFAM is poison to Free software projects.

There is nothing benign about conditional help.

oday was a very successful day because we put in our lawsuit (formal draft at this point) and have thus far heard nothing back from the firm that caused this problem. Tomorrow we go on holiday (none of this is critical to us, we’ll be back “in action” in September) and as noted earlier on it looks like the people who bully us are not doing too well (“Their papers and their envelopes became cheaper; they are budgeting their inventory in the office“). The papers associated with this lawsuit were sent yesterday by post to a law firm so sexist and insane that it can probably compel departing female workers (lots of that) to go on a stabbing binge/spree in Trafalgar or something.

I struggling to see why any women at all would still stay there. One client strangles women, another thinks stabbing is a joke.

I never chose to put myself in this situation, wherein my wife and I file 2 lawsuits in 2024, one lawsuit in 2025, and soon another one for this year.

Lawsuits are always like this. Or almost always. People who assume they’re entitled to something for ‘hurt feelings’ are often guilty of many things themselves. They tend to ignore what they did to “deserve” what they later complain of.

OMORROW we unofficially go on “holiday” or a weeks-long vacation, even if it is a stay-cation and most travel will be to places nearby. We don’t plan much shopping, windows “shopping” can be fun too.

A week after Rianne’s birthday it’ll be Bank Holiday, then we’ll be back to normal.

I plan not to check E-mail much. It’ll be as if I’m away somewhere in a distant island (like I was less than a decade ago).

With Rianne by my side, life is always a joy.

Keep it simple, stupid (KISS).

Being “offline” is not a state of misery but a sign of contentment.

HE firm that has bullied us for 2.5 years seems to have entered “cost savings mode” and is still not revealing financial details despite it being well past due date and end of the financial year. Their papers and their envelopes became visibly cheaper; they are budgeting their inventory in the office, what’s left of it anyway.

In the Court, they have very few staff attending (minimal crew). So what happened?

Let’s consider what people said about IBM this week: “This is typically expense control because customer travel is charged against cost of sales while non customer travel is charged as a regular operating expense. It is a symptom of financial pressures due to sales numbers not as great as hoped…”

Another said: “Having $70B of your market value in one day is pretty much an indicator that the company is in serious trouble regardless of how much they try to explain it away. Surprises me that so many people at IBM are in a bubble and think they are working at a growing and thriving company.”

And also “that’s what dying companies do, start cutting back on all the unnecessary expenses” (yes, it said “dying companies“).

T remains to be seen how many people will vote “POCOCK”, but voting is exactly a week from now. This is the schedule:

For what the candidates have to offer, specifically Daniel Pocock: