oday turns out to be another lovely (sunny and warm) day, so plans have changed and we’re going out for the day. This year has been a lot more relaxing than prior ones.

I recently increased my E-mail-checking intervals to 3+ days, seeing that no critical mail is missed if I don’t check my inbox for a few days.

Notifications of any kind appeal to “hunger” and hunger relates to impulse, which comes from human instincts. What’s repulsive about this is that companies latched onto this to case inherent addiction, passing casino ‘science’ onto digital systems.

I need to focus on more labour- and thought-intensive tasks, not limited to filing an appeal and studying the EPO corruption in order to run this long and very important series.

I sometimes wished I had adopted this etiquette much sooner.

oday I saw a new job ad. It turns out that what I wrote last week (Brett Wilson must be broke) is paying a Paralegal or Administer just £28k/annum. In central London. That barely even covers rent there!

In London, based on some basic research, this is like minimum wage. For people who have a degree in law. Incredible.

But then again, Americans wanted something cheap (shoddy) with poor staff retention. They cannot even distinguish between clients anymore! Under sworn oath a year ago they admitted to the judge they had gotten confused.

What sane person with a law degree wish to work for minimum wage for male thugs? No wonder so many people flee this firm.

“Is it even London’s minimum suvivable wage?” a friend has asked me. “It looks much lower than that.”

Maybe they want their staff to share apartment or even share a room.

“Or else force them to sleep in the sauna,” the friend responsed.

N the past 2+ decades I did not lose data. Prior to that I only lost things I did not value, like old and mostly meaningless E-mails from the 1990s (not MP3s, I had those backed up). I make regular backups, I keep a spare machine in case the main one fails, and I maintain the hardware to make sure it works or be fully aware when it is about to fail. When my storage device finally failed in January 2023, for example, I had already prepared for it for about 12 months because there were warning signs. I no longer stored on it anything essential. Likewise, in 2020, I moved away from “ted” when it was giving some warnings, so when “ted” (used by me since 2013) finally died nothing of value was lost and no time wasted. I also keep external backups and we have fire extinguishing kits just in case.

People who have been around in tech for a long time and properly understand tech prepare for disasters in advance. So they don’t become disasters at all, they just involve a bit of work (to get fully back to speed).

ast night I added a fluorescent light for the fish, it is external to the tank, and so far it also helps illuminate the desk area at night (days are quickly getting shorter), so it is double-purpose ‘thingie’ really. There is a light switch that controls whether it is on or off, it is easy top use, and it is within arm’s reach.

The fish tank experience next to my own desk (not Rianne’s) began a week ago. So far, so good.

t has been nearly 24 hours for the new arrivals and they seem to be coping OK. I spent many hours working on them yesterday, checking their condition every 10 minutes or so until going to sleep. Time-consuming? For sure. Even gave me a physical headache. But the first few hours or days are critical, I wanted to be sure the creatures all get along and, if not, intervene before it’s too late.

Learned from experience…

I don’t expect this week to be busy anyway. Many things have calmed down, people go back to work, and this coming week/days/weekend there are many fans walking past the streets here to concerts, including the very weird fans of Melanie Martinez. The music scene has gotten truly bizarre.

ids of the 1980s did not have computers at home, except those born in the late 80s or mid 80s. People born in the early 80s seldom had a PC at home unless a parent needed one for work or was working in the “IT” or similar industry/occupation. Mobile phones did exist, but very few people had them back then. To us, the kids, phones were “on the hook” and TV was the thing to watch things on (with a remote control; some TVs didn’t have that yet).

Now, by contrast, kids grow up with skinnerboxes and computers, such as tablets. They’re being spied on, they get exposed to loads of rubbish, and politicians who grew up in the 60s get to decide if it’s OK or not OK.

Politicians don’t represent the public interest.

HIS month is nearly over and we did not leave Greater Manchester, only Manchester ‘proper’.

Next year we plan to go somewhere sunny.

Thankfully Manchester was very sunny almost the whole month. It’s not good for Manchester’s water reserves and for nature; but it makes Manchester feel a bit like a holiday resort.

O tomorrow morning we leave for the day (or half-day) and enjoy the birthday, followed by a week of rest. We’re not getting younger, so we might as well make the most of life and making the most of it does not mean being online or wasting any moment in social control media garnering “likes” and digital greetings.

We still do greetings the old, traditional way. 20 years later it’s a lot easier to revisit things.

People who are too dependent on some “Facebook account” will have nothing analogue to show.

XACTLY one week ago, on Wednesday morning, I sent the papers associated with the lawsuit I’m lodging against the Serial Strangler from Microsoft. Afterwards I went to Superdrug and spent 30 minutes examining the prices of non-edible goods, seeing that packaging got smaller, prices are much higher, and services barely exists anymore.

At the Post Office, there are still human workers, but they’re nowhere near as friendly or useful as decades ago. They act like they do you a favour by actually serving you (which they must). They’re basically a private business now (the tasks got offloaded to local shops) and postage costs have grown about 5-fold in 20 years. What justifies those price increases? The cost of fuel? The sour face of staff?

The world is getting ruder, more expensive, and there’s a moral obligation (I think) to do something about it.

Now there’s some strong wind (not gale force, but strong nonetheless) and more rain. The city needs this. The grass everywhere looks like it’s dying.

Climate change is real. Check the food prices.