After just over 3.5 years, the other side's insurance (Aviva) finally settled and the costs have been recovered. And I expect it was quite a lot of cost too. As mentioned in [wordpress.com/post/blen...](https://wordpress.com/post/blenderfox.com/8108:)
Total costs the other side will have to foot: Value of my car (written off): £3000 Value of the car next to me (written off): £2500 Value of the car that both our cars got shunted into (written off): £1500 Repair of the damaged car (sole survivor): £1500 Hire car (45 days @ £75 per day): £3375
Total Costs: £11875
And this is not including the other side's own car, which was likely also written off.
So last week, my boss and I had a one-to-one review going over things that had happened since the last review. Generally OK, but he was definitely not sounding right.
Turned out that he had picked up covid, and since I was both sitting next to him and had a face-to-face meeting with him, I decided to test myself, but gave it a day before doing so to make sure if I did have symptoms they would have enough time to manifest properly.
I was clear and tested negative.
However my boss was bedridden for about two days before he started answering some of his slack messages.
Now, over the weekend, his bad luck got even worse, and we found out his dad passed away. So not only is he recovering from Covid, he now has to deal with the end-of-life stuff for his dad.
There's an expression in Chinese which literally translates to "misfortune doesn't come alone"
Wishing him a speedy recovery and I'm sorry for his loss.
Firstly, as suspected, I finally got the notification saying that Google Domains' registrations would be acquired by SquareSpace so all my registrations would be transferred over them should I not do anything. Obviously, I didn't want that, so I transferred them over to AWS (Route 53) so now my domains are registered with AWS, but are DNS managed by Cloud DNS. I had some weirdness when trying to migrate all my domains in bulk, with respect to the auth code not being accepted on one of the domains when doing the bulk migration, but it was accepted when I did the migration on that one domain alone, so... go figure.
Next update is Terraform. In case you didn't know, Hashicorp has changed the Terraform license and essentially made it no longer open source. This behaviour is similar to what Red Hat did with its RHEL offering and the backlash is just as bad.
Immediately I knew someone would fork it, and already, there's the OpenTF Initiative and this is the key part:
Our request to HashiCorp: switch Terraform back to an open source license.
We ask HashiCorp to do the right thing by the community: instead of going forward with the BUSL license change, switch Terraform back to a truly open source license, and commit to keeping it that way forever going forward. That way, instead of fracturing the community, we end up with a single, impartial, reliable home for Terraform where the whole community can unite to keep building this amazing ecosystem.
Our fallback plan: fork Terraform into a foundation.
If HashiCorp is unwilling to switch Terraform back to an open source license, we propose to fork the legacy MPL-licensed Terraform and maintain the fork in the foundation. This is similar to how Linux and Kubernetes are managed by foundations (the Linux Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, respectively), which are run by multiple companies, ensuring the tool stays truly open source and neutral, and not at the whim of any one company.
OpenTF Initiative (https://opentf.org/)
Essentially, make Terraform open source again, or a fork from the MPL version will be made and maintained separately from Hashicorp's version. This will essentially lead to two, potentially diverging versions of Terraform, one BUSL and one MPL licensed
I'm already looking at alternatives and the two currently that I'm looking at are Ansible and Pulumi
Ansible I've had experience in , but there's two main issues with it:
It's underused compared to Terraform and the providers are woefully undersupported and undermaintained
It's Red Hat
Pulumi I've heard lots of good things about, but its a new technology, and I don't know if it is can "Import" existing infrastructure.
It's been quite a long time since I did any updates on this blog so a couple of updates are in order
House
I've now been living in the new place for just over a year. Generally everything is good, we've started putting in a lawn and currently letting it get its roots in before we try to cut it
Twitter
Oh, boy, what an absolute train wreck. I've tolerated Elon's presence at Twitter because most of the stuff he did wasn't far off what Jack was doing prior. But cutting off all third party clients, forcing everyone onto the new TweetDeck (which likely will be paywalled too) has literally driven users away. Twitter has been losing users and revenue constantly, and it is totally unsurprising.
I've disabled my two TweetDeck profiles (a professional one, and a casual one) from Ferdium. But I doubt I will be going back any time soon.
Red Hat
Another train wreck of a situation. Red Hat's decision to first kill CentOS's stability, then for RHEL sources to only be accessible behind a subscription has pissed of a lot of users, even if it's not strictly speaking against license.
The only one left in its sights will be Fedora so that leads me onto the next update
Manjaro & Archlinux
I've been tinkering with Manjaro more and more lately, with its rolling release schedule meaning I never need to upgrade from a major version to another major version.
It's downside I'm finding is that some packages, especially those in the AUR are essentially "compile from source" packages which does the build on your machine during the install. This can take a varying amount of time depending on the code. With my RSS reader of choice: QuiteRSS, this build takes a mind numbing 2.5 hours to do, even on a high spec machine.
That's where I found out about setting up your own Arch repo. I've been tinkering with that, setting it up on GCP and fronted by a CDN. This works pretty well, but I still need to find how I can do scheduled builds to keep that up to date, but it looks like I'll be switching to Manjaro at some point in the near future. Sound works fine, using lyncolnmd's work.
Another downside with Manjaro, however is that its btrfs filesystem, my home directory backup, and CloneZilla don't seem to want to work well together
Wordpress & Domains
One final update, I will likely be transferring out the blenderfox.com domain out of Wordpress, while I had this registered as part of the blog, I'm finding it much harder to maintain this domain using Wordpress's very limited DNS management tools. I will likely transfer it out to Google Domains, even though there's talk of them shuttering that service. Secondary service would be AWS.
Well, it was going to happen at some point in my life, but I ended up getting a speeding ticket after registering an average speed over 5mph above the speed limit for an average speed zone.
Instead of points, I've been offered a driver education course, which I of course am going to have to take. I opted for the classroom rather than virtual.
Not how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning, but I can combine it with some shopping.
I got called by the hospital and they gave me an update on the lump removed from the mouth. It was thankfully nothing serious, but recommended I keep an eye on it in case it came back (there is always a risk of that)
It's been a while so here's a few updates in the meantime
It's coming up to a year since I moved house and only now have the pile of construction rubbish been moved from outside my old flat. Dumping of rubbish by the neighbours in the adjoining block of flats into the garage is still happening.
Conservatives lost control of the area to Labour but I'm seeing absolutely no change
We went through a period of very cold weather (-6degC) and this was costing us £10-£15 per day in gas usage.
Moving onto other updates. As posted previously, I went into hospital to remove a lump from my mouth. I'll soon get a follow up call from the doctor to check how I'm doing. Stitches took about 10 days to dissolve. I just have a small white patch there now where the lump was removed and the doctor cauterised the wound.
Twitter has descended into a real s**thole since Elon took over. First killing all third-party clients and then indicating it may start charging for API usage.
The third-party client purge I can tolerate -- it was originally started during the Jack era, but charging for API usage, or even limiting tweets per day is not something many people will accept.
I started working on stripping out twitter functionality from my TFL updates bot and that's near enough done now. It now tweets (or should that be toots) into a Mastodon account at https://mastodon.xyz/users/updatesbf
RSS feed functionality should still work, but it is not enabled yet, until I can get Keda to work.
The stitches they put in my mouth have finally dissolved just over two weeks after the operation. All I have now is a small white patch in my mouth where the lump was with white lines across it where the stitches used to be.
So it's been a couple of days since the operation. The pain has now died down enough to be tolerable without painkillers - or at least as frequently.
I'm able to eat semi-solid food now stuff like soups, porridge and congee (look that up if you don't know what that is). I have been able to drink hot drinks without too much pain now, like tea, although I still need to mix in a bit of cold water to cool it down first.
Brushing my teeth has been easier now and I've started using salt water rinses as instructed -- although the side effect of that seems to be that it dries the hell out of my lips (well, that's what salt does, after all).
I'll be heading back into the office next week, but only for one day since I'm training for three days and the fifth day is taken up by another freaking train strike.
Today, I went to hospital to be operated on -- something I haven't had done for over 35 years.
The operation was, quote, "An excisional biopsy" of a lump in my mouth - a lump I have been carry for several years.
The lump has been growing very slowly and I am now biting it more frequently than before, causing a lot of pain.
My dentist referred me into the Maxillofacial department of my local hospital.
I visited there last week to get a preliminary examination. The doctors there agreed it could be removed and scheduled me into a biopsy today.
I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a bit nervous. Nonetheless, the doctors helped reassure me and the operation started. They offered me a pair of sunglasses to go over my own glasses as the light from the operating theatre's light is very bright. I chose to use them.
Settling in, the process started with three anaesthetic injections. I felt the first two and they didn't feel bad. The third one hurt, and the fourth one was tolerable.
Couple of minutes later, the doctor poked around inside the mouth to check if the anaesthetic had taken effect (I didn't feel anything). They started stuffing gauze in my mouth, and it felt a bit like one of those prisoner scenes in the movies when they did that.
The nurse kept my lip open while the doctor operated on it. I felt nothing at all. This was so weird, I could see them doing stuff, but they were out of my field of vision and I had no idea what was going on down there.
I started to see blood on the gauze. LOTS of it. They swapped out gauze a few times and then I started seeing small thin wafts of smoke coming from there. However, still no pain.
The doctor then started stitching me up. They used 3 stitches and still felt nothing.
I asked for a mirror at the end of the operation to see how bad it was. I had a puffy upper lip on one side and normal on the other. Expected though.
The doctor ran through some after care instructions. I'm supposed to be on a soft diet for 3 days, no hot food or drink for 24 hours, no smoking, vaping or alcohol for at least 3 days, no strenuous exercise for 3 days, no spitting or rinsing the mouth for 24 hours, salt water rinse after meals from 24 hours onwards, and painkiller use when needed to help reduce pain and swelling.
It's been around 5 hours since the operation and I'm feeling rumblings of pain. Not intense, but I suspect the anaesthetic might be beginning to wear off.
Just got my boiler fixed after three days without reliable hot water.
We had two engineers in over two days, and a total of 4 hours where neither could figure out the problem. Then we called in the manufacturer's engineer (Vaillant)
The outlet sensor was faulty and was registering a temperature of 999 deg C. The boiler kept flaring up then tripping the safety cutoff as a result.
5 minutes, and one replacement part later and everything was fixed.
Well, it's New Year's Eve, and I haven't posted any proper blog posts since April. So here's a bit of an update.
We completed the purchase on our house and moved in around April.
We had a period of 40degC+ temperatures soon afterwards and it was _really_ uncomfortable to even exist during that time. I couldn't even work in my bedroom during that time, and had all the windows open overnight.
And recently, we had a complete reversal, with temperatures hitting -6degC, and a thick layer of snow. Since the house is not on the main road, we no longer have priority with the gritters, which lead to some nerve-wracking drives on the Saturday when I headed up to morning shopping.
I later found out my former neighbour in the flat where I used to live (still find it strange to say that) actually lost functionality to their boiler during this cold snap (the pump to their boiler broke), so they had to wear like 5 layers of clothes and sit around a portable heater in order to keep warm -- travelling to a relative's house to get showered and stuff.
I also found out that two Muslim families have moved into the two vacant flats since we moved out. This now leaves only 4 flats out of the 12 available that are inhabited by non-Muslims. I am, sadly, not surprised by this turn of events, the local council have been aggressively buying up all the council properties they can, and then throwing probably the worst people into them -- heck they even bought and sold one of the flats across to a neighbouring council -- so essentially we have a flat in one council that is being used to house people from another council. 1 of the remaining residents is only there because they have a vulnerable relative nearby and will move out when she passes. Another is already looking for a new property, and the other two families haven't made their plans known yet.
We've now gone through over 6 months in the new house and have been getting and going through the new bills. Trying to keep the house warm during the cold spell has been costing me over £15 per day in Gas alone. Thankfully, the cold spell only lasted around a week, and the government's energy assistance did help with the Electricity side -- giving £66 extra per month. That doesn't help with the Gas costs, but it does mean I can use the space heater (which runs off electricity)
My Yaris seems to be having trouble with acceleration even without ECO mode on, so I'm going to start putting money aside to buy a full EV -- maybe a Tesla, Hyundai, or Toyota EV (even if Musk has been an AH with the Twitter purchase, I'm still liking the Tesla interface -- I even got to sit behind one this year, even if only briefly)
As with most people, I grew concerned with Musk's handling of the Twitter purchase, so I picked up a side project a year or so ago: Mastodon.
Back when Twitter had issues with privacy, several projects spawned up: Ello, Diaspora* and Mastodon to name a few.
Ello basically failed and has now turned more into a portfolio site. Diaspora is sort of like a decentralized Tumblr and Mastodon was the Twitter equivalent, so much so that there's more than one auto-crossposter now that allows you to Tweet to Twitter, and it will automatically crosspost it to Mastodon, and vice versa,
I decided to update my TfL Travel Updates project and allow it to post to Mastodon instead. I have it now posting to https://mastodon.xyz/@updatesbf but I am also looking at setting up my own Mastodon instance so I can experiment and break things on my own setup without messing up or flooding someone else's instance
I'm still here, covid and the flu didn't take me out. Just been occupied by other things in life, including moving house. That is now pretty much finished.
My role at work has now changed and I'm now a Senior SRE, and with this comes a host of other tasks, including interviewing prospective new
It's been a long time since I posted on here -- my last post (before today's posts) was July 17 when I had to self isolate. A lot has happened since then, so this post will be a bit of an update list
I had to take my dad into hospital for a prostrate operation (this was planned before I had to self-isolate) -- he already had a PCR test and was cleared. My LFT was also clear, but I still had to self isolate. This was before the self-isolation changes happened. The operation was successful, but he needed to be held a few more days to see an ENT specialist due to them finding lumps in his throat. The concern was that they might be cancerous, but turns out it was just irritation so they gave him some Gaviscon to take after means and soothe the throat. Both my dad and I are prone to post-meal throat irritation so it might mean I might be subject to the same thing later in life.
I got a ticket after driving my dad to the hospital for taking a left turn when I was not supposed do, due to badly signposted roads. My appeal was rejected on the grounds I had paid the ticket. This is how the council screws you over -- if you pay the fine to avoid the 100% charge, they will claim that admits guilt. If you don't, they delay the response until after the 2-week window so you then have to pay the 100% charge.
I finally decided to upgrade my phone and went for a OnePlus 9 Pro. The phone is classed as a "Phablet" and much bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S5 I have been using for years:
The case on the left is for the OnePlus, the case on the right for my S5
I had problems activating the new SIM and eventually Three had to send me a new one, and soon after I got that new one, I got a message saying Three were going to be doing works on the mast in my area and ever since then I have had horrendously bad speeds at home. By bad, I mean speeds of < 1Mbps and even down to 0.2Mbps. Using 3G band sometimes helps, but only marginally.
I've taken my complaint up to the Ombudsman but Three are still refusing to do anything about it -- even charging me to leave contract early.
I've been with Three many years but I will not be recommending them going forward. I will be checking other providers when my contract expires.
We've started to go back to the office. My team is doing three days a week in the office, and you pick which three days as long as there are a max of 8 people in the office (due to some office reorganisation, we only have 8 seats for the entire team).
Surprisingly many people have left jobs during and post lockdown (some might have been nudged due to the lockdown, and not just in my office, but generally.)
I won a Twitter completion by Curve for a swag bag. Just had to tweet them three images of their different adverts -- all of which showed up on the same station, so that wasn't too difficult.
Then we had the annoying as heck "Panic at the Pumps" causing shortages.
This video from my dashcam shows the queue of traffic. This is the queue leading into the Alperton Sainsbury's. I was there at around 5am and it took me 30 minutes to clear the queue even with less people in the queue. This queue will probably take 90 minutes to clear, assuming the fuel was not gone by the time they got to the front of the queue
This video, also from my dashcam shows the queues that built up outside the petrol stations -- this Esso I actually went into at 4:30am that morning and they were not open, even though there were staff in the shop (so maybe they were waiting for delivery?)
You'll get people tooting impatiently and even people cutting the queue and then blocking the lane for the people behind (they must be luxury car drivers)
My house purchase has progressed and we have moved on and are now ready to exchange. However, one of the two sellers is unable to complete his purchase (he's part of a chain and needs to complete his purchase before he can complete the sale on the current house).
Finally, I got a letter from Principia Law who are the ones trying to claim money back from the drunk driver who wrecked my previous car.
They want me to release my bank records for the period of time I had the hire car. But everyone I have discussed this with seems confused as to why this is required since the accident is a "no-fault" claim on my part, so they should not even need my bank details.
I asked them to call me today to discuss this. I may also speak to the office legal team for their thoughts.
I started this post over a year ago, then abandoned it and though perhaps its high time I actually finished it.
You may recall I lost my uncle to cancer in October 2017 and felt I should write down the phases of dealing with the death
Stage 0 -- Normality
This is the normal day-to-day life no indication of any problems in the future
Stage 1 -- Terminal
This is where you or your loved one is diagnosed with an illness that cannot (normally) be recovered from.
Stage 2 -- Death & Disbelief
Immediately after death, this starts. You run through a period of "this can't be happening", "this has got to be a dream" and keep wanting to wake up from the nightmare, even though it isn't one.
Stage 3 -- Guilt & Denial
After you've gotten past the "this can't be happening", you get to "this isn't happening" -- you don't want to believe this is true and refuse to believe this is true. Also, you start second-guessing yourself thinking "did I do everything I could to save them?" "could I have done something differently?" "could they still be alive had I picked up on that symptom just a day earlier?"
This stage lasts the longest, and to some, the guilt consumes their lives
Stage 4 -- Acceptance
The hardest stage to reach is acceptance. You accept the death and move on. Some keep a piece of the loved one with them -- a piece of jewellery, a photo, a locket, a favourite song -- something that lets them remember them going forward or when they want the feeling of warm, loving memories.
Where am I on this list? Stage 4. I have photos of my uncle in Google Photos I can look back on whenever I want to remember him. I have pictures of him playing with my cousin's children; I have fond memories of playing poker with him (and me losing :-) ); I have memories of having drinks with him -- he was an alchoholic, but really was loose when drinking. I remember that I also didn't know him as well as I thought I did. His drinking buddy took the pedestal at his funeral and told about how he donated food from his KFC-style shop to people at the pub.
I really did not know my uncle as well as I thought I did.
It finally snowed today. And as usual, gritters were not out in time.
The roads turned into slushy, slippery dangerous skidways, but there were no accidents fortunately.
I had to head into Chinatown to pickup my contact lenses from the opticians. While waiting for the bus, two cars got stuck trying to climb the hill (it's a notorious hill that has caused problems in the past during snowy, icy conditions, even the police got stuck the last time it snowed heavily)
Since the cars were now blocking the road going up, I decided to go and take a different route to Chinatown, and went via the Northern Line instead of the Piccadilly Line like I was originally planning.
The pavements were slushy and there was not even any sign of gritting. The station pavements were gritted, but presumably by the station staff, and not the council.
Even while coming home and trying to climb the hill to my house, my shoes were not gripping well, and had to take small steps to make sure I wouldn't fall.
Dangerously incompetent, that's what my local council are.
We got the replacement heater installed today, mostly fine, the heat of the water is now very high, since the plumber had to replace the piping near the heater, and had to mount a plank of wood on the wall to provide additional support for the heater as the bracket where the heater will be mounted would be too high.
This heater requires electricity, compared to the previous one which did not. Meaning without power, we won't have hot water.
The plumber had to add cement around the exit flue of the heater and a few hours later I could see a crack in the cement, probably from it contracting and cracking while drying.
The plumber also had to remove an entire cupboard from the kitchen where the heater is and we'll have to remount that some other time.
Google Photos reminded me of some photos I took in 2006, reminding of how incompetent Barnet Council are.
The landlord in the flat above us decided to get plumbing done by people who were likely not qualified and ended up compromising the floor between flats, and causing electricity arcs in our ceiling, we had to pop the breakers manually to prevent any short circuits.
Attempts to communicate with the landlord all went to voice mail, attempts to get entry to the flat to stop the water were ignored, attempts to contact the council to get help were refused.
Eventually the water leaked through OUR floor into the floor below, and the OAP who lived there called us. We told her to call the council since they refused to help us, and lo and behold, 30 minutes later, we had the council banging on our door.
Now, due to the council's refusal to help, instead of one flat being damaged, you now have TWO.
The following day, the police and fire brigade were called to gain entrance, because the landlord STILL did not answer his phone.
After this incident, we had to redo our bathroom, toilet, and front bedroom.
We had to rip out the carpets, wallpaper and replaster the ceilings.
We had to also rewire the ENTIRE flat.
But that's not the end part of it. Several years later, the damage caused by the landlord, carried over and the ceiling started leaking again. And again, the council didn't help. The tenant who lived in the flat above (the original landlord had since sold the flat on) was a construction worker, who knew what he was doing -- mostly, I guess.
Over the course of two years we were subject to more ceiling leaks, including leads into our cloakroom where we store our coats, until he finally found the leaking pipe -- one which was severed during the time of the previous landlord and was still dripping.
He's also sound the house on now, and to the council, and now Brent Council and Barnet Council have combined and we now have new tenants who are probably worse than the previous two combined -- they sleep all day, talk loudly until around 2am in the morning, smoke pot and guess what, Barnet Council won't do anything about it.
When I escalated to the counsellors of the area, they passed the query on to the council and the council claimed I never contacted them. Well, that's BS since I have an email chain AND a case reference.
Barnet Council have done nothing but drag their feet for the past 14 years whenever there's been any complaints. They like to claim they are listening to people with things like "You Said.. We Did" but that's only for things that are easy to do.
I know the likelihood of Barnet Council reading this post are low, but I need to vent...
I thought with the Hire car collected, this incident would be closed. I guess not.
The insurance broker contacted me to ask me to complete a litigation questionnaire. From the sounds of it, the other side is resisting the costs, unsurprisingly.
I came across this article on FailBlog, but it was actually something that hit home quite hard. It's a thread that talks about grief.
In case you didn't know, I lost my uncle to cancer in 2017 and sat on a blog entry talking about dealing with loss for months, not wanting to publish it (it wasn't this entry, mind you) -- but I knew that writing about it helps deal with it.
The article on FailBlog links to an old thread by Lauren Herschel, an unrolled version is here:
It talks about grief as a "Ball in a box with a pain button" and the ball fills the box, hitting the button near-constantly right after the incident or loss.
The ball deflates over time, meaning it doesn't hit the button as much, but when it does, it hurts just as bad, and damn, this is right on the button.
So I went to the local McDonalds to pick up a coffee and light breakfast and they were doing takeaway only, and only providing seating for delivery partners, like Uber Eats and Deliveroo.
My normal local cafe has turned into a KFC-like chicken shop and now opens at 10am instead of the usual 6am. Disappointed, but I can understand why.
At McDs, I placed my order just as the manager was asking a customer to leave. As he was, I noticed he had a bottle in his hand. Originally I thought it was a Maker's Mark bottle, but actually looked more like a Courvoisier 1L bottle, which retails for around £35-£40.
This guy was nearing the end of the bottle when I arrived. Had he finished an entire 1L, 40% ABV bottle of Cognac at 6am in the morning? No wonder the boss asked him to leave. The boss was then on the phone, not sure who to, though. I waited for my breakfast outside, monitoring the display screen.
I've decided to put the McDs app on my phone in case that helps for the next time I'm ordering.
After my breakfast, I went to Tesco for the weekly shop.
I parked up and then noticed nearby (like three spaces away) was another Yaris. It was a black Yaris Hybrid, like mine, with a 68 plate (mine is a 67 plate). I thought "that's ironic", and went to do my shopping.
Came back after shopping, loaded up my boot, then sat in the car and tried to get phone paired with my car's Bluetooth so I can listen to my Spotify music on the journey back.
Just then I felt my car's back shaking. Looked in the rear view mirror and found someone trying to get into the boot. I'd already central locked the car, which means the boot won't open. So I opened the window and said "Wrong Car". The guy realised immediately what had happened, and so did I. He's the driver of the _other_ black Yaris Hybrid, parked but three spaces away!
Got my first cheque in the post from Aviva the insurance company the other driver is part of. Now waiting for the second cheque from the Salvage agents.
Also got a refund from DVLA for the remainder of my road tax since the car is now written off.
