yaleman.org


Welcome to another year of advent calendars, again I’ll be running through the LEGO City and LEGO Star Wars calendars, one day at a time.

133 days since I submitted my application, 126 since I submitted the “additional” paperwork they required - which they already had - I finally have an email stating my crossbow license has been approved.

I did the Category M (crossbows) safety course on the 2nd of July, got the certificate of attainment on the 7th and submitted it on that night. I’d really love to know what took so long, but given that any question to Queensland Police Weapons Licensing end in ridiculous hand-wringing and misinformation, I’m just over it.

Last week’s sniffles turned into a full-blown face-crippling sinus infection come Monday morning. This being so close to my holiday, I was less than impressed, and I missed two days of finalising things at work. Thankfully, the high-dose antibiotics seem to have worked within twenty-four hours or so, taking it down to merely a sniffle after a week.

Rimfire ten-pin on Thursday was a bit of a shambles, I ended up taking myself off the line after succumbing to a light-headed woozy feeling. Nothing dangerous, just tired and not enough sugar by that point in the day. Still did OK, considering.

Ten days until my birthday, three years and a day since I bought my car. Honestly, the car thing is way more interesting to me. I’m having a lazy Sunday afternoon on the couch with my puppy, because I’m snuffly and don’t want to do any more house work.

What have I been up to? I finally played with app deployment on Splunk this week - it’s a great tool to have - but just like a lot of these things could be used too much, or in the wrong ways. So far I’m keeping it simple… so far.

About fifteen months ago, I posted a vague thing about my net worth and how I had been graphing it, and the results I had seen.

Time for a new update! This month I paid off my car after three years, which should help the line’s angle a little - though with my recent spending spree I might have to be careful. :)

A while back I split the graph to show the “without superannuation” part of the information out, since that was something I had identified as causing some strangeness in the data. It’s a little clearer now how much of my net worth is “liquid” - for various values of liquid - and what’s going towards my future security..

Another week that’s flown past without me realising it… I’m not really sure what’s happened to be completely honest :)

Saturday night was a whole lot of BBQ thanks to MrK, with all manner of dead animal presented to us, having been tended to and smoked throughout the day. Quite lovely.

Today (Sunday) I cut the last large section off the rather dead paperbark tree in my backyard. I’ve only been concerned about it for nearly three years, probably a good time to sort it out. There’s extensive borer-insect damage throughout, so whatever I don’t burn in short order will have to go to the tip. Can’t risk them going off and finding other things to eat! The full-sized chainsaw’s blade was terribly dull, even after I’d had a go at sharpening it, but a hand saw finished the required job, and the tiny-but-mighty chainsaw on a stick did the needful to take down the higher branches with surprising finesse.

A big week! Tuesday was pay day and with it the final payment on my car! Three years in, I love it more than ever and we have travelled over fifty two thousand kilometers together. Paying it off frees up a large chunk of my budget, which will be a lovely change!

Pokemon Go has been a interesting game to get into. I’ve only ever had a sideways glance at the universe, being too money-poor to own a GameBoy when I was younger, and time-poor since I have had the cash to play otherwise. The exploration of the local areas around work and home has been fun - I’ve walked down Kedron Brook for the first time in the seven and a half years of working for my current employer! The infrastructure behind the game, let alone the code of the UI itself is a shambles, but they’re making great strides to keep it all running and us engaged. An unsurprising response to the game has been from the various facets of social media, with the lovers and haters having plenty to work with.

I finally watched Battle Royale on Monday night via Netflix after hearing so much about it for so long. It definitely lived up to expectations. Absurd, violent, poignant, and impossible in western cinema but perfectly produced by eastern. I loved it, for everything that it is.

Just Cause, a story of Florida’s habit of treating black people like shit, and its long-term effects. A stellar cast including Sean Connery playing an amazing role as the out-of-town lawyer while Laurence Fishburne defends “his” town from the outsider. I saw Scarlett Johnson in the credits but didn’t spot her until the final act, wow I’m old. A fantastic mid-90’s thriller with some great twists and turns :)

Thursday night I received the statement of Attainment for my Category M (Miscellaneous: Crossbows) license! Now the countdown begins, I put my application in as soon as I could, but Qld Weapons Licensing are notoriously slow.

Friday morning they called me to confirm that my paperwork had been received and that I needed to supply something else (that I already knew about). It was nice to see they were fast on that, and that they could confirm everything else seemed OK.