I’ve been walking, yes indeed

Today is the start of a new month, the first complete calendar month in which I’ve done a walking workout every single day. Naturally, I put all the data into a spreadsheet to allow me track my progress and because, spreadsheets. I use them for all sorts of things.

February was a good month overall, especially my goal at this point is still to build up stamina, and I think I’m doing that. I thought I’d share some stats from this February—something I may do again at the end of March, at the end of the quarter, but if I do any updates after that, it’ll probably only be at the end of each quarter.

In February, my walking workouts covered a total of 52.68 kilometres (35.219319 miles), compared to 46.36 kilometres (28.806768 miles) in January. My average pace on my workouts over the month was 14:04 per kilometre, compared to 13:09 in January.

I had an average daily total daily of 7141 steps per day in February, which includes all my steps, not just those from the walking workouts (the workouts don’t track steps for some reason). The average total distance I covered each day in February was 5.78 kilometres (3.591525 miles), again, that’s total distance walked, not just from workouts; I only know my distance from workouts alone because of my spreadsheet. The totals in January were pretty similar, however, the difference between this year and last is significant: In February 2024, I had a daily average of 3,953 total steps per day and an average total distance of 3.36 kilometres (2.23694 miles) per day. February was my worst month in 2024 (after that month, my overall totals were much better.

All of those are just numbers, and honestly probably of interest to me alone. So I decided to have a bit of fun: The map up shows the towns in a 50 kilometre radius of Hamilton [SOURCE]. It’s not necessarily possible to easily walk to some of those towns, and certainly not by me, but it’s kind of interesting to see how far 50 kilometres really is. As a bonus, several places I’ve talked about at one point or another—like Cambridge, Raglan, Huntly, and Matamata—are all within that circle, and others that I’ve talked about, and that had roles in my past life, like Paeroa, Thames, Pukekohe, Waiuku, Clarks Beach, and Te Kuiti are all visible.

The thing about these stats, and even the map, is that looking at the data visually on a spreadsheet (or even on that map) somehow keeps me committed to the plan. Some of it’s probably that I’m competitive with myself, and I constantly want to do better than I’ve done in the past. I want to try to tap into that self-competitiveness to get some other things done, too, because maybe it’ll work for other plans and goals, too? I know some people get more stuff done when they make things like chores into a game, and, in a sense, that’s what I’ve been doing.

Still, February is my only full calendar month of daily walks so far (plus most of January, of course), so it’s a bit early to take a victory lap. I want this to be a lifestyle change, and not just a temporary obsession. Creating opportunities for me to compete with myself—including my making a spreadsheet with my data—may do exactly that.

My car is fit

My car is fitter than I am, if for no other reason than that it’s certified fit. Getting to that point consumed a chunk of my day yesterday, and yet, it was better than in previous years. It may also have suggested a way forward for next year.

Most vehicles used on the road (including trailers) are required to get a safety inspection, and a "Warrant of Fitness" (usually called a WOF or a Warrant) is the version for cars (there are different versions for different vehicles). It has to be done every year for most cars. The inspection involves inspectors looking for rust in the car’s body, whether the brakes are good, whether the wheels rotate freely, whether the indicators (“turn signals” in Americanese) work, whether the seatbelts all lock (or whatever it’s called…), and even whether the horn works. They also look in the boot (“trunk” in Americanese) to see if there’s a spare tire, and to make sure the metal at the bottom isn’t rusting through (that happened to my previous car, and it failed it’s inspection because of it).

I went to a testng company called VTNZ, because of reasons I'll get to, and the first thing I needed to do was check-in at reception (about which more in a bit). After I was done with that, I went and sat in my car until the inspector was ready for my car. All up, the whole thing was over roughly 1:40 after I arrived, which is actually faster than it’s been in the past. Of that, around 10 minutes was waiting to pay (and it felt like an hour…), and 40 minutes was the test itself (all of which I know because I took notes to ease the boredom). The rest of the time was spent waiting in my car for its turn to be checked, but it’s air conditioned, has a radio, was a good spot for my selfie (above), and that also gave me a chance to charge my phone.

The guy who did the test was VERY nice—they aren’t always—and they had the air conditioning on in the waiting/reception area, where I waited, so I was pleasantly cool.

I think I’ve said before (here or on my personal Facebook) that the most annoying thing about the whole process is how ultra slow the check-in process is, mainly because of slow computer systems. Still, I suppose it’s nice to see that VTNZ found a use for antique CP/M computers, WordStar, and SuperCalc…

I had little choice but to go to VTNZ because I forgot my warrant expired yesterday, so I didn’t have a lot of options. VTNZ recently began accepting bookings for these tests, though I couldn’t do that because it was last minute. There was a guy in front of me who’d booked a test, and he had to go through the same check-in process as everyone else, so at first I thought it wasn’t a big improvement. However, it turned out he was gone well before my car was tested, so it definitely seems like a good option for next year.

After I was done, I went to Woolworths (supermarket) on the way home “to pick up a few things” (yeah, right…), and I went a more direct route avoiding Te Rapa (the main North/South road in my part of Kirikiroroa-Hamilton) and a very busy roundabout. It was so much faster! So, all joking aside, it was a much better experience this year than the past two. I take that as a win.

I think safety inspections are important, though Im not sure that every year is necessary for relatively new cars. However, I continue to be appalled that New Zealand doesn’t do tailpipe emissions testing (or decibel tests for tailpipe noise, especially for motorcycles…).

Still, I do think these inspections are both necessary and important. I do think the whole think could be improved (especially by VTNZ—it’s 2025: Computers should not run so slowly). The important thing is I got my warrant done on time. Another year sorted!

The Warrant of Fitness testing cost me $85 (around US$47), plus an additional $1.70 fee because I used payWave (contactless payment). Using payWave is much faster than swiping a card and entering a PIN, and getting to that point had already taken too long, in my opinion.

My Dad would be 109

This week had my father’s109th Birthday. I remembered to blog about it, even thought I didn’t have time to follow through, only because I decided to get organised: Almost a year ago, I wrote a post in which I talked about setting up a list of certain posts I wanted to be sure to write and publish. When I set up this year’s list, this post was on that list.

Life has been unusual for quite awhile now, and I continue to fins it difficult to find the time to actually get blog posts and podcast episodes done. Nevertheless, I’m getting to this in my dad’s birthday week, which right now, is a huge win.

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately, because of what I’m going through now, a few years older than he ever managed to reach. I’ve talked about how my single biggest challenge emotionally and existentially about aging is that I have NO idea what to expect. My Mom and Dad both died younger than I am now, so I don’t know how they would’ve been as they aged.

My father’s siblings all lived to be old, though with the health problems of old age, and my grandfather was a nonagenarian. My mother’s parents died relatively young, but her uncle had good innings. So, because I have few examples to turn to, I don’t know if I’ll have mobility problems, cognitive decline, or any of the other things I worry about.

Which brings me back to my Dad. I remember when he was in his 50s how he couldn’t walk far at all. There were a lot of reasons for that, but he was certainly unfit, too. Over my life, I’ve seen several older people slowly decline, and watching them made me wonder how avoidable (generally speaking) loss of mobility and flexibility is.

All of that made me realise that I have some agency here: If I get fitter now, it’s bound to at least help me as I age, and maybe age-related decline might not be too bad. At the very least, it will probably (?) improve the quality of my life now because I’ll be better able to do physical things better.

As I said in my blog post about my walking, I already find it easier to get up off the floor, and even my knees seem more reliable. So, yay, I guess. And, in a roundabout kind of way, my Dad was one of my main inspirations.

Still, I often wonder what my Dad would’ve been like in old age, though I know he’d almost definitely be gone now regardless, and his too-early death left me with no example to look to in order to guess what my own old age might be like. However, there’s also everything that came before his death that’s helped build the foundation on which modern me is still being built, and that’s an important thing. As I said in my 2021 post about my Dad’s birthday:

Mainly, though, I’m grateful for the base he and my mother gave me, the framework to build the me I would eventually become. I get some of the credit for that, of course, as do other family and my friends (and, again, especially Nigel…), but the fact remains that he and my mother laid the foundation on which I would one day build me. Open eyed, aware, and certain that I may be, I nevertheless acknowledge where I come from, and my Dad was an important part of that.

All of which remains true, but it would be handy to have an inkling of what I might be facing over the next 20 years (or so?) years I may have left.

Nevertheless, as always, thanks, Dad. And Happy Birthday!

Previously:
My Dad would be 108 (2024)
My Dad would be 105 (2021)
My dad would be 100 (2016)

Related:
Sunday Quiet (2009) – What Sundays were like when I was a kid
Like father, like son (2009) – A reflective post about sons imitating their dads and the freedom my dad gave me
Easter (2009) – Where I talk about my dad’s stage management
Good Friday Flashback (2011) – More about his stage management, with a photo
Arthur Answers Again, Part Two – Religion questions (2013) – I talk about being a preacher’s kid
AAA-14 Answer 7 – Loss and memes (2014) – I talk about the death of my parents
New Year’s Eve 2014 – In which I talk about one of my favourite memories of my dad

I’m going to live

I can remember the precise moment I realised that I’m not going to die. I was walking down the hallway that connects all the bedrooms to the living areas, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a painting a friend of ours painted and gave to us for our Civil Union. Our friend died from motor neurone disease in the year before Nigel died, and as I paused to look at the painting, I thought about how she was gone and Nigel was gone, and then it hit me: I’d spent all of my time since Nigel died expecting that I could die at virtually any moment, but clearly that was no more likely for me than for many others. I realised that if I wasn’t about to die, then I’d better focus on the business of not merely living, but having a good life. That, in turn, meant redoubling my efforts to have a good aging.

That was the moment everything changed.

I’d been thinking about what government officials like to call “ageing in place”, that is, growing old in our own homes, with support services gradually added as we need them, all designed to help us live long, healthy lives in our own homes, without having to go into care until/unless it’s truly necessary. Seeing the painting that day later helped me focus on what I needed to do.

I chose my house because it’s one storey (no steps), and after I moved in I installed the solar power system so that it could help keep my power bills as low as possible so that I’d have more money to pay for living, not merely existing. I have further plans to upgrade this house to make it even better for me (and, to be honest, for the eventual resale, in case I need or want to sell it, even if that’s not until well in the future).

However, there was more to this planning than merely making my house elderly-me friendly, there’s all the time between now and then, too. So, I decided to work on myself to try and keep mobility and flexibility as I age. This led to my biggest work on myself, probably ever.

Last December, I started walking two or three times a week. Then, on Monday, January 6, I began walking every single day, which means that this past week was my seventh consecutive week of this daily routine. There have been positive results, some subjective, but at at least one that’s clearly measurable.

Before talking about what I did and why, it’s important, if obvious, to note that this is about my personal journey in health and aging, and shouldn’t be taken as advice. I will say, however, that any exercise is better than none, but how much is enough—or too much—will vary from person to person. It’s a good idea, especially for us older folks, to talk to our doctor before starting any exercise programme—but I didn’t do that, even though I absolutely should have.

That out of the way, here’s what I did and why.

My Apple Watch tracks minutes of exercise (the green ring), movement (the red ring, and an estimate of kilojoules/calories burned), and whether I stand for at least 5 minutes every hour fir 12 hours per day (the light blue ring). My progress throughout the day is tacked on those rings, and the goal is to close all three rings every day (there’s an example at left, from February 21, 2023). My Apple Watch’s week is from Monday through Sunday (I have no idea why or if that can be changed, and I frankly don’t care), and that’s why my daily walking routine began on a Monday.

My routine was to walk two kilometres (1.24274 miles) every weekday, and one kilometre (0.621371 miles) on Saturday and Sunday. On weekends, I actually walk a bit farther than one kilometre per day because, generally speaking, my watch requires a “workout” to be at least 15 minutes to register it as a workout, and since my average pace for one kilometre is faster than that, I keep walking until I pass 15 minutes. I also end up walking a bit more than two kilometres on weekdays, too, mostly because I can.

My Apple Watch also sends me rewards badges, first for each ring on my watch as I close them, then another when I close all three rings, plus badges for a perfect week (closing the ring every day), and a perfect month (closing them every day of a month). There are additional monthly challenges, and there was one more I never got: Doing seven workouts over that Monday-Sunday week (the watch can track many different kinds of workouts, including both indoor and outdoor walks). Getting those badges every day and week is a surprisingly strong motivator for me.

For some reason I assumed that the workout challenge was to do workouts on all seven days of a week, but this week I suddenly realised that it’s actually seven workouts total, not per day. So, this week I experimented with doing two shorter walks on both Wednesday and Friday of this week, each walk a bit more than a kilometre. This meant that I did seven walking workouts on Monday to Friday, and, as I suspected, I got my reward badge on Friday (the image at the top of this post). That means I could’ve taken the weekend off from walking if I wanted to (I didn’t, but in the future I may use one of the two days as a “rest day”).

I first felt my walks affecting my calves, then my thighs, and finally my hip flexor muscles, all of which felt stronger. Over time, I noticed my balance had improved, that I was easily able to stand on one foot. My knees seem more reliable, and even my lower back doesn’t get sore like it used to, and I also noticed that it had become somewhat easier for me to get up off the floor (like after I scrub the shower floor). Gaining flexibility and greater balance is precisely what I was trying to achieve, but all of that’s entirely subjective. Fortunately, there’s now an objective improvement.

I’ve been getting annual blood tests for years, and I have a spreadsheet with the results dating back to 2011 (though there’s a five year gap between those first results and the next ones, probably because I lost the forms for some years’ results. Nevertheless, one of the consistent things has been that my HDL (“good cholesterol”) has always been too low. It’s supposed to be greater than 1.00 mmol/L (“millimoles per litre”), however, mine has never reached that. My worst (lowest) reading was 0.64, and my best was 0.90. Last year’s result was 0.88, but my most recent blood drawn on February 5 showed my HDL was at a new high of 0.92—the best reading ever, as far as I know. I’d always been told I needed to exercise more since it’s the only way to significantly improve the HDL level, and my new result came after I’d been doing daily walks for around a month, and doing walking workouts at least some days for roughly six weeks. If I keep walking/exercising, I may eventually finally pass 1.00 mmol/L.

In summary, my legs feel stronger, my balance and flexibility has improved, and I’ve raised my HDL levels, all of which gives me an incentive to continue (that and getting those Apple Watch badges…). However, I haven’t noticeably lost any weight, but that wasn’t goal at this point; that will come over time. This is a process, of course, and I still have a long way to go.

I have a cross-trainer (also called an elliptical) in the garage, but I don’t yet feel anywhere near fit enough to use it—although, it’s been way too hot in the garage to use it, anyway. The elliptical also helps with upper-body work, though I have other plans to help with that, too—after I take off my training wheels, so to speak. My plan is to slowly build my strength and stamina, then add more and different routines to target different areas, all with the same goal of strengthening the muscles associated with balance, stability on my feet, and even pain avoidance (lower back, for example). I want to be as mobile as possible for as long as possible, and I’m the only one who can do anything to help make that happen.

It’s still early days for all of this, but I definitely feel better, stronger, and more flexible, to varying degrees, and that’s more than enough incentive for me to keep going. All I really want is to have the best life I can have, regardless of how many or few years may be ahead of me. I finally understand that I’m not going to die, after all, not right now, and that it’s up to me if I want to be able to live whatever life I still have to the fullest. I think I’m well on the way to making sure that happens, one step at a time.

A deliberate absence

I haven’t been blogging much so far this year—I know that will come as a huge surprise. There are many reasons for that, but this has been a mostly intended time away. This post is about why that’s been the case.

The story begins, really, last year. I said that was a challenging year for me, and it definitely was, for all the reasons I blogged about. However, there was also the death of a friend I never talked about here, for a lot of reasons, but partly because my friend’s death happened shortly before what would have been Nigel’s 60th birthday, and about a month before the fifth anniversary of his death. I was already dealing with a lot.

At the same time, I was dreading the outcome of the US election because I had a feeling it would be a disaster. Then, like so many people, I was profoundly—and badly—affected when the USA’s election disaster actually happened. All that year, I felt like I was watching the land of my birth committing slow-motion suicide, even as I fervently hoped voters would come to their fucking senses. I managed to hold back my dread of the disaster as well as I could, but that denial couldn’t last forever.

All of that was followed by this year starting out badly with technological problems I wrote about on January 2. That, combined with the USA’s upcoming coronation of the convicted felon, should’ve warned me that this year could be bad, too, but there was more.

Late last year, certainly by Christmas, I was aware that my sister-in-law, Carolyn, was beginning what would be her final battle, leading ultimately to her death. At first, just as with the US elections, I tried to ignore what I I knew was going to happen, but reality again conquered my attempt at optimism.

I didn’t talk about the US elections in part because I couldn’t pretend that my fears were unjustified. However, it wasn’t my place to talk about my sister-in-law’s health battle while she was still waging it, and then I didn’t post anything about her death until after her immediate family did. After that, it was normal blogging issues: I wanted to include a photo of her with my post, and didn’t find the one I used until late Saturday when I was looking through my photos.

What all of these stories have in common is that I found them personally challenging for a lot of reasons. The tech problems were challenging mostly because they’re still not actually solved, just a little bit better. The disaster caused by the US election results is ongoing, and getting worse, of course, and I’m still working my way through all that. The death of my friend was hard, but it also happened at time when I just didn’t have the emotional space to talk about it. That, and especially the death of my sister-in-law, were also difficult for me because they brought up the trauma of Nigel’s death and my emotions around that. I tried as best as I could to keep everything in perspective, to compartmentalise when necessary, and I often succeeded. Still, it was nevertheless six months of waves of emotion washing over me.

All that said, it was absolutely NOT unrelentingly bad: I had fun during those six months, even if sometimes it was despite everything, and I achieved some things that made me feel happy, accomplished, proud, etc. It was, in other words, a period of time with good as well as bad—pretty much like every other time in one’s life.

Nevertheless, for a lot of that time I simply didn’t have the mental or physical energy to blog or podcast, nor the ability to say why that was. Because of all that turmoil, I missed out on blogging about things that I very much wanted to talk about, completely non-political things, of course, things that were personally important to me (like anniversaries). I may talk about most of those things in one one post (kind of like my old “Internet wading” posts). I also have other topics leftover from last year that I still want to talk about, including some that have reached their own first anniversary in the past couple months (whether I mentioned them at the time last year or not). On top of that are some very good things I’ve been up to starting back in December, and that topic, too, deserves my full attention.

The thing is, though, that because I don’t know when things will get better, I also don’t know when I may have a shot at being even slightly more productive—in everything/anything, actually. I guess we’ll find out together.

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 2

Seven weeks into 1985 a new pop song reached Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100”. It was only the third song to do so in that timeframe, and it, too, had a multi-week run. On February 16, 1985, “Careless Whisper” (video up top) hit Number One. The song was credited in some countries to “Wham! Featuring George Michael”, and in the UK, Ireland, and other European countries to George Michael. The song was also the second single from the second Wham! album, Make It Big (the first single was “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, which was the subject of “Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 17” back on November 17 of last year). Like the previous single, “Careless Whisper” would stay at Number One for three weeks.

Michael originally wrote the song when he was 18 and on his way to his job as a DJ at a hotel. He said that as he paid the bus driver, he came up with the famous sax riff, and then wrote the rest of the song on his commute. His bandmate, Andrew Ridgeley, was a co-writer.

I very clearly remember this song and its video, which was directed by Duncan Gibbins, who also directed the video for their previous single, "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". At the time this song was a hit, we still didn’t (officially…) know about George Michael’s sexuality, though there was certainly speculation. That doesn’t matter for the song itself, which isn’t gender specific, but it’s a key part of of the music video. Music videos tell a very specific story, and in the case of “Careless Whisper”, while the song itself and the video are about the same thing (cheating on a partner), the video leaves no doubt it’s about a man cheating on a woman, something one could ignore in the song. That didn’t matter to me, but I did prefer the song to the video for that very reason.

I’ve talked before about “filling in the blanks” in pop music to make them a song a better fit for me as a young gay man, to make it something I could personally identify with. I assumed that sort of thing never crossed the minds of young heterosexuals, and it’s probably something that only mattered, to the extent it did at all, to an LGBTQ+ person—or who intensely disliked those who were LGBTQ+. Times have changed, and nowadays there are songs and music videos with positive LGBTQ+ storylines, something I couldn’t have even imagined way back in 1985.

Personally, I mainly just liked the sound of the song, that sax riff, and the words, especially the first two lines of the chorus: “I'm never gonna dance again / Guilty feet have got no rhythm”, which to me was a very evocative phrasing. This wasn’t unusual for me: I’ve often had my attention captured by a couple lines of a song—even the choice of one specific word—which is probably because my own creativity, such as it is, centres on the written word (I know nothing about music composition). I suppose this just reinforces the fact that songs are a very personal thing in many different ways.

“Careless Whisper” reached Number One in Australia (2X Platinum) and Canada (5X Platinum), Number 3 in New Zealand (3X Platinum), and Number One in the UK (2x Platinum). It was also Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100” and on their “Adult Contemporary” charts. The song was also 7X Platinum in the USA.

The album Make It Big reached Number One in Australia (Platinum), Canada (6x Platinum), New Zealand (Platinum), in the UK (4x Platinum), and on the USA’s “Billboard 200”. It was Certified 6x Platinum in the USA.

This series will return March 9 with the next Number One from 1985.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1985” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 1 – February 2, 2025

Another loss for the family

This past week, on Waitangi Day, we lost Nigel’s sister Carolyn after a battle with cancer. She was an immensely kind and loving person, always ready to help folks in the family—and she gave the BEST hugs! Nigel felt a special bond with Carolyn, and she sometimes turned to him for advice, so really they were there for each other. Naturally, she was also always there for me after Nigel died. Of course.

I drove over to visit her the week before she died, and that was a really good day: She was in good spirits, relatively comfortable, though she’d lost a lot of weight and was clearly weakened by her health battle. It was a lovely afternoon with her. We just chatted about nothing and everything, joked, laughed—all the things we’d always done. When I left that evening, I knew I might not see her again, though I didn’t think we’d lose her only a week later. I’m so very glad that I went to see her and that our last time together was so awesome.

The photo of us above is from January 2010, and we’re sitting on the deck of the bach (holiday home) they had at the time. I went there with one of my other sisters-in-law and my mother-in-law to stay with Carolyn for a few days (I don’t remember why Nigel didn’t go, though he might’ve had a work function or something). I had a great time! Her family asked for photos of Carolyn, and when I went through mine I was struck by how in so many of them she and the family were laughing or engaged in some sort of hijinx—that, and karaoke singing. This photo, though, is the only one I found of just us two, which makes it special to me.

As I’ve said many times, I am so lucky to have married into this large loving family, and everyone will help each other through this loss. I have a long-standing policy of not referring to people, especially family members, by name on social media. So, I’ll just say my heart goes out to her husband, my brother-in-law, because I know what this loss feels like. I also send my love to their son and daughter, their own spouses, and their children. I hope they all feel the warmth of this large loving family, even when we’re not in the same room, because that will help them all a lot. I know what that feels like, too.

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 1

Well, well, well: Here we are in a new year and today we begin a new series about pop songs that reached Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100” 40 years ago this week. It turns out that 1985 had quite a lot of Number One songs that I liked, and this week’s is one of them.

On February 2, 1985, ”I Want to Know What Love Is” (video up top) by British-American rock band Foreigner became the first new Number One song of 1985. It followed ”Like a Virgin” by American singer Madonna, which was Number One from December 22, 1984 until February 2, 1985—a pretty good run, that.

Originally released in November 1984, “I Want to Know What Love Is” was Foreigner’s first Number One in the USA, though before that—dating back to1977—they’d had ten Top 20 hits, including five in the Top Ten. The song was the lead single from their fifth studio album, Agent Provocateur.

Like a lot of folks I grew up with, I knew and liked Foreigner from the beginning, and I bought their first four albums, though I never bought Agent Provocateur—or any later album, either. While I really liked their songs dating back to 1977, by the 1980s—mid-1980s in particular—my tastes had changed, and I was more into electronic pop music, European in particular.

I was aware of this particular song, though, and I liked it. A guy I quite fancied at the time listed the song on a list of his favourite songs, and that probably made me like it a bit more. I lost contact with him many decades ago, but I still like the song and I still remember him.

My music tastes in the early 1970s had been mostly “Easy Listening” and “Adult Contemporary", but by my high school years (1973-77), I started liking more rock. After 1977, I began to like “alternative music”, New Wave, and their descendants. Today, I like all of that and more—plus some contemporary pop songs. Put another way, my tastes didn’t change as much as they evolved to include all sorts of music. And that’s both my connection to this week’s song, and it’s place in my personal pop music universe.

“I Want to Know What Love Is” reached Number One in Australia, 9 in Canada, Number One in New Zealand and in the UK (2x Platinum). It was also Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100” and on the Billboard “Mainstream Rock” charts, as well as Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100”. The song was also Platinum in the USA.

The album Agent Provocateur reached Number 2 in Australia, 3 in Canada, 4 in New Zealand (Gold), Number One in the UK (Platinum), and 4 on the USA’s “Billboard 200” chart (3x Platinum).

This series will return February 16 with another new Number One from 1985.

The annual increasing number: 66

So! Yet another birthday, huh? For me, 66 is one of the “non-significant” birthdays, mainly because I tend to focus more on those ending in zero or five, but this year was unusually fraught. For one thing, I realised that because birthdays are annual events, I’m now closer to 70 than I am to 60 (and yes, I’m aware that was technically true the day after my 65th birthday, but now it’s officially official). Still, my day turned out fine, which is probably the main thing.

I was dreading this birthday because when I celebrate it, January 21 New Zealand time, is January 20 in the USA. Every four years that corresponds to the swearing in of the US president, and there was absolutely no way I was going to watch the coronation of The Orange One: Worst.Birthday.Present.EVER! However, because my side of the political divide values truth and facts: The swearing-in part takes place at 6am NZDT, and I’m never up at that time unless the loo beckons. Nigel and I got up and watched in 2009, mainly to make sure Bush was gone, and I also got up and watched in 2021, mainly for Nigel, to make sure the Orange Stain was gone. So staying in bed at that ghastly hour was true-to-form for me.

Even so, I was planning on avoiding Facebook this morning, but since many of my friends were taking part in the “Blackout” (avoiding all Meta products for this week) I figured it would be safe to venture on it, because there’s be very few posts about the circus in Washington, DC. I was right, but wrong about a different aspect: I assumed that the Blackout would mean I’d get very few birthday greetings on Facebook, but I actually got a lot (and I was grateful for every one, even if I was a little surprised).

As for how my day went, this is what I wrote on Facebook:

My birthday so far: This morning, I made poached eggs on toast with sliced Edam cheese because I felt like it and it’s my birthday. They also have freshly ground salt & pepper and some dried parsley from my garden. I seldom make poached eggs on a weekday—no idea why not.

This afternoon I went to Kmart and bought myself some boxer-type shorts for sleeping (I need to get rid of some that are worn out or that aren’t comfortable) and a couple shirts. It was probably the first time I’ve bought anything in that particular Kmart in 10 or 12 years, the last time I was there with Nigel. Since moving to Hamilton, I’ve always walked out with nothing. Gotta say, the shop’s much better than it was not very long ago!

I went to Kmart at all because I was going to Woolies (this week was that supermarket’s turn), and it’s next door to that Kmart. Oddly, I didn’t but any special treats for myself at the supermarket.

My poached eggs this morning.

Yesterday, I went out for lunch with some of the family because one of my sisters-in-law and her daughter (my niece) were in town, so she organised lunch with several of us as a kind of early birthday celebration for me. It was a really nice outing! All the more so because I was planning a quiet day today.

However, for some reason I woke up VERY sleepy yesterday, probably because I went to bed a couple hours earlier than usual (my body probably thought, “WTF are you doing to me?!”). That meant I was a bit subdued yesterday. I went to be last night at a slightly later time, and got up a little bit later than yesterday, but with no less sleep. I was considerably less sleepy today, though still felt very tired and at least a little sleepy. That alone made this birthday unusual.

I said on Facebook yesterday that because I wasn’t planning anything special for today, “I might make a ‘special’ dinner tomorrow night (meaning something I wouldn’t normally make on a weeknight), or maybe I’ll order pizza. Not sure yet.” In the end, I ordered pizza—but that mention that I don’t make poached eggs every day? That was actually a subtle reference back to something I wouldn’t normally make on a weeknight”. I doubt anyone caught that, but I often like to put little easter eggs in things I post on Facebook. And, for the record, the pizza I ordered today was from a local place not very far from my house, and it was very meh. Sadly, I have no good options for pizza delivery.

And that was my day. A couple wines while I watch TV will finish out my evening before I head bed and return to normal normal life tomorrow.

So, my annual increasing number happened again. This year was just an ordinary number, and there are three more (assuming I have any…) until my next "significant birthday". One thing I know for certain is that it’ll be here before I know it and yet, there's one more thing: My birthday is probably the day I miss Nigel the most, because he loved to make a big deal out of my birthday, even though he hated anyone making a fuss about his birthday. He always made me feel so very special on my birthday, even on the ordinary number birthdays. I miss that feeling almost as much as I miss him.

The "Illinois US 66" sign up top is a recreation I created using a similar public domain one for a different US Route in Illinois that I found on Wikipedia. The regular US Route 66 sign is a public domain graphic available from Wikimedia Commons. US Route 66 in Illinois had its original 1926 terminus at Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in Chicago, a spot I was at or near many times in my years living in Chicago. However, over the years there were many changes in the Chicago and Illinois parts of the road, and especially the approach to Chicago and within it. Nothing stays the same forever, of course. That’s true for me, too, oddly enough.

My Previous Birthday posts:

2024: The annual increasing number: 64
2023: The annual increasing number: 64
2022: The annual increasing number: 63
2021: The annual increasing number: 62
2020: The annual number increase happened
2019: Another 'Big Birthday'
2018: The annual increasing number: 59
2017: The annual increasing number: 58
2016: The annual increasing number: 57
2015: The annual increasing number: 56
2014: The annual increasing number: 55
2013: The annual increasing number: 54
2012: The annual increasing number
2011: The annual increasing number
2010: The annual increasing number
2009: Happy Birthday to Me…
2008: Another Birthday

New year, old problems

This year has barely begun, and already old problems are repeating. Fortunately, none of them are my fault, but that fact doesn’t make them any less annoying. Worse, there’s very little I can do about the problems, and what I can do isn’t a good option. Complicated stuff, and barely into the year.

Yesterday, I posted my first blog post of the year, one that talked, in part, about the “Y2K Bug”. That caused a big problem for me, one that requires a bit of a back story.

There’s a Google-supplied sharing bar at the bottom at the bottom of all my blog posts, making it easy to share a post by email, to “re-blog” it to Blogger, or to share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. I’ve used this for a very long time to share my blog posts to Facebook, but they made some changes at some point, adding a “Send Message” button to whatever post I share, and that goes to what appears to be an AI chatbot, for some unknown reason. Even worse, the ENTIRE Facebook post is a link to that Messenger chat thing (sample at right). In other words, it makes sharing posts this way utterly pointless.

I was first alerted to the problem by a subscriber to the AmeriNZ Facebook Page. When I clicked on the link, it worked fine, but it turns out that’s because I was using the page as AmeriNZ, not as myself. I started including a direct link to my blog post in the comments, and that seemed to work well—until last night when the new problem appeared.

Last night I shared my blog post as usual, and then I left the direct link in the comments on Facebook, as usual. Later, I opened Facebook and there was a Notification from Facebook telling me they’d removed my comment because, it said, “This goes against our Community Standards on Spam.” WTF?! As always, my comment had a direct link to the same thing I was sharing to the page.

Naturally, I read what they were referring to:

We don't allow people to use misleading links or content to trick people to visit, or stay on, a website.

Examples of things that we don't allow

• Telling people that they must like a Page to access content on another site
• Using irrelevant pop-ups on websites to prevent people from leaving easily
• Disguising a link as something on our platform, such as a poll or video, to get clicks

Obviously none of that was remotely relevant to me sharing a link to my blog post in a comment. So, I clicked on “read the full policy”, and it was just as irrelevant to this situation:

We do not allow content that is designed to deceive, mislead or overwhelm users in order to artificially increase viewership. This content detracts from people's ability to engage authentically on our platforms and can threaten the security, stability and usability of our services. We also seek to prevent abusive tactics, such as spreading deceptive links to draw unsuspecting users in through misleading functionality or code, or impersonating a trusted domain.

Most (I suspect all…) comment moderation on Facebook is done by bots and algorithms, so I had a hunch I was just another victim of technology, and I was right. I clicked on “How we made this decision” and read: “Our technology found that your content doesn't follow our Community Standards,” it said. “As a result, our technology took action.” Their “technology” means no human had anything to do with it, which was obvious, of course.

As usual, there was no way to appeal their decision, and there are no actual humans to contact (apparently if I pay to become “verified”, which would give me a blue checkmark, it might be possible to reach a human). So, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

My next step was to try to remove the message option from posts, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. After the better part of an hour clicking various settings, including on the Meta for Business part that provides no way to go back to ordinary page administration (I had to close the tab, open a new one and launch the Facebook Page again), I found nothing. Facebook is notorious for putting controls for various settings in weird and illogical places, but it could just be that they don’t permit that.

So, the only option I have is to stop using the share button and copy and paste the link directly in a post on the Facebook Page (that’s also my only option for sharing podcast episodes). I have no idea whether Facebook’s “technology” will allow me to do that, but if it doesn’t the AmeriNZ Facebook Page will be useless to me, and I may as well delete it.

Meanwhile, another problem has resurfaced with my podcast: Folks clicking links are blocked by their web browser due to a supposedly missing or expired “security certificate”. I set that up only a few weeks ago when Roger Green alerted me to the problem. In fact, I was getting it on Chrome, too, but could click a few times to get the part where I could tell Chrome to let me do what I want on the Internet. However, Safari on my iPad wouldn’t let me override it, and it prevented me from accessing the site or use any direct link to a post. When I added the security certificate, all of that stopped—for me, anyway.

The podcast site is currently hosted by Go Daddy, and I’m sick of the constant problems and how difficult it is to navigate their systems to fix them—although, if I used it a lot, like if I was a web developer or something, it might be easier; I need to do something on it maybe once or twice a year. This is an open project at the moment.

Finally, a problem that took me awhile to identify: I wasn’t able to do certain things because I have a VPN (Virtual Private Network). I originally got it last January, just before my trip to Fiji with the family, because I knew Internet access was through wifi, and there’s no way of knowing how secure such things are. The VPN I chose, like most others, allow me to include all my devices, and while I mainly wanted it for my phone and iPad, I realised it could useful for things like watching news videos that are geoblocked. It worked great in Fiji, but then we came home.

I would try to access some websites and be refused access, something that sometimes happened before the VPN, but I assumed it was just a glitch. On a whim, really, I switched off the VPN and I could access the sites. Similarly, I use an FTP program to upload my podcasts to my site, and the one I use is called Cyberduck, something I've used for years, including for work. Earlier this year, I started having trouble connecting to the server to upload my podcast files: It would be very slow to login, then to access the folders on my site so I could upload my file, and then the upload would often fail, sometimes many times. I wasn’t suspicious because there were somewhat similar problems sometimes in the past, so it didn’t surprise me that there were glitches using it—ones that Nigel fixed for me, of course. I eventually started logging in through Go Daddy’s website, because even though it was much slower using a web browser, at least it worked.

When I resumed podcasting in early December, I and ran into the same problem using Cyberduck. Then, on a hunch more than a whim, I paused my VPN, and Cyberduck worked perfectly—fast login, fast access to the folder I needed, and VERY fast upload—all exactly as it should be, and how it was before I installed the VPN.

What all of these problems have in common is that at first I didn’t realise what was wrong, for different reasons. Once I worked out what was going on, I tried solutions for Facebook and for people to access to my podcast site, only to discover find out the solutions weren’t as simple as they seemed. Of all of those, only the problem using Cyberduck was easy to fix, and it’s remained fixed.

In a year in which I had very little room in my head to try and figure out complicated technical things, especially on top of everything else that was going on, it’s not a surprise that the problems took as long to work out as they did, and also why some of them didn’t work. Still this is new year, with, I hope, some new perspectives that can lead to new solutions.

Still, this certainly is not what I wanted to wrestle with on the New Year’s Public Holidays—or any other day, actually. This is one of those times where, “it is what it is.” Onward! I hope…

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 417 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 417, “Happy New Year”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

Welcoming 2025 and my own past

2025 has arrived—another year that sounds all future-y. Maybe that’s just me, but, then, I’ve accumulated a bit of experience in this life thing, so I may have a bit of perspective on such things. Or maybe it’s delusions? Either way, I have thoughts about it all.

It seems crazy to think that a mere 25 years ago today we’d just found out that the “Y2K Bug” had really been squashed. In the run up to December 31, 1999 there was so much panicking going on—and without the benefit of social media, or even general Internet as much as there is now. These days, such the panic would probably do what the “bug” couldn’t do—bring the world to a halt, if only briefly.

On “Millennium Night”, Nigel was the Call Centre Manager for what was then Auckland City Council. They’d arranged a special night those who had to work that (the call centre was pretty much 24-hour, especially when there was a big event, like that year’s New Year’s Eve). Nigel was allowed to invite family to join him.

That evening my cousin-in-law picked me up and we went to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner, then the three of us, plus my niece drove into the central Auckland at around 10pm to join Nigel at his work. My journal from January 1, 2000 picks up the story (edited):

We got to Nigel’s work and I rang up for him, because he had to come down and let us in. We checked in with the security guard, and went upstairs.…

There was a big buffet on the seventh floor, and we waited there watching TV3’s coverage on a big screen TV as we waited for midnight. We watched the Chathams celebrate midnight, about a half-hour before us, then made our way up the 18th floor.

Midnight came, the lights stayed on, and I’m sure everyone sighed with relief. Unfortunately, the bad weather almost ruined the fireworks. We couldn’t even see the top of Skytower, which was hidden in a cloud. Still, what we could see looked good, and we could imagine how nice it would have been if the weather had been better. We had some more champagne, then went back down to the seventh floor for more food. We rang Nigel’s folks to wish them a Happy New Year, then by around 1:30, my sister-in-law, niece, and cousin-in-law] left. I decided to stay because, in part, I could help keep Nigel awake on the drive home.

I sent an e-mail to my brother and sister at 1.30 to let them know everything was OK.

About 2:15, the Mayor, Christine Fletcher, stopped by to see the people working, carrying an entourage behind her (including one aide who was very cute). We were all sitting around watching TV, she came back in the room from the loo, I presume, and she sneezed. I said "gesundheit”, as is my custom. She said, "That's my first sneeze of the new millennium!" and I said, "and I gave you your first blessing of the new millennium." They left a little while later, and a half-hour or so later, so did we.

Things went so smoothly with Y2K issues that the Emergency Operations Communications (what they used to call the civil defence communications bunker) centre closed at about 2.30.

We got home around three-thirty, spent some time with Saibh, then went to bed around ten to four, and that was our day.

I quote that at length because it felt like such a cool thing to be part of, and was very unusual. At the same time, though, I’d forgotten some of the details, and I’m so glad I wrote that down in those pre-blogging days, especially because I probably wouldn’t have blogged about all that, anyway.

Today I discovered something else I wasn’t really aware of before, and it was thanks to this blog. I knew that there were several different times over the years that I’ve mentioned that I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but I didn’t remember that the first time I did so was on December 31, 2006, in my last post of that year, my very first with this blog (which began September 13 that year). Specifically, I said:

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I think it just sets people up to fail, and we all have plenty of failures in our lives without adding more of our own creation.

Instead, I make some general goals for the year, things that are, perhaps, only “would be nice” rather than “must do”. I also set goals and targets low enough that they can be reasonably achieved, freeing me to make newer goals.

It’s always been that way for me, and I don’t see that changing. So, no resolutions for me, though I’ve already started what some people make resolutions about: I started gentle walking workouts, as I mentioned on Sunday (which, because of my recent blogging frenzy, seems like a month ago…). My goal is to get fitter to see if that will help me mind the mowing less, and so that I can use the cross trainer I have in the garage (I’m definitely not fit enough at the moment). We‘;’ll see—it’s just a general goal, after all.

And that’s been my New Year’s Day: Relaxing after a quiet New Year’s Eve with Leo (my usual tradition)< then today was about remembering and rediscovering my own past even as we all launch into a new year. That last part seems especially perfect for someone with a blog.

Happy New Year!

I saw the image up top on the Internet many times, and in many places. I have no idea who originally uploaded it, nor where I found it.