Open, says me

A miracle happened this week —well, two actually. Well, three, all up. And I was relieved by all three.

First, those Torx screwdrivers I ordered that were delayed? They arrived Tuesday, a day earlier than promised, and six days earlier than the revised delivery estimate. One miracle will take a bit of explanation.

The Torx screwdrivers arrived, much to my surprise, and that’s not just because all the talk of delays turned out to be irrelevant, but also because of the way they were shipped: The drivers were in the wall rack they came with, but were otherwise loose in a what appeared to be a retail box, with two tape circles holding the lid closed: The product was just loose in the box. It’s a miracle that the box didn’t open in transit—though that’s not the last big miracle.

The finally opened Mac Classic.

On Tuesday afternoon, I used the Torx screwdriver to finally open the case of the Mac Classic and: The battery did NOT explode and destroy the logic board! That was so common among on Macs of that vintage that it’s what I actually expected to see. It means that whatever’s wrong with it may be repairable. Whether I, personally, even can repair it is another matter entirely. Another big miracle may be required.

To recap for a moment, I needed a special long-handled Torx screwdriver because two of the screws were in the recess for the carry handle (in the shadow at the top of the photo above) and I couldn’t find such screwdrivers here in New Zealand. I ordered them from Amazon, was told they were delayed, they arrived early, and I immediately used the new Torx screwdriver to open the case, and then found that there was no catastrophic damage, like I thought there might be. So, even though it seems like nothing much happened, this was actually a big step forward.

And that’s a bit of a miracle, too.

The screws after removal. The black one on the left is from the bottom of the back of the case, which can be seen, so they're black to match the various ports. The upper screws can't be seen, so they're just ordinary screws (and have looser threads), and un-coloured screws are usually cheaper. But making sure that visible screws match nearby ports is the sort of attention to detail that Apple was once famous for.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 358 now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 357, “Projected Living” is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast.

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

The worried well

Doctors used to talk about “the worried well”, people who were healthy, but who nevertheless worried about something happening to their bodies or health. The clear implication of the phrase was that such worry was irrational, but what happens when the world changes so much because of a raging global pandemic that healthy people worrying about their health isn’t merely rational, but even necessary? That’s now life as we know it.

There’s something very different about Covid in New Zealand now, and not just the obvious, namely, that the techniques that worked so awesomely well last year are, by themselves, no longer capable of stopping the spread of the virus. People now seem to fully understand the implications of an unstoppable virus spreading widely through a population with little or no resistance to it. We know that one infected person can infect six others unless there are things to slow that down—widespread vaccination, constant mask-wearing, social distancing, and good ventilation.

Vaccination rates are still the country’s Achilles Heel. As of 1pm on October 6, 2021 (the most recent stats available as I write this), a mere 51% of New Zealand’s eligible population is fully vaccinated, and only 80% of the population has had one dose. But that’s only the eligible population (currently those 12 and over). The vaccinated rates among the total population are an abysmal 43% fully vaccinated, and 68% with one jab. [In the interest of full transparency, 83% of the eligible population has either had their first jab or is booked in for it, and 73% are either fully vaccinated or booked in for their second jab).]

A large percentage of that 80% of eligible people who have had a first jab are now eligible for their second one, mainly because the government reduced the time between jabs to a minimum of three weeks (it was raised to six weeks a couple months back, apparently to manage the supply of vaccine to make sure as many people as possible could get one jab until new shipments of vaccines could arrive). The government is also ramping up the vaccination campaign.

Saturday, October 16 has been designated “Super Saturday”, a nationwide campaign to get as many people as possible vaccinated as quickly as possible. Roughly a million people eligible for the vaccine haven’t yet had even one jab, and that’s a lot of people to get motivated to do the right thing. There will be some carrot-stick things going on, too.

This week the prime minister confirmed that proof of full Covid vaccination will be available before summer using a new App, or a code people can download on paper for scanning on site (and they’re going to arrange sites where people who don’t have computers or smartphones can get free print-outs of the proof). The existing Covid Tracer App can’t be used because that has the option of enabling Bluetooth to allow anonymous information sharing when we’re out and about (making contact tracing far faster and easier), and neither Apple nor Google allow private data (like vaccine records) to be accessed in Bluetooth-enabled Apps due to the probably remote chance of data breaches). [See also: “Covid-19 vaccine certificates: How they might work and what questions remain” – RNZ]

This matters because, the prime minster announced, proof of full vaccination will be required for anyone attending large public events, like the music festivals this summer and, I’d guess, large concerts and sports events. They’re also looking at what they have to do to make sure any venue (including potentially bars and restaurants) can restrict entry to only those who are fully vaccinated (there’s some question at the moment about whether that would be legal). There will be more details provided later, probably next month when the App is rolled out. [See also: “The three possible ways vaccine certificates could be legally enforced” and also “EMA (NZ business lobby group) says vaccine passports should be mandatory in the workplace”]

The fact that full vaccination will be mandatory to do some things is an incentive for people who simply haven’t gotten around to getting vaccinated. I saw an example of that very thing yesterday evening when TVNZ’s One News showed a young man who’d just had his first jab saying he did it because he wants to go to music festivals this summer. In other words, he had a reason that was important to him personally, and that’s a common enough reason to get the jab.

An additional problem with the old system is that it relied on people obeying the rules—and law—and doing the right thing. The Waikato (and, as of last night, points south) are now under Level 3 Lockdown because of two men who are gang members, one of whom illegally crossed the Auckland border, became infected, and brought the disease back to the Waikato (seems to me that there are legitimate questions about why police patrols of rural roads crossing the border weren’t far more frequent). So far, all the people infected in the Waikato have been connected to each other, meaning there’s not yet any evidence of wider community transmission, but it’ll take a couple weeks to be sure—if even then. The Auckland outbreak keeps showing new infections, and even though they’re connected to each other one way or another, it still means that infectious people could, potentially, infect others in the community.

All of which makes this outbreak feel different than last year’s. In the first one in early 2020, it was all scary because there so much we didn’t know, but now? We may know a lot more now, but we face a far more infectious variant of the virus, and it just doesn’t go away—we keep getting new cases. We—the vast majority of Kiwis—know that vaccination is our only hope for ever getting anything like the freedoms we had before Delta, but 20% of the population still hasn’t had even one jab. That’s a lot of people who aren’t pulling their weight, regardless of why that may be (and, it must be noted, so far the main reasons seem to be lack of access to vaccines, like in rural communities for example, cultural/language barriers, or simple lethargy; there’s still no evidence of any widespread deliberate, willful, arrogant avoidance like in some other countries, even though our tiny fringe is as extremely noisy as it can be in order to try to fool the rational majority of people into thinking there’s more than a tiny number of the loons about).

This outbreak feels much closer, possibly because Covid was brought to the Waikato just last week (though illegal activity…), and because the “locations of interest” (places an infected person went to) are often close by. The fact that the cases in Auckland just keep growing, and also that vaccination is so very slow, makes it seem like it’s more probable than possible that we’ll come in contact with the virus if we go out in public.

I take this very personally. I have people in my life who cannot be vaccinated, including young children, but even among those of us who are fully vaccinated, there are still several of us who are vulnerable if we have a breakthrough infection. I got to get my first jab ahead of my age cohort because of my heart condition and hypertension, both of which put me at higher risk of severe disease. But I’ve had lung infections throughout my life, especially in childhood, and my dad often did, too. All of which means that if I do become infected, the odds of me being one of the rare cases that becomes serious or even life-threatening is greater than if I didn’t have that health history. I’ve done pretty much all I can do to protect myself, from following all guidance and rules and laws when I’m out and about, and also including staying home as much as possible to reduce the possibility of being exposed to the virus and becoming infected.

Many of us, including me, are well and worried, and we have every right to be. In fact, I’d argue it’d be irrational to NOT be worried. Until we get our vaccination rates dramatically higher, we’re all vulnerable to widespread infection that could claim us, too. At the very least, until vaccination rates are dramatically higher, we cannot even contemplate a return to anything approaching the freedoms we had eight weeks ago.

The way forward is clear: We all have to do our part to protected everyone else by getting vaccinated and following all the other rules and laws. I just hope we can all rise to meet the challenge and do our duty. The consequences of failing to do so are too severe and horrible to even contemplate.

I’m a helpful blogger

There’s no sense denying it: I’m a helpful blogger. Whether it’s my “AmeriNZ Test Kitchen” posts, in which I try all sorts of products and recipes, through to my “Projects” posts, where I talk in detail about things I’ve worked on, I talk about things I do so that others don’t have to. There’s another (sadly neglected) category of posts, “Household Hints”, in which I shared specific information to help with everyday challenges. Today I revive those posts.

Among the many things that I personally find the most annoying about chores associated with daily life is refilling the liquid soap dispensers next to all of my sinks. It’s something I have to do more often than ever, thanks to the frequent handwashing required by living with Covid, but even before that it was always annoying and even frustrating—until I thought of a workaround.

The photo up top illustrates the tip: How to refill a liquid soap dispenser quickly, easily, and with no waste or spills.

To to use this tip, you’ll need the empty soap dispenser, of course, a funnel that will fit inside the mouth of your soap dispenser, and a twist tie. That’s it! Well, a bottle of soap to pour into the bottle, too.

First, wrap the twist tie around the threads of the bottle, making sure it’s within the groove of a thread (so it doesn’t slip). You can twist two twist ties together if your soap bottle has an extra wide opening. Twist the ends of the twist tie together. That’s shown in the left photo in the bottom row.

Next, bend the twisted ends into the mouth of the bottle (middle photo), and insert the funnel (right photo). Don’t push it too hard—it’ll be askew and that’s what you want! Then, pour the new soap into the funnel and let it drain in.

The point of this is that it allows air to enter the bottle around the base of the funnel, and that speeds up the funnel emptying. Without the twist tie, the funnel will form a seal with the bottle opening and it’ll drain slower than maple syrup on a Vermont winter morning. This tip saves a lot of time.

There’s an important warning: You need to know what the capacity of your bottle is so that you don’t over-fill the funnel. In my case, I already knew what the capacity of my bottle was, and I’d measured how much the funnel holds, so I knew how far to fill the funnel so I don’t spill any soap. This can take some trial and error.

The point of this process is to speed up filling the bottle, of course, but there’s also another goal that others may or may not share: Until I came up with this, I always spilled some soap because pouring it into the bottle without a funnel meant I always misjudged the flow rate (or whatever it’s called) and the soap would gloop out and onto the bottle. When I started using a funnel, I had to leave it for ages as it slowly drained into the bottle. Now, it’s over in minutes, and with no spillage.

I’m being thoroughly tongue-in-cheek in this post, however, I really do use this method and highly recommend it. I’m absolutely certain I’m not the first person to come up with a way (in fact, this is my final, refined method) to make sure that the funnel doesn't form a seal, and so, make the bottle fill slower. However, so far this is the first place I’ve seen anyone spell it out.

This public service of mine is all the more remarkable given that I’ve never received a single cent in payment, nor any other form of compensation, in the entire 15 years I’d done this blog. What can I say? I’m a giver. And today is no different.

In all seriousness, though, I do swear by this method.

Changes for the times

Today the NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced adjustments to Auckland’s Level 3, with an eye toward gradually easing restrictions before an actual Level change. There have been other changes announced in recent days, all of which are related to Covid. That’s the times we live in.

The changes announced for Auckland involve three stages modifications to Level 3 restrictions in Auckland. From 11:59pm tonight:

People will be able to connect with loved ones OUTDOORS with no more than two households at a time, up to a maximum of 10 people; early childhood education will return for all; and people can move around Auckland for recreation such as beach visits and hunting.

The changes only apply to Auckland, and not the parts of the Waikato that are temporarily under Level 3 restrictions. There’s also no indication on when the next Step may be implemented, but they plan on reviewing the situation weekly.

Part of what will determine the easing of restrictions anywhere in New Zealand will be achieving higher vaccination rates. Today, the Government also announced that 2 million Kiwis—48% of the eligible population (people aged 12+)—are now fully vaccinated. Overall, 79% have had at least one jab. The percentage of Aucklanders who have had at least one jab is now higher than 80%.

The Government has also begun point out that, in this current outbreak, only 3% were fully vaccinated. More importantly, NONE of the fully vaccinated people who got Covid were hospitalised, and none died. This also means, of course, that none of the fully vaccinated people ended up in an Intensive Care or High Dependency Unit, either.

What this shows is that vaccination slows the spread of the disease because the virus doesn’t affect the vast majority of vaccinated people, however, if a fully vaccinated person is infected, their disease will be milder and is unlikely to be fatal. All of which strongly suggests that some sort of vaccine passport will be required for events with large crowds, and the Government expects that next week they’ll be able to make an announcements about what that might look like.

Lost because of the Waikato drama yesterday was an announcement from Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins, who revealed that, “Full vaccination will become a requirement for non-New Zealand citizens arriving into the country from 1 November.” This will mean they’ll need to have had “a full course of any of the 22 COVID-19 vaccines approved by a government or approval authority” 14 days or more before their arrival in New Zealand. This won’t apply to NZ citizens, anyone under 17, or people with a valid medical exemption. But before packing one’s bags, it’s important to remember that:

Everybody arriving will still be required to complete 14 days in Managed Isolation and Quarantine, and all travellers except those from exempt locations will still need to have evidence of a negative COVID-19 test result from an accredited laboratory within 72 hours of their first scheduled international flight.

This is related to Air New Zealand ’s announcement yesterday of mandatory vaccines for international travellers, a “no jab, no fly” policy that will begin in February, 2022. They also elaborated a little bit on how it’ll work:

Using Timatic, the IATA Travel Pass will check customers' health information against flight details to ensure they are meeting entry requirements for that destination, and the airline.

The app is based on decentralized technology which means there is no central database holding passenger information. Passengers have complete discretion as to whether they share their data or not and they can delete their data at any time on the app, without fear of this being stored.

The last part is very similar to the way NZ’s Covid-19 Covid Tracer (check-in) App works. More concrete details will be released over time.

On Saturday, (October 1 USA time), the USPS (United States Postal Service) announced in a message on its website that it was suspending processing most international deliveries to 22 countries, including New Zealand, Australia, and Samoa. It said it was “due to impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other unrelated service disruptions.” They also said that anything already in the system will be returned to the sender.

Covid-19 has definitely disrupted shipping around the world—absolutely it has. However, I tend to suspect that the real problem here is “other unrelated service disruptions”, and while I might have my suspicions on what the real cause of this disruption is, I couldn’t possibly comment further. All I know is that I won’t get a huge stack of Christmas cards from the USA this year! Seriously, though, I hope this doesn’t further delay—or prevent delivery of—those Torx screwdrivers I ordered nearly a month ago, but that haven’t left the USA yet. In fact, nothing’s happened since I wrote about the delay last week.

Right now, the only constant is change. Absolutely everything I’ve talked about here will be changing even more in teh weeks ahead. I guess we’d all better get used to that happening. Change is now (a big) part of the times we live in.

Back up to Level 3

At 11:59 tonight, parts of the Waikato will move to Covid Alert Level 3. The affected areas are Hamilton City, Raglan, Te Kauwhata, Huntly, and Ngāruawāhia. This is scheduled to last for at least five days.

The Government made this announcement this afternoon [WATCH/LISTEN] after it was discovered that two people in the Waikato tested positive after feeling unwell (one was in Raglan and the other in Hamilton East). One of them is now in hospital for treatment of their Covid, and their household members are all isolating and helping officials with their enquiries. The two Waikato community cases are associates of one another, but at this point it’s not clear how they became infected because there’s no clear link to Auckland cases. Genome sequencing is under way in order to help answer some of the questions. Neither of these cases were vaccinated.

Alert Level 3 will help ensure that the virus doesn’t spread even farther into the Waikato by severely restricting the virus’ ability to find unvaccinated people to infect. It also gives health authorities time to do contact tracing. Another part of the control efforts, and to try to determine the extent of spread in the community, they’re asking anyone in the region who is feeling unwell to get tested immediately.

The Prime Minister said that if New Zealand was able to reach 90% vaccination, the possibility of Level 3 or 4 Lockdowns will be greatly reduced because it would be extremely difficult for the virus to find an unvaccinated person to infect. She urged folks, especially those in the affected areas of the Waikato, to get vaccinated immediately.

Hamilton Mayor Paula Southgate posted on Facebook about the change to Level 3: “No-one wanted this,” she said, and then issued a strong plea to Hamiltonians: “PLEASE Hamilton, let’s do what right. We MUST get our vaccination rates up to avoid further lockdowns and I am imploring people who have not yet been vaccinated, to do so.” Exactly.

The Emergency Alert once again
scared the crap out of me
when the alarm signal went off.  

I often call Level 3 “Lockdown Lite” because we can do some things that people under Level 4 Lockdown can’t, such as, we can do click and collect (order online and drive to the store for contactless pickup) for anything, whereas only essential goods can be bought under Level 4 and it must be delivered to a person’s home contactlessly. What the two Lockdown levels have in common is that we’re still supposed to stay at home and within our household bubbles, so they share some of the same harsher lockdown restrictions.

I think the Government absolutely made the right call. Much as I completely hate going back under Level 3 Lockdown, we simply cannot risk the virus taking off while our vaccination rates are still so low—we absolutely can’t become like the USA’s Southern states (among others). On the other hand, there’s no evidence that we have anywhere near the same rate of batshit craziness against vaccines that the USA has—though we do have a small number of moronic arseholes spreading lies and disinformation, of course, as all other countries seem to have.

I’m quite lucky, I think. I have plenty of things I can do around the house to keep me busy, and that’s good. I also have plenty of food (and toilet paper…), so I won’t have to venture out to the shops this week, and that’s also good until we know whether there’s widespread community transmission. Put another way, I’ll be able to stay safe and avoid getting bored. Some people are definitely not in a similarly good space (literal or figurative) for another Lockdown.

The sooner people hurry up and get vaccinated, the better. We ALL want Lockdowns to end, and none of us wants to watch people get sick and possibly die from what’s now a largely preventable disease, but absolutely NONE of us want to be the cause of people getting sick or dying. It’s quite simply our duty to get vaccinated to protect everyone, including ourselves. I’ve done that. Now it’s time for the rest to catch up.

For the photo up top, I’m once again continuing the imagery from the photos I made for the previous Alert Level changes in this outbreak. This photo draws on when New Zealand (Apart from Auckland) went to Alert Level 2: This time, the two locked padlocks with the keys in them represents Auckland and parts of the Waikato under Level 3. Those two locks can be unlocked for certain things, unlike Level 4, but are otherwise kept locked. They are two separate locks because Level 3 for the Waikato is likely to end before it does for Auckland. Maybe? The opened lock still represents the rest of New Zealand Alert under Level 2, but it's still hooked to the closed Auckland and Waikato locks. The key is still in it because, as before, it could be locked again if things go wrong—which is what happened to parts of the Waikato. This is the only set of three matching locks that I have, so I hope we don’t have further splits in Alert Levels.

Brand name

Everything has a name, and sometimes it’s a name we’ve given to it. But what happens when we begin to question the name we’ve given to something? The “AmeriNZ” name is an example. Is it time to retire it?

There was a time when the name of this blog (etc.…) was obvious. I’d started using the “AmeriNZ” brand several years before this blog was born, so when I started it, using the name for it was the logical thing to do. It was still a logical name to use as I expanded the stuff I did (like when I added the podcast and YouTube Channel, among other things). But, so much has changed over the past 15 years, hasn’t it? After the biggest change of all, losing Nigel, I began to think about whether my brand name was still right for me. I began to wonder if it was time for a new one.

This thinking was awakened yet again when I realised that I no longer had the “amerinz.com” website. I was thinking about my options for the future, and that made me think again about whether or not I should even keep using the name.

When I first started using the AmeriNZ name, I explained that it was a shortened version of the phrase “American in New Zealand”, and that’s the crux of the issue: Is that an accurate way to describe me in 2021? After more than 25 years in New Zealand, and with no intention of ever leaving, am I not now arguably more Kiwi than Yank?

I knew that the name was accurate when I first arrived because I was absolutely an “American in New Zealand”. It was even still true once I became a permanent resident, because I was still a US citizen, but one allowed to live and work in New Zealand indefinitely.

Everything changed when I became a New Zealand citizen: While I was still an American, I was also legally a New Zealander. Put another way, I was no longer just an “AmeriNZ”.

That’s where I got stuck. A walk through this blog’s archives was the antidote.

Back in 2008, at the blog’s second anniversary, I added a banner I made for the top of the blog. That banner still had the original name (just “AmeriNZ”, not “AmeriNZ Blog”, as it is now; that came about when I decided I needed to differentiate the blog and podcast), but it also carried a new tagline “A gay American-born New Zealander talks about life, his two countries, and a whole lot more.” And that was when it hit me: The brand name now means “American-born New Zealander” or even just “American New Zealander”.

Today I made yet another revised banner for the top of this blog (at the top of this post), with one revision: I shortened the tagline to “A gay American-born New Zealander talks about life and a whole lot more.” Nothing’s changed about the blog itself, or what I might talk about, but by removing the reference to “two countries”, I’m taking the focus off of that. I now realise it should have been like this all along because “AmerNZ” is a personal brand about me and the stuff I create. My unique thing was never really just about where I was born, but about everything that’s happened to me since I moved here, and not all of that has anything to do with my origin story—well, stories is probably more accurate.

All of this will become more important (to me…) over the coming months. I’m making changes to allow me to better manage the content I create and save money as I move closer to retirement. I’ll talk about each step as it happens, but nothing will change in the way to get to things. Right now, the important thing is that this process made me realise the brand I’ve been working on building for the past 15 years is safe. It turns out that the name grew and changed, just like me. There’s still a lot of life left in us both.

Today was a fob-ulous day

Today wasn’t supposed to be about any projects, and mostly it wasn’t. Impatience played a role in that, but mostly it was just a Saturday, and there was no reason to fill it with lots of work and such. I still managed to find a small victory. though.

I had two goals for today today: To exchange some button batteries I bought earlier this week for ones I actually needed and meant to get, and I also wanted to check out some stuff to finish the top shelf of the shelves I put in the kitchen.

I set out early this afternoon and headed to one of the home centres, the one where I’d bought the shelf supplies—because the two home centres carry different mostly entirely products. Of course. Once I got there, the carpark was packed and there was a queue of people waiting to get in (under Covid Level 2, there’s a limit to how many people can be in a shop at any given time, which varies depending on how big the place is so that people can keep a 2-metre space between themselves and anyone else. I changed my mind and got back in my car and headed to my next stop. Ain’t nothing I needed badly enough to make me wait in a queue at that store.

My next stop was the supermarket I went to earlier this week. That day, I bought a couple button batteries for my car’s key fobs, but got the wrong ones (the ones I bought were on the hook right next to the ones I wanted). Once I got there (and with no waiting to enter), it wasn’t obvious to me what I needed to do to exchange the batteries. So, I picked up some stuff I needed (including flour to replace what I used up with yesterday’s pizza), and then I went to the checkout.

The operator called over a supervisor who slowly and methodically worked out what to do to make the exchange, which apparently required her to issue a cash refund that she then used to “pay” for the new batteries. Odd, and pretty inefficient, I thought, but we got there in the end. It also reminded me that some things about that particular chain are difficult to navigate.

I then went home, and it was on to something that wasn’t a project, but just an ordinary life chore: I needed to change the batteries in my car’s key fobs.

“Fob” is a highfalutin word for a car’s remote, but the kind that’s a “proximity key” to let me unlock the car with the remote in my pocket, and without using an actual key. For my car, I need to press a button on the handle of the front doors (driver’s side or the passenger’s). With Nigel’s last car—the first time I’d ever seen such a thing—he just had to touch one of those two door handles. But, then, his car cost much more than mine.

Doing this was no big deal, of course, but I had to find out how to do it first (I had no idea). It was easy, it turns out, and cost me around $11 for the batteries for the two fobs. Dealers usually charge crazy money to do it for you, so I probably saved myself a bundle (the car goes into the dealer for its next regular service on the 15th, and I wanted the fob ready to go by then).

Things went well and easily, and I was able to unlock and re-lock my car using the remote from my front door, so clearly the battery works. It had been giving me more and more trouble, so much so that I usually had to use the emergency key to unlock the car (even with low batteries in the fob, the car will still start as long as the fob is near the start button). Changing the batteries should fix all that.

That wasn’t enough for me, though: I just had to sneak in one more little project, too. I wanted to raise the lowest shelf in my pantry so that I could store my new breadmaker at the bottom of the pantry. That went well, too (though at first I forgot to move up one of the five shelf supports; oops).

The space at the bottom of the pantry became available after Jake died: I had a tin to store his food in there (Leo, being younger and smaller, got different food, which I store in a different container). The only drawback to this change was that the bottle of canola oil I use whenever I need cooking oil will no longer fit on the shelf, where it was at a convenient height to grab while I was cooking. I’ll just have to find a shorter bottle, I guess, or be willing to bend over a bit more to lift it off the bottom of the pantry. In the meantime, the breadmaker is now out of sight (the old one was on the benchtop, and I want to keep that as clear as I can since the kitchen’s a little small, and the benchspace is limited).

My only other project for today was related to this blog, actually, but that’s an entirely different story.

The thing that made me the happiest today was totally unimportant: Those key fobs. I felt good about accomplishing it, probably because I had to figure it out and get it done. As I said on my personal Facebook, “sometimes the smallest victories are also the sweetest.” And, how sweet it was!

Successful failure

Tonight I tried doing something I’ve been wanting to try for ages: I made my own pizza bases for homemade pizza. My verdict? A resounding, “It was okay, I guess.” At least now I’ve done it.

Pizza is probably my favourite “junk” food, so much so, that I often joke that if I was gong to be executed, I’d want pizza for my last meal. That’s probably not actually true, but it’s something I do like and have often.

Back in April of last year, I talked about making pizzas at home, noting, “For some time—years, probably—I wanted to try making pizza completely from scratch, especially the base and sauce.” I found or was given many good recipes, but they all seemed so fiddly that I just couldn’t get enthused about actually doing it.

Then this past March, a fire destroyed the factory that made the store-bought fresh pizzas Nigel and bought for several years. In the months since, I made more pseudo pizzas, like I did last year, and tried a few fresh pizza bases sold in supermarkets, but never found any I liked (for my taste, the Pam’s brand from New World was the most okay of any of them).

So, I again decided I should try making my own base—using my automatic bread maker.

The machine takes care of much of the hard work—the mixing, the kneading, the first rising, etc. That took 45 minutes (plus the time before putting the ingredients in the machine’s bread pan.

When it was done, I had to knead it, then cut it in two and let the two dough spheres rest in a warm spot for 10 minutes. Then I was supposed to press it into a greased pizza pan and let that sit at room temperature for 15 minutes, and then assemble it and bake it for around 20 minutes.

All up, the whole process took more than an hour and a half, roughly two hours if you count the assembly of ingredients. In that amount of time, I could’ve ordered in a pizza, then immediately ordered in another one. I was glad I used pizza sauce from the supermarket, because everything took so long that making the sauce, too, would’ve driven me round the bend.

I thought the base was was “okay, I guess,” though I know some people would’ve liked it—just not me. I like thin and crispy pizza bases (and so did Nigel), but this was thicker—not pan pizza, but more like what’s usually the “standard” bases from chain pizzerias in NZ. I also thought it was surprisingly bland, though I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing. I have a lot left over because it was so filling that what I did eat sat like a rock in my stomach.

Still, I’ve done it now and my curiosity is assuaged. I could experiment, or I could try an even more time consuming and more fiddly recipe not involving the bread maker, but, no, I won’t be doing that. I’d honestly rather stick with my pseudo pizzas or the okay pizza bases if I’m going to make any at home. Mostly, I’d rather order it in and get something much nicer, where my only effort is placing the order on my iPad.

On the bright side, though, tonight was my first time using my new bread machine, which was the delayed package delivery I wrote about on Wednesday. I ordered it online last week to replace my old bread maker, which we bought in 2000 or 2001 in Taupo (though I can’t remember why were were there). We didn’t use it for most of the years after that, but I’ve used it a lot over the past couple years or so, and once every week or two for the past year. It reached a point where the motor spinning the mixing paddle would push the bread pan up and disengage during the kneading mode. The last loaf I made, the pan popped up about a dozen times in the final kneading (I had to push it back down each time). I knew the metal that holds the pan in place was wearing out, and this last incident made me give up on it and order a new one. Still, some 20 years is a pretty good run for a small kitchen appliance.

I bought my machine based on the evaluations conducted by the non-profit consumer organisation, Consumer NZ. I subscribed to their magazine many years ago and found it useful, but membership is so much more useful now, with access to product reviews and evaluations that the general public can’t see. I had to pay up for that privilege, but I figure it’ll help me avoid some costly mistakes.

The particular machine I bought was rated second, but had features the number one machine lacked—and cost some $200 less. Today I unpacked it and read the instructions and the recipes, which were far more detailed than the recipes in the old machine’s book. For example, the new one measures flour by weight, not by cups, and that makes so much sense to me: The amount of flour actually in a cup can vary based on how much air is mixed in. As I often say, “cooking is art, but baking is chemistry”, which overstates things a bit, but it’s still true that more precise measurements of ingredients are important in baking.

As I read the recipes, I saw many that made my mouth water, something I don’t think has ever happened to me before—not with bread recipes. The machine can make pretty much anything with flour, though some—like doughnuts and bagels and croissants—require a LOT more work after the machine does the first part, which is a bit like the pizza bases I made. The machine can also make jam, of all things, which is just weird enough that I want to try making some when the summer fruits are ready.

So, despite the successful failure of my pizza bases, I nevertheless learned how to use my new machine, and so far I really like it. I’ll make my first loaf of bread sometime next week, after I finish the last one I made in the old machine, with its popping-up bread pan.

I’ll also get to have cold pizza for breakfast! And lunch…

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 357 now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 357, “Projected Living” is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast.

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

Error prone

I make mistakes all the time. We probably all do that, but since I talk about nearly everything, I’m maybe a bit more open about that than most people are. Like, for example, I have a reputation in the family for constantly hitting my head on things—not huge knocks or anything, but enough to hurt for a moment or two. There are plenty of other things that I simply mess up, and I talk about those, too so that others can learn from my mistakes—or at least have a good laugh at my expense. Whatever works for them.

One of my biggest mistakes was the window coverings I chose for two of the bedrooms, something I talked about back in July of last year. My technological failures have been more common and often harder to fix than window coverings.

I’ve broken things on this blog enough times that I really ought to have a tag just for such posts, embarrassing though that might be. I haven’t done that lately, however, for the first time ever, I recently accidentally deleted a comment, one from Roger Green. Since all comments are now moderated (because of a problem that had nothing to do with me), I get email alerts whenever someone posts a new comment. I usually see them in the morning when I check my email on my iPad, and then tap “Publish” (I almost never get alerts about what are really spam comments). However, that particular day I did it on my phone, with it’s much smaller screen, and I accidentally tapped “Delete”. I suppose the learning moment was that there’s no “undo” if I accidentally delete a comment—that and to never moderate comments on my phone, with it’s much smaller screen. I was an honourable blogger, though, and emailed Roger to tell him, so, points for that, right?

There’s yet another accident—though one way or another, this one will turn out to be a good thing.

A few weeks (months?) ago, I began getting email alerts from the company that hosted my “amerinz.com” site that they were doing some sort of "upgrade" to a different (and more expensive) server, and I had to do something or other. I don’t remember what, but I think I told it not to do it automatically. Whatever the reality is (and I definitely have trouble focusing on things at the moment), my site was taken offline when the deadline arrived. I didn’t notice for ages.

I noticed recently, though, and I set the URL to redirect to my “amerinzpodcast.com” site instead, which is good enough for now. This mistake (?) will save me lots of money every year, and may lead to more streamlined organisation of my sites.

When I registered the amerinz.com domain many years ago, it came with free basic website hosting, so I eventually set-up the site I used to have at that address (which, by the way, is fully backed-up). Somewhere along the way they upgraded all such sites to C-Panel, which is very expensive—especially when compared to free—and far, far beyond the needs of what that site was and was for (basically, an online brochure). What I wanted to do is—and pardon the meta stuff, but someone may be interested—I wanted to use the domain as my main site with subdomains for everything else, allowing me to drop one or more of the hosting agreements I pay for. Long story somewhat less so, I missed a deadline and then let it slide for another year. The company’s expensive “upgrade” then made the decision easy—regardless of whether I actually “decided” anything or was just lucky.

I may leave it as it is (and save money), or I could set up new hosting (as I wanted it to be), cancelling one or more of my other web hosting accounts (and saving money). The jury’s still out on that (I have months to decide, unfortunately—a very dangerous thing). Whatever I do, I’ll make sure that everything is easy—invisible, actually—for anyone accessing the sites.

So, this domain stuff is yet another mistake I made, but like those window coverings and even accidentally deleting a comment, it’s not a serious one. It’s also far less painful than hitting my head. Apparently, I have a reputation in the family for constantly hitting my head on things. The technical stuff is, fortunately, definitely not in that league.

A blog exclusive!

Last night, I thought I’d take a selfie with me and Leo (photo above). I wasn’t happy with the result: I wanted Leo sniffing me, but it looks like he was more interested in his ball. The bigger issue was how the light blasted out the upper left and top of the photo. So, it would’ve remained among my private photos that someone else will have to delete some day, and then I had an idea.

The photos I post on this blog fall into two broad categories: Ones I take to illustrate a post I’ve written (the majority), or else ones I originally shared elsewhere, like Instagram or Facebook. This photo, in my opinion, wasn’t “good enough” for either, and that’s when it hit me: Why not post it here, instead? I mean, yeah, it wouldn’t stand up to Instagram scrutiny (that’s sarcasm…), but it’s not totally horrible, as photos of me go, so, why not share it here exclusively?

And that’s the story. This is a photo that would’ve been an “also ran”, never seeing the light of day, but what’s the point of having a blog if I don’t share something exclusive every now and then? I mean, aside from the vast majority of my posts?

The serious point in this, though, is that I’ve gotten out of the habit of creating photos and images just for blog posts, and I want to do that again. Since this is a personal blog, why not resume by publishing a photo of me and Leo? It’s my new reality after all.

Waiting patiently

There’s been a lot in the news lately about the huge backlog NZ Post has in delivering packages due to a massive jump in online purchasing because of Covid lockdowns, and how that’s meant huge delays in deliveries. There really are big delays, like, for example, that vintage Mac keyboard I bought on Trade Me took nearly a week to get here from Auckland’s North Shore, somewhere I could drive to in a couple hours or so, depending on traffic (and without lockdowns, obviously).

But now it seems the very space/time continuum has been ruptured.

Last week I ordered something from a major retailer (because it wasn’t available at any of their stores within an 8 hour drive). It arrived at the NZ Post depot in Hamilton early Saturday morning, where it’s been ever since. When I got up yesterday, Tuesday, I thought it might be delivered that day (since it was already in Hamilton). That didn’t happen, but we did enter The Twilight Zone.

When I checked the tracking today (image at right), nothing about its status had changed, except it said, “Estimated delivery: Yesterday”. I’m expecting to suddenly remember it arriving yesterday as I look at the package on the table where I put it, yesterday, though it’s not there right now, of course. This led me to a question: What day will my reality be altered to accommodate a delivery of an item in the past? And will it hurt when the space/time continuum burps?

Those sarcastic questions popped into my head today, but the bigger thing is how noticeable it is that things have fallen apart for NZ Post, so much so that they’re not even trying to keep the estimated delivery date remotely accurate (assuming, of course, that they really can’t travel back in the past to deliver a package…). This same thing is happening to a lot of people I know.

There’s actually a part of me that wonders why NZ Post was caught so ill-prepared for the surge in online orders. They’ve talked repeatedly about how package delivery has become the biggest part of their business, and they even re-branded to promote their new reality. This doesn’t seem to bode well for the Christmas shopping season. Still, this is also a global problem, so I don’t want to be too hard on NZ Post (yet…).

Today I also checked on the delivery status of those Torx screwdrivers I ordered from Amazon for Ye Olde Macintosh Project. They were due to arrive “about October 6”, but today their website said, “Unfortunately, your delivery is running behind schedule,” and then added that the delivery company was “working to make sure the delay doesn’t affect your final delivery time. Your package can still arrive by October 11,” which is nice, but that’s actually five days later than they originally said, and while I’m sure their wording was meant to be positive, I couldn’t help noticing they’d moved the goalposts.

I don’t know what the specific problem was, though the details on the order said it was “Carrier Delay – Operational/Capacity Related”. I have no idea what that actually means, but in general terms it’s happening absolutely everywhere.

After all of New Zealand (apart from Auckland) moved to Alert Level 3 Lockdown, construction could resume, and within a week or two that led to warnings that builders would be running out of various materials because the factories in Auckland were closed due to their Level 4 Lockdown. The industry has had trouble getting foreign-made supplies for months, and, in fact, pretty much any person or business ordering stuff from overseas has probably seen delays, sometimes massive ones. As the world begins to accept that Covid has become endemic, shipping will begin to return to normal, but what about next time? There will be another pandemic and we should take the lessons from this one to better prepare us so that next time we don’t start seeing shortages of stuff and/or massive price hikes.

Before all this happened, I was looking at some specialist New Zealand food suppliers, small businesses supplying NZ-made products that aren’t sold in supermarkets. I seriously considered placing orders to try their products, but I’m now glad that I didn’t: Wouldn’t want food products sitting in a depot for several days.

I was just being silly when I talked about my package’s delay—my life will not be diminished by it taking a long time to get here, apart from the fact that I don’t want to leave the house in case the package is dispatched and their system doesn’t alert me like it usually does. Same with those screwdrivers: If I’ve gone this long without being able to tell if that Mac Classic is repairable or not, then an extra five days (or whatever it ends up being) won’t make any difference.

But it would do a world of good for people’s sense of well-being if deliveries could get back to being a little more, well, normal. We’re waiting patiently for that, too.

Update – September 30, 2021: The package was delivered around Noon today.

Update 2 – October 5, 2021: The Torx screwdrivers were delivered early this afternoon—and a day earlier than originally promised. Um, good?

This is based on something I posted on my personal Facebook earlier today, but that was just my starting point for this post.

Projected living

I talk a lot about my projects, some that are big and important, and also those that aren’t. There are all sorts of reasons why I do that (not the least being that, ya know, I’m a blogger…), but the truly important thing about it for me is that those projects provide signposts of a sort, marking my progress on my journey. Recently, there’s been a bit of a shift in the focus of my projects—small, even subtle, but that shift’s important, too.

For most of the first two years after Nigel died, my projects have been about building my new life, often literally—things like getting my house the way I want it, sorting through and reducing the mountains of stuff he and I accumulated over 24 years, and also getting things working (phone, TV, weather station, etc). Other things, like my cooking experiments, have been about doing things that interest me and move me forward in building whatever my life will become (I actually didn’t even know I was all that interested in cooking until I was cooking only for myself). However, all those projects were still related to the life I had, building on that base.

The change is that I’m now taking on projects that are only about me. The shift really began with my Mac project (YOMP). It started out as just another “based on my old life” project, but it’s grown beyond that into something I’m keenly interested in because it’s something I want to do. In fact, it’s now grown beyond just getting the Mac Classic to work so I can access old files, now it’s become about something I want, and stuff that’s about me.

It’s not all about tech stuff, either: My recent project to the replace the wheels of my mobile filing drawers was something I didn’t have to do—I could’ve just tossed it out, or left in the garage to deal with later. But it was something I wanted to to do mainly because I could. It was only when I started working on it that I realised how I could use the repaired drawer unit to better organise my office—though, as with so many other projects dealing with “stuff” in the house, that’s not been a huge priority for me (in fact, I haven’t used all the storage I’ve already created for myself in my office).

Now, sure, I freely admit that this is partly about having a diversion from those mind-numbing, never-ending bigger projects (especially the garage and the gardens), but it’s become an important way for me to carve out space for myself, to stake out some of the boundaries of what my new life may become. It’s also helped me catch glimpses of at least some of what my new life may one day be like. Those are not small things.

While all that’s been gong on, I’ve also had a slight reemergence of interest in some of the activities I used to enjoy—like blogging, for example, and obviously: No matter how many posts I do in what’s left of this month, September is already my most-blogged month of the year. That doesn’t mean that 2021 will be a return to those golden days of yesteryear when I did an average of one blog post a day: To achieve that I’d have to hit an average of roughly two posts per day, every day, for the rest of the year. That seems highly improbable. But, next year, maybe? That’s at least theoretically possible, and the fact that I can see that it’s theoretically possible is just another example of how things are changing.

Over the course of this month in particular, I’ve talked about some of the things that have changed and shifted, and a little about why it’s happened. There’s so much more to say about all that, and over time, I will—especially as I manage to figure it out. I guess my own life has become my biggest project of all. And I’m okay with that.

Another battle in my wars

Today I completed another battle in my war with the lawns. Although the ultimate victory was mine, it made me again question myself. In the end, I resolved to fight another day.

Yesterday started out sunny, so I thought it’d be a good day to mow the lawns, however, my body was still running on NZ Standard Time, so I was an hour latebeginning the day, and the most important thing I had to do was to pick up my prescription refill. By the time I was back home and ready to mow, it was 3 or so, and it was clouding over. I started doing the back lawn, anyway—surprised the temperature had dropped so much (about four degrees).

The lawns were wet and heavy because of all the rain we’ve had lately, and that also made the grass (etc…) grow like crazy. So, it was very hard going. The mower stopped when I was about 2/3 done, so I cleaned out the underside (yet again) and went inside to charge up the battery.

Here’s the thing: This isn’t just about the charge left (I had a bit more than a quarter which could be enough). The battery has what they call a “battery protection feature”, a sort of fail-safe that if the battery starts to get too hot, it shuts down—and that mower was working REALLY hard on that gluggy mess. Since I had to let it cool, anyway, I decided to charge the battery—except that also doesn’t work until the battery cools down. By the time it was cool enough to charge, and then was fully charged, it was getting darker because the clouds had thickened.

This morning was another sunny start, so I went back outside and finished the back lawn. Then, I came inside and re-charged the battery while I rested and had lunch. Afterward, I went back out and mowed the front weed patch (aka “lawn”).

I gotta admit that yesterday as I struggled to mow the part of the back lawn that’s thick and lush and nearly all actual grass, I thought maybe I should just surrender and hire a service, something I thought about when I was doing the front lawn earlier this month. Three things stop me doing that.

First, I’m stubborn (Nigel and I were a complete set in that regard…). Second, I need the exercise (that’s beyond dispute). And finally, I use a battery lawn mower and line trimmer, and they’re charged by my solar power system, while all the lawnmowing companies use petrol-driven equipment. So, hiring a company just doesn’t work for me, however, I did think about compromising and hiring a company to do the mowing only in the winter months when everything’s wet and gluggy. Maybe, but did I mention that I’m stubborn?

Still, at least at Alert Level 2 I can buy the plants and supplies I need to start the process of making the yards nice, and I hope to do that this week, though the actual outside work may be delayed because, oddly enough, more rain is predicted.

I was thinking yesterday that I would’ve been better off buying a house with established gardens, but not because of a difference in the amount of work they need (once established, both need to be maintained), but, rather, because figuring out what to plant and where at a new house is something that Nigel and I would’ve done together. Doing it alone just isn’t any fun, and getting a friend or family member to help me plan it isn’t even remotely a substitute. In fact, it would make things worse because my stubborn side would take control, making it a very unpleasant experience for everyone (it nothing else, I know myself).

I’m going to follow my original ideas and instincts for the gardens, and then I can change it down the line if I don’t like the results—like everyone else does, but it’s kind of new for me. Still, this afternoon, after I’d rested up from today’s battles, I spent a little while in the garage again looking for the filament for the line trimmer, and I thought, for maybe the billionth time, how absolutely overwhelming the weight of all the stuff I have to deal with is. The garage is basically impassable, despite all my hours spent going through boxes, and there’s extra stuff in pretty much every room of the house. Dealing with the gardens is just another crushing weight on top of the other crushing weight.

And yet, despite often getting discouraged and sometimes dispirited, it doesn’t keep me down for long. That’s when my small projects come in really handy, giving me something to focus on that doesn’t take all my energy and focus, and yet something that’s also a positive move forward, not merely a distraction.

So, yeah, today I completed another battle in my war with the lawns. I resolved to fight another day, as I always do, but the real questions are, which battle of which war, and on which day? And that’s why this is a story arc, not an anecdote. At least it gives me something to blog about.

The graphic above is a screenshot of what I posted on my personal Facebook this afternoon, after I was done with today’s skirmishes.

Ending September: Final songs

The final songs of pop music artists who die often take on far more importance than they might otherwise have had. But sometimes those final songs are a fitting end to a career, wrapping up their career. These are two final songs that do that for me.

The video up top is Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”. The song was written by Trent Reznor, who is the lead singer (etc.) of American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. I must’ve heard that when Cash’s version was released because I’m quite certain I never heard the NIN version before Cash’s. Nine Inch Nails is a group that it’s still quite fashionable to hate, and whether that’s justified or grossly unfair is a matter of opinion, but either way I don’t care for their music. Had Cash never recorded his cover, I’d never have heard the song. I’m glad he did. [WATCH: “Johnny Cash The Story Behind His Cover of Nine Inch Nails Hurt & Trent Reznor's Reaction”.

Johnny Cash’s version is full of melancholy, awareness of his approaching end, and the regret that can come with that. The video, I think, is utterly masterful in capturing all that, and the use of the decrepit House of Cash as a kind of metaphor is perfect. This is the one of these two songs that I sometimes sing to myself.

“Hurt” was the final single released in Cash’s lifetime. The video was filmed in February 2003 and released the following month. Johnny’s wife, June Carter Cash, appears in it twice; she died in May 2003. Johnny Cash died in September 2003.

Because I always mention such things, the song hit 39 in the UK and 56 in the USA.

Next up, the last song by David Bowie, “Lazarus”:

“Lazarus” was the final song to be released in Bowie’s lifetime. and Bowie’s producer has said that Bowie intended it as his epitaph, which at the very least seems plausible. I have to be honest: This video, and the others songs from his Blackstar album, made me very uncomfortable because he was clearly unwell—though we had no idea how sick he was until he died. In the time since then, I found out that he died of liver cancer—the same thing that killed my Nigel, but Bowie got 18 months, while Nigel didn’t even get 18 days. Because of all of that, this particular final song caries far more meaning for me now than it did when it was released.

Coincidentally related – WATCH: David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails perform “Hurt”

The song hit Number 72 in Australia, 14 in Canada, 9 in New Zealand, 45 in the UK, and 40 on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100”.

As I said up top, the final songs of pop music artists who die often take on far more importance than they might otherwise have had. These two songs have taken on new meaning for me because of what I’ve been through, and I can relate to them more now than when they were originally released. To some extent, that happens with all music, but when it’s a final song? Maybe the meaning becomes a bit more.

Dinner change

Tonight I made a Stovetop Chicken Casserole (well, that’s what I call it, anyway—though I'm sure it probably already has an actual name). I had some things to use up, and added on from there. I was very happy with it.

This came about because I had a leek I needed to use, and I thought about making chicken and leek pie—but I was too lazy to make the pastry. I also knew I had a box of low-salt chicken stock that was at the “either use it or toss it” stage.

So: First, I chopped a small red onion (I have too many, but they’re also milder than ordinary onions). I also sliced a carrot and some celery, and, of course, the leek. Next, I took a chicken breast out of the freezer. I cooked that while the vegetables softened in another pot. If I’d been more patient, I could’ve cooked the chicken, removed it from the pan, then put the vegetables in. But I was hungry, so, two pans.

When the vegetables were softened, I added the chicken and pan juices, a little freshly ground salt and pepper, a pinch of mixed herbs, stirred it and, once it was heated through, I poured in the chicken stock (one cup). I then added a cup of water and one cup of dried rice (I used long grain, which I have the most of, but any kind would work).

Next, I controversially added a prepared packet of name-brand instant gravy mix (also nearing the end of its days). I did that because I wanted the dish to be rich and hearty (it’s going to a cold night!), but when I mixed up the gravy I had doubts because the herbs smelled quite intense. But, I stuck with my gut instinct and poured it in and stirred everything, and put the lid back on the pot. Once the mix came up to a near boil, I reduced the heat and let it simmer for about ten minutes, then reduced it to a quite low heat for about 5. Then I stirred it, turned off the heat, and left it with the lid on for another 5 minutes.

It was perfect—exactly what I wanted. If I’d planned it all out, I could have skipped the gravy (and it’s salt) and thickened it in an ordinary way, or I could’ve used more chicken stock instead and given it a bit more time simmering. But this was more about using up some odds and ends, and, besides, it was yummy.

This little story is also about change. Over the past two years, I’ve been braver about trying new, unfamiliar recipes, and especially about trusting my instincts/judgement when cooking. I’ve had a few failures along the way, but I learn from those, too. I did a little bit of this sort of cooking experimentation for Nigel, especially in later years, but that’s taken off over the past two years.

Apparently, this is part of the new life I’m building. And that’s a great thing, I think—especially when my experiments work!

Another project rolls to completion

I have a lot of small projects, ones that have nothing to do with the garage or the gardens or anything other than things I want or need to do. This week I completed another one of those. It's unimportant, in the overall scheme of things, but it’s an accomplishment all the same.

Several years ago I sold the large corner desk I had at the time and replaced it with a more modern table-like desk with powder-coated steel legs and white top. Then I bought the matching mobile unit with two stationery drawers and a filing drawer (the old desk and mobile unit were both that fake light coloured wood sort of plastic veneer). I really liked the new desk, and so did Nigel, so I got him one, too.

We moved the desks to our last house, and I had them moved here, too, but gave them to family: At 1.8 metres long, they were simply too long for my office in my new house. I bought a new desk before I even moved in, so I was ready to go. It turns out that at 1.4 metres wide, it’s a bit too small, but this isn’t about the desk (that’s a future project). Instead, this project involved that mobile filing unit.

That unit and I have history, and it’s not been altogether amicable. A few years ago I noticed that stuff kept falling out of the stationery drawers and getting stuck behind the filing drawer, sometimes preventing me from closing the filing drawer. This was annoying, not the least because the drawers weren’t easily removed.

The disagreement between that unit and me over where those stationery items should stay came to violence one day: Stuff was stuck behind the filing drawer, I couldn’t get it to come out of the unit, not for the first time, and that particular day I could take it no longer. When I couldn’t get the drawer out, I yanked on the handle as hard as I could and, of course, broke it. Specifically, I destroyed the drawer runners, and heavily greased ball bearings flew everywhere—or, they would have except that being heavily greased they couldn’t fly more than a centimetre or two.

At this point, I could’ve given up and brought a new drawer unit, throwing the now-broken one into a landfill somewhere. But, of course, that’s not what I do. Instead, I bought new drawer runners, ones that mounted underneath the drawers, not on the sides as the old ones did, and ones that were designed to make it very easy to remove the drawer whenever I wanted to. It was an upgrade, and a nearly perfect one, except my skills weren’t perfect and the drawer doesn’t sit completely flush anymore. Still it’s “good enough”, and, I might add, not bad for a first-ever attempt at installing drawer glides.

A couple years later, more or less, I was moving to Hamilton and, apparently the movers thought it wold be a really good idea to pile lots of stuff on top of that mobile unit. They apparently also thought that weight couldn’t possibly be an issue, and even that using the unit as a sort of trolly to move stuff into the garage was an even better idea. The result is in the photo above: One wheel was snapped off—though I didn’t know that for awhile.

After I moved in and the movers had left, I found the wheel laying on the floor in the garage, but I didn’t know where it came from: I had three of the drawer things: The newest one, along with my old mobile unit, and also one that had been Nigel’s (his was two-drawer, and my old one had no bottom for the filing drawer, and an additional flaw for both of them was that fake light coloured wood sort of plastic veneer). I didn’t realise the wheel was from the white one’s until I moved it into my office and noticed that it was slumping down in one corner. At the time, I just assumed I could put the wheel back on my pushing it into place.

all five old wheels after removal.

Once I finally flipped the unit over, I realised that the missing wheel had been snapped off, and that some of the other wheels had been bent, both presumably because of too much weight on them (it had to be the movers because it was under my desk for years, with no weight on top of it). Such wheels were never designed to be repaired, so, again, I either had to replace the broken parts or chuck the mobile unit into the rubbish. However, that’s still not what I do. So, I decided to get new wheels, and I did: Three times.

The first wheels I got were much more robust than the old ones and two of them included foot brakes to keep the unit from rolling around. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the lip of the sides into consideration (the sides end nearly 2 centimetres below the actual bottom of the unit), and there’d be no way to be able to access the breaks.

So, I decided to replace the wheels with the same sort that were broken, and without bakes (it sits on carpet; it’s not rolling anywhere all that easily, anyway, even with me pushing/pulling it). I’ll use the first set of wheels for storage under my workbenches in the garage when I get to that point, so they’ll be useful.

However, the wheels I bought were 50mm, and the originals were 40mm. This meant that if I used the same screw holes, the wheels would hit and rub against that lip below the base. I returned those wheels and bought 40mm ones, instead. I was able to put those in without any problem.

Because of all this, I noticed something odd: The wheel under the filing drawer was set about 10mm below the bottom of the unit, where the other four wheels were mounted (photo below, after the new wheel’s first installation). I kept one of the 50mm wheels to go in that position so it can actually support the filing drawer, apparently for the first time ever.

One final twist: I noticed the new wheel under the filing drawer was slightly touching the front of the drawer when in the position for the drawer being pulled open (the wheels are mounted off centre). This isn’t an issue when the drawer it closed. I decided to move the wheel further back, so I removed it and when to get my drill bits—and quickly found out that I couldn’t find any that were small enough (most of them are, apparently, “somewhere safe”, as so many things I need tend to be; I refused to go buy yet more drill bits). I ended up putting the wheel back on (and, yes, the second time I made sure that one screw was in straight). I figure if it’s really a problem, I can fix it later, once I (again) find the rest of my drill bits

And, what about the other two drawer units? Nigel’s old one is in my office wardrobe and I’m using it for storage and to, er, um, put stuff on top of—not heavy stuff, though! The other one is still in the garage, and I’ll probably use it there to store stuff for ongoing projects all together in one place. I always try to reuse things until they can no longer be reused, or I find a new home for them (as I did with the desks)

And, that’s it: I fixed a set of office drawers for the second time. I don’t plan on there being a third. Instead, I’m just going to roll on to my next project.

Slower than I thought

Progress is progress, right? Well, Ye Olde Macintosh Project (YOMP) has moved even slower than I expected. Which doesn’t mean that nothing’s happened, just that not much has happened. Which makes a short post all the more possible, for a change.

in my first post on the project, I talked about some of the things I needed in order to be able to get the Mac Classic working. There are updates on two of those.

I said I needed a long-handled Torx screwdriver, and I thought that Nigel might have some. I haven’t found any, and I’ve since realised that what I pictured in my head were probably hex drives because they were used for the machines that Nigel built, like his CNC router and his (many) 3D printers. Torx are kind of a specialty thing in computers, and I can’t think of a reason he’d have needed one.

So, I started searching for them in New Zealand, but true long-handled Torx screwdrivers weren’t available here. I bought an ordinary one from the home centre, even though I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work for the two screws that need the long-handled screwdriver, and I was right (though it did work for the other two, not that it helped anything with two than couldn’t be reached).

It was back to the search, and I finally relented and went to order a set from a New Zealand site that imports them from the UK, only to find they were out of stock. I surrendered: I ordered a set from Amazon, and they should be here on October 6, give or take. Oh, well, I tried to buy in New Zealand. As I learned from watching Nigel, it’s all too often impossible to source specialised tech stuff in New Zealand, and now it’s even worse because of all the Covid-related disruptions.

Another thing I mentioned was that I needed a keyboard and mouse that could connect to Macs of that era (they use a standard called “ADB”). I also said that the only place I found vintage keyboards was in the USA where prices could be many hundreds of dollars. Then, my luck changed.

Someone put an ADB keyboard on the New Zealand auction site, Trade Me. It was from Power Computing, which I knew had manufactured “Mac Clones” in the mid-1990s (until Steve Jobs returned to Apple and killed off the clones market, acquiring Power Computing’s assets). I knew it was a Mac keyboard from that alone (the listing didn’t say), but it had a photo of the connector, which I could see was ADB (because of the number of pins and their configuration), plus the key combinations to the left and right of the spacebar (I used one every day for years, after all). The asking price was $15 (!).

I was all set to bid on it in the last few minutes of the auction—and then I forgot to go there and the auction closed with no bids. I sent a message to ask the person to relist it. Then I got an email from Trade Me touting various auctions, as it does, and one of them was for the same sort of keyboard from the same person, but not as yellowed (a topic in itself). Another lucky break! I got that one (photo up top) for $15, plus $10 for shipping (it was in Auckland, and I couldn’t go there to pick it up due to Covid restrictions). It took six days to get to me because of local shipping delays (apparently caused by people buying lots of stuff online during the Covid lockdowns).

I was sure that the delay didn’t matter, because without the Torx screwdriver, I can’t open the Mac Classic to see why it won’t boot (I’m betting the logic board is munted). Nevertheless, I hooked up the keyboard (after giving it the first clean it’s getting), and, as I suspected, nothing happened. Back to waiting for the screwdrivers.

A keyboard alone isn’t enough: I’ll need an ADB mouse, too. I keep having visions that I still have an ADB mouse packed away, but I don't know if I do or if it's a displaced memory or something. I looked through some old boxes where I thought it might be, but so far nothing. I did, however, find the AC power adapter for my Zip drive that I brought from the USA (once here, I had to get one that would work in New Zealand), and also the US power cord for my old Mac Performa 637 that I brought from the USA. If I kept those, then the mouse, if I do have it, will be packed away somewhere—and so, too, there may be some SCSI hard drives I had back then, too. After all, I still have the modem I brought with me.

Meanwhile, in my first YOMP update post, I talked about not being able to access old diskettes. I said that “somehow getting access to a working vintage Macintosh” was an option if I can’t get the Mac Classic working. The jury’s still out on whether that Mac Classic will work or not, but I made progress on the back-up option, something I’ll talk about in a few weeks (those same Covid restrictions are delaying the completion of this mysterious development). But I think it’ll be a good development.

So far, though, that’s all that’s happened—or not, depending on your point of view. And there’s much more yet to come—or not. For me, the not knowing is part of the fun of the whole thing.

The month persists, with a new mission

Monday was “officially” the second anniversary of the day Nigel died, and the Friday before marked 104 weeks, which is two years. The the date itself, September 20, moves around the calendar, while weeks are cumulative. They’re just different ways of marking time, and I don’t think either one matters for something like this. So, I don’t plan to publicly talk much about either measure of time every year in the future: I want to carry what Nigel and I had into my future, and not just think about the day it ended.

Which isn’t to say I could ever forget about the day or date—of course I’ll remember it!—it’s just that I don’t want to focus on the loss of Nigel and of our life together. The more time that passes since that September Friday in 2019, the more I want to focus on the things that make me so grateful for Nigel’s life and our life together, and I want to focus on that.

Besides, the measurement of time is a weird thing, anyway. When I posted last year about the 52 week mark, I said:

I’m noting the anniversary in weeks mainly because I have several times before, but I know that in future years I’ll remember it mostly by the anniversary date, and not the specific week or day of week, just as I have for all the happy anniversaries we shared. I think that if that’s so common with happy memories, maybe it’s a good idea for bad memories, and especially horrible ones.

I still think that—though I know I’ll remember the day of the week. Even so, I won’t be pointing out weeks anymore, not the least because keeping track of the number of weeks gets more and more complicated as time passes. For example, the next time that September 20 will fall on a Friday will be 2024, but that will also be 261 weeks later, not 260 (260 weeks will be the week before, September 13, that year…). That takes far too much head space to contemplate (and Google to calculate…). That effort would be far better spent on remembering Nigel, not trying to be pedantically precise about how long it’s been since he died. In fact, obsessing about that would mean focusing even more on the end. Nope, not me.

Obviously, thinking about Nigel and our awesome life together will inevitably mean remembering the end, especially on every September 20. I can’t imagine a time in which what I wrote last year won’t still be true:

I think of him every day, cry sometimes, miss him always, smile at memories of good times, and laugh about his cheeky humour and how he could be such a loveable jerk when he wanted to be. I’m not sad just because he died, I’m sad because all of the good stuff that went with him.

That’s just my reality, and I don’t actually need a particular day to experience any of it. However, as I was saying on Monday, I’m also keenly aware of how much Nigel wanted me to be okay, and that’s now my mission, for lack of a better word.

My intention, then, is that I’m not going to be making a big deal out of this “anniversary” anymore. Making it to, and through, the second year without Nigel is a big achievement, but that work is now just an ongoing part of my life and reality, not something that only has relevance in September. If I want to carry what Nigel and I had into my future, and not just think about the day it ended, then I both need and want to focus on the future.

All that, yes. But I’ll still hate September.