Next phase of the barn finalization Sunday, 06-Jul-25 17:22:54 CEST

Sunday, 13-Jul-25 22:30:51 CEST

We got back the repaired lawnmower

This was a hectic week, with the general feeling that things are falling apart. I must stress that not all is falling apart, but I sometimes tend to be an exaggerating sort, so I tell myself that everything is falling apart when, in fact, it's not that bad. However, there are issues with the mail server; it sometimes works for some emails, but most emails are not being delivered.

My bike has recently had issues with the back tire, which were fixed, so now I can bike without worrying about getting stranded on the way to and from work. I also helped DS repair his bike. He got a new back tire, and we adjusted the wheel sufficiently to prevent the chain from jumping off.

At a second-hand shop, I found a keyboard stand. I made a desk for it, so now I won't use the ironing board anymore. I was done with the comments about using an ironing board for the DJ setup.

I played a DJ set at a party on Sunday afternoon. It was great!

The phoneme conversion project has been lying still for most parts of the week. I made some minor improvements, but no giant leap forward as I had hoped. The line counter is still around line 27 thousand.

These were the headlines for the week. Here follows the usual in-depth blog from this week.

Monday 7 July

Today I worked from home. In the evening, I wrote on the blogs from the previous two weeks. It has been a busy time, and I was not happy that the blogs still had not been published. I wondered if I am doing the right thing by writing this blog. For now, maintaining this blog is exactly what I want to do. I stay committed to the blog.

 

When it was time to upload the two blogs, I discovered that the email server was no longer functioning. I worked until 1 AM. It did not help.

Tuesday 8 July

Before going to work, I found Merida in her new place. I had put the keyboard on the side. Now she leaned toward it. She did not turn on the computer. Luckily.

Today, the weather was good enough to bike, but I took the car to work. This was because I was so tired from getting less sleep, so I decided to drive instead of biking to preserve my energy.

Another company acquired the Internet service provider I had used for many years. I firmly believe that the old ISP's infrastructure is being integrated into the new company on a step-by-step basis. Another theory is that the security settings of the servers are being incrementally increased, so that this weekend, it was time for the relay server, and my server did not meet the new requirements, causing things to stop working.

Whatever it is, I discovered this just before I wanted to upload the two blogs from previous weeks. When I installed the email server, I was confused about how it was done. In the end, it worked, and that was all that mattered to me at that time. I kept it just as it was for many years, until now.

So it got late. This morning it’s gorgeous weather and it’s perfect for biking. But I know I had a short night's sleep, so I need to conserve my energy, which is why I’m driving to work today. Usually I’ve been biking in these weather conditions. Tonight, I will continue working on the server.

In the evening, I continued on the failed email server. It improved slightly, but it's still not working correctly.

Wednesday 9 July

In the morning, I worked from home. In the afternoon, I had a half-day off. I harvested potatoes and succini and delivered these to the food corporation together with DW. It was lovely weather and great fun.

In the spot where the potatoes were harvested, I decided to sow carrots. It might be a little late in the season but I will try it anyway.

Then I worked in the barn, and I finished putting up OSB boards on the west wall of the attic. Then I finally uploaded the blogs of the previous two weeks.

Thursday 10 July

Good morning. It is Thursday, 10 July. I am late. I got the logs from the previous two weeks uploaded last night. It does not feel right that it took so long to get them uploaded. I mean, there is no such thing that I don’t have enough time because when it comes to the core, I have the time I have, and it’s just a question of how I prioritize things. That works out well when I know what tasks I have and can juggle the priorities accordingly. When my Internet service provider decided to shut down an old server, I suddenly had a new high-priority task to deal with. I mean, what am I complaining about?

There is a concept called the Eisenhower matrix. I recall it plotting urgency and importance on two axes. I understand the matrix, but somehow, the order of the elements on it goes in one ear and out the other.

I do know that writing and publishing the blog is neither urgent nor a high priority, but I want to write on it every day. I wanted to do it because when I read my blog, I get happy.

That’s another thing that makes me happy, I’m delivering vegetables for sale in the food corporation.

I wish it were possible to adjust the time needed for Microsoft Word Dictate to activate automatic punctuation. I tried auto-punctuation, and that drives me crazy. I have come to realize I have to turn that off, and then I have to insert my sentence endings manually by saying the word "full stop". I realized that editing garbage is not enjoyable; it saps my willpower to work on the blog.

The time is now 7:00 PM, and I’m on my way home. When I arrived at the bike, I found that the back tire was flat. I always carry a variety of tools in my bag. So I took out my pump and I started pumping the tire. This is not a big pump; it fits the bag. I'm pumping it into a reasonably well-filled tire. That was not enough for me; I had to do it a little extra, and that broke the pump. There’s one thing with these bags: they are large, and I think I have another pump somewhere in the depths of the bags.

DW texted me, "Where are you? I’m hungry." I started biking home, and it's excellent weather, perfect for biking, but the tire is losing air. I think my back tire is making a promotion from important to urgent. I came home without needing to stop and add more air to the tire.

The sky was gorgeous in the late evening.

Friday 11 July

Hi, good afternoon. It's Friday, and I’m having a day off. This morning, the repaired Lawn mower tractor was delivered!

This morning, I worked on trying to repair the broken email server. I also wanted to implement something called DMARC, but that did not help. Now, I also need to install DKIM and SPF. However, instead of doing that, we had lunch. After lunch, I took out the lawn mower and cut the grass in the area between the neighbors on the West and north sides. We had a willow tree there with branches broken off from the previous storm, so I removed those branches to allow for driving with the lawnmower.

Now I’m driving to the city to buy myself a new back tire for my bike.

I went to the bike shop to buy a tire. Then I went to a second-hand shop specialized in more technical things, where I bought a keyboard stand with one foot missing. I also bought two disco lights, and I found a complete microscope. Great stuff! It was not cheap, though.

Years ago, I got a bike mounting set at a second-hand shop. Now it was time to put it in the barn! I repaired my bike with the bike mounting set.

Saturday 12 July

Today, I prepared a couple of songs for the DJ set tomorrow. However, my routines didn't work. The feeling of "all is broken" came over me again.

I heard from DS that he was also experiencing an issue with his back tire. I took him to the same bike shop, where he purchased virtually the same items that I had bought the day before. His back tire was more challenging to remove. It was great to work on the bike while it was suspended in the air. DS and I had father-son quality time while fixing the bike, which we both enjoyed. I would love to experience that feeling more often.

We also worked in the garden. I got strings for each cucumber plant. There is a potential for a bumper crop of cucumbers this season.

This afternoon, a ginormous cricket landed on the window of our garden doors. Amazing!

Sunday 13 July

This morning, I finished building the new DJ table around the keyboard stand. It looked great! I also got my functions working, so I've prepared my songs. I provided all new songs with loops so that at the end of the song, it won't just end abruptly if I need to start talking to the audience and not pay attention.

I got the two speaker systems to talk to each other, which was great. In the process, the subwoofer was less prominent. That is something I will look into later.

When the time was right, I got onto the little wagon and we walked to the neighbors, where I played a DJ set. First, I had a time when I just had my phone connected to the boxes. I asked around for songs people wanted to hear. That's great because I can incorporate these songs into my DJ set, and people will enjoy that. I will need to administer the songs with playlists, etc., but that's something I will improve at gradually.

It was a great party, with many young kids. People enjoyed the music. It was lovely weather. Have you ever played a DJ set and made a cat figure out of blue Play-Doh clay at the same time? Well, I did that!