Since our last episode....

It's been seemingly an age or two since I last updated the blog, so I'll try to keep it interesting, and given the number of relative small updates - and the average attention span of most readers - I'll keep it to bullet points (but not PowerPoint slides because I'm still mostly sane and hate that crap).

Plus I almost suffered from Death By PowerPoint during my last work trip to Hong Kong. I'd remove it from my work laptop if I could 😅

Anyhoo...

• At the end of 2023, having had a hopeless experience with both moving apartments and my broadband network connection (necessary for work as well as personal use, we still do a lot of hybrid work here in Australia) I ditched my old network provider (Internode, now part of TPG) not because of price but because their service got so bad I felt I had no choice. They not only provided a substandard connection (around 20mbit download when I'd paid for 250!) and pissfarted around (obviously sticking to a script being the inept Filipino call centre that replaced the old quality systems people I'd come to trust over the prior 20 years) but removed the static IP from my last place - and kept charging me for it despite my hard proof that they'd screwed up. Rather than talk to a brick wall and broken English fake apologies for their incompetence, I just churned over to Aussie Broadband who for a little extra give a faster and much more reliable connection. That they also provide good IPv6 (standard for me for literally a decade or more), the requisite nerd tools and a good mobile app is a bonus.
• I've been using Terraform for work since before I started doing full-time AWS work for my current mob, but unlike their infra team (whom I have still yet to convince as they ClickOps their way to insanity, dress funny and use a mouse to delete files) I've moved all of my personal work to pure infra-as-code - a mix of Terraform (actually OpenTofu as the licensing is much more open) and Ansible
• I've made good use of IaC but there's some small amounts of "legacy" setup - mainly from the old days (pre-2017!?) that had been set up by CloudFormation and as such is "unmanaged" (in OpenTofu) that will disappear shortly 😄
• Oh and I've added Infracost to my git hooks and checks so I'll know how much I'm blowing on all of this geekery (along with the usual pre-commit hooks every good developer / devops user should have)
• I've gone slightly retro and cast off Google Chrome for good old Firefox

• I'm also going a little retro in my gaming - still playing a fair amount of Eve Online (and even a little Vanguard though I'm still shit at FPS) but also a bit of the old-school titles via GOG - Ultima V is my focus right now as I never finished it as a schoolboy, and having another crack at some of the other Infinity Engine games (finish Neverwinter Nights and Planescape: Torment@)
  
  I'm still also a tabletop RPG player though it's taken a moment or three to pick up - I've missed four editions of ShadowRun as well as a much more streamlined Battletech version in Battletech: Alpha Strike
• Unfortunately age has caught up with me a tad, and for the last couple of years I've suffered from an issue with my upper spine - a bony protrusion had been pressing on my spinal cord so I've been walking in a rather "interesting" way that has made it quite difficult. I've had surgery so now I have to deal with the downside of that (it fixed the balance issues now I just feel like I've had a bar inserted between my shoulder blades after being stabbed in the spine. Good jorb Royal Brisbane 🤣

• I've now got a valid passport, so can and have travelled a bit (Check my Instagram!)
• Alas the medical issues have shot my fitness plans so I'll be fighting back on those (got a gym membership I can't use yet 😦)
• I've canned my Xitter (Twitter, calling it X is shit and Elon "Aparthied Clyde" Musk aka Elmo can kiss my arse). I'm hoping the good folks @ Ghost add better integrations with Threads (which I have and do use a bit) and Bluesky (which I have but only dipped a toe into.) As an old Identi.ca / Status.Net user of old I'm happy to know the Fediverse is still a thing!
• I have been checking out the new features of Ghost by the way, expect a mailout here and in future (if you subscribe) and possibly comments if I can find a good anti-spam measure in the integration!