Today marks 1 year since I quit the job I'd held for almost half my life. The plan was to take some time off to decompress, then go find another job. I thought that'd mean three or four months off - six max before I went stir crazy. Turns out I was wrong. Twelve months in, I'm feeling no urge to go back to the rat race. There's plenty to keep myself entertained round the property, and I haven't even got to the point yet where I can back off home improvements and start seriously playing with cars.

We'd done the math before I quit and concluded that even if I couldn't find another job, we'd be OK. We've been over it again, and decided that yes, we can make it work for the long term. It'll mean less overseas trips, and no expensive vehicles in retirement, but that's OK: I'd rather have the time than the toys, I've realized.

So screw it, I'm going to keep on being unemployed. I have a few projects I'd like to have a go at which may or may not turn out profitable, and I may pick up a side gig or two for a little pocket money, but basically aged 58 I'm a retiree.

For now, at least - who knows what'll happen further down the line. It may all wear thin and I'll be pleading with someone to give me a screen to stare at

Stereotypical Kiwi pensioner's car for your time. If I ever announce on here that I’ve bought one of these, someone needs to fly down and shoot me.

Quit my job yesterday, after 23 years with the same firm. The company's changed over the last few years (since well before Covid - anyone else noticed that 2020-21 don't count when talking about "a few years ago"?) between the previous CEO losing his way and ultimately quitting, and a new guy coming on board and bringing his team with him. My role within it has also changed over that period, into one I'm not satisfied with. I could have fought to get back into a role I wanted, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that even if they gave me the perfect role, the company culture is now not one I want to be part of, and given the individuals involved, I can't see that changing. So I'm out.

I'm glad to have made the call, and hopefully it'll have me feeling better about life in general in a few months - I've been finding myself getting steadily more negative about all sorts of things of late. But meantime there's a grieving process to go through - this job's been part of me for almost half my life, and while I'm not sad to be going, I'm sad it's come to this.

No idea what happens next - I don't have a job to go to. I'm going to take a few months out to decompress, shitpost a bit more, and do some landscaping around the house: there's some big jobs required to finish off the massive project we took on with this property four years ago, and I've been deferring paying someone to deal with them because I had a feeling that at some point soon I may have more time than money. After that, maybe a similar tech management role with a different company, maybe get back on the tools, which TBH I enjoyed more than I ever have management; the only issue is money. Or maybe get back into the startup scene - I joined my soon-to-be-ex employer as employee #6, and the best days were the early days when we were making it up as we went along and everything seemed possible: I'd love to get that feeling again. I'm not overly worried about finding something when I decide to look - the job market seems to be booming even despite the looming recession, and worst case we can get by on my wife's salary with a few lifestyle compromises.

A reminder of more carefree days (or at least less thoughtful ones) for your time.

...because apparently some of us already have.

Armistice Day seems particularly relevant in a year when once again young men are dying in muddy fields in Europe.

My barber gave me the pensioner’s rate today. He’s 8 years early.

I took the discount just to pay him back for making me feel old . If he keeps it up, that’s gonna cost him $270 by the time I actually hit pension age - take that, you callous youth!

Time to go yell at some clouds, I guess.

<note: this has the potential to turn political but that's not the intent. I was just reminded today of a so-Kiwi quirk of NZ's Parliamentary system that y'all might find amusing>

The US has the Liberty Bell. The UK has the Crown Jewels. New Zealand has ..... The Biscuit Tin of Destiny.

In our system, along I expect with most parliamentary systems, not all law is created according to the government's agenda. Any Member of Parliament here is able to draft their own bill on any matter they feel strongly enough about to bother, and submit it to Parliament to be debated and then voted on like any other legislation. If it passes - which mostly it doesn't - it becomes law.

Aside from allowing random trivia or pet hobby horses to come to Parliament's attention, this is also commonly the way that legislation on "moral" topics like marriage, abortion, euthanasia or homosexual law reform comes about here. Political parties often won't want to put their name behind something too controversial, but there's usually an MP who feels strongly enough about it to submit the legislation privately - often with behind the scenes support from MPs on both sides to draft a compromise bill that has a chance of passing - and if it is drawn in the ballot, the government can declare it a "conscience vote" which means MPs are free to vote against party positions, insulating the government from criticism whatever the outcome.

Since there are generally many, many more of these "Private Member's Bills" in the queue than can get discussed in the one afternoon every two weeks which Parliament schedules for them, there needs to be a system for deciding which ones get debated. In New Zealand, the process is by lottery: tokens representing the bill are drawn at random by one of Parliament's officials whenever there's a vacant slot.

Because this is New Zealand and we don't go for no hi-falutin' ways, the tokens are repurposed Bingo counters, and the container from which they are drawn is a biscuit tin (cookie tin for the Americans). These were pressed into service because they happened to be lying around 30 years ago at the time the ballot system was put in place, and have remained in service ever since, as has the paper label taped onto the tin.

Due to this, the Private Members Bill system is informally known here as "Biscuit Tin Democracy" and the tin in question, whose official home is a bookshelf in a parliamentary back office, is variously called "The Biscuit Tin of Democracy" or "The Biscuit Tin of Destiny".

(

Summertime here, so prawns have been barbied and beers have been drunk for the lunchtime warmup session, and now the younger members of the family are off for a surf while the rest of us get in a bit of digestive stupor before the serious eating and drinking begins this evening.

Hope everyone has a good one.

It probably didn't make international news much, but Auckland NZ, which I live on the outskirts of, took an absolute pasting from a storm over the weekend. I posted on Friday afternoon about it being wet, but it got a lot wetter: we're up to 40% of Auckland's average annual rainfall already this year, and most of that happened in the last few days. The city's under a State of Emergency, around 600 houses have been declared unfit for habitation so far, around 10% of the city's still without power and 25% without water pressure, more than 2000 emergency services callouts on Friday night alone, large amounts of urban infrastructure foobar due to flooding or landslides (including 40% of the city's sewage pumping stations, so no ocean swimming for a while), schools closed and public events cancelled for the next week at least, and 4 dead. So nowhere near Katrina level ugly, but not pleasant.

Pics of the aftermath here and here if you're interested.

Being on a hillside, and not an erosion-prone one, the Distraxi household came through it not too badly. Minor roof leak which wet the carpet in one room. The driveway's been washed out somewhat - not massively, but the 86 with its low ground clearance is housebound till I get a chance to get the tractor out and grade it. The roadside culvert at the end of our drive blocked with debris, sending a few hundred yards worth of road runoff water into our upper paddock and piling debris against the fence between it and our forest block, though fortunately the fence held, so I don't need to hump fenceposts and a post hole borer down the gully and remake it. The fence on the downhill end of the forest block is probably toast, but that’s the neighbour’s problem as it’s his responsibility to keep his stock off my land, not mine to keep my trees off his . The road between us and town was flooded out for a half day or so but it's useable again now, though the farmland either side of it is still largely under water.

Plus Mrs Distraxi had a very miserable night attempting to attend the Elton John concert, which was cancelled waaay later than it should have been, leaving 40,000 people wading back to their cars.

However my sister currently has two sets of neighbours camping in her house because the valley they live in is blocked by landslides and both their houses were floated off their piles, and one of our friends has had water waist deep through their house, so it'll be a year or more till their life is back to normal again.

And now we're off to the races again. Another storm incoming tonight - expected to be almost as severe as the last one, but the ground's totally waterlogged already so the effects will be worse. Forecast says the worst of it should go north of our place (we're south of the city), but the forecast for Friday said it was going to be bad but not horrific, so who knows.

It's starting to rain and my phone just squawked a Civil Defence alert at me. Wish me luck and post Unimogs - the Surf Lifesaving guys need a break.

...and other clickbaity titles.

The Gen1 Leaf is a good car - it really is. OK, the aesthetics are questionable and the life of the traction battery isn't great, but its comfortable, nippy, cheap to buy thanks to the aforesaid battery life, basically free to run, and reliable AF - ours hasn't seen the inside of a mechanic's workshop in the 8 years we've owned it (and that includes servicing, since there's nothing to service). If what you need is a cheap city runabout and you have access to a power point at home, you can't do better.

However there are aspects of the 12V electronics which were clearly handed off to an intern during the design process.

• The circuit which charges the 12V battery off the traction battery only uses a charge voltage of 12.5V, so it never charges the 12V battery to more than 50%
• It only charges the 12V battery while the traction battery is enabled for other purposes (i.e. driving or charging) - it can't enable it purely to charge the 12V. So the 12V will go flat from parasitic loads even if there's plenty of charge in the traction battery. And once it's below 10V or so it can't pull in the big-ass relay which enables the traction battery, so you can't self-recover from that state.
• It doesn't have an undervoltage lockout for parasitic loads, so it's perfectly capable of draining itself dead flat. In particular, if you leave it plugged into its portable charger for three or four days it will drain the 12V down to 2V or less, because the charger electronics are powered by the car and once it's completed charging it disables the traction battery but keeps sucking 12V into the charger electronics.

... and now, the latest one I just learned: If the 12V battery voltage is low, it impacts the measurement of the charge state of the traction battery, so the car lies to you about how much range it has left.

I've been worried for the last few months that the traction battery of our 2012 Leaf was starting to fall off the End of Life cliff. The battery health indicator was still sitting on 8 bars, but the range was turning to shit; the trip into our nearest major town and back, which used to be comfortably doable on one charge, had become a case of "turn the heater off, slow down on the way home, and hold your breath". I'd checked the obvious things like tyre pressure, alignment and brakes and they were all good. It was getting to the point where I was thinking it was time to sell the car - if it won't do that trip without a charge at the other end, there's no point in us having it.

However last week the dashboard threw a hissy fit when I tried to start the car - wouldn't start, a random selection of warning lights wouldn't go out and the range was showing as "---", which I've never seen before. A quick forum search later and I found that with the Leaf, as with most modern cars, if the electronics start doing weird shit the first place to look is battery voltage. And surprise surprise ours was down at 10.5V. A bit of experimenting later and no, it's not holding a charge: time for a new 12V battery.

So today I go into town to get a new one. Buy it, swap it out in the carpark, and lo and behold the state of charge of the traction battery rises instantly from 40% to 60%. Which is where I would have expected it to be a few months ago after getting into town. Drive home without taking energy conservation measures and yup - normal service has been resumed. The 12V must have been sagging for the last few months, far enough to impact traction battery monitoring but not far enough to stop the thing working. Go figure.

So that was a cheap fix

Interestingly, although the range as measured by remaining charge level on the dashboard graph has improved substantially, the range predicted by the digital guessometer hasn't changed at all. Which confirms my impression that the guessometer doesn't use battery charge state - or any other actual "facts", for that matter - in its prediction algorithm.

NZ has done well at containment, but we’re doing a lousy job at vaccination - only 15% of the eligible population have had even one shot. I guess there just hasn’t been the sense of urgency here, plus supply’s been a problem because we don’t have a lot of leverage with pharmaceutical companies and anyway the government’s only approved the Pfizer one.

Anyway, my number just came up, so I’m now sitting in the recovery area waiting to see if I keel over.

So far, at least, I’m feeling no urge to use Bing. So that’s good.

Here in New Zealand, we're still living in 2020: we're in a hard shelter-in-place lockdown at the moment due to Delta breaching the border quarantine. Seems to be working so far, but it's an open question how sustainable an elimination strategy is going to be vs Delta and whether we can hold it together till vaccination rates are high enough to open up. But that's another story and not the point of this tale.

Anyway, as a consequence, it's not currently possible to buy anything I can't get from the supermarket or pharmacy: hard lockdown in NZ means hard - everything's closed. Which is a PITA - it's amazing how many jobs I've started over the last couple of weeks that have stalled because nipping down to the hardware or auto parts store and grabbing a necessary widget isn't an option.

So of course this is the time that the shrub which had hooked itself around the antenna cable of our internet connection (we're on cellular broadband via a Yagi antenna bolted to the roof) managed to yank the cable out through the wall in a storm, breaking the connector on the inside end. Net result: no internet, which as I'm sure most of you remember from last year, is a major crisis when you're confined to quarters.

Fortunately, my box of "cables which I have no idea what the fuck they're for or where they came from and I really should get rid of" was able to ride in and save the day. I'm pretty sure I've never previously owned a device with an SMA format coax connector, but nonetheless I do have a short cable with an SMA plug. A bit of chocolate block splicing and an antenna cable rerouted through a window and connected directly to the router later, and Netflix is back online - yay! It's ugly, but it'll do till electronics stores are open again.

It's nice to occasionally get rewarded for never throwing crap out

@foghat1981 Was rumoured, but still sucks. Unless someone's prepared to break a contract (or RB tosses Perez), it's either Williams or suck it up. It'll depend what RB want though - he'd be a fool to step out from under their umbrella for the next year, even if it prevents him getting a full time drive

@SilentbutnotreallyDeadly that thing really is a lotta truck for not very much truck

@john-norris said in Self Driving Clusterf**k:

@іди-на-хуй-Влад-formerly-known-as-Distraxi

I just expect the cost of potential liability being crazy high and no companies being able to adequately mitigate the risk of occurrence.

May well turn out to be the case in the US, but other places are less litigious. I expect at some point European and Japanese safety standards for self driving vehicles will be developed, and "it complies with the standard" will be a valid defense against liability, just like it is with other products. And meantime in China nobody has any rights anyway, so if the government deems dominance in self guided vehicles to be strategically important, it's just tough luck for the people who get mowed down.

I'd also guess that as and when either or both of the above leads to self-driving vehicles taking off elsewhere and the US being left behind, pressure from industry will lead to Congress passing some sort of safe harbor legislation eventually.

Not going to be a problem in NZ, since we already have no-fault accident compensation laws, but nobody's going to be developing self driving vehicles just for our piss-ant market

@WhoIsTheLeader this one’s easy: burn them all and walk.

@HammerheadFistpunch the fancy Landcruiser. I have an unreasonable bias against jeeps, and in any case if I want a small and nimble off-roader I won’t half-ass it: I’ll go find a Suzuki.

@TheJWT I’m a have me some land yacht. ‘65 Buick Electra Custom Sport Coupe:

https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/chevrolet/auction-4332891579.htm

Though I’m very tempted by this in-period-customised ‘65 Mini Cooper S, with ALL the gauges, and an Audible Speed Computer, no less:

https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/mini/auction-4176127956.htm

@flatisflat I’m sure the fact that these things are (a) suited to desert environments and (b) way too low for actual humans to be comfortable on is not coincidental

@flatisflat That’s a long way from the native habitat of the Jawa

@flatisflat

@john-norris Damn. This will be the first one I've watched live in a while, and I was hoping for something more than the usual "Max plus also-rans".

Ah well, at least there'll be some interest in the mid-pack in seeing what Lawson can do with his last chance to pitch for a 2024 seat. He has something of a home-court advantage having raced at Suzuka already this year in Japanese Super Formula, so I'm hoping to see him further up the points than last time.