So… I’ve been busy at work lately, and that for the last few months has been my primary focus. A big reason why I’ve been keeping my head low is because a few years ago, it was pointed out that I had been physically with the company I’m working for for about 10 years.
Here in Australia, that milestone grants long-service leave; a bonus 8⅔ weeks of leave. This is something that’s automatic for full-time employees of a company, and harks back to the days of when people used to travel to Australia from England by ship to work, this gave that person an opportunity to travel back and visit family “back home”.
But at the time, I wasn’t there yet! See, for the first few years I was a contractor, so not a full-time employee. I didn’t become full-time until 2013, meaning my 10 years would not tick up until this year.
While the milestone is 99% symbolic, the thing is at my age (nearing 40), I’m unlikely to ever see that milestone come up again. If I did something that blew it or put it in jeopardy in any way, it’d be up in smoke.
There are some select cases where such leave may be granted early (between 7-10 years):
- if the person dies, suffers total physical disability or serious illness
- the person’s position becomes untenable
- the person’s domestic situation forces them to leave (e.g. dropping out of work to become a carer for a family member)
- the employer dismisses the person for reasons other than that person’s performance, conduct or capacity
- unfair dismissal
I thought, it was worth sticking it out… after 10 years, it’s a done deal, the person is entitled to the full amount. If they booted me out after that, they’d still have to pay out that, plus the holiday leave (which I still have lots because I haven’t taken much since 2018).
Employment plans
Right now, I’m not going anywhere, I’ve got nowhere to go anyway. While doing work on things like electricity billing brings me no joy whatsoever (“bill shock as-a-service” is what it feels like), it pays the bills, and I’m not quite at the point where I can safely let it all go and coast into an early retirement.
Work has actually changed a lot in the past few years. Years ago, we did a lot of Python work, I also did some work in C. Today, it’s lots of JavaScript, which is an idiosyncratic language to say the least, and don’t get me started on the moving target that is UI frameworks for web pages!
Dealing with the disaster that is Office365 (which is threatening to invade even more into my work) doesn’t make this any easier, but sadly that piece of malware has infected most organisations now. (Just do a dig -t MX <employer-domain>
, or just look at the headers of an email from their employees, many show Office365 today). I’ve so far dodged Microsoft Teams which I now flatly refuse to use as I do not consent to my likeness/voice being used in AI models and Microsoft isn’t being open about how it uses AI.
Most people my age get shepherded into management positions, really not my scene. In a new job I’d be competing with 20-somethings that are more familiar with the current software stacks. Non-technical jobs exist, but many assume you own a motor vehicle and possess the requisite license to operate it.
This pretty much means I’m unemployable if I leave or are booted out, so whatever I have in the bank balance needs to make it through until my time on this planet is done.
Thus, I must stick it out a bit longer… I might not get the 15-year bonus (4⅓ weeks), but at least I can’t lose what I have now. If excrement does meet a rotary cooling device though, simulations suggest with some creative accounting, I may just scrape through. I don’t plan on setting up a donations page and talking to Centrelink is a waste of time, I’ll die a pauper before they answer the phone.
Plans for this month
So I have holiday leave off until November. Unlike previous times I’ve taken big amounts off, I won’t be travelling far this time around. Instead, it’s a project month.
Financial work
I need to plan ahead for the possibility that I wind up in long-term unemployment. I don’t expect to live long (the planet cannot sustain everyone living to >100 years), but I do need to be around to finalise the estates of my parents and see my cat out.
That suggests I need to keep the lights on for another 20~30 years. Presently my annual expenditure has been around the $30k mark, but much of that is discretionary (most of it has been on music), and I could possibly reduce that to around the $10k mark.
I have some shares, but need to expand on this further. David Rowe posted some ideas in a two part series which provides some food for thought here.
At the moment, I’m nowhere near that 10% yield figure mentioned…that post was written in 2015 and lot has changed in 8 years. Interest rates are currently at ~5% for term deposits.
I do plan to start one though all the same. After Suncorp closed both The Gap and Ashgrove branches (forcing me all the way to Michelton), I set up an account at BOQ who have branches in both Ashgrove and The Gap… so I can do a term deposit with either, and they’re both offering a 5% 12-month term deposit.
I have a year’s worth sitting at BOQ in an interest bearing account… so that’s money that’s readily accessible. The remainder I have, I plan to split — some going into the aforementioned term deposit, the other will go into that interest bearing account in case I decide to buy more shares.
That should start building the reserves up.
Hardware refurbishment and replacement
Some of my equipment is getting a bit long in the tooth. The old desktop I bought back in 2010 is playing silly-buggers at the moment, and even the laptop I’m typing this on is nearing 10 years old. I have one desktop which used to be my office workstation before the pandemic, so between it and the old desktop, I have decent processing capacity.
The server rack needs work though. One compute node is down, and I’m actually running out of space. I also need to greatly expand the battery bank. I bought a full-height open-frame rack to replace the old one, and was gifted a new solar controller, so some time during this break, I’ll be assembling that, moving the old servers into it… and getting the replacement compute node up and running.
Software updates
I’ve been doing this to critical servers… I recently replaced the mail server with a new VM instance which made the maintenance work-load a lot lower… but there’s still some machines that need my attention.
I’m already working on getting my Mastodon instance up to release 4.2.0 (I bumped it to 4.1.9 to at least get a security patch off my back), there are a couple of OpenBSD routers that need updates and some similar remedial work.
Projects
Already mentioned is the server cluster (hardware and software), but there are some other projects that need my attention.
setuptools-pyproject-migration
is a project that David Zaslavsky and I have been working on that is intended to help projects migrate from the oldsetup.py
scripts in Python projects to the newpyproject.toml
structure. Work has kept me busy, but the project is nearly ready for the first release. I need to help finish up the bits that are missing, and get that out there.aioax25
could use some love, connected mode nearly works, plus it could do with a modernisation.- Brisbane WICEN‘s RFID tracking project is something I have not posted much about, but nonetheless got a lot of attention at the Tom Quilty this year, this needs further work.
Self-Training
Some things I’d like to try and get my head around, if possible…
- Work uses NodeJS for a lot of things, but we’re butting up against its limits a lot. We use a lot of projects that are written in GoLang (e.g. InfluxDB, Grafana, Terraform, Vault), and while I did manage to hack some features into
s3sync
needed for work, I should get to know GoLang properly. - Rust interests me a lot. I should at least have a closer look at this and learn a little. It has been getting a mention around the office in the context of writing NodeJS extensions. Definitely worth looking into further.
- I need to properly get to understand OAuth2, as I don’t think I completely understand it as it stands now. I’m not sure I’m doing it “right”.
- COSE would have applications in both the WideSky Hub (end-to-end encryption) and in Brisbane WICEN’s RFID tracking system (digital signatures).
Physical exercise
I have not been out on the bike for some time, and it shows! I need to get out more. I intend to do quite a bit of that over the next few weeks.
Maybe I might do the odd over-nighter, but we’ll see.
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