I feel seen

There’s 70cm of snow on the ground in Tromso that will be there for another couple of months and they seem to be getting on with life. We’ve had some snow in the UK and everything is at a standstill or cancelled.

Today is a DIY day off work catching up with lots of jobs that need doing round the house. A bunch of stuff has arrived this week so various things can be fixed or replaced. The cat has however parked herself on me and gone to sleep. So not entirely going to plan…

That cat was very insistent that going outside was not negotiable. But her enthusiasm waned pretty quickly when she actually experienced the snow.

I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be in charge but sometimes Molly is pretty determined that fusses are due regardless of whatever I have planned.

It’s got to be Thursday by now right? It’s been a long assed week.

I want to spend more of 2026 like this

It’s a long read but totally nails it.

It’s 5:45 and the moonlight is bright enough to wake me. That is a very clear sky…

This is so me

New Year’s resolutions? Not doing another year like 2025 again. It’s a low bar but I’m not entirely convinced it’s achievable..

Teams is resolutely setting my status as offline for some reason. Feels like it’s reflecting my inner status even though I’m supposed to be working.

This is a public safety announcement. I just received this email on Christmas Eve minus one. Do not under any circumstances buy your other half a router for Christmas. Not if you wish to live and eat solid foods over the holiday period. That is all.

We thank you for joining us at our conferences in 2025 either speaking or attending. Register for the next event Saturday 31 January 2026. Register: bit.ly/DT2026-Regis... Have a Happy Holiday. #MicrosoftFabric #AI #Copilot #AIAgent #MicrosoftPurview #DataToboggan #PowerBI #datacommunity

I have definitely entered the cantankerous old engineer phase of my career. Some would tell you I’ve been here most of a decade. But I am definitely starting to stare at tech that’s less than 5 years old and wonder what’s the point of this new fangled crap.

I have started to realise that listening to my podcast shows at 1.2x speed is one of the reasons I have even less patience in my teams meetings…

It’s taken us a week to get the tree up (everyone was ill in every way imaginable) but it’s finally done. Even the churlish teenager has helped and been grooving along to various Christmas songs while we decorated it.

the HL7 connector for Azure #LogicApps Standard and Hybrid (Public Preview) by Harold Campos techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-int...

I’ve read the instructions several times and I’m still struggling to understand the concept of leftover wine that I am apparently supposed to add this to.

One of my favourite Christmas traditions

“It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.” ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

You can help struggling billionaire owners of big tech companies that can’t build AI data centers fast enough by closing accounts and canceling subscriptions

These two old work horses have finally been replaced. Almost 2 decades of supplying rock solid networking for the house. Let’s see if the new eero’s can live up to their predecessors reputation. Changing all the damn Alexa devices and smart plugs has taken all day.

#pluribus Carol is just incapable of being happy. She’s also a complete tool. Is it all just going to be about her learning to be a happy functional human? One giant therapy session.

I am now at that stage of my man flu where only one nostril works at any given time. The switching of which nostril is finally starting to slow down. I may have been somewhat pessimistic in my initial assessment that this dose was probably fatal. It seems I may survive.

I have no idea what Apple did to the autocorrect in iOS 26 but it’s like it has been lobotomised

My son works at a charity shop now and again. He rescued this cuddly toy from going into the rag waste bin. I’m a bit concerned it might come alive and murder us all in our sleep…

Apparently my energy provider has remotely disconnected my gas supply. Given I’m hundreds in credit this has resulted in a number of increasingly farcical phone and email exchanges. Another example of why you shouldn’t digitise everything. Maybe they wired some AI up to their control systems…

Oh wow - up to 16bn of meta's revenue could be due to scams. Interesting reading how FB needs to reduce scams but is disincentivised by how much cash it drives www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Number of open bugs preventing turning the new thing on = 0 This does not mean we will be any less busy. The amount of mopping up there is to do is enormous.

Molly is very keen to keep us all pinned down since we came back from our holiday. Can’t even tempt her off my knee with treats… so must be serious

Yeah. Multitasking is just the best method of screwing up several things at the same time.

More integrity than all of big tech combined

2100km flight back to Manchester came in 35 mins early at 3hrs. 15km drive from the airport to the house 1hr 15m. Today seems to be accident Wednesday for a lot of unlucky people. Thankfully not us. Important thing is I’ll be sleeping in my own bed tonight.

I’ve decided we must have offended the Norse gods at some point. Every time we fly in the clouds descend. The weather always seems to break just as we are leaving. Going to be clear tonight so anyone around Skibotn will get a great show if the other evening is anything to go by.

The weirdest thing about being on holiday is that despite quite a lot of activities I’ve managed to burn through three books. (2 fiction) I haven’t managed any long form reading in months as work seems to crowd it out. It also helps that I’ve avoided logging in to any of our media subs.

Do the right thing, even when no one is looking. It’s called integrity. #Thoughtoftheday #Mondaythought

Gotcha

Today’s adventure. How far north can we get?

An amazing show for anyone that wants to understand some of the history of our industry

Today was a sky, fjord and mountains kind of day

My wife seems to have booked us a gingerbread cabin in the woods for our final few days in Norway. Though the view out front is pretty good 😊

Time to drive into the wilderness!

2 hours ago it was wall to wall cloud cover. But a snowy Tromso in the sunshine is pretty spectacular

So excited for this: blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-US/blog/s...

Looks like a quick trip to Finland is on the cards as we chase a hole in the cloud cover

Well. We’ve managed to book a northern lights tour on the cloudiest night of the year apparently. Cue a long minibus journey to somewhere cold and wet to watch the clouds. Not even going to get any stars.

Hello Tromsø

Oslo in the rain

Oslo is a lovely city. Though the floating sauna cabins that people rent out and then dive off into the fjord do seem a bit too adventurous for me. Mind you they do have this view.