Just managed to rescue my wife's crypto at the last moment from the Portis wallet I had set up for her a couple of years ago. Portis is shutting down, but there's no mention of it on their site, no email, no nothing. I did not get this message, but only found it by chance on the net.

I went by and climbed the fence for a walk in my future garden. Another week at the very least before we can do the final signature so that it actually is ours. Lots of things growing, and I discover new things whenever we visit. More different kinds of trees than I remembered.

I still don't understand what people see in LinkedIn. OK place to put one's resume, but always seemed like one of the scammy kinds of social network that tells you you got a message or a visit, but want to charge you extra for actually seeing it.

It is taking forever to go through the steps of our house purchase. Lots of paperwork in France. All is approved, but we have to wait another week before we can accept the mortgage, and another week before we can sign the final sale papers. All considered, it has gone quite smoothly. Just impatient.

Having ChatGPT analyze legal documents and explain them to me before I sign, that's a bit of a game changer. Sure beats just signing things unread.

My simple recipe for happy relationships: Don't have them with anybody who's jealous, who thinks they own you exclusively, who's trying to police that you don't somehow cheat on them. Walk the other way. Have relationships with people who care about your well-being and who can talk about everything.

If PDF/A is an available choice for saving a document, it is better than plain PDF for anything you're hoping to be able to look at many years later. It includes everything needed in the package. I only just recently learned that. Even without it, PDF has always been the most future proof format.

I'll happily shop lots of other places than Amazon, if they can only deliver somewhat comparable service. Like, tell me when my stuff will be there. As opposed to just taking my order, sending me a confirmation email, and a week later, nothing, no shipment, no status, no estimate.

USB-C plug have been sort of loose, falling out easily, on my iPhone 15 Pro. I thought I might need to have the port replaced. I looked around for USB-C plug that could lock to the port, didn't find any. Eventually a Youtube video led me to cleaning out the port with a sharpened toothpick. Dit it!

After starting to look for and buy a house, Facebook in particular has supplied me with an endless stream of houses for sale. Luckily none of the suggestions have made me regret my choice in any way. Sure, there are castles I can buy for very little, but still several times more than my budget.

One thing ChatGPT (or some other helpful AI) is great at for me is to face old festering government/administrative things that otherwise keep me worried. Did I file this thing right? What about that 30 year old tax bill? What about that car I don't have any longer, etc.

I like by Brother printer. I.e. it just works and I've had zero problems with it. That was indeed the word on the street (OK on Reddit). My Xerox laser printer was always getting stuck, having phantom jams, needing restart, etc. For the record, this is an MFC-L8390 color laser printer.

At some point I was sure that this was the time, the generation, where we (humanity) would get our act together and create a glorious abundant world for all of us. Now I think I will content myself with just personally making it through my life reasonably well.

If everything continues to go according to plan, my house purchase should go through in around 3 weeks. The bank is still crossing Ts and dotting Is, which gives a certain amount of stress, but it appears to be all good.

I'm switching to Obsidian, after using Evernote for some years. Some things about Evernote really annoy me, like the automatic linking, and other features they keep adding that I don't want, and the lack of a Linux client. Obsidian is certainly more of an open source DIY thing, but so far, so good.

"Contact us for a quote" - that's the sure way I will move on to a competitor, unless there really is nobody else. Give me at least some approximate range, or I will assume you're scamming me.

Teams seems like a good drop-in replacement for Skype. Just a shame for Microsoft that they did a lousy job in making that clear, so in my circles people have already moved on to alternatives.

This is an old article of mine, but it keeps attracting interest, and it is getting even more relevant.

I tried to log in to the US Social Security Administration to check the status of my future retirement. I do that once in a while. But, since recently, it's been saying, after login, that they can't process my request and I should call them. I'm glad I don't really need this to work for a few years.

Russia is the role model for privatization. Give a rich guy a lot of money to fix the potholes in the streets, and look the other way when he buys a yacht, and the potholes are still there.

The kind of thing I'd like to do with my garden. "An invitation for wildness" as it says.

Went wall climbing with my daughters today. I got a little bit better at it.

Getting older is an evolving exercise in paying better attention, in doing things smarter. All that one previously could get away with doing badly, one has to do better. What one eats, how one sleeps, how one walks up stairs, how one spends one's time. One has to get wiser, or else.

yes

I'm maintaining one US trip this year. Leaning towards skipping the other two that would be on the program. The US has always been a little hostile to try to get into it, but a good deal more so now.

I just got a Pro subscription to Cursor for AI coding. It is shockingly good. I've been using GitHub Copilot for quite a long time, but this is a whole other level.

The Giger Bar

The original in the HR Giger museum in Gruyères

Giger meeting room, originally meant for the Jodorowsky Dune movie that never happened

In front of the HR Giger museum in Gruyères, Switzerland.

I typically go back to the US once or twice per year. The next few years I'm afraid I will be a lot more hesitant to do so.

We're still moving ahead with the process of buying a house. Which is a bit slow. Actually it is not very slow, but it feels slow, because I'd like to get it through and over with, as I have many plans and things to do.

The Tesla dealer in my town, Toulouse. The French like to set things on fire, particularly cars, and in Toulouse more than anywhere. I have no issue with the choice of target in this case.

“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.” ― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

London Underground

In AD 41, Caligula was taken out by his own Praetorian Guards

Thank you, Lord Vader!