Surviving Death Warmed Over

No offense meant to the bean dish in the cover photo, but it reminds me of the results of an awful bout of food-borne illness I recently experienced. The old cliché of feeling ’like death warmed over’ certainly was on my mind and for some reason that made think of reheated refried beans, so you get the lovely image above and the implications of what was happening when I talk about food borne illness.

Especially at first I was just suffering through the effects, but after the initial two or three days of misery I was able to get back to getting a few things done. I still was sleeping a great deal and feeling miserable, but at least I have projects and other activities with which to distract myself. This has been important to avoiding boredom or getting sucked into binging Netflix or other media, and feeling like I’m still doing something moderately meaningful with my time.

Amongst other things, I merged four of my websites into to two (the the personal/political sites now live here at https://www.princesandmadmen.ca/, and the professional and technical sites live at the resulting https://www.wildtechgarden.ca/). The old www.thecshore.ca site now just redirects to www.princesandmadmen.ca and the old danielfdickinson.ca redirects to wildtechgarden.ca. I’ve also moved my workstations from Windows to Linux, and back again (I’ll be writing about that on the Wild Tech “Garden” site sometime soon) and I’ve implemented making the ‘administrative’ (super) user on Windows separate from the day-to-day user (standard user), which is a configuration that is now supported much better than in the past.

I’ve also commented on the Town of Midland (Ontario) Draft Procedural Bylaw, which is not what most folks consider terribly exciting or interesting to read or think about, and I watched my first council meeting in a long time (I can’t deal with Councillor Bill Gordon’s constant yammering these days, so mostly I avoid watching) with a lot of muting except for the parts that I was specifically interested in (the procedural bylaw and the presentation of the draft budget).

I’ve been reading through the [2022 Draft Budget for the Town of Midland (Ontario)](https://www.midland.ca/budget) (another slough, but important if one cares about making sure town hall’s activities and actions reflect what one wishes see being done by one’s town government).

Unfortunately due to being a ’little’ under the weather, I missed the public meeting for the Council Task Force on Affordable Housing, which apparently was not well attended. The truth is though, that I didn’t expect to have much to say or add as the report to council and the work they have been doing has been quite thorough. I suspect that is true for many people who still support the work.

I also slept a lot, and struggled to get to shovelling the driveway after a multiple days of significant weather events (equals ridiculous amounts of snow). I wasn’t terribly effective at that and I’ve realized without a snow blower or getting someone to do the bulk of the work, there is no way I’m going to keep up this winter. The side effects of medication I have to take certainly don’t help with that.

Despite that I am hoping to find a flexible enough work arrangement that I am able to capitalize on my ability to get stuff done, just not on a 9 to 5, chair-warming/timekeeping basis.

We’ll see if I can find any opportunities that work for myself and the employer/contracting entity.

In the meantime, if you don’t trust your dinner, don’t eat it, even if your mother cooked it! (Especially one that thinks ‘modern’ food safety protocols are overdone).

Credit for cover photo of refried beans with attempt to look appealing with a green garnish (beans may taste good but they don’t photograph well): PxHere