I’m heading off for a long service leave trip. Tickets are booked, bags are packed, anxiety about whether we’ve missed anything is once again running rampant. We’ve had to postpone this four times owing to factors outside our control, so we can’t believe it’s finally happening. And yes, before you ask, three more things thing popped up, but we finally had the gumption to push back. I’m not sure what the dynamic will be over the next few weeks. Maybe I’ll continue blogging every day or so, or it might be a week in between posts while I dust off our hiking boots and explore Japan again. See you again soon :). By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-19.

I cannot overstate what a gem Stefano Marinelli is to the BSD operating system community. He’s kind, clear headed, and curious. He operates several Mastodon instances from the delightfully-named BSD.cafe server, from which I follow a significant number of people, and we’ve DM’d a few times on some heavy topics. If he and I are ever in the same city, I owe him several beverages, and likely a hug. I was so happy to see this new post in which he graciously mentioned my ramblings! I’ve decided to start writing on a personal blog again. Not just on IT Notes, where I’ll continue to publish technical content as I’ve been doing, but also on a more personal and general blog. And this for a number of reasons. He describes a few motivating points, but I think this one was key: Too many things I’ve written on social media have disappeared into nothingness after a few days. I’ve seen people comment on a few stories critical of Mastodon lately; concerns I don’t necessarily share, but that I’m sympathetic to. I’ve got a proper post about this brewing in the back of my mind, but I definitely see this struggle between social media and personal spaces you own and control. I’m reminded of the early days of Twitter, where we used it more like throwaway SMS. Blogs, on the other hand, were for the thoughts you wanted to survive. I’ve got another post coming up soon comparing a few different blogging tools for people who want to dip their toes into this wonderful form of self-expression (present writer notwithstanding), but in the meantime I’m so happy to add Stefano’s blog to Clara’s and my RSS reader. And yes, that was a not-so-thinly-veiled push for you to start one as well, dear reader, if you haven’t already. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-18.

I’ve been a massive John Grisham fan for years, but I never read his first book The Firm. I’ll save my review for a future post, but wow! I’m so glad I saw it in one of those Street Libraries and decided to give it a try. No spoilers, but in chapter 18 our protagonist Mitch is attempting to operate one of The Firm’s shiny new photocopiers. The entire passage is brilliant, and could map to so many frustrations with modern enterprise IT. A red warning lit up and flashed the message INSERT FILE NUMBER. He backed away and looked at the copier. Yes, it was a new one. Next to the PRINT button was another that read BYPASS. He stuck his thumb on it. A shrill siren erupted from within the machine, and the entire panel of buttons turned bright red. He looked around helplessly, saw no one, and frantically grabbed the instruction manual. “What’s going on here?” someone demanded over the wailing of the copier. “I don’t know!” Mitch yelled, waving the manual. Lela Pointer […] reached behind the machine and flipped a switch. The siren died. “What the hell?” Mitch said, panting. “Didn’t they tell you? she demanded, grabbing the manual and placing it back in its place. She drilled a hole in him with her tiny fierce eyes, as if she had caught him in her purse. “Obviously not. What’s the deal?” “We have a new copying system” she lectured downward through her nose. “It was installed the day after Christmas. You must code in the file number before the machine will copy. Your secretary was supposed to tell you.” “You mean this thing will not copy unless I punch a ten digit number?” “That’s correct.” “What about copies in general, with no particular file?” “Can’t be done.” By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-18.

The 2025 Australian Federal election will be taking place when Clara and I are outside our electorate, so we opted for a postal vote. This means no democracy sausage on polling day, but we’re still able to perform our civic duty. Well, that and the fact voting is comulspry in Australia (as it should be, you have a responsibility in a democracy), so we don’t want to cop a fine. We cut the timing a bit fine, but we both got an encouraging email yesterday: This is an automatically generated message from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), please DO NOT reply. Your postal vote pack is on its way to you by Australia Post or DHL international courier. You will receive a separate email from DHL with tracking information. Sure enough, it arrived that afternoon! Phew. I prefer postal voting because you can take your time to review the candidates, look them up, see that many of them are ghastly, and avoid them. Australia uses preferential voting, so you’re encouraged to rank your House of Representatives and Senate candidates in the order you’d like them to be elected. Hence why people who only get their news from American media are so many levels of wrong when they say you shouldn’t “waste” your vote on a third-party candidate. Australians among you though may have spotted something else in the photo above. Alongside the officially sanctioned Australian Electoral Commission envelopes is a postal vote application pamphlet. It’s not in the AEC’s official purple, nor does it have their logo anywhere, so my suspicions were raised. Sure enough, it was sent by the conservative opposition (because of course it was them) as a blatent data harvesting exercise. I returned their form in the postage paid envelope saying “YOU ARE NOT THE AEC, AND YOU LOST ME AS A VOTER”. I wasn’t voting for them anyway, but they don’t know that. The election is on the third of May. Fingers crossed, and all that. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-17.