He actually turned up at 10 when I was free. I don't know what to do with myself now the rest of my day is free

A courier is meant to come today to pick up the old work laptop. I was given the wonderfully specific window of 9:30 to 17:30. Kids are dropped off, I'm about to shower, and I'm ready to hunker down and not go anywhere until he comes to pick it up.

Because you know he'll come if I go outside or the next time I go to the toilet

You can tell the place is from a different time. The houses are so big, the streets so narrow, and there's no parking

Spent the nice weather this morning around Canterbury, imagining what it would take to live there these days. I like the leafy streets and packed in shopping precincts of those areas

They really are just big cats

Going out for fancy breakfast this morning to a cafe near a post office. Nice food and the boys can post our council votes for us.

If I ran a cafe near a mailbox I'd do a post about it to remind people to send off their votes and come enjoy a coffee while you're at

I put on the first Paddington movie for the boys the other day because I heard it was good when it came out, and it is quite good.

It's silly and over the top in all the right ways, with a villain that's just evil with clear motivations. It felt like a 90s movie made with today's technology.

Also turns out the director worked on Darkplace and directed all the Mighty Boosh episodes so of course it was going to be good

I put on the first Paddington movie for the boys the other day because I heard it was good when it came out, and it is quite good.

It's silly and over the top in all the right ways, with a villain that's just evil with clear motivations. It felt like a 90s movie made with today's technology.

Also turns out the director worked on Darkplace and directed all the Mighty Boosh episodes so of course it was going to be good

DC coffee and the Italian supermarket next to it had to leave so that place could be built, it's good to know there are more reasons to hate it

Yeah, it's about 6 months and these things do tend to get extended. I can put in for longer term things in that time or just see what happens where I am

This has turned the termination into a blessing in disguise because I'd been speaking to recruiters and the biggest thing stopping me from moving into a contract was my notice period

That's a heck of a studio PC. I think it would work fine, you may need to upgrade the graphics card depending on what you want to play but you don't have to go top spec there

Thanks everyone. This 2 weeks has gone from a rather stressful period to a kind of paid holiday by my old work. I'm ready to put clunky systems, sales teams, and clueless managers behind me. It's been great having this space to vent and get support from everyone while I've gone through this

The PS5 Pro will sell for $1200 here. You can get a cheap gaming PC for that price and have access to your Steam, GOG, and Epic library, as well as using it for everything else you can use a PC for. Get a controller and a loungeroom keyboard and you can use it from the couch just as easily as a console.

That's my reason against. If you've already got games on PS5 then it's a harder argument against it

I did it! I got the contact I interviewed for. I just need to go through reference checks and I'll start in a week. Everything has worked out and lined up for once.

This will get me on the other side of Christmas if I don't get anything else, and it will give me recent experience in the space I want to work in again.

I dug out what I thought was a combination DVD and VHS player and plugged it into the TV, turns out it was just a really big DVD player. I couldn't get it working with the RCA inputs into the receiver so I've just hooked up the other DVD player for the moment. The current DVD player also has RCA output and that didn't work either, so it could be the cable.

I put on some DVDs for the kids and it was so much better. You know what you're in for, the shows have a proper start and end, and they can pick out a DVD like they do books when they're ready

Yeah, I use the app Pixeldroid and there's pixelfed.au

I've been doing yoghurt and muesli for breakfast for years since it's healthy and I can't think of something better. That could be an option

There's a slightly active community of photographers on pixelfed, kind of like the fediverse version of Instagram. I wonder if it would be possible to view its feed here

That's how I feel sometimes. I know I can interview well too so I just need to get in the room with them and I can talk myself into the job.

You get thinking about how your life could be, apply for these jobs, then nothing happens