People will lie to you. I caught up with an old work colleague and friend for a coffee yesterday.  She was in this situation where her work — where I used to work — is telling her a bunch of things.  Top of mind are: You are bad at your job, and Because of this, we’re going to demote you and pay you less money. Having worked for the very same place, and experiencing at least one of those things (constant negative feedback, which we’ll get to in a moment) and a partial on the other (due to contract, they couldn’t demote me, but they avoided raises when they were applied across rest of the team), I was a sympathetic ear.  I think I was also a useful ear, because I mentioned to her that: She is in fact good at Read More …

Ahem. You know when you’re meeting a friendly, and they ask you what has happened since April? So, that’s me. Turns out, things are kind of exciting from my end. I’m making good progress on Night’s Fall – it’s probably at about the 50% mark as of today.  And by 50%, I mean first draft, so don’t get too excited.  I know there’s a number of you — you know who you are — who keep asking me how that sequel is coming along. You might, therefore, be asking, “Richard, so.  Tell me.  Why no blog posts?”  It’s a little like this.  The new job is very exciting and has me working at a level that is rewarding, but it’s sucking free time out through my eyeballs.  Given a choice between blogging, and writing, I would rather write – it will give Read More …

Man, I don’t get why my online banking has lower requirements than the thing I would use to file medical receipts.  It’s my data, FFS, so I just dropped this in to their customer contact bin. Hi – I tried to set up my southern cross today, and got to the password page where it requires two letters and two numbers. I stopped there and won’t be continuing – you’re asking me to keep a different type of password to what I usually use, and I’d be constantly forgetting it and having to reset. Just thought you’d find the feedback useful; since it’s my data you’re holding it’s not your job to tell me security requirements as it’s my risk, and I doubt I’ll be using the service until it better suits my needs.  As it happens the password I Read More …

This isn’t my usual fare, I know.  Look at it like a little something extra. One part of my Christmas haul this year was a waffle iron.  Little Breville unit, looks like a flying saucer with a temperature gauge.  It came with a collection of almost useless waffle recipes, so the hunt began for the perfect waffle. I picked up Primal Cravings from the guys over at Health Bent.  This has a pretty good waffle recipe, but it’s not a perfect recipe — I found it a little … chunky.  It didn’t spread like a good batter should — gluten’s good for something, right? Enter the Family-Favourite Oatmeal recipe.  This thing would be close to perfect except for the use of a megaton of carbohydrate, which isn’t really the way I like to start the day.  But man, it smells like the tears of Read More …