Yodeller

I'm fine doing diy stuff that is possible to be done by existing things that just need a little bit of modification to fit my needs. Sometimes my projects are just combining a few things that weren't meant to work together, but create something new when joined in a correct way.

Unfortunately I'm not handy enough when it comes to creating something completely new from scratch. The various skills I have are enough to do those small and creative modifications or following tutorials and examples. It's the difference between a professional and a hobbyist, creating something completely new.

When I get an idea of some new thing I want to build I need to hope there is something existing I can base my work on. It's usually a lot of googling to find those things. Often it also requires learning something new to be able to do the modifications and make everything work together.

Starting from scratch also requires often quite a different set of tools. Working on some materials just is too expensive to get the tools just for some random ad hoc project. If I can't find suitable pieces it's pretty much no deal at that point.

Old LEGO sets can be quite pricey. Looking at the pieces most of them are still available brand new directly from LEGO. It's the few discontinued ones that usually hike up those prices.

Take the Forestmen camouflaged outpost (6066-1) for example. I was doing an inventory for it so I could build it next from my old collection. The set sells for over 200 euros in secondary markets. I was thrilled as I had only few pieces missing... until I found out I'm missing the two most expensive pieces of the set. The black and blue plume feathers cost almost one third of the total set price. Other missing pieces were few cents. Those feathers are the smallest pieces in the set, so easy to get lost. It's also almost the only set where those pieces were made for.

Other third of the set comes mostly from the minifigs and their accessories. The bulk of the set, the pieces that are mostly still available today, or included in many sets in the past costs almost nothing per piece.

Of course there is also some additional value in those old pieces that are still being made today. All that wear and scratches give them the real old set look. An odd new piece in the set really stands out and feels out of place.

Writing every day feels like a lot. But spending minimum amount of time on it isn't really enough to give the attention so.e topics deserve. So I don't write about them and instead just keep postponing them for "better time".

Sometimes it's about my lack of proper background knowledge of the topic. I want to make sure I get the facts right and try to do my background checks before writing anything. For these the better time usually comes. I can study the subject at my own pace and come back to it when I feel I'm ready.

Other topics just feel too big. They deserve more than 200 words to give them enough room. Or they need better words, well thought sentences and clever remarks. Not just an unstructured stream of thought filled with first words that come to my mind.

The first kind I could of course split into multiple posts. I've done that before and it has the added benefit of not having to come up with a new topic for a few days. The second one is a bit more complicated. I could write a draft and refine it until I'm satisfied. But if it takes days to perfect a post can it be counted as a daily post anymore?

I have always been a Linux user (save the first few years of my computerized life before the first version of Linux came out). The first Linux installations were whatever I managed to get my hands on. There were no public internet yet to download whatever you wanted back then.

After getting connected the things got interesting. There were so many options and the technology was moving so fast it was hard to keep up. Especially if you resorted to the stable releases.

For years I was running self compiled Linux with all the bleeding edge packages, sometimes pushing that edge forward myself too. New hardware in particular was basically impossible to find support from any stable distros. You had to get experimental builds to get your things working.

Over the years I got tired of that constant race and turned back to more stable distros that required lot less work to keep updated. Looking back to those most "wild" years when I might have been rolling a whole system anew my current setup is already 5 years old! That's a lot for me, but it's also a lot for a stable distro release as well.

I was never looking to keep this system for so long. By now I expected to have a new laptop already and I could have just installed an up to date distro on it and not have to worry about it for several years.

Now my trusty old system is facing an end of life and I should finally upgrade it. Maybe it's a good time to get that new laptop as well at the same go.

Today we are having a farewell party for our temporary local hr person at our company in Finland. It's amazing how somebody can become such an integral part of the company in such a short time.

It feels sad to see him leave even though it was known from the beginning that he would be with us only for a set amount of time during our "own" hr lady during her maternity leave. The little over a year went so fast but it feels like he has been with us much longer.

At the same time there are people who have been years with the company and feels like they just started. And then there are people who have been in the company for few years and feels like they have been there forever.

Having been there for over a decade myself I start losing the concept of time. It probably has a lot to do with how much I interact with those people, not with the years they have been my colleagues. Even if somebody has been working for us for years if I don't regularly interact with them it feels much shorter time than with somebody I work on a more regular basis.