Light installations Sunday, 07-Dec-25 21:32:39 CET

Sunday, 14-Dec-25 20:24:31 CET

Installed more lamp fixtures

This week, I continued on the theme of installing lamp fixtures.

Monday 8 December

Good morning! It is 9 degrees Celsius and not raining. Yesterday it rained a lot. I did not sleep exceptionally well tonight. The watch gives me an exact overview of how my sleep was, and it wasn't good. The last couple of nights have been full moons; perhaps that has to do with it.

Merida came to lie next to me. That is something I like, but it is not suitable for sleeping all the time. Last week on Monday night, she got an epileptic seizure, and that spooked me this night. She kneaded my armpit and purred loudly; it was cosy. I will manage, I am sure.

People in the area have started collecting money as a present for the family whose house burned down. We will donate to that present. They must be in an awful situation.

It was a regular Monday. DW worked from home, and the iRobot cleaned the ground floor while we worked. It wasn't raining, so Merida went on an excursion in the garden.

LinkedIn sent me a message suggesting I follow Bill Gates. Last week, I listened to the Interesting Times podcast on The New York Times, in which Ross Douthat interviewed Julie K. Brown, a Miami Herald investigative journalist who exposed Jeffrey Epstein.

Julie's work is thorough, and Ross's interview paints a picture of how Jeffrey got what he wanted. There are still questions, but overall, my questions were answered.

Good morals can be odorless and fluctuating. Bad morals, on the other hand, are sticky. Get yourself in contact with immoral practices without doing anything wrong from a legal perspective, and for me, you still have the sticky immoral discoloring on you. Melinda pointed out that Bill has known Jeffrey; no more needs to be said. That is the proof.

The way Jeffrey operated means there are many more morally discolored billionaires.

A couple of weeks ago, I found my old Bluetooth mouse in a bad condition. I had left batteries in it, and they had leaked. I decided to discard the mouse. Now that I have the “new” Bluetooth keyboard, I am wondering how it would feel to have a mouse as well to use with the phone. Had that not been fantastic? Well, I should not complain because I do have a pen, so I should be fine. Theoretically, I will keep an eye open for Bluetooth mice at second-hand shops. I found the original Bluetooth keyboard, and it had a magnificent foldable stand. Although the keyboard is riddled with bugs, I can still use the stand. The stand will not slide elegantly into the keyboard, but it is still a nice stand. The leather pouch of the old keyboard is still practical. I liked the old keyboard very much. P is missing. That is a bummer. I already tried to fix that, I remember that now. Oh well, I got a new keyboard.

Today I was supposed to work on a minor update on a separate project. I made the change, and it worked as expected during testing, but it failed to work at all. What is worse, the program before the change has also not been working for some years. That hurts. I will continue on that tomorrow.

We had a lunch walk. I took two pictures of the house that burned. When I look at it up close, I notice the insulation looks flammable! The insulation is not made of wood fibre; it is difficult to say.

Although wood fibre insulation is not flammable when enclosed, it might ignite if sufficiently hot and exposed to oxygen. I don't know. If some form of PU foam was used, then I can understand that it is more likely to ignite. Still, a proper roofer should know how to handle a little fire. It is their job. This is all speculation; I have not spoken to the family.

Tomorrow, both DW and I will drive to the city. DW will continue by train to her office. In the future, the company she works for will relocate to another office, and in that new situation, she can take a bus. She would like to ride her bike to the bus station when the weather permits. The only problem is that the bike is not in good shape. We've talked about buying e-bikes many times. I changed my mind about that and will keep my manual bike as long as I can. DW has other thoughts. She wants to buy an e-bike, but the bus station has no secure parking for valuable bikes, so we would rather repair the old bike because it is less likely to be stolen. You never know for sure, but that is the idea. I hooked up the bike carrier and put her bike on it. I will bring it to the bike shop tomorrow.

Tuesday 9 December

Good morning! I arrived at the office at the same time as Gwen. I let the bike stay on the car. Colleagues arrived, and many of them noticed I had a bike on the car's bike carrier. In the morning, I delivered the bike to the bike repair shop. They agreed on looking at the bike. I would hear from them when it was finished.

In the morning, we worked on the issue found yesterday. Actually, a department needs to look into the issue. The cause is probably due to infrastructure changes in the IT organization, but we decided on an immediate workaround. Time to market is essential. This is just a temporary solution until the other department allocates time to look into the issue.

During lunch break, I made a doodle of my keychain!

When I came back from lunch, I noticed someone had been eating at their desk. It smelled delicious the rest of the afternoon. Slightly torturous. Nevertheless, I had a productive afternoon. I continued on tickets reported on the Dutch and US rollouts. This progressed nicely. Franco told me he had begun preparing for a rollout in Germany. Engineers at the German office will work on this project. I am confident that this will go flawlessly!

Nicole was the last person to leave, and then I was the only person left. It is strange to be one of the first and one of the last on the same day.

DW arrived at the train station, and we drove home.

Wednesday 10 December

Good morning. It is still pitch dark when I write this. I had a good night's sleep. Not excellent and outstanding, but good enough. It will be a hectic day with trips to the city a couple of times. DW will go to a wool event. DW and I have a check-up appointment at the dentist.

Merida was just about to come to me in bed tonight when DW turned, and Merida jumped back.

Yesterday evening, I doodled quick sketches of Merida. Great fun. I also programmed the lyrics-editor.com. I am still working on the sign-up functionality. It is starting to take too much time.

DW gave the sheep hay, and she was delighted by the new lamp in the temporary hay shed and the rain roof.

I worked in the morning while DW went to a wool workshop. It was lovely weather today, the sun behind a shallow layer of clouds.

After lunch, we went to the dentist. There was road reconstruction at the dentist's, so we had to take a detour. DD also had an appointment at the same time, and we were supposed to pick her up at the train station, and all three of us were going to the dentist. DD called to say she had missed her train and would arrive slightly late. That was no problem, since we would be in line first.

The roadblock was annoying, though, because I couldn't get reliable information about which parts of the road were closed and whether the remaining roads were one-way. DW thought it was just a short detour, but I wasn't sure. Luckily, it was just a minor inconvenience with the road deconstruction. I had anticipated something worse.

We came on time, after our appointments, and DD arrived. Just in time, that is DD. That is how she is.

Thursday 11 December

Good morning. It is a grey, overcast morning, about 8°C, as I bike to work. My health app showed I had a sleep score of 70 last night, which isn't bad, but it didn't feel great. It’s a new development for me that a night's sleep has a specific score. I suppose it is like the value of money, it is just a number, but at some point, you know what you get for that number, and that feeling, that prediction, that is the actual value.

Yesterday turned out to be a busy day, just as I predicted. But it was a successful day! When we were done at the dentist, we had to wait for DD to finish, and in that moment, I got an SMS from the bike repair shop saying DW's bike was ready! I still had the bike carrier in the trunk, so when DD was done, we went to the bike repair shop to pick up the bike. So convenient!

The road construction problem at the dentist was no issue at all. While we were driving there, I saw someone I recognised. It was a cleaning lady at our previous office. I waved at her, and she looked happy to see me. Had we not had to be at an appointment on time, I would have stopped to have a chat with her.

Anyway, on our way to the bike shop, DW and I discussed our visit to the second-hand shop. It was last Sunday when we found a lamp fixture we didn't buy.

Here, I had to stop to take a photo of the canal at the folk-dance bridge!

After picking up the bike and buying new bike bags, we went to the secondhand shop for the second time. They still had the lamp fixture! DD found cups and a bike seat for €4! I hovered over the blood pressure monitor, but I didn’t buy it. The thing with my clock was that, if I had a blood pressure reading, it could estimate the blood pressure from that reading. At least, that is what I guess. That would be cool!

Good evening. The time is 6:40 PM, and I’m biking home in the pitch dark. It’s getting much chillier than this morning. I had a good, productive day at the job. First, I addressed minor issues that were easily fixed, then I could return to the rollout of the Dutch and US product lines. I delved into the reported issue and fixed some obscure ones. That was fun because bug fixing is the best there is.

Today, Ed, Ellie, Rita, Erica, and Nicole came to the office.

During the lunch break, I went to the second shop to pick up the blood pressure monitor. I found out that the price was set to 50 euros! Usually, I’m not the one to start bargaining over the price, but this time, the instruction book and the power supply were missing. The person in charge of pricing was available, and I put forward my argumentation. She wanted to explain to me how the machine worked, but the batteries died. I told her I could very well buy new batteries, which was not the issue. She made one more attempt, saying I could cuckoo the instructions on the Internet. Now, this is the strangest pronunciation of "Google" ever. I know I can "cuckoo" the instructions on the Internet, but it costs me extra effort, and I explained that to the lady twice. But OK, now I know I can "cuckoo" the instructions, and that's good to know. I didn’t tell her that I’m a master in figuring out strange devices, user interfaces, file formats, and so on, infinitely. Besides, the most important instructions were written on the cuff, but I did not say that. The lady made a pause, and I waited. Then she said I can have it for half the price. The business model of these enterprises is that you bring things for free, and they sell them for money. But I was okay with this deal. For me, it’s a significant step forward to bargaining at all.

When the sun set, I took out my DSLR and shot a couple of photos.

 

The skyscraper in the city centre tries to be fancy, with a green-lit mast atop the building. Should I have a green lit mast on our house? I do think about setting up traditional Swedish wood ornaments on the house, but they should be white. On the way home, I picked up a package at a package automat. It is a device for delivering packages. So you get the code sent to you by mail or another method, then go to this place. There’s a Screen where you enter the code, press a button, and a door opens, and you can take out the package. The package was a yule package from DW's employer.

When I came home, DW rightly commented that if the new blood pressure monitors are around 25 euros, then the deal was okayish, but just barely. We found they are. I was glad I hadn't bought it for 50 euros. It did what it should do. I have normal blood pressure. I did not expect anything else. The thing is, now I can track my blood pressure in my health app. I like that. Who wouldn't want a colorful graph of their blood pressure? I had thought that the clock would estimate the blood pressure and that this was just a calibration, but that seems not to be the case. What it does, though, and this is a new guess, is that it deduces other calculations based on the blood pressure. Fine enough. I will figure it out. I am sure.

We received a package today with the four lamps we ordered for the hallway on the ground floor. The lamps are from Zangra in Belgium.

The present was delivered today to the neighbors of the house that burned down. They deeply appreciated the flowers and the extras. They have full insurance for their building project, so they can restart and build a new house. It will take time, but it will happen.

Friday 12 December

This morning I gave the sheep their hay. When I opened the lid of the hayrack, the lid fell off and landed on Hanna. She panicked.

The rope that acted as a hinge was worn out, so I replaced it with real hinges and added a handle to the lid. It is a little challenging to work on a hayrack while three curious sheep are using it. Oh well, I managed.

It is now 10 °C, completely overcast. DW is working from home, and I have a day off. After doing maintenance on the hayrack this morning, I continued installing the fixture at the canopy of the barn. The actual lamp holder of the fixture was not designed for reuse. I spent a surprising amount of time dismantling this to realise it would not come together again. Now I’m working on the plan of using a replacement, namely the lamp holder we already have, and I do believe that will work out. The fixture will hang on a chain, but it needs to be black, and right now, my mission is to go to the city for a black chain. I am wondering if I can pull that off, or if I will get another shop disappointment?

The specialist hardware store in the city provided the right things. They had two different kinds of black chains. I found one I liked, and someone from the shop even came to help me cut it off. Great service!

I went home happy to have gotten a chain without hassle. I got the fixture mounted, and with that, I was done with the scaffold that I had put up in the canopy when the electrician came. I disassembled the scaffold.

We had things stalled under the canopy, and I had the idea of tidying it up so it looks nicer. When we emptied the sea container, we placed a loom under the canopy. The loom is incomplete. It has a lot of thick wood, but I wanted to get rid of it, and DW wanted to keep it for a tinkering project. The compromise was to stall it under the canopy. It has been standing there since then, but now I have moved it up to the barn's attic. That is a better place. It is out of view and dry, and we keep all other tinkering materials there.

I was just done hoisting the loom when I accidentally jammed the wire of the winch. At first, I stood at the edge of the opening to the ground floor, but I figured I would be so busy with the cable I might forget I was standing on the edge of the hole. It would not be good if I fell. I unscrewed the winch from the beam. To do that, I laid planks over the hole to gain better access to the winch. It is a heavy piece.

With the winch on the floor, I tried to unwind the jammed cable. It was firmly stuck. I got the brilliant (Jens said sarcastically) idea of unscrewing the motor from the outer shell. Inside, two nuts were loose. They started to rumble inside, but the motor did not come loose. It was still attached to one end of the outer shell. At that point, it was pressed fit into the shell. I got some movement when I banged the heavy motor. The two loose nuts eventually fell out of this handling. This was a miserable moment.

I went downstairs, cleaned the canopy, and tried to organize my thoughts. Now the winch is entirely dead. The plan to pull the winch motor out of the press-fit shell was a bad idea. I had to get the wire unjammed without detaching the motor from the shell. I went back up again.

At the point where the jammed cable was most stuck, I placed a screwdriver. Then I hammered the screwdriver and got the cable loose, but now it was damaged: Strands of sharp metal fibre had come loose. I unwound some of the now-loose cable. Nice, now I have a winch with a loose, damaged cable and two loose nuts. I sat there and tried to picture how this machine had been assembled. If the cable were fully unwound, there would be more room to access the cavity where the nuts had to be mounted. With the cable unwinded, I could see better. The cavity was precisely the size of the nuts. I just barely got them back, one after another, and fastened. The motor was reattached to the outer shell!

Now I have a damaged cable. A damaged steel wire is not so fun. The strands point right through sturdy gloves and easily pierce your skin. We had experience with this on the tractor's wire crane in Sweden. It was at the end of the cable that it had jammed and now broke. I cut off the hook with the angle grinder, then I searched my pots for cable fasteners. I had four of the right size lying in a bucket. I cut off the damaged part of the cable and reinstalled the hook. Now the winch could be used again, if it was mounted back to the beam, that is. So I did that. Then I removed the planks and uttered a sigh of relief. I had successfully restored the winch's functionality. I missed one and a half meters of cable, but that is not that much.

Now it was dark. Here is how the lamp fixture looks. You can also see the birch tree trunk hanging. We took away the onions because we don't want the onions to freeze. It is nice and tidy. The two hay bales that didn't fit in the temporary hay shed are living on the blue bench.

I called DF to wish him a happy birthday. He is now 91 years old. He said that his sister had a stroke. She is older than he is and generally less healthy. DM and DF considered going to the hospital to visit her on 17 December, her birthday. DF has a blood pressure monitor as well and is making diagrams with Excel on the computer. In some aspects, you would not say that he is 91. He had an issue with the date format on the diagram. It was displayed in short form, and he wanted the dates in long form.

In the evening, I worked on lyrics-editor.com. I finished the validation of the sign-up screen, and now I have moved on to the back end and the mechanics of what happens when a person presses the sign-up button. I got the backend to store the data in the database. The password is not stored in clear text; instead, its hash is stored. The hash is a function that, given a string like a password, produces a complex code. This way, if the database is hacked, passwords cannot be read. Only the hash is stored. When someone logs in, I can compare the hash with the one in the database to see if they match. In that case, the person knew the original password. Storing the data is one thing. Now I need to send an email as well, and I need confirmation that it was received. If that happens, the person has an active account. I need to create a confirmation page, but that is for tomorrow.

Before going to bed, I suggested to DW that we go to the farmers' market tomorrow. She liked that idea.

Saturday 13 December

I slept really well. It was a beautiful morning. Nothing spectacular, but beautiful enough for me to grab the DSLR and snap a photo.

This morning, I rediscovered that I could make the clock measure blood pressure. To make this work, I had to run a calibration program with the pressure monitor. It is all interesting. I got an excellent blood pressure.

Now that DW has a repaired bike and the weather is nice, it's the perfect time to bike to the farmers' market. In the forest, we stopped for a quick photo!

I took a photo of the path, and DW took a photo of me. I did not take a photo of her. I will do that another time.

We got there before the bread was sold out, so that was an outstanding achievement. It was crowded, and we had to wait for our turn at the cheese market stall. There in the crowd, I decided to do a bit of urban sketching! I could have stayed at the market longer, drawing people. That had been perfectly fine.

We bought a few more things, and then we went home again. We biked past the Brussels sprouts and the onion field, now prepared for winter. DW starts to recognize it better. I like to bike here. I usually bike here when I commute to and from work. DW isn't in for biking in the dark, as I am. She will not be able to bike in the winter, but I think she will figure out how to do it.

We stopped again on the way home at the high farting canal. The water was still, and the sky was blue. It was beautiful!

Everything was beautiful. Even the garlic that is coming up is beautiful in the sun!

After lunch, we decided to use the new saw machine that arrived a few weeks ago. It was epic weather, and we cut branches from two trees. Then we cut the trees, leaving only the trunks. This kind of pruning is common in the Netherlands. We prune the willows so they begin to develop branches at about two meters. Two willows were more than enough for our energy levels and about the maximum that our branch stack henge could swallow.

The sheep got one branch to eat on. They like it very much.

In the evening, the sunset was magnificent.

In the evening, I worked on the lyrics-editor.com. The SSH FS feature stopped working. That meant that I could not debug properly. By accident, I enabled SSH from Microsoft, which I cannot run on the server because it is so memory-hungry. Xdebug settings were gone. It took some time to realize that a VS Code update had wiped out some of the most essential settings. Apparently, I had the plugins set to auto-update. Now it no longer worked, and I was not amused. Do there exist competitors to VS Code that do not have this issue?

Sunday 14 December

My morning thought this morning was that there is one or two firearm mass shooting events in the United States per day. It is impressive that so intelligent people cannot do anything about that. In the European Union, there are about two or three firearm mass shooting events per year. You might not know this, and that's interesting, too. This might indicate that the news is selected for us. Someone, somewhere, decides what we should know and what we should not. That someone probably makes more profit if you don't know what is going on in the rest of the world.

It was a foggy morning that transitioned to a completely overcast day.

In the first part of the day, I wanted to work on the lamps from Zangra that arrived on Thursday. Our ceiling boxes lacked the screws at the proper spacing, so I had to figure out how to do it. This isn't very pleasant because we got standard-size boxes, and it would be much less effort if the lamps came with two screw holes spaced the same distance apart.

I realized I had to install a metal bracket in the original holes and then mount the lamp to the bracket. The bracket I got wasn't thick enough to make a threaded hole with a secure grip on a bolt.

My idea for solving all this was to use a nut and glue it to the bracket, but I realized that if the glued bolt loosened, I wouldn't be able to get the lamp down from the ceiling again. Ever. I recalled how Mattias Wandel, the German former Blackberry engineer who now has an exciting YouTube channel, lives in Canada. He said in one of his videos that a drywall screw in metal can hold quite well. I experimented with this concept and made it work!

The lamp casts a star-shaped glow, and we will install four of them in the hallway on the ground floor. It will be nice.

When this was finished, we had lunch, and after lunch we went to SIL and BIL. We were going to SIL's birthday party. She is one year older than DW. The brother was also there, SIL's and BIL's daughter with husband and child. We caught up on each other's stories. I learned that BIL is already starting his pension at the start of January next year. Initially, he had to wait until March, but with so many holidays left, he could start the pension earlier. He was happy about that.

On the way home, there had been an accident with animals on the motorway. Luckily, it was not on our side of the motorway. The motorway had been blocked and the traffic redirected. We had no problems on our side of the motorway.

Here ends this week's blog. Yesterday, the winter weather was epic. It was such a nice day, we biked and pruned two willow trees. Filled up our windshield in the form of a willow rack.

In general, I continued this week with the theme of installing lamp fixtures. One fixture at the canopy of the barn, and I started installing lamp fixtures in the hallway on the ground floor. The scaffold under the canopy was dismantled. That was great. I wrote 4733 words this week!