Spooky issue with my phone Sunday, 23-Aug-26 20:57:39 CEST

Sunday, 30-Aug-26 23:35:09 CEST

Twelve Friends Required

What began as a week of frustration with Google Play, Reddit, and a stubborn neck ended with a series of small but satisfying victories.

Monday 24 August

Today we both worked from home. It did not rain today, and according to the forecast, today and tomorrow are the only days this week that it will stay dry. That is great news because we want grass to sprout and to grow to feed our sheep. Our pond is back to normal levels after I almost depleted it, and that is great. We barely escaped a water crisis.

For lunch, I had a sandwich with a double cucumber. The slices looked like number eight. Apparently this was a good fortune sandwich.

After work, I tried to continue with the Watch Face project. Google Play Console gave me a hard time when I tried to upload the Wear OS project. For this to happen, I need to create an app instance, but nowhere am I told I created the wrong type of app; it has to be a Wear OS app. I had to stop working on the project out of frustration with the Google Play Console.

I delivered more zuccinis to the market in Amsterdam. This time it was just 6.5 Kg. It feels like the harvest is failing this year. I wonder if the customers are patient enough?

Tuesday 25 August

We both went to our offices today. DW had to attend a BBQ in the afternoon and early evening, and I had a regular day at the office. It was uncertain if DW would be able to get on her favorite train. I drove a little quicker than usual without breaking any rules. Or did I? She got on the train on time, and I was early at the office.

I was not feeling well today. It could be the tooth I mentioned before the holidays. I had a little ache in my neck on my right side, but nothing terrible.

In the afternoon, more and more colleagues left the office, and at one point I was the last person. I watered the plants at the office, and then I went to the city center. Here, my idea was to spend the time until DW returned from her BBQ. It was warmer this evening. I decided to go to a simple restaurant and eat a simple dinner. I ordered an open-faced ham and egg sandwich with Tonic soda water. Now I planned to extend this afternoon so far that I did not have to drive back home and then into town again to pick up DW. It was a bit of a gamble because I had no idea how great her BBQ event would be. She did not know either. Perhaps she knew, but she did not text me any progress, so I had no idea if my strategy would work. It was a nice evening, so my strategy was still valid at 7:30.

The sandwich tasted okay, but it looked like crap. The owner was a happy grandfather doing a video phone call to his grandchild on holiday in Spain. He made silly noises to his phone. He even walked around and showed his grandchild to some regular customers in the restaurant. Luckily, I was not blessed with this.

DW was to arrive when the restaurant closed. That was perfect timing.

I sat there writing and observing strangers. It was enjoyable to see who was doing what. In the large hall of the train station, there is a piano. Three ladies were standing in a row listening to a guy playing the piano, looking admiringly. They looked sweet. Perhaps it is wrong to take photos of strangers, but I could not resist. DW arrived at the perfect time, and we went home.

In the evening, the news came that Dolly Parton had died. This time she died for real. A year ago the rumor was spread that she died, but that news had to be demented. Now she is dead; it is real, and it is sad.

Wednesday 26 August

PW went to work by train this morning, and I worked from home. The forecast that it should rain today seems to have dried up. Instead, we’re having a warm day. I learned it is not the amount of rain that is vital for sprouting grass seeds. It is the regular moisture that is needed, or soil that stays moisturized.

My stiff neck pain intensified during the night. I decided to wear a scarf. I worked from home.

After work, I decided to check the Google Play Console to publish my unobscured digital and analog watch face for closed testing. The user interface is confusing to say the least. I started over again today and succeeded in submitting the watch face.

Just before going to bed, we ordered a digital picture frame for MIL. We will give it to her and load it with photos from FIL. She asked for some of the photos, but I plan to give her all of them.

Thursday 27 August

My stiff neck is worsening. I slept well, according to my smartwatch, but every time I moved, it hurt a lot. My left side is not that bad; my right side is acting up. I promised myself I would wear a scarf until this is better, and I took two paracetamol tablets as well. And so I’m driving to work.

After work, I concluded that it went okay despite my stiff neck. I think it was a good decision to wear a scarf, although it looks a little bit strange when it’s 30°C outside.

For dinner we had our first sweet corn of this season. It was delicious.

In the evening I talked with a neighbor living further down the road. He said that a long time ago I had said something that he thought was really interesting. It had something to do with CO2 and Money. I recalled it: Money is just unreleased CO2. The neighbor smiled, "Yes, that was what you said!" Then he added that it was a really interesting statement.

This evening I picked up the digital picture frame for MIL from the post. In reality, this picture frame is an entire computer. MIL does not like complexity, so I stripped all the sound effects and time indicators. She does not need to know that it is a computer. I loaded over 100 photos onto the frame. Every 15 seconds, it switches the picture. I hope she will like it.

Friday 28 August

That night I had a lot of pain on the right side of my neck. I got 60 points for sleep. DW had a day off, and I worked from home. I had my scarf on.

It was challenging to focus on the work, but I did my best. It rained heavily, and that felt good. At the end of the day, I told myself I had been productive despite the odds!

We moved the sheep to the northeast area between the neighbors. We had to roll out the new fence because of the neighbors' berry bushes. I could do it even in my condition. Perhaps staying still for too long is not improving my state? I decided to have a night's sleep and, after that, find out if I fancied some activity to loosen up my neck.

In the evening, I worked on publishing the watchface. Google Play Console had approved the watchface for closed testing, so now I had to set up the closed testing. Great news: I had to have a maximum of 12 testers, and not 20 as previously stated. Now I just had to revitalize my Reddit account, and all would be fine.

Except it was not fine. I composed the post, and it was live for exactly three seconds before Reddit filtered it. Something was not accepted. I think they tried to tell me that I had been absent for over ten years, and it was about time to show up and post something? Huh! I have been busy elsewhere; that is true. I sent a message to the moderators to ask them to clear my post. I also figured that perhaps I need to learn more about Reddit and become a better person at the same time. Before, Reddit was just a waste of time. Now it is part of a goal I want to achieve. I found subreddits about writing blogs. That could be interesting. I might try to be more active there. I do feel rejected, and I suppose I am.

Saturday 29 August

I figured out how to get out of bed with my bad right side. I stretch out my legs and clamp against the side of the bed. Then I can get up without using my arms. The situation is getting better, but it is a slow process.

DW pickled cucumbers. I wanted to try running with the tiller machine to see how my stiff neck would respond. It happened before that my neck was stuck in a similar situation, and then I experienced that serious manual labor loosened up the neck. Then I am talking about working in the forest with a chainsaw and a stubborn winch crane or digging a ditch in clay for rainwater pipes. That sort of thing.

It is the southwest field I would like to have tilled, since it is less productive than the other grazing areas. Soil has a memory. If a forty-ton truck has driven over the ground, the clay hardens into the consistency of concrete, and that goes deep into the soil. We had trucks drive over the ground when they built the first dirt road. It was more than six years ago, but the soil has a long memory. Me too; I am still angry about them. I powered up our trusty old Stiga tiller machine. It jumped around on top of the concrete.

I got blisters on my hands. On my left hand, the blistered skin was lost, about the size of a chickpea. On my right hand, I still kept the skin on the blister. My stiff neck reacted well to this exercise. Not that it went away, but I felt great. I was disappointed in how little tilling I had achieved. Perhaps just two square meters. That, compared to the blisters, was a sour experience. DW reminded me that I felt good about the exercise.

We went on a second-hand shop tour. Just three shops in the city center. First we went to a cluttered second-hand shop. They had buckets with hand-tools. This is unique in both the Netherlands and Sweden. I am sure they are not aware of their Unique Selling Point.

Then we went to the next second-hand shop. It is a large shop. DW was looking for shirts for MIL. They had a cafe, but it was closed on weekends. I sat down in the closed cafe and wrote on the blog with my Bluetooth keyboard.

I am trying to learn the Reddit game so I can get my watchface posted live. I am not good at social media games. Until now, there has been no platform where I had to achieve some form of success to reach a goal. Now I have this with Reddit. It is new to me.

The people at the Google Play Console team must be patting each other on the shoulder, saying to each other: "Those lonely developers without friends will learn a lesson for life." It is not that the app's quality is tested at all under this scheme. The requirement is that someone has the app installed for fourteen days. So there is no actual quality check on the app itself; the important thing is that lonely developers are having a tough time submitting their apps to the platform. To be worthy of uploading an app to Google Play, you need to have 12 friends or more. That’s all. It is absurd.

Sunday 30 August

This morning I was feeling better with my stiff neck and painful right shoulder. DW told me how it went when Merida came to our bed in the morning. DW was already awake and could not sleep. Merida came to me, and I greeted her and made space for her. She snuggled up against me and started purring loudly. Then, within 30 seconds, I fell asleep again. DW's question is obvious: How do you do that? My answer relates to the Finnish stand-up comedian Ismo Leikola. He had it all figured out. I am stuuupid.

It was raining heavily this morning. We collected 40 millimeters of rain since Friday morning.

The situation with Reddit still frustrated me. If I could just get sufficient Karma points, my post about the watch face could go live. Hopefully. I figured I'd post a picture of Merida on the aww forum. As the day progressed, I got messages about upvotes on the picture of Merida.

The main goal of today was to go to MIL with blouses that DW found at the secondhand store, bring back a cupboard, and, most exciting of all, give her a digital picture frame.

MIL is 97 years old, and for the longest time she has been kind of anti-photography. She hates any appliance with more than one button, to be honest, unless it was a common thing when she was young. For the rest, she is a lovely lady.

I have been around her and her late husband for about 38 years, and I like photography. FIL did not like being photographed, but I sneaked up on him with my camera and took photos of him anyway.

When her husband died 9 weeks ago, it was clear that pictures were necessary for the funeral ceremony. It became my task to find suitable images. After the funeral, MIL asked me if she could get a couple of images, and I got the idea that she could get all of them and many more. What if we gave her a digital picture frame displaying a new picture every 15 seconds? We arranged that and got it loaded with 140 images. I can even log in to the frame and add more images. I removed sound effects, calendar, and time so that the thing became a picture frame only. It is actually a computer, but if no one tells her that, she will not be bothered.

I was so curious about how she would receive the picture frame. She got obsessed with it. We arranged it so that she could give it a glance from he comfy chair. I explained things from the photos. She loved it.

When we came home, I had received 390 upvotes on the Merida image; my karma had risen from 55 to 225 points. The image had 6k views. The filter was removed from my watchface post. I had achieved my goal! That was good because I would hate to go to bed another evening feeling that it is the extroverts who dictate the rules in this world and it is not fair.

I so much wonder if the watch face project can continue now? Here ends this week's blog at 2542 words.

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Here is a 20-minute in-depth analysis podcast of this blog called Twelve friends and the memory of soil.