So, myself and the two other British contractors spend a week in Skopje, North Macedonia with our Polish and Macedonian counterparts, and it ended up being both super productive and a lot of hard work. Most importantly though, it was a lot of fun. I’ll just say, Macedonia is lovely, the food and wine are excellent, but its people are wonderful! I hope to make it back someday and ideally try to get up into the mountains that overlook the city.

After all our work during the week, we came to a conclusion that we needed about 300 man-days of work to build a new infrastructure framework. 300 uninterrupted man days without having to context switch mind.

Towards the end of the week though, we got some less-good news that the bean-counters only wanted to extend us contractors until May. Which is like 2 months beyond the end of the current contract. WTF? The business has secured some BIG new clients that need to be on-boarded, there’s a clear new amount of work to do, they’re already running the Platform team without enough people, one of us is retiring, and there’s little to no chance of recruiting in that time frame, much less anyone new getting up to speed in the short term. A year’s renewal would make business sense.

So, I didn’t say much. I’ll take the 2 month extension if that’s what’s on offer, but probably use those two months to find a more reliable contract. If it’s at least a more sensible 3 months or more, I won’t worry so much.

Watch this space…

Back At Home

On Saturday after I got home, I went out first thing to get the allotment going for the 2025 season. I stopped at my local tire garage as I couldn’t get the new tubes in for the rotovator and they quickly sorted out the problem. Slipped ’em a tenner as technically they aren’t allowed to work on non-car tires. Ran those to the allotment and got them on quickly enough, but then the bloody rotovator wouldn’t start. Ended up having to take the petrol tank off as it was filled with water. Drained it easily enough, but then broke the tank nipple trying to get the tube back on. FFS.

Anyway, I ordered in hopefully the right parts and I’ll get it all put back together tomorrow.

Nothing much else to report. I got tired of Terraform rebuilding this server every time Debian updated a single package in Debian Stable, so I now use Packer to create golden images for this web server and my mail server. That also shaves about 3 minutes off their first-boot time and allows me to choose when to upgrade

The New and Old Cars

News came whist I was away that the new car had been built, and this very morning I got an email saying it was on a ship headed here. That means I’ll have the new car in about two weeks! I’m giving the old car to my daughter - well technically to my daughter’s fiance as she doesn’t drive. So, in that area I’ve been ensuring the old car’s mechanically perfect as it can be for something with 95k miles on it. Had the tires checked and got new ones put on the front. Premium Goodyears - All-Seasons. Had the sticking throttle fixed. And I’m getting the brake pads and shoes changed next Tuesday. I’ll ask them to give it a once-over whist they’re at it.

As always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Chris

But anyway, I’m currently blogging from a Holiday Inn at London Luton Airport. At 3am I gotta get up, pack back up, get the car over to long-term parking, and get the shuttle to the airport. Hopefully by 3:30am-ish. Gonna get checked in, stop by duty free, and get a bottle of single malt whisky for the folks in Skopje.

Hope this week goes well. I’m nervous - not just about going to North Macedonia for the first time and meeting people face-to-face for the first time, but because I’ll be stuck in an office for a full-on 8 hours a day for 4 days! Heh heh. Who does that? I’m not used to it anymore!

Anyways, I’m off to bed early, so as always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice. And, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Chris