work – Groningen Rain

14 April 2021

A Company Wants to Hire You But

[Dutch Lock Down Day Three Hundred Ninety One]

They don’t have a tax entity in the Netherlands. What do you do?

The short version is that every single company that extended an offer doesn’t have a tax entity in the Netherlands, so I’m doing a LOT of research on my options / their options for working together. Until we can figure out our relationship, it’s really hard to choose between them.

And, since I’m not a lawyer NOR an accountant NOR a native Dutch reader, it’s slow going.

I’m hopeful that this information, gathered in one spot, will help others in a similar situation.

But first the news:

LIFE happened today and while I meant to pull together a bunch of information, I ended up getting super distracted and so “only” have the series of articles I found without a lot of streamlining.

Without further ado…

20 August 2020

Don’t Forget To Breathe

[Dutch Lock Down Day One Hundred Fifty Seven]

One of the core points of strength training is breathing on the hard part. If you’re squatting, that’s the going down bit. If you’re doing bicep curls, that’s the bit when the weight is going up.

Remember to breathe OUT right then.

Or at all.

Breathing is better than not breathing.

But first the news:

Quite often when I’m working out, if I run into a brick wall, I take note of my breath first.

Usually I gasp for breath right then because I’ve been holding my breath… and then I can go for another five, six, seven reps.

18 August 2020

Tomorrow! Morning! OpenStack! On! Packet!

[Dutch Lock Down Day One Hundred Fifty Five]

Two weeks ago I was on vacation and not really doing the technical stream thing except then I had a look over the OpenStack on Packet repository, ended up auditing the entire README.md, making a series of pull request, became an official collaborator on the project and said I’d be running it the following week.

And then it was hot.

But first the news:

So hot, in fact, that I did not one single stream, vlog, or recording for the entire eight day heatwave.

But!

Tomorrow!

Morning!

At 0900 GMT!

On Twitch and YouTube and Twitter!! !

And I set up a couple of new visuals for this one. Can you tell I’m excited? Wanna see?

31 July 2020

Dutch Lock Down Day One Hundred Thirty Eight

[And Then I Jumped Out Of The Airplane]

Not literally.

But OMG OMG OMG figuratively.

But first the news:

Last night I was having trouble falling asleep, stressed about today. My plan was to do my normal morning routine at work and do the live streaming today from one to three.

But.

As I was keeping my partner awake with mutterings, he suggested I do it as soon as I arrive at work. Immediately. No procrastination.

So I did.

28 July 2020

Dutch Lock Down Day One Hundred Thirty Five

[Today Was Kinda Rough]

It started with a call from IT.

I couldn’t reset my laptop password. I mean, I could in recovery mode, but it would be overwritten once the operating system loaded. Or something loaded.

I hacked on it until I figured out that it was resetting the local password to match the Active Directory password which is SUPER creepy, but I guess that makes it easier to ~~monitor my system~~ help me when something’s wrong.

Awesome.

But first the news:

The good news is that not only was the root cause discovered, but it was ‘resolved’ in that it’s a feature, not a bug; I wrote it up so it’s ACTUALLY DOCUMENTED and moved on.

Because, really, once I know the root cause, I am chill.

Sort of.