Ended up cancelling my CostCo membership as I couldn’t make it work financially and I’m frankly too far away from CostCo Westgate. Once they open up more stores, and there is one available on my regular weekly routes, then will look to re-establish my membership.

That said, it was good to at least pop in to have a look and I’m still appreciative of them bringing in much needed added competition. I believe a CostCo membership is still beneficial for those who reside nearby and have an actual need to buy in bulk, be it for their family or community group.

One of the issues is that they rotate stock out frequently and it’s currently difficult to know what they have unless you physically visit their store (or go out on a limb and ask on the Westgate CostCo Community faceborg page and risk a barrage of snark). That’s until they open up their online store for New Zealand. For example this weekend, went to look for a dehumidifier and a new home gym (which I had seen on prior visits) and discovered CostCo Westgate had neither for sale.

Despite trawling all the aisles, I couldn’t convince myself to buy much, if anything this weekend. Arrived early, and parking was easy, but it feels as soon as I turned my back around, the place was absolutely slammed with people. Ended up only buying something for Lunch and having to navigate the checkout queues, then past the over crowded food court and then navigate the Car park traffic jam to get out. Ended up parking up in a spare parking bay along Gunton Drive and walked back in to get my Membership cancelled/refunded. Sorry, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

On other aspects…

• The staff can be mixed. Checkout staff were efficient. The sign up staff were friendly and I did feel sorry for advising I was here to cancel my membership. The door staff can be a bit like drill sergeants however.
• CostCo may not always be the cheapest, unless it’s on rebate, so still pays to compare pricing with your local supermarket.

Overall, CostCo is good for what it is I guess, but really only works for specific situations. I at least did appreciate the chance of just having a look around to see what it was all about. To close, I end with a cliche “It’s not you, it’s me” but “it’s not forever” and I plan to have another look in a few years.

Early spring clean. Photo of product packaging that I dug out from the closet.

Issue is, some of this packaging is so elaborate and fancy inside the box, that you don’t want to throw it away. It does make me wish there was a practical way to send such packaging back to the manufacturer to reuse.

For me personally, a return to full price adult fares is a deal breaker and will likely result in a substantial drop in my utilization of Auckland Public Transport. Half price fares did compel me to at least try out public transport to get around Auckland predominantly during the weekends (including picking up groceries at Pak n’ Save Glen Innes).

That said, it was a shit show of cancelled services, missed connections, helping out fellow public transport users who were lost, avoiding the derranged, taking two hours to get to your destintation when a car could do it in a third or even a quarter of the time. Frankly, I felt like a second class citizen and that the powers to be really couldn’t give a toss about Public Transport users.

My place of employment (East Tamaki) is poorly served by public transit so I don’t have the opportunity to use public transport regularly (even though I have longed for decades for being able to do so) and subsequently it doesn’t make sense for me to buy a monthly pass. I have to join the throngs of other single occupant cars to make the 16 km journey (32 km return) to and from work as the only pragmatic balance between cost, personal safety, and time.

Will be going back to using my car more in the weekend, even accounting for the 30c tax and excise being added back on. A bus fare of $2.37 for one way one zone travel just isn’t compelling for me in many situations. More so for short journeys that cross a zone boundary. That said exceptions where Public transport could still work for me…

• $4.20 to get into the CBD, with a $8.40 round trip, Cheaper than driving (single occupant) and paying for parking. That said, I don’t find myself needing to go into the CBD very often at all.
• Travel from the end of one zone to the other end (e.g Eastern Suburbs to New Lynn), typically using Bus 75 and hopping on the Western Line trains at Newmarket. The Same journey in an ICE car would probably be $6-8 one way  inclusive of wear and tear

The surprise take away advice I got from attending Fieldays as a townie was “Don’t get into farming (at least not full time)”. It would appear from those I’ve spoken to is that If you’re in a cushy desk-bound / office job “then stay in it” was the advice of many surprisingly.

Specific comments received chatting to both attendees and stallholders from those actually farming include…

• The pay “is crap”.
• The days are long – “You’re working up to 10-16 hour days a lot of the time” (depending on what role you’re undertaking of course).
• Social interaction is limited. “You’re isolated and alone for much of the time”.
• Mental well being is generally lower. “Depression throughout the industry is rife”
• “The job is stressful for the amount of remuneration / compensation you receive”.
• “Smaller farms are struggling to survive and are being bought out by larger scale corporate operations”.
• Government regulations stifling their livelihoods.

Admittedly overall I was a little taken back by how negative and upfront farmers themselves perceive of working in the farming / rural sector.

The more positive aspects of Farming mentioned…

• Get to spend time outside.
• Great views / scenery.
• Less people / Solitude.
• Opportunity to use a wide variety of equipment and drive heavy machinery.
• Opportunity for a more laid back and quieter lifestyle.

The idea fantasy of getting hands-on in any sort of farming work (even part time) has been quashed at least for now I guess. That said, I anticipate vocational roles may make a come back at some point. When? I don’t know. Farming as a career choice has been in the doldrums for a few decades.

It does explain why every time I walk into the Fieldays Careers hub, I find it’s completely empty and when I did talk to a roving representative, I get the strong vibe of “why would you even ever so much as entertain the thought of a career change from IT into farming?”

With that said, I will admit this post reads rather downbeat and may be unfairly so. I invite those who actually enjoy their farming role (and I’m sure there are many) to perhaps pipe up and tell their story.

Away from the Business / Career aspect of Fieldays 2023…

• In terms of shopping. There wasn’t much in terms of deals quite frankly. The only thing I actually bought was a $50 Swazi Bush Tee to replace my one that I currently have which is near the end of it’s life. (To be couriered out for free as they didn’t have it available at the time)

• The “Rural lifestyle” tent, car dealerships and the Clothing stalls were the most popular. The actual Farming equipment areas were dead quiet, but mind you this was on a Saturday – Traditional “Townie” day.

• There were somewhat less interactive displays at the various stalls this time. The giveaways were also less this time than in previous years. A few new hubs such as the Forestry hubs and the sustainability hub were established which were worth a look. Good conversation at AgDrive/AgWork. Good experiences at the Bank sites, Sanford and power equipment sites.

• Most stallholders were friendly though many didn’t have the answers or information I was seeking about their specialty and was instead directed to look online. None of the fencers really wanted to chat. Exceptionally bizarre experience at the Zespri marquee

• Despite the slightly downbeat vibe received from attendees and stallholders this time around. Getting to the event was quite easy with only a short time queuing and car parking was a breeze (we were directed to a spot near the entrance) arriving in at about 8:30 AM Saturday Morning. National Fieldays Society did a fairly good job orchestrating the event (though did see complaints to the contrary from other attendees saying parking was actually instead difficult)

Entry tickets cost $30.00 per adult + 0.90c Booking Fee. If you scan your wrist band at enough places (and you’re happy enough to provide your personal information to the exhibiting companies for marketing purposes), chances are you’ll win a prize at one of the stands that effectively redeems the cost of the day.

Worth it to attend at least once every now and again though there hasn’t been much change between each Annual Fieldays over the last decade. There does seem to be a slow change to more of an Rural version of the Auckland Home Show Expo with more focus towards being a family day out.

 

More of a shower thought only. But currently trying to understand why I get an unignorable sense that we’ve recently entered into a slow but accelerating and now unstoppable / irreversible slide into some form of Neo-feudalism or serfdom.

Granted, I don’t believe we are anywhere near in a state as bad as it was in history, but I don’t see what we have in the way of sufficient safe guards that would stop / prevent the eventual re-emergence of the above mentioned.

I guess as long as the masses are fed a steady diet of bread and circuses to distract them from civics, then we’re all good… right?

Photo of one of four hidden lakes within the Southern end of Waiuku forest.

Received this perplexing rookie error while trying to undertake maintenance on one of my virtual servers.

An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: https://packages.matrix.org/debian bullseye InRelease: The following signatures were invalid: EXPKEYSIG F473DD4473365DE1 matrix.org packages packages@matrix.org

Apparently apart from running the usual such as…

/usr/share/keyrings$ sudo wget -O /usr/share/keyrings/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.matrix.org/debian/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg

…I needed to also hop into /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out the line…

deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main

e.g From…

# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse
deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main
# deb-src https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main

…To…

# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse
# deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main
# deb-src https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ focal main

After that, was able to upgrade my Matrix Synapse homeserver without error

Home time traffic on a Friday. Just as well I was working from home today. If I had to deal with this again on a regular basis. Would absolutely lose my freaking mind.

Auckland transport suggest that the Bus Driver Shortage afflicting the region will likely draw to a close in September. That long?

Unfortunately, it seems a few employers are still keen to force people back in the office at all costs while openly admitting that productivity while people were working from home was not actually a problem but simply to say it was “Sad” to walk into a sparse office – I struggle to see how this is a well throughout reason for lumping employees with such a heavy personal cost just to fill “bums on seats” in terms of personal time, commuting cost + stress along with mental health, and more importantly morale.

Keeping my clocks in Daylight savings time (DST, NZDT, UTC +13:00) until such a time I can’t.

Have already stopped bothering with changing the clock in my car and since I’m still working from home (until May that is) and am chatting mostly with work colleagues who are mostly overseas anyway, I have set all the devices (with the ability to do so) likewise to UTC +13:00

Picking I’ll eventually stumble though, schedule something in DST time resulting in confusion which may compel me to fall back into line and put my clock back an hour.

If one claims to advocate for the environment and is pretty blunt in doing so, what am I to think when I find that one drives a large double cab diesel ute and a Ford Falcon along with living in a huge house that you’ve just recently built. Basically goes against the whole concept of “Taking only what you need”.

Luggage exhibit from the Maritime Museum at the Viaduct.

 

 

The issue I have with the events that have transpired over the weekend is that the result was really a loss for both sides of the transgender discussion. Not only that, the impact has apparently spilled over to inflict at least some mild transient damage to New Zealand’s reputation.

Instead of reasoned debate, we ended up in totally unnecessary and counter-productive violence of both the physical and verbal kind. The issue here is instead of making the other side more likely to see and come to understand your point of view, the attacks like this just make the other party dig in, radicalize and double down entrenching a war that frankly does no one any use.

Thought the cones in this scene may be a little excessive…

Admittedly it hasn’t been in my nature to feel like this towards others, but If you want the public to either do or not to do something (as in areas you can and can not go to), it would help if there were signs. It’s simple people. Don’t expect people to freaking mind read.

On a tangent but still on the Signage rant bandwagon. Why are so many speed limit signs in Auckland these days twisted and turned around facing the wrong way? Even the new ones showing the recently lowered speed limits are like this.

Yeah, sorry, I fear I may be becoming only a husk of my normally meek self.

Picture of an urban waterfall, in Raumaga, Whangarei. Beware of the roaming / unrestrained Pitbull.

TL;DR Answer was found here. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1426476/ubuntu-22-04-audacity-does-not-show-up-in-pulseaudio-recording-tab

sudo apt install audacity -y

Admittedly, the process of trying to lay down and run Audacity initially gave me a bit of grief.

Wanted to install Audacity on my freshly laid down copy of Ubuntu 22.04 and all the references I could find of Audacity was to either install using “Snap” or “Flatpak”. Was apprehensive about Snap versions of any software and recall having grief with Audacity Snap before on my older machine giving me vague errors (e.g error -9985) about being unable to save or being unable to listen to a particular recording device. “Going Transport” –> “Rescan Audio Devices” did absolutely squat.

Even went back into Ubuntu Store and enabled all permissions on Audacity with again, nil effect. Appears nothing has changed (at the time of writing this post) two years on. As a Ubuntu user, I don’t have an overall very good impression of Snap at all having had issues with other Snap packages including with Flameshot (a screenshot tool) being unable to save to the Picture directory.

 

Traditional Hangi at Christmas.

Admittedly, my desire to travel anywhere is in a definite lull at the moment. I’m anticipating it will come back at some point, but I ain’t going to try and force it back. May be accommodation and general travel costs is impacting this a bit.

Might do some day or short overnight trips somewhere these Holidays depending on availability of accommodation / tent sites and depending on how I feel. Again, I’m not going to force it. Will spend my holidays how I see fit.

An average picture of “The Tron” (Hamilton, New Zealand)