Whenever I fall off a track, I find it hard to get back on. But I’m back and that’s what matters (!!)

Would describe the past few weeks as walking a lot, seeing Canadian Geese in real life and embarking on a bunch of experiments.

Semi-failed experiments:

  1. My abortive attempt at getting WiFi to work on my Samsung Galaxy S II with postmarketOS
    1. The real treasure was all the people I met online along the way
    2. Being quietly right is satisfying but being loudly wrong might be even better. When I am loudly wrong on the Internet, I learn something new. Someone more experienced descends from the heavens over the wire and tells me what is wrong.
  2. Trying to help a worker with going to the Small Claims Tribunal to get money back from a dodgy agency. It’s been 6 months and I think I’ve hit kind of a dead end with what to do next.
    1. The problem with small claims is that even if you get an order in your favour, you might no actually be able to enforce it. Even if you cough up all the time and money needed to engage in enforcement procedures, the other party may not actually pay you anyway. It’s bizarre and I think it only works for people who are conflict-averse. Companies that are truly committed to not paying up will simply continue to dodge and ignore as much as they can.
    2. Minor win: Helping him actually get his day in court, because it otherwise would’ve been impossible as (1) interpreters are not provided for certain languages and (2) he doesn’t have a laptop or the ability to navigate the court system’s interface
    3. Minor win: I have a better understanding of the court’s online system and have comments on how it could be better (haven’t written this post yet but it’s mostly (1) please have notifiations for system events like when the tribunal uploads documents / fixes appointments, and (2) please keep the court website updated with the right forms)

Pending experiments:

  1. Powering a Raspberry Pi 3 (from a friend) with solar power
    1. I secured the solar panel, but the forecast is cloudy and I’ll be away for the next few weeks. I have abandoned the Samsung phone for now, but I was eating dinner with my friend and he said that he has an RPi3 lying around that he doesn’t use.
    2. I got a solar panel from some guy on Carousell who said he ordered a whole bunch for his kid’s school project but they didn’t end up needing all of them.
  2. Growing a tomato - my pirated supermarket tomato has grown up and started flowering. There is the tiniest hint of a tomato growing, but it’s so hard to see that I won’t put a photo here as it’s kind of embarrassing (though I’ve been sending it to my friends on chats, like a fussy parent)

Successful experiment:

  1. Growing my first round of pink oyster mushrooms from a grow kit, and also getting a very modest second flush. There’s some pinning now and I’ll see if we can get a third flush. I’ve been weighing each round of mushrooms I pick to roughly approximate the Biological Efficiency of this mushroom grow kit I’m using.

I’m still very scared of job hunting and don’t really know how to feel about possibly asking friends for help. I get this ick about referrals/asking friends as I believe that I need to somehow “make it” on my own to be “deserving” but my friend was like, “this is not how it works” and “if we’re your friends then why wouldn’t we want to help you???”.

On the bright side I am getting better at trying and failing, and also treating my site more like a scrapbook (as I set out to do a while back).