It's the last day of 2024, and tomorrow (no surprise) is the first day of 2025. I remember when I was pretty young thinking that wouldn't it be fun when the year 2000 came around and would anyone else notice. Well yes, I think they kind of did! But now we're 25 years further along. It is certainly true, time seems to move so slowly when you're young, and much quicker as you get older.

This year has been quite an interesting mix.

Work things

Working remotely from home is such a wonderful thing and I don't take it for granted. Even more so when I read about other companies now reversing their flexible work arrangements. Unfortunately I think that's largely driven by old-fashioned senior managers who either think you're only productive if you're all colocated in an office, or that they're worried about all the lease/asset costs of empty office buildings.

Yes, there are specific times when it is valuable to all be together in the same room, but for the rest of the time if you're stuck in an open office which is so noisy that most people have to wear noise cancelling headphones to be able to get any work done, well that makes no sense to me. Let alone the time it takes to commute to the office.

I really value the trust that SixPivot places in its staff. The way we help each other out. Having that "reservoir of expertise on tap" just a Slack message away is so helpful. Or for that unusual day when everything seemed to be going crazy at once. To have the support of your peers, knowing they're there for you. That really matters.

Working remotely makes it all the more sweeter when I did get to catch up with my SixPivot colleagues at our annual in-person Summit in July.

I've been focusing a lot on "DevOps" kinds of things lately. I honestly prefer not use "DevOps" in a job title, but I think I'm probably fighting a losing battle. Most people know what you mean when you describe managing build and deployment pipelines and infrastructure as code as "DevOps stuff".

Professional things

I was able to attend the Microsoft MVP Summit in person over in Redmond for the first time since the pandemic. A definite privilege to be there, and I still get a huge kick out of visiting a different culture (and while there are similarities, there's also enough differences between Australia and the USA to be interesting).

We ran the DDD Adelaide conference, and I think that was pretty successful. And then two weeks later I got to speak and help out at DDD Brisbane. That was a real bonus.

The Adelaide .NET User Group met regularly throughout the year. It's been great having a team helping organise this with me too.

On the blogging side, I was hoping to get at least one post out each month. Looks like I missed out a few months, though some months did have multiple posts. Not too bad.

I am thinking of changing the blog engine I use. Currently using Jekyll, but I'd really like to switch to a .NET-based engine (as I think I'd find that much easier to customise). We'll see if I get something working well enough to migrate to.

I left X/Twitter. I'd stopped using it for quite a few months and didn't really miss it, but decided enough was enough with the antics of the current owner. Account deleted. I'm now on Mastodon and Bluesky.

Technology things

That Apple TV I got the family for Christmas 2023 turned out to be quite a hit. I think at first there was a bit of "what's the point of this?" but it has just become the most common way we watch TV now by all members of the family.

The Synology NAS is just a really useful thing. The backup features came into their own when my parents were travelling overseas and managed to lose a bunch of contacts from their email account. Because I had backups configured I was able to restore the contacts for them.

I think we've finally found a working combination of bits to enable us to record and live stream our ADNUG meetups. It's taken a while, and if there was a single device I could use to replace all the separate things plugged into my laptop, that would make it so much easier, but I haven't found that yet (and I suspect it wouldn't be cheap).

My laptop has been behaving itself since those overheating issues earlier in the year. I've been pretty loyal to Dell in the past, but those kind of reliability issues have raised some questions in my mind. I'll be taking a very close look at the Framework for my next hardware refresh to see how it compares.

Personal things

Probably the biggest highlight of 2024 would have to be my son getting married. He and his fiancee decided they'd prefer an shorter engagement, so getting everything organised for the big day was challenging, but it came off. We're especially grateful for their friends who put in so much effort to ensure the church and reception were all ready to go. The day was wonderful, everyone had a great time, and it's a really special event we'll always remember.

The garden also got a bit of an overhaul (largely in preparation for the wedding). This included rebuilding a large part of the irrigation system. Originally we had someone lined up to do this but they pulled out at the last minute so I ended up doing it all myself.

Health continues to be a challenge particularly for family members. I had a few niggles of my own (not at all comparable to be clear) that put pause to my usual before-work walks and the odd bike ride for a couple of months, but hopefully those are mostly resolved now.

We had a few Sevenfold band gigs this year. To be able to play music with special friends who have known you for ages and are so encouraging is just the best thing.

I've also gotten more involved in the song leading side of things at church (in addition to being on the roster for video camera operator and producer). It's different being in the worship band compared to Sevenfold. With Sevenfold you have the same group of people you play with all the time, and you can spend a lot of time working on the arrangements for songs. Whereas the people who are in the worship band changes week to week, so each time you're rostered on you'll likely be with different combination of musicians and singers. And usually you only get an hour to practise together early on Sunday morning before the first service starts. I think I'm still learning to be comfortable up the front when we're leading the singing. Given it is a church service, most of the time I feel a responsibility to adopt more of an attitude of reverence (and keep my 'silly' side in check), but there have been a couple of times when it's been ok to let loose a little bit, and that is fun.

I'm sure I've forgotten some significant things. I'll have to include those in the next post.

Anyway, goodbye 2024. See you all next year!