A new year, and 5 years at SixPivot
Some highlights of 2025, surviving the summer heat, and 5 years at SixPivot.
December and January have come and gone. What’s been going on?
I had 3 weeks off over the Christmas/New Years break, which was much appreciated. We didn’t go away, but it did give me a chance to do a few jobs around the house. We’re renovating our laundry and there was some painting that needed to be done before the new cupboards get installed. The whole process has taken quite a bit longer than we’d hoped but it does feel like the end is in sight.
The Tour Down Under was on recently in Adelaide. On the second Saturday, the men’s race came quite close to where we live. I met up with our friend Jane and we hung out at top the King of the Mountain stage finish to cheer all the riders on. If you were watching the TV broadcast I’m the yellow blob to the right of the arch, visible for about 0.2 seconds. That bright yellow ‘DDD Adelaide 2025 Organiser’ t-shirt comes in handy!
We’ve already had a number of days over 40°C - Summer is definitely here in Adelaide. On days like that the aim is to keep cool and try and protect our garden and animals from the heat as best we can. Old bedsheets are put to good use! There’s actually a Mandarin tree hiding under there.
One other change for the Gardiner family is we’ve had some new additions:
Vanessa (a 1 year old tortoiseshell-coloured rescue cat) joined us back in May last year. She loves all the girls in the house but just puts up with me. More than once I’ve gone to start work in the morning (or returning after lunch) and discovered there’s an extra “cushion” on my chair. Well I thought it was my chair but I think she has other ideas 😃.
And in early January our chook collection doubled. We’re now looking after Peckachoo and Egglet, in addition to our two bantams. They belong to my son and daughter in-law, and needed a new home after friends who had been looking after them on their behalf moved to the country.
The new chooks are full-sized, so in comparison to the bantams they seem huge! But they’re settling in well. We’ve kept them apart from the bantams for now. They’re great layers - most days we get an egg from both. I’m hoping it will inspire our bantams (who are not the most reliable in that department) but so far not so much.
Adelaide .NET User Group
Recently the ADNUG organising team caught up for a meal and we started planning out the year. One minor issue we’re still trying to solve is a venue. Normally we meet at the University of South Australia’s City West campus. But UniSA has just merged with University of Adelaide to become ‘Adelaide University’ and that was causing a delay in us being able to book our regular room. Merging two large complex organisations is tricky at the best of times, so I can only imagine all the internal systems and processes they’re trying to figure out. We’ve ended up with a different venue for February but hopefully we can be back at City West for April.
DDD Adelaide
I’ve also spent a bit of time editing some of the videos recorded at DDD Adelaide. I’m not giving up my day job just yet, but starting to figure out more about how to use DaVinci Resolve 😃. You can see the recordings that we’ve published so far at https://www.youtube.com/@DDDAdelaide.
5 year work anniversary at SixPivot
My first reminder of this was getting some LinkedIn notifications on the weekend. I continue to be grateful for working for a modern, people-focused company. Small enough that I know everyone, but large enough that there is a diverse range of experience and thinking.
After previously working with a few longer-term clients, I’ve been mixing it up a bit recently with some shorter engagements. I am enjoying the variety.
I’ve received 500 ‘good vibes’ points for my ‘workversary’! I’m due to get a new laptop this year, so I might put them towards that (which I may need to given the price of RAM these days!)