David Gardiner - Life

A new year, and 5 years at SixPivot

2026-02-03T12:30:00.000+10:30

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!)

2024 in review

2024-12-31T17:00:00.000+10:30

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!

Looking back at 2022

2022-12-31T18:00:00.000+10:30

As 2022 draws to a close, it's time for me to write my final blog post for the year.

It's been a bit of a mixed bag of a year. COVID restrictions in South Australia have eased, and yet COVID is still an ever-present threat. As far as I know, I've avoided it, but just this week two families I know have lost family members. Such a terrible tragedy. Can I ask that you continue to take precautions to reduce the risk to both yourself and your loved ones. Too often it is those already doing it tough who are impacted the most by this pandemic.

My involvement with video streaming at my local church continues. I enjoy being a camera operator, but I've also taken on a 'producer' role, keeping an eye on the whole service, filling in and troubleshooting as necessary. To contrast those 'behind the scenes' roles, on Christmas Day I took on something new by singing up front!

SevenFold (my band) did a few gigs this year. I do love making music with my friends. I'm looking forward to continuing that in the new year.

On the health front, there have been some challenges for my family. Not to be left out, I had my own face vs. bike path effort. Some minor broken bones in my face, but fortunately no surgery was necessary. It did take quite a few months to start feeling normal again and get back on the bike. A useful reminder that a) I'm getting older and b) I'm not bulletproof.

When not falling off my bike, I've managed to get a few local rides in, as well as the occasional ride with my Dad and the folks from Mud, Sweat and Gears down to McLaren Vale. More frequently I've been taking a walk around the neighbourhood most mornings before starting work. It's good to get some fresh air, stretch my legs, and keep up with my podcasts.

Work at SixPivot is going well. I continue to be impressed by the thoughtful leadership and am feeling quite at home. It was so great to finally meet almost all my colleagues in person at the SixPivot Summit. Our Adelaide team has grown from 2 to 5, and it was great to gather together for a Christmas celebration a few weeks ago.

From a technical perspective, I've been spending a bit more time lately on the 'DevOps' side of things. Improving build and deployment automation, and digging deeper into infrastructure with Azure.

I was renewed as a Microsoft MVP. Something I don't take for granted, and try to leverage to the advantage of our local .NET user group. I'm keenly anticipating news of the next Microsoft MVP Summit. Will it be virtual? Will it be back in person? Hopefully they announce their plans soon.

Speaking of our local .NET User Group, the Adelaide .NET User Group resumed meeting in person for most of the year, though we did have some online-only meetings when necessary. DDD Adelaide is still on hiatus, but I'm hopeful that we might be able to build a new organising team to run a conference later in 2023. It has been encouraging to see both Perth and Brisbane resume their conferences. Maybe in 2023 I might get to visit some of the interstate events. (I was hoping to get to Brisbane this year, but it ended up being the same weekend as a friend's wedding). There's always next time.

Weather-wise, it felt like a very wet Winter and Spring. The garden had been so green, but now we've had a few hot days so it does seem like Summer is finally here. It's funny how quickly you go from waiting for the rain to go away, to now hoping for a bit of rain to water the garden!

It is nice to have some time off over the Christmas break. I did have plans to go cycling almost every day and do lots of jobs around the house. That hasn't quite eventuated, but it is good to just pause and take a breath. I'll have another week off later in January to spend time with visiting family.

I pray 2022 finishes well for you, and that whatever situations we find ourselves in 2023, there are moments of hope and joy for us all.

Farewell 2021, Hello 2022

2022-01-01T22:30:00.000+10:30

And so 2021 finishes and 2022 begins. 2021 has been a different year, not the least because I changed jobs and joined SixPivot in February! (more reflections on that next month).

Looking back on 2021, some of the technology highlights include:

Passing 2 exams (and failing one)
Getting a Synology NAS, a new laptop and other related hardware for the home office
Digging into Azure more deeply
.NET 6 and Visual Studio 2022 launched

I've enjoyed helping out with the video streaming and production at my local church. I'm looking forward to continuing that in the new year, and as a result of that, I also decided to step down in my role as a Sunday school teacher - something I've been doing since my own kids were very little. I'll definitely miss building some awesome train track layouts!

For the year ahead from a family perspective, there's some milestones as our kids move to the next stage of their schooling.

I don't have any plans to travel overseas. Microsoft have again decided to run the MVP Summit as a virtual event, which is a good call. Maybe one day I'll get back to Seattle and Redmond, but not this year. It would be great to be able to safely visit interstate. There are friends and new colleagues I'm really looking forward to catching up with.

COVID has obviously been ever-present, if not so much physically in Adelaide and South Australia (compared to some parts of the world) but certainly in the news and impacting life. That's changing now, thanks to the government relaxing restrictions now that vaccinations have been taken up by most people. Unfortunately, that's also coincided with the Omicron variant, so now all of a sudden we're dealing with growing community transmission for the first time here and growing hospitalisation. That is concerning and a little scary.

Time will tell if 2022 sees the return of in-person events within Australia. We had a good run in 2021 with many of our .NET user group meetings being able to be held physically. I hope we can continue that, and ideally we'd be able to bring back DDD Adelaide. I'll be taking a cautious approach - I don't want to risk the health of attendees, or my own family.

I'm on leave for a couple of weeks over the Christmas/New Years break. We've been making the most of a local reservoir that's opened up to the public and going for some great walks in the evenings (daylight saving makes this easier too). I must admit I was a little sceptical when they first started the building process, but now having access to areas that were previous off-limits (hence the old sign!) is great. And it's been taken up by the local community with the car park often overflowing. Not sure what the large mobs of kangaroos think of all these new visitors coming to visit their home, but at least the ducks don't seem to mind!

I do hope you have a safe, happy 2022.

Continual learning and improving quality

2020-12-07T09:00:00.000+10:30

The bio that is on my GitHub and Sessionize profiles (amongst others) includes the following sentence:

"I have a passion for continual learning and improving quality, and enjoy being in and creating environments where these happen."

This isn't just a throw-away line. I really do like being in that kind of place, but let's dig a bit deeper:

I want to have a positive impact, leave things better than I found them.
Looks for ways to keep my skills current by learning from others and sharing what I've learned. Always be looking for better ways of doing things.
Be around people that challenge me - people with diverse opinions, experiences, ages, backgrounds.
Aiming to do things sustainably - trying to find the right balance between work and non-work.
Speak up for those that can't (or don't feel they are able to) speak for themselves. Looking for ways to use my position and privileges to lift others up.
Have a laugh. If you've ever had anything to do with me, you'll almost certainly have experienced my sense of humour!

These could be at work, at a user group, at a conference, in an online meeting, or a virtual community.

Do I do these things all the time? No, sadly not!

These are aspirational - they're the things I'm aiming for. I'm not perfect, and I fail a lot. I hope I learn from my mistakes, and I hoping I'm heading in the right direction.

Welcome to 2020

2020-01-09T20:00:00.000+10:30

Christmas has come and gone, and now it's 2020. If there's one thing that's been a constant over this Summer period, it's that it feels like we're under seige from bushfires.

Here's a view not that far from where I live. That's a smoke haze (not really thick, but noticeable ), from fires on Kangaroo Island around 200km south. There's been other fires around South Australia in the Adelaide Hills and over on York Peninsula. And then interstate there's fires all over the place - basically all around Australia. A good drop of rain would not go astray.

I've been enjoying some time off - catching up with family, the odd bike ride or two, a few jobs around the house and just trying to switch off for a bit.

More to come...

Dumb Questions

2013-11-08T08:33:00.001+10:30

Something I still remember from my school days was one of my teachers telling me, "David, don't be afraid to ask a question!". Presumably I'd been struggling with a particular topic (possibly maths), and essentially they were encouraging me not to sit there "spinning my wheels", but get some help to make sense of the problem.

That's a lesson that's just as applicable today as it was then. In software development, we are constantly solving problems. Some are easy, and some are hard. Some are easy but the hard bit is finding the bit that will be easy to fix.

Sometimes it's just the act of getting a colleague to come and have a look that sheds light on the problem.

But not just in work. Only this week I was at a Church meeting, and people were asking some very deep, insightful questions. I however asked what some might call a "dumb" question (but one which I didn't know the answer, hence why I asked).

After the meeting as I was leaving, a couple of people came up to me and said, "I was wondering the same thing, thanks for asking that!".

Which is another great reason to ask questions, even if you think they're dumb, as odds are someone else is wondering the same thing too.

Photo from Mallala Museum, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license

White men can't?

2012-05-27T19:53:00.001+09:30

It is very important to test out new play equipment before letting the kids have a go :-)

Esther Duflo: Social experiments to fight poverty

2011-09-20T20:54:00.001+09:30

We (Narelle, friend Jane and I) watched this TED video last year, and somehow tonight's conversation came around to TED talks and this one in particular. It took a while to find it (we were searching for "malaria", "mosquito", and "nets" on the TED site without luck as we'd remembered the bit about mosquito nets).

A most impressive and compelling presentation.

Catching up

2009-09-07T21:42:00.001+09:30

It's been a little while between posts, and there's been a couple of reasons for that..

That back injury has been persisting a lot longer that I'd hoped
My Grandma (Nanna) Jean was hospitalised and then passed away recently

Nanna was 96, and had pretty much been living independently in her house right up until she suffered a massive stroke. She hung on long enough for the family to travel interstate to Geelong Hospital to spend time with her before she died.

I flew over to say goodbye to her (she wasn't able to speak but was alert and had limited movement), and then returned to Geelong a week later to attend the funeral service. Then last week her body was brought back over to Adelaide where she was buried.

My back injury seemed to be healing well initially but a work field trip (spent largely sitting in a car) was not helpful and things seemed to plateau for too long. I've taken to avoiding sitting as much as possible – including standing on the bus to/from work and even standing in some meetings.

Some more "enthusiastic" (aka painful but effective!) treatment from my Chiro and a follow-up remedial massage session seem to be helping. I'm sure my work colleagues would prefer to see me being able to sit down for most of the day rather than doing yoyo impersonations :-)

Ironically my iPod Shuffle appears to have succumbed to the dreaded "flashing LEDs of death" – annoyingly on the flight home from the Geelong funeral service, so all those podcasts will have to wait until I come up with a replacement plan.

And to top it all off, tomorrow I'm heading off to the Microsoft TechEd Conference 2009 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. I well may be the conference delegate who stands up in the sessions rather than taking a seat.

Oh, and additional congratulations to LobsterPot Solutions, as they are now a Gold Certified Partner. Was it that long ago they were just plain Certified?! I'll be proudly wearing a LobsterPot shirt at TechEd and lending my support to raise the profile of Rob's company.

No doubt I'll be posting more about TechEd in the next few days..