David Morgan-Mar – Page 13

Dealing with tech issues

I had a couple of annoying tech issues today.

A few days ago I logged into my University of Technology Sydney account to check my email there. I found, to my surprise, an automated transcript of a phone message, left by the project manager of the Standards Australia photography committee. This confused me, because I never gave Standards Australia any contact details related to the university. They have my direct mobile phone number, and should be calling that. I don’t even know if there is a UTS phone number that is supposed to be able to reach me – I don’t have an office there, and as far as I know I haven’t been assigned a number there. SO this was a big mystery.

Today I emailed the project manager about something else, and mentioned that I was surprised to find a phone message from him at UTS. I asked him what number he called. He replied and confirmed that he’d tried my mobile number (though didn’t quote the number). And he just tried again, but it diverted to a message bank. My phone had not rung at all.

Now I was worried. I couldn’t even imagine how this was happening. How had someone calling my mobile been diverted to a UTS message bank without my phone even ringing? Was this happening to everyone who tried calling me?? HOW??

I got a friend to try calling my phone to see what would happen. He got through – my phone rang and I answered it. No diversion to a message bank at UTS. I went back to the project manager and asked him again specifically to give me the phone number he had called, and to check SA’s records to see if any other number was listed by them on their systems.

A few minutes later my phone rang, and it was the project manager! He was confused too. I stepped through the sequence of events with him, asking him to state what number he was calling. He said they only had one phone number for me, my mobile number that he’d just called, and that he just used Microsoft Teams to place the call…

And that’s when the shoe dropped. He had MS Teams place the call, so he wasn’t actually entering a phone number. I use MS Teams routinely at UTS. I was describing all this to a friend in a chat window at the time, and I said the guy was using Teams to place the call, and he said, “Ohhhh…. Okay, it was all weird and inexplicable before, but now it suddenly makes sense. Yeah, Teams will screw up stuff like that all the time.” Presumably what was happening was he opened his contacts in Teams, hit the “phone call” button, and Teams decided that since I have an account at UTS, it should direct my call there, instead of, you know, to my actual phone number.

I mean, that explains what must have happened, but why would Teams do such a stupid thing? Who on Earth thought that use case was a good idea? And presumably this is going to keep happening unless the project manager actually picks up the handset and dials my number manually. Ugh.

Anyway, the second issue I had was with Numbers (the Apple spreadsheet). I had a bunch of cells with date values in them, which I wanted to format just to display as months. I had them formatted as “January 2025”, but wanted to change them to “Jan 2025” format to save some column space. So I selected the format drop-down list and was confronted with the following:

As you can see, every option under the sun, except the one that I wanted! Fortunately this was not as serious an issue as the phone thing, because I created a custom format and got what I wanted.

The other main thing about today was the weather. Wow. It was really hot. We got up to 43.3°C in parts of Sydney, although near the coast it was a few degrees cooler, but still around the 40°C mark. But then at 4pm a storm rolled in, dropping the temperature a good 15 degrees in just a few minutes, strong winds blew in, and the clouds unleashed heavy rain and hail. We got some hail at my place, but my wife reported that where she works, just half an hour’s walk away, there was a lot of hail, blanketing the ground in a white layer like snow.

A few hours later now and several storm cells have come through, dumping heavy rain and splitting the sky with lightning and thunder, separated by calmer periods. The temperature now is below 20°C, which is a nice respite from the heat.

Tonight I started this week’s new ethics class topic, on “Opinions vs Facts”. I spent the morning writing up the lesson plan. The class went well, with some very interesting and nuanced discussion from the kids on the differences and similarities between opinions and facts in various tricky contexts.

New content today:

Public holiday, but I’m working

Since Australia Day was on a Sunday yesterday, the Monday is a public holiday. My wife had the day off work and spent time at home doing her watercolour artwork. While I didn’t have a day off at all, and did my usual 6 ethics classes!

There wasn’t much time for me to do much else. There was some light housework, cleaning a few things, doing cooking for dinner, and so on. But basically not much else. Oh, I did put in a little work on Darths & Droids, making a comic and reformatting part of the website to move the fan art stuff to the new bonus material area.

Oh, because my wife was home all day I also spent an hour or so removing photos from her phone, backing them up on my computer. Some of them went back about three years!

New content today:

Australia Day lunch

Today was Australia Day, the annual day when half of the country celebrates and other half wish that we were celebrating the occasion on a less controversial anniversary.

We hosted a lunch for my wife’s immediate family. We made some salads and roasted some chicken breasts to go on bread rolls. My wife also made a batch of brownies.

Over lunch we discussed our upcoming trip to Japan, and organised some planning details. I booked our tickets to Shibuya Sky, the observation deck to get a view over Tokyo. We wanted to get tickets for a bit before sunset, the best time to be up there. But even though the tickets only went on sale today for the day we want to go, when I logged in to buy them every entry time from 14:40 to after sunset was already sold out. So we settled for a 14:40 entry. Since there’s no time limit to your visit, we can choose to either stay for sunset, or leave a bit early after we’ve had enough.

Lunch took most of the afternoon and I went into ethics classes after that, so didn’t get much else done. Oh, in the morning I did a 5k run and had a shower afterwards, which consumed a big chunk of that time. So that was pretty much my day.

New content today:

Moving neighbours, booking Japan, games night

Yesterday I had my usual ethics classes during the day. I was also franticly updating the JR East website to see if I could buy tickets from Tokyo to Kawazu for our upcoming trip to Japan.

We’re planning to go to the Kawazu Cherry Blossom Festival, and the only day we can go is Monday 24 February. Which happens to be a public holiday in Japan. And over a million people go to this festival every year. And I’d previously checked about buying train tickets to get there from Tokyo, and seen that the JR East website only makes tickets available one month in advance. So on the 24th of January it was the first opportunity to buy tickets. I wanted to get them as quickly as possible to avoid missing out if the trains sold out.

But when I checked in the morning, I could still only buy tickets up to the 23rd of February. So I was intermittently refreshing the page, thinking it would probably tick over at some time during the day. 9am Japan time came and went, and still no change. I had to teach a couple of ethics classes, but sneaked in some updates. No change. But then after midday Japan time he site updated and I could book tickets!

I chose a train departing Tokyo just after 8am, arriving in Kawazu about 10:30, and a train returning at 15:44, getting back a bit after 18:00. I managed to book the tickets. But I noticed that the next two trains returning to Tokyo (about every half hour) had no seats available already by the time I’d finished! I suspect that given it’s a long weekend, a lot of people want to return to Tokyo that evening.

On Friday evening it was board games night at one of my friends’ place. I arrived while some of the others were playing a game of Landmarks, a new game for us. Since one person was giving clues and the rest of us were trying to solve them together, I could join in. In this game one player is trying to lead all the others across a hexagon map, by giving word clues. It starts with three hexes having words on them, and then the clue-giver attempts to direct the guessers where to place new hexes by writing related words on them. You should put them near hexes with related meanings and far from hexes with opposing meanings. It was tricky and we messed up several times, but ultimately managed to win by the skin of our teeth.

Our host made home made pork, fennel, and apple sausage rolls, which were delicious snacks.

Then we split into two groups since we had seven people. I played Root with two others, while the other four played Ticket to Ride: Europe. In the Root game, I played the Vagabond, with the others playing the Cats and Birds.

It was a very close game, with all of our points tracking one another closely throughout. But in the end the Cats prevailed. After this we rejoined groups for a big seven-player game of Apples to Apples to round out the night.

Today I went for a 5k run in the morning. I took it easy since I felt a bit tired, but was still pleased with my time. Then I cleaned the bathroom and shower while cooling off afterwards.

I’m making sourdough today and we didn’t have any bread left, so we walked up to the pie shop for lunch. Then later we went out again to do some shopping for lunch tomorrow, when my wife’s family are coming over. We’re just going to roast some chicken and make potato salad and a green salad.

On the way back we passed this brand new public art installation near the shops – it wasn’t there just a couple of days ago:

The bird in the statue’s hand looks like a tiny pelican. I’ll have to take a closer look another day to see if I can positively identify it.

New content yesterday:

New content today:

The giant corpse flower

Today I spent a lot of time keeping track of the opening of the giant corpse flower which is blooming right now at the Royal Botanic Gardens here in Sydney. The specimen of Amorphophallus titanum is the first one to flower here since 2012, and it’s become a media sensation, with a live stream on YouTube that got up to almost 10,000 viewers at various times during the day.

The queue to get into the hothouse to see the flower is apparently now almost 3 hours long. They are keeping the Gardens open until midnight tonight specially for this event, but closing the queue at 9pm, to account for the waiting time. Oh! I just read on the livestream that they’ve already cut the queue off, 3.5 hours before midnight. Yeah, expected waiting time now 3.5 hours.

It’s a weird thing, but this has really captured the imagination of Sydney. A positive thing bringing people together as they celebrate a wonder of nature.

The other main thing that happened today is the guy finally came to install our new window blinds, that we ordered in early December. The delay was caused by the previous installation guy taking emergency extended leave from work because of a family health issue, so they had to reschedule our installation with other staff. The guy arrived after my morning ethics classes and spent an hour or so installing the new blinds. Thankfully he took the old ones away too, which was good, because I don’t know how we would have disposed of them otherwise.

Oh, and while that was happening, another guy knocked on my front door. When I opened it he said he was here to measure the door, for replacement. This was the first I’d heard of any such thing. It turns out at the annual fire safety inspection for the apartment block a couple of months ago, the inspector failed our front door, and we have to get a new one installed. But nobody told me about this, until today when the guy knocked on the door! HE said it’ll take them a month or so to make the new door to the right measurements, and then someone will come and install it.

New content today:

Lunch expedition to Bourke Street Bakery

That was about the only noteworthy thing about today. I went for a short drive over a couple of suburbs to the Bourke Street Bakery at Neutral Bay. I was feeling like a nice lunch and they have some excellent pies and sausage rolls. I wanted the beef, beer, bacon, and cheesy mash pie, but that was the only one there sold out of, so I got the beef brisket, mushroom, and red wine one instead. And a pork and fennel sausage rolls, which is the go-to item there. They were delicious as usual, although honestly I think the pork and fennel roll used to be better.

On the way home I stopped at the local shops to pick up some hamburger buns for dinner tonight. We had vegetable patty burgers. By the timer I parked, walked over to buy the buns, and stopped for a gelato because it was a hot day, it was time to pick up Scully from my wife’s work, so I drove straight over there and waited a bit until she was ready.

At home I made some Irregular Webcomic! and Darths & Droids strips, before three ethics classes tonight. The new topic on Bio-Engineering is going well, with some very diverse opinions from the kids about the merits and dangers of the technology. One question is: If you could make a brand new life form, plant or animal, what would you make? And there was a new girl in one class who loved dragons, so of course she was enthusiastic about the idea of making one. And then I asked what we should do if they got released into the wild and caused problems…

New content today:

Lots of running and walking

My wife took Scully to work this morning, giving me a free morning. I considered driving somewhere interesting, or going out for a nice lunch meal, but I decided to be good and do some exercise. The day was not too hot, while tomorrow is forecast to be very hot, so I wanted to avoid going on a run tomorrow. And so I took the opportunity today, and I also decided to push myself to 7.5k. I completed the distance in 43:15, about mid-range in the handful of times I’ve tried that distance.

After cooling off and changing clothes, I had some lunch at home (simple tomato bruschetta on home made sourdough), and then went out again, to walk to my wife’s work to pick up Scully and bring her home.

In the afternoon I wrote up my lesson outline for the new week’s worth of ethics classes, on the topic of Bio-Engineering. And then used it for the first class this evening.

I also spent some time doomscrolling all the executive orders that newly sworn-in President Trump signed in his first few hours. I don’t usually comment on politics online, but yikes, this is pretty much a living nightmare.

Speaking of which, I’m in the middle of watching Terminator: Dark Fate, which I’m enjoying so far. The first two Terminator movies were among my favourites when I was growing up. I haven’t seen any of the other media like the TV series or whatever it was, but I understand they are ignorable in the movie continuity of the first two movies and this one., which seems to flow nicely directly from them.

Weather today was pleasant and warm, but tomorrow is forecast to be very hot. Not looking forward to that.

New content today:

Taking Scully’s prints

It was the usual busy Monday with plenty of online classes today. I didn’t do much else of note, except for one thing this evening.

My wife found a jewellery maker that does silver castings of custom wax moulds that you make. They suggest doing fingerprints of yourself or loved ones, or nose or paw prints of pets. So my wife decided to get one and make a wax impression from Scully. We did it together, heating up the small wax balls supplied by the jeweller with a hair dryer, then squashing them down and then getting an imprint by pressing them onto Scully’s nose and paw. They give you two wax balls and you send them both back, labelled in order of preference, and they decide if the first preference is okay to use, otherwise they use the backup.

She’ll send them back tomorrow and I guess she’ll have a Scully imprint bit of jewellery within a few weeks. I’ll see if I remember to take a photo to share when it arrives.

New content today:

Exploring Summer Hill

This morning I did a 5k run. I wanted to beat 28 minutes and put an extra effort in and ended up recording 26:46, which I was very pleased with.

Afterwards, my wife and I went for a drive over to the suburb of Summer Hill. She had proposed we go there to look around as it’s a place we’ve never been before. We wandered around several of the streets, checking out the shopping area and some residential streets. We found an amazingly good patisserie, called simply the Summer Hill Village Patisserie. While we were looking hungrily at the pastries in the window, the woman inside stuck a note on the window right in front of our noses: “Special: 3 items, $3 off; 4 items, $4 off”.

So we had to go in and get three items! My wife got a croissant, while I decided to make this lunch and got a cherry danish, and a sfogliatella filled with ricotta and candied orange peel (top right in above photo). We sat in the small square across the street to eat them, and they were delicious!

Walking around, we admired the architecture: a mix of Victorian terrace houses:

Victorian/Federation hybrids:

Federation Free with classical columns:

Art Deco:

And modern murals:

It was a fun and interesting slice of Sydney history.

Back home I had three classes this evening, punctuated by an hour break in which I made Thai red curry Brussels sprouts with rice for dinner.

New content today:

An easy Saturday and a closed restaurant

I was glad that I did a 5k run yesterday, because this morning’s weather was miserable. Cold and rainy and still very, very windy. But the awful weather eased up today and the sun finally came out in the afternoon, heating things up and releasing a ton of humidity into the air.

I basically took it easy, doing some comics stuff and random puttering around. I took Scully for a walk at lunch without my wife, and we got fish and chips for lunch. We planned to stay in for dinner again, but my wife got a hankering for dinner at Organica restaurant, so we walked up there with Scully early in the evening. This has become her new favourite restaurant, after the closure of some of our other favourites over the years.

But when we got there, it had closed down! The furniture and signage had all been removed! My wife checked online and sure enough, it’s listed as permanently closed. So that was a big disappointment. We walked over to Green Gourmet, the vegetarian place that last time said we were welcome to bring Scully inside. So we popped in and they confirmed Scully was welcome. I actually don’t think this is technically legal in New South Wales – dogs are allowed in commercial outdoor dining areas, but not indoors. But it’s on them, so we were happy to enjoy a nice meal there. Another couple came in with a dog too while we were there, and they looked like regulars, as the staff greeted them and knew the dog by name.

Not much else to say about today.

New content today: