Blog 4.0

Just taking some notes on a few more shows that I watched on Netflix. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power A friend made me watch the first three seasons of this show a few years ago when I was visiting her. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, but of course I then went back home, which meant no more Netflix. It made sense to now rewatch what I'd seen before and then find out how the story wrapped up. I'd say the animation is only mid-tier, but the music is great and it's a lovely story overall - primarily aimed at a young audience for sure with how cheerful and full of rainbows it is, but still not without depth either. For example it probably has the biggest raising of stakes I've ever seen in a kid's show, going from "just fighting some bad guys here in this fantasy land" to dealing with a galactic emperor looking to wipe out whole civilizations in the space of only a few episodes. Catra's characterisation in particular was surprisingly deep, sho...

I got an email this morning, notifying me that the website sms.at will be shutting down at the end of the year. The title stated that it was "the end of an era" (in German) and that certainly seemed apt. My profile on sms.at was one of the very first online accounts I ever created, all the way back in October 2001. That's 22 years ago now, when I had only just turned 18! I used the site both to send free text messages (something that seems very quaint now in the age of many "unlimited texts" plans, but back then it was useful) and for its free webmail. I had my "official" email account provided by my ISP, and the sms.at webmail for more frivolous purposes such as registering for random websites. I can't say I'm surprised that they're shutting down; to be honest I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did, considering they didn't seem to have much of a business model. I also effectively stopped using the site several years ago, as ...

It was good to visit my Mum for a week. After the whole scare with the cardiac arrhythmia (which is still not resolved, just temporarily on hold), I was worried that I'd find her much worse than when I had last seen her in April, but she didn't seem that different. She had just developed a sudden fear of stairs and hills, as she said that any sort of climb made her feel incredibly exhausted and unwell. Though we did go up one steep road together eventually, and she realised it wasn't actually that bad when it wasn't 30+ degrees out (no duh). I also got to visit the garden one more time and it was very bittersweet. I picked up a couple of keepsakes, but it was weird to think that I likely won't see the place again. I could definitely understand why my mother made her decision though, because seeing her and seeing even the comparatively tiny amount of work that was still to do in late September, such as picking up fallen pears, raking leaves etc., it was still clear...

Today my mother and I went to the local shopping centre to run some errands. First we visited a shop for her landline and cable provider, as I was interested in adding internet to her package, with an eye on me coming to visit more often in the future. I was hopeful that this would be easy, as she was sent a brand-new modem only the other week, which does have wi-fi capacity and everything; it's just not unlocked. First the guy told us that he couldn't just "add" internet, we would have to be changed to a whole new bundle deal. Fine, I thought. And no, we couldn't keep the current modem, in fact we'd need two new boxes installed. With an activation fee. And a monthly rent. And my Mum would need a new landline number. That's where I kind of went "come on", because I couldn't believe that simply amending an existing contract would require a new landline number. The guy called up some higher-level support, chatted with them for about ten minute...

I flew back to Austria yesterday to spend a few days with my mother. It was mostly an uneventful journey, which is kind of what you want when flying, but when we descended to land, something pretty amazing to me personally happened. I always like looking out the window at that point to see all the little houses and trees, and to slowly watch them get bigger, but I'm bad at orientating myself, so I usually can't tell what exactly I'm seeing. However, this time the plane approached the airport in a straight line from northwest to southeast, on a beautiful day with blue skies, and just as the sun was starting to set. Everything was casting stark shadows and for the first time ever, I could clearly see all of Vienna from the sky, recognising what I was looking at and spotting landmarks everywhere. It was like seeing a perfect 3D map of the place. I didn't know what to look at first, I just kept staring as the plane passed by and before the city itself disappeared from view...

Last month my husband and I were visiting a friend for a week, and one day, while the two of them were busy with something else and the wi-fi was down, it suddenly occurred to me that I could play a game on my mobile phone. I've been a PC gamer for most of my life, but for all that, I've been oddly resistant to playing games on other devices. I don't have any inherent objections to the concept, it's just always felt inferior to me somehow. However, that day, the time was right. I browsed the Google Play store for a bit, initially thinking of playing something "sophisticated" like a strategy game, but everything I looked at just made me think: This looks like it could be a fun game on PC, but with a hundred mobile nuisances tacked on. So eventually I just gave up and decided to find something that seemed uniquely suited to the smart phone as a medium, something that I was never going to play on my PC anyway: a puzzle game. One of the first ones to come up was ...

I work for a medium-sized company that is in turn owned by a global mega-corp that you're unlikely to have ever heard of. I joined them almost a decade ago when said medium-sized company was still a start-up still in the process of establishing itself, and my original role was as a customer service representative and German translator in an small office near me.  At some point they closed that office in favour of a London-based one, which introduced a lengthy commute to my day, which I absolutely loathed. In hindsight I'm not sure how I put up with it for as long as I did... though then the pandemic came and normalised working from home (luckily for me?!), meaning that I now only have to go to London twice a week at most. A couple of months ago we found out that our existing London office was once again closing down. With all the changes and acquisitions over the years, the business was now sitting on three different London offices, none of which were actually used to full capa...

After years of seemingly being the only person in the office who didn't have Netflix, I finally caved and subscribed for a month. The thing that unexpectedly ended up pushing me over the line was a glowing review for the animated film Nimona . Long story short, I didn't feel as strongly about it as the reviewer, but I did enjoy it. Of course, I was then left with the question of which of the many shows on Netflix that I'd previously missed out on to watch next, and I ended up picking Bojack Horseman , since I'd heard many good things about it. The first episode was... okay , but didn't exactly blow me away. It had some decent gags, but I mostly came away from it wondering whether this was going to be another one of those "edgy" shows where we're supposed to root for a protagonist who's a complete asshole. I'm glad I continued watching! I can't remember the last time I ended up being this engrossed by a television show. I laughed, I cried, a...

I suppose taking care of ageing parents is never easy, but when you live in a different country than they do, it definitely adds extra complications. I found out a few weeks ago that my elderly mother was diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia - this partially played into her decision to sell the garden . This morning I found out via a message from my brother that my Mum will need to have another test done next week to determine whether she needs a stent . I had to look up what that even meant. Now, we don't even know for sure yet whether she will indeed need that procedure to be done, but if it does turn out to be necessary, it's my (very limited) understanding that it's a relatively routine thing and not all that scary, despite of involving the heart. However, even assuming the best possible outcome here, considering that my Mum turns 83 this year, she's still gonna have a hard time with needing this kind of surgery. I knew immediately that if push comes to shove, I'll...

I created an online savings account with the Post Office this morning. Somewhat to my surprise, they didn't even send me any sort of "thanks for signing up with us" confirmation email. My user ID was a randomly generated number, and I found myself getting logged out of my very first session unexpectedly. When I tried to log in again, it became evident that my browser had not saved my login details, and I had no other record of them, meaning that I had to ring up their support hotline a mere ten minutes after account creation to ask them what my user ID was. Also, when I tried to put some money into the new account via my regular provider's banking app, it popped up with something like three different fraud warnings ( Are you sure this person is who they say they are? Well, it's me...), to the point that it made me feel insecure about sending money to myself . Not as smooth a process as I had hoped.