Today is the day my new roto-tiller arrives, and the Stucco-man gets to work finishing the outside of our home. My new workshop and my new lawn are taking shape, too. If only the little woman would stop giving me ToDo lists of errands, I might actually accomplish something in the near future.

My last accomplishment was fabricating a custom-built steel channel to reinforce a loose Newell post. Being a welder really helps when you have to make something strong and compact. Having the drill-press finally installed helped, too. I have yet to repair an old watering hose for the yard and she wants me to do errands fixing the old homestead as well… Yesterday, I was spraying dandelions on both properties. I also repaired the old mower to mow the old property. Then there’s fertilizer for both properties. The list keeps growing.

I look forward to the day when things are actually as they should be and I can get on with my life instead of doing things elsewhere. Isn’t that what retirement is supposed to be about?

A database of deadbeat parents (not making child-support payments) in UK was moved from one IT system to another and finally yet another and along the way the opening balance was lost so arrears can no longer be calculated properly… Ouch! Sometimes the problem is not the OS or the application or even the operator. It’s the PHB who is supposed to “manage” the system.

see The Register – Child support IT fail: Deadbeat mums ‘n’ dads off the hook

NAO: Child maintenance computers unable to keep tabs on payments

I’ve made a few mistakes in my life. Once I forgot about password changes in a system of 4 terminal servers… Another time I changed one report card in a school to a new format while forgetting the elementaries had 3 separate cards for different ages. An hour or two of labour fixed those mistakes. The UK seems to make larger blunders, with the cost of fixing them being larger than the benefit of fixing them, resulting in a once-useful system becoming a burden rather than a blessing in spite of huge outlays of cash to maintain and to operate the system.