Pete Johns - Blog entries of the highest uptodateness

In The Before Times™ we used to like to go to restaurants. Of course, part of the restaurant dining experience is being asked, “how is your meal?” Just as a forkful of said meal has entered the diner’s mouth. There’s a polite nod with the mouth covered by a hand, followed by a quiet acknowledgement, “very nice. Thank you!” And that is that. The review is acknowledged.

As we have lived through more than 200 days of Coronavirus-induced lockdown, finding reasons to be positive is increasingly difficult. I’m finding identifying reasons to be grateful is a lot easier.

This year has thrown a lot at so many of us with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. My family and I have been observing the restrictions since they came in… indeed K and I were working from home for a couple of weeks before the restrictions came into effect here in Melbourne, as we have K’s parents staying with us from the UK. I have missed my regular run commutes with my friends and parkrun, of course, but have made up for this by running 5km each day and catching up with friends online for coffees or beers, depending on the time of the day.

This weekend I completed my first 10km road race since June 2016. It wasn’t a personal best time for the distance nor was it my longest run, but I finished the event feeling more proud than I’ve felt in any running event. To understand why, I have to cast my mind back to February 2014 when our then three-year-old would leave me breathless running after him around the local park. I started doing the Couch to 5K programme to give me a hope of keeping up with him as he got faster and faster.

Sometimes my add-ons in Firefox go absent without leave and the only way I’ve found to get them back is to uninstall and reinstall them. I was making a list of the ones I use a lot for my own records and wondered whether others would find this list useful. So I’m publishing it.

A highlight at work recently wasn’t directly work-related at all but a positive comment from a colleague on my use of the word “outlandish”.

I’ve been doing commercial web-based development for about six years now and I still don’t haven’t committed each and every HTTP status code to memory. I refer often to HTTP Status Codes — httpstatuses.com to appear way smarter than I am.

# The Story

Since handing over the Event Director role at Coburg parkrun to Marcus last year, I’ve been taking the opportunity to enjoy being one of the parkrun adventurers and have been ticking off my Nearest Event Not Done Yet (NENDY) as time permits.