Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on Today at 02:33:55 PM

Quote from: Slim on Today at 01:57:25 PM

Quote from: Fishy on Today at 01:43:50 PMVoyager-1 sends readable data again from deep space https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68881369

"the issue was resolved by shifting the affected code to different locations in the memory of the probe's computers"

Amazing to think of people moving code around in the RAM of a computer system that's 15 billion miles away and hasn't been physically touched for 46 years, by using a very slow and weak radio link.

I started to try to imagine one billion miles as an understandable concept. I fully understand the number and what it signifies, but one thousand million miles is staggeringly difficult to absorb. Times that by fifteen and it becomes a pointless exercise of Brian energy, and to think that in cosmological terms it's not even that far away.

It's actually pretty close, despite the fact that it takes the light of the sun nearly a day to get there. If you were perched atop it with a paperback in one hand, you could probably read it by sunlight, just about. A bit like moonlight I think.

Quote from: Fishy on Today at 01:43:50 PMVoyager-1 sends readable data again from deep space https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68881369

"the issue was resolved by shifting the affected code to different locations in the memory of the probe's computers"

Amazing to think of people moving code around in the RAM of a computer system that's 15 billion miles away and hasn't been physically touched for 46 years, by using a very slow and weak radio link.

Wordle 1,039 4/6*

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90 seconds or so.

Quote from: David L on April 22, 2024, 10:41:46 PMHowever.....the shine has been taken off my leaving due to a VLS being announced just a couple of weeks after I gave my boss my termination date. This means that colleagues of a similar age, in a similar role will now be walking away from the company with over £40K redundancy.

This is yet another variable I need to think about. A few years ago there were two waves of redundancies at our place. I highly doubt they'd offer voluntary redundancy but it's just possible that they'd do it again, and I'd get the (involuntary) chop this time.

My payout would be at least £16,000 as a statutory minimum which is not life-changing, but I'd hate to leave my job and miss out on it a couple of months later, if it happened.

Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on April 22, 2024, 11:07:30 PMSorry, James. Now edited. Where did Jim come from?

Probably my reminiscence from 1989, that's what my colleagues used to call me back then.

Honestly there was no need to edit it, I don't mind it at all.

Wife suggests that, in the long run, I probably wouldn't save any money by leaving the company pensions alone until state pension age.

Tempting as it is to walk away from all the various work commitment nonsense, turning off the money tap is an uncomfortable thought, especially at the very moment when I get to keep more of it. Funnily enough I just got a pay rise as well today, not a big one though. Below inflation actually.

Love that Reg, it has a bit of a Breitling Aerospace vibe. And actually the main reason I sold that watch was that my Casios had sucked the fun out of it. They did everything the Aerospace did, they did it better and they did more.

I have a few radio-controlled solar Casios, I've had some of them for more than ten years and they just keep going. So much better than having to have a battery changed every couple of years.

You've just reminded me of something Nick. On my very first week as an analyst/programmer at Rolls-Royce, one of the old lags in the office was about three weeks from retiring. He'd been there since the '60s and he was counting the days. And I remember him saying to me, with a wry smile, "you've got about 35 years to go, haven't you Jim?"

He knew I was 29, and people typically retired at 64 in those days.

And now I think about it, that'll be 35 years ago in August.

I've reached that watershed moment when you start to think seriously about retiring. I'm at a confluence of two factors contributing to this: firstly we paid off our mortgage last week and secondly my job is becoming more stressful and annoying at the same time.

So I'm writing this post partly to straighten things out in my head.

I can't draw the state pension until November 2026. I also have three company pensions, none of them particularly lucrative and although I could draw on them before 2026, I'm determined not to - to give the overall pension pot a chance to grow a bit. I'll obviously get a bigger yearly wedge of cash out of all of them if I leave them alone for now.

However - I do have a substantial chunk of savings. I've saved pretty diligently this last ten years or so and I also inherited some money. I could live off savings, modestly anyway, until November '26 and still have most of them left in 2.5 years time once I start living off my various pensions.

So: knowing that I could retire right now, at a pinch, makes it very tempting to do so.

Against that: every month I stay in work is another £2Kish I can add to my savings, now that I've paid the mortgage off. And of course it's one fewer month I'd be draining them when I do retire.

Then again: why not use my savings for electricity bills, Tesco, car maintenance and the rest for a couple of years? It's not like I have other plans for them. No wish to move to a bigger house. No desire to own a Porsche or a boat. I have no desire to be, as my wife occasionally puts it, "the richest man in the graveyard".

Another option is to quit my job and do something lower paid and less irritating and demanding for a year or two. Maybe I could start a YouTube channel and get some income off that, or get occasional writing work. Or do occasional short contract IT work.

So there are a lot of variables and considerations to this. Another thought is that I do get a sense of purpose from my job. It does occasionally provide me with a bit of pride and satisfaction.

If you've retired - did you experience a lasting surge of joy at being released from having to work for a living? Or did you look out of the window on a rainy Monday afternoon with no job to go to and think: "is this it?"

I'm in some dusty, dingy basement club. It's more like an old storeroom than a music venue, but Motorhead are playing there. I have a seat on an old chair in the front row.

The band walk on stage. Lemmy throws cans of beer to people in the audience. He throws me a can of Newcastle Brown. I open it; it's warm. Then they walk off again, and the support act comes on. They're a five piece band with two drummers.

I get up to walk to the loo, and when I come back someone has nicked my seat. But a few minutes later he goes to the loo as well, so I take it back. His mate in the next seat tries to tell me that the seat is taken, but I tell him that I had it first.

Then suddenly, the seat rises into the air .. it's somehow part of a "teacup" style fairground ride, set on a spinning circular base levitating on a huge mechanical arm. I'm spinning around in circles, near the ceiling.

Wordle 1,038 3/6*

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A minute.

Strong stuff from Forest. I applaud them for speaking out.

I heard this morning that Eric Moody died last week.

Eric was piloting a British Airways 747 over Jakarta in 1982 when the engines started to misbehave. Shortly afterwards all four of them flamed out, choked by an ash cloud from a volcano that the aircraft had flown through, transforming it into a glider.

Famously, Moody announced to the passengers that there was a "small problem".

Fortunately by the time the 747 had descended to 13,000 feet twelve minutes later the air was oxygen-rich enough to overcome the choking effect of the ash buildup over the critical flow areas, so that the engines could be restarted. They were returned to Rolls-Royce in Derby to be stripped down to their component parts and examined.

After they landed, the flight engineer is said to have kissed the ground. When Eric asked him what he was doing he replied that "the Pope does this".

"That's because he flies Air Alitalia", came the reply.

A beautiful dry day, and we haven't had many of those this year. Since I got up earlier than I expected I thought I'd do Buckminster and back, about 80 miles.

I went the "old" way through Rempstone since it's a bit shorter and I wanted to make sure I arrived at Buckminster's village shop before it closed at 1300. I got there at 1235, good timing. Had a bit of a feast on the bench outside - a cheese & onion slice, a packet of crisps and a Magnum ice-cream lolly.

On the way back just to make it more interesting I took a right turn at the crossroads at Waltham - to give myself an orienteering task. But I very soon found myself back on the usual path. Basically a three mile detour, partly consisting of a single-track lane.

Came back along Narrow Lane and through Wymeswold (where I took the pic) and Hoton on the way back, for a change. I have quite a few variations of the eastbound route now.  Noticed a number of tiny fish in the stream (the River Mantle apparently) at Wymeswold. Minnows?



Listened to the first couple of hours of the next Reacher novel, Worth Dying For. Very good so far, classic Reacher. Flowing along nicely and so far not tripping over its own plot, as they sometimes tend to do. Reuses plot elements from Killing Floor and Echo Burning. Then I listened to football, including a highly entertaining FA Cup competition between Man United and Coventry at Wembley. As I was putting the bike away in the garage Coventry scored what I thought was a consolation goal to make it 3-1 to United, but later I discovered they'd pulled it back to 3-3!

Conditions seemed warmer than the advertised 11C in the afternoon. Mostly sunny, as well. I took off my overtrousers with about 13 miles to go. I was definitely too hot with about 4 to go but didn't bother to stop and part-unclothe.

Back on 80.69. Very enjoyable run out.

https://www.strava.com/activities/11233367980

Failure. But at least I only spent three minutes on it.

Wordle 1,037 X/6*

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