Author: Dave VR

Error not found

There’s a fault with my car so I took it to a garage. They said it was too complicated for them and to try another with more technical equipment. I did. They said it has no fault codes.

I find this concept very strange. That cars have gotten so complex that a mechanic’s first impulse is to connect a tablet to your car to determine what is wrong. The problem is that when the car says nothing the mechanic gives up, they don’t even look at it.

There’s nothing they can do without a fault code they say. Come back when it has an error.

The car generated an error. I had multiple lights on the dash. The garage said bring it in tomorrow. I did. No fault codes are stored in your ECU they said, so there is nothing we can do. Clearly there is a problem. I describe it. I’m talking to myself. The mechanic has a glazed expression across his face.

I phone the dealer. We can run diagnostics, they say. There is a diagnostics fee. They’ll connect it to their more expensive computer. It’s much better than non dealer garages they say.

I’m not sure if I’m driving a car or a laptop.

Problem empathy

I suffer from problem empathy.

It’s where you worry and stress about problems that are not your own, but those of friends or family.

When catching up with a friend or family member and they tell you about their woes, something that happened to them recently, maybe they were ripped off, scammed, or threatened, and are obviously upset. You begin to feel angry as if the problem has befallen you and not them. That you were the person that was wronged or threatened and you need to sort it, to make things right.

This is problem empathy.

You get worked up about this thing that has not happened to you, yet somehow feels as if it has. It can be really frustrating. Your loved ones may not even understand, telling you that you are worrying and stressing over nothing.

OSINT on old TV shows

I found myself carrying out OSINT on old TV shows. I didn’t realise I was doing it at first. I was watching an old episode of one of my favourite shows and I wanted to know where it was filmed. IMDB and a quick Google returned no information.

I started freeze-framing one scene, advancing frames looking at the geography, buildings, and business names, phone numbers, anything. I was geolocating the scene. It took me minutes. I had it.

Google street view confirmed it. Some minor changes to the buildings and layout but definitely the right location. I had the location, obtained out of mere curiosity and some OSINT skills. Information that the show’s wiki and even IMDB did not have.

There is data in these old TV shows if you know how to extract it.

Jiffy bags

My child was excited about receiving her first post. It was just a children’s magazine subscription, but the excitement was real. The postman had posted something through the letterbox that was actually addressed to her.

We forget how fun the post used to be when we were younger. These days in adulthood the sound of the letterbox triggers thoughts of bills or junkmail, rarely is our first thought that it could be something exciting or fun, for that fix we turn to our phones for instant digital gratification. A message from a friend or family member delivered in full animated colour straight into the palm of your hand. No stamp required.

As I dwell on her excitement I recall a time long ago when I used to trade warez from the demo scene. Not a day would go by without a handful of jiffy bags falling through the letterbox onto the mat below. Except Sundays. There was no post on Sundays. Each parcel filled with 3.5” floppy disks containing the latest releases. This was the internet of my childhood. Parcels from all over the world bringing digital joy. Plus hand-written letters from each contact. Sometimes the letters were typed and included on one of the disks.

Most of my pocket money was spent on stamps, parcels, and sellotape. It was worth it though. It afforded me pen-pals on a whole new level. We would swap and trade software, swap stories of our lives from our little corner of the world, and share our own creations and ideas.

Those were the days. Now with instant gratification thanks to the internet, that sense of anticipation, expectation, the wait for the postie, is long gone. The memories recalled but for a moment by the joy momentarily witnessed on a child’s face when receiving a magazine in the post addressed to them. 

Christmas at Grandma’s

I remember Christmas at Grandma’s.

The decorations were old school. Crepe-paper thin ceiling hangers that expanded out, pinned from the corners to the central light. Pieces of wool pinned along the walls in sagging lines from which to suspend all the cards she would receive from friends around the world. A lifetime of friendships, many lines of wool.

The tree would be small and white. The old record player moved so that its home could now be used as a base for the tree.

The Christmas cake that was started just after the summer ended. Needing time to mature. Iced nearer to Christmas ready to be eaten with cheese.

The decoration boxes lived on top of the wardrobe. Stared at all year round and brought down but only once.

Memories and emotions of Christmases past. A glass or two of Baileys by the gas fire playing gin rummy or knock-out twist.

Merry Christmas Grandma.

Forgotten tech

Are you old when you can recall technology from the past? Technology that either no longer exists, or the name you use for it is no longer in use.

My father used to say photostat and fax. In my youth there was dial-up and BBS. The device halfway between a smartphone and tablet was a phablet. We had MP3 players like the Creative Rhomba, flip phones that fit in the palm of your hands. PDAs. All forgotten like tears in the rain. Saved in our memories, while they last.

Saving. That reminds me, most children today do not know where the save icon comes from. The good old floppy disk. Not the 5.25 inch, the real floppy, but the 3.5 inch rigid 720MB SD (880 Amiga) or 1.44HD.

Old technology. Guru meditations.

It’s exhausting

There are so many scams these days. Some are getting more and more sophisticated. Making use of new technology like AI. Scammers love the social networks and LinkedIn is no exception. You need to verify everything. You cannot trust anything anymore.

Scammers can contact you as potential recruiters looking to harvest your info, or to sell you something, or to trick you into revealing something about your employer or colleague. Others try to connect in order to gain access to your contacts and to use your connection to them to boost their credibility. Some will contact you via LinkedIn messaging to offer you opportunities or fake services. Others may be selling certifications or courses that are not real, or worthless.

Some days I can’t be bothered going on LinkedIn or the socials full stop. I’m just too tired of all the scams and having to work out what is real and what is not. It’s exhausting! It’s a pity that the social platforms themselves don’t use technology like AI against the scammers to better police their networks. Maybe it would reduce their income streams too much.

The power of knowing your rights

There is power in knowing your rights. Not many bother. Or they think they know them already. They purchase goods or services believing that certain protections are in place, only facing reality when they try to enforce them later.

There’s a lack of education in schools around consumer rights, or even human rights. If we are being honest there isn’t really much education around finance. Most school leavers don’t know the difference between a debit and credit card, or how to balance a bank account. Mathematics, reading and writing, a partial second language if you are lucky, and some science is all most leave school with.

You can educate yourself. The likes of Martin Lewis and Rob Moore offer free education on finance and your rights as a consumer. It’s worth taking the time to learn all you can. If nothing else you’ll learn how to make better purchases and how to look after your own financial health.

Knowing your rights is a very powerful tool that we should all acquire.

Peter Pan Syndrome

Men can suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome. It’s a thing.

You are forever a big kid. You never grow up. You don’t do adult. Toys just get more expensive.

One day you realise that you are as old as your dad was when you looked up to him as a grown-up. Yet you don’t feel like a grown-up. Not yet anyway. If you were to look in the mirror then you would realise how old you are, on the outside. But on the inside? You still feel like a big kid, but with responsibilities and bills to pay. You fake adult as best as you can hoping that one day you’ll get there, but not yet, not today. Today there’s a new Lego set to build, or an online campaign to look forward to, or maybe a movie marathon with your mates and pizza.

Tomorrow, tomorrow you’ll do adult. Today you are still a lost boy.

After ambition burnout

Ambition burnout. It’s a weird combination of words implying that it is possible to burn-out from ambition. But it is real and something that I’ve personally experienced.

I’ve always been driven by ambition. As a child I wrote a list of things I wanted to achieve by the time I was 18. I completed the list well before my 18th birthday. I wrote another to achieve by the time I was 30. It included things like to live in a nice home, have a nice car, a great job, and to travel around the world. I completed it by age 29.I wrote a few more, which I achieved. Then I hit the aforementioned burn-out. I ran out of things that I wanted to achieve. So I idled. With no more drive or goals I coasted along. I embraced mindfulness, journalling, meditation, and long walks. They kept me sane but barely.

Those of us driven by ambition can feel a real sense of loss when we no longer have ambition to steer us forwards. We merely exist like everyone else. With no measurement of progress, no sense of achievement. Just being.

It can lead to depression, and bad health. Ambition burnout can leave you hollow. A loss of drive, no mojo, no spirit.

So what comes after ambition burnout?