…counting in binary, of course.
It’s also a bit of a weird anniversary in another way too. You see, rounding it all to the nearest year, although I was born in England, I’ve now spent one half of my life elsewhere. When I was between 7 and 10 years old we lived in Le Havre in France, and then we lived for one year in Brussels, and I’ve now pretty much lived in the US for 28 years (I arrived on April 29, 1993). So 32 years in England, and 32 years abroad. I suppose you could now say that I am only half English!
Mind you, given what has happened over the past year with regard to the pandemic and the various lockdowns, it feels like I’ve spent just 32 years in this house without going anywhere. Hopefully that impression will be dissipating soon, especially as tomorrow at 10am I shall receive my second Pfizer vaccine shot. And two weeks after that, to let the full effect get through my system, I shall be one of the fully vaccinated invincibles! Or something.
Despite that thought, it is true that, with my job as CTO at DevExpress for the last 15 years, I’m well used to working remotely. After all, here I am in Colorado Springs, and the company’s main office is in Glendale in California. Which I haven’t now visited since 2019. Yikes! What has changed though over the past year, to be fair, is the number of multi-person video meetings. Text messages via Skype or Teams have now morphed into video chats. We’ve all seen each other’s home offices and have experimented with background replacement images. I’ve even resurrected the green screen I used to use waaaay back when to record a “Message from the CTO” video (here’s an example from 10 years ago) at home.
Another fascinating anniversary that is coming up is in June. Yes, it was twenty years ago in June 2001 that my book was published. Hmm, maybe it’s time to update it a bit?
Want a real giggle? The scammers are now trying to scam me via a comment on this blog! Yep, sending scam emails is so passé. Here, have a laugh:
TERMINATION OF DOMAIN jmbucknall.blog Invoice#: 491343 Date: 02 Apr 2021
IMMEDIATE ATTENTION REGARDING YOUR DOMAIN jmbucknall.blog IS ABSOLUTLY NECESSARY
TERMINATION OF YOUR DOMAIN jmbucknall.blog WILL BE COMPLETED WITHIN 24 HOURS
Your payment for the renewal of your domain jmbucknall.blog has not received yet
We have tried to reach you by phone several times, to inform you regarding the TERMINATION of your domain jmbucknall.blog
CLICK HERE FOR SECURE ONLINE PAYMENT: https://servicedomains.ga
IF WE DO NOT RECEIVE YOUR PAYMENT WITHIN 24 HOURS, YOUR DOMAIN jmbucknall.blog WILL BE TERMINATED!
CLICK HERE FOR SECURE ONLINE PAYMENT: https://servicedomains.ga
YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY IN ORDER TO KEEP YOUR DOMAIN jmbucknall.blog
The submission notification jmbucknall.blog will EXPIRE WITHIN 24 HOURS after reception of this email
(Aside: I’ve set up that jmbucknall.blog domain to redirect to this site. Because, well, this is where I have my blog.)
Oh, and my wife’s car is still being repaired. It’s been over two months since the accident. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.
Loading links to posts on similar topics...
1 Response
#1 Luiz Marques said...
07-Apr-21 6:35 AMI also got a number of those notices a few months ago (on several of my blogs). They don't beat the bills I got in the mail for a dozen domains, though, which if you read carefully were just offers for submitting my domains to search engines. Those were not outright fraud, though, just very misleading.
Leave a response
Note: some MarkDown is allowed, but HTML is not. Expand to show what's available.
_emphasis_**strong**[text](url)`IEnumerable`* an item1. an item> Now is the time...Preview of response