Rihards Steinbergs

Today, I read from a few other public journals that I follow and like to read. Just to get an idea of what people usually write about. In my previous posts I mention that I feel like I’ve just been complaining about random things and not actually writing journal entries about my days.

So here goes.

Today didn’t start as early as I would have like it to. Instead of six in the morning wake up, which I sometimes manage to achieve, it was closer to seven thirty. No matter, at least it was already getting light outside.

Shoes on, walk the dog first, listen to Midweek Mayhem edition of What Did You Do Yesterday podcast. That podcast has become such a big thing that I look forward to each Wednesday and Sunday.

Finish walk, get ready for remote office day, work until lunch. No time for lunch, continue work. It’s not a good pattern that is emerging, and I know it.

Come home, rest a bit, take the dog out for a walk, cook dinner. Feeling much better after those have been accomplished.

Started to think, “Hey maybe this journal actually needs pagination, I’ve made it to week four of journaling.”

Success?

Another thing that I myself experienced for the first time in Finland. Housing association. I imagine many people have heard all about them in USA context. How evil and corrupt they are. How they keep fining you for the smallest of things that they see as you breaking the rules. Or in some cases even preventing you from buying into the housing association / home ownership.

They are very different in Finland. In most cases there are no fines, or people preventing you from home ownership. However I must admit that lately it’s still not something that I always view as a positive thing. A housing assocition is still made up of people, and more often than not it’s made up of strangers.

For most parts I actually think that they are pretty awesome in Finland, and do a lot of good. But sometimes, like I said, people are people, and one gets quite disappointed by people and how selfish they are.

Wondering if this journal is becoming less and less of a journal and more and more a soapbox for my grievances, and whether soapbox is even the right term.

But there will be an attempt made (tomorrow?) to be more journal and less complaining.

It’s currently 16:42 in Finland as I’m writing this entry. And it’s pitch black outside.

I’ve been in Finland now for thirteen years, and winter depression comes and goes in waves, or for me in years.

Some years I don’t feel it at all, and some years it feels like, “Yeah, I fully understand why people leave Finland for the entirety of November and sometimes even most of Decemeber”.

And I say that as someone who lives in the south of Finland.

This year it does feel like the latter. And it’s not even that much about the daylight. It’s that when there is daylight, it’s grey, it’s cold, and it’s constantly wet and drizzling.

Big (grocery) shopping day today. Nothing too crazy or out there, but I did have one thought on my mind, and I feel like that would be an interesting thing to look into.

Why is it that some countries have those bread slicing machines in grocery stores that people can freely use themselves?

I know that Norway has them, that’s where I first encountered them. I know that Ireland has them as well according to various Irish podcasters.

But why do other countries, especially the ones that are known for their bread, quality and variety wise. Why do they not have them?

It can’t be because “They know how to slice their bread” or “They don’t eat as much sliced bread”.

Why?

Today was going to be a rest day, and in the end it was. It did start with quite a few chores (but heyoo that’s what weekends are for). Washing cat litter boxes, cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, all done and quite happy about that, because that was productive at least.

Good portion of the day then went to a game that I play for a while, and then stop for months, and then again play for a while, and keep repeating this cycle.

I do this actually with quite a few games.

This time it was Project Zomboid, which is still in Early Access. In fact I think it has been in Early Access before Early Access even existed. With regular updates you can maybe image just how much the game has changed over the years.

And that is something that keeps drawing me back to it, time and time again. That and the fact that there is no winning or beating the game.

Everytime you start a new game, it even tells you.

“This is how you died.”

Originally this was going to be a post about containers. Not the fun kind of container mind you, that has pretty amazing origin story and how it actually is one of those things that changed the world. Which you can by the way read about on Wikipedia under Intermodal container and I have a recollection that there is an amazing episode by the “Why Would You Tell Me About That?” podcast about them as well, but my searching for it failed me.

No, it was going to be about virtualisation type of containers. The kind of containers that run software applications, typically in cloud, but quite often also in non-cloud environments these days.

Anyway, I understand why, and the benefits, but sometimes working with them is just such a pain. Quite often things aren’t easy and it’s a tradeof for all the benefits they bring.

I understand that. But… ARGH!

Writing these journal entries.. immediately getting interrupted by my wife and losing track of what I was going to write for the second of my five daily journals that I’m trying to catch up with.

Right.

It reminds me of working at agencies (and I’m currently working at one). It reminds me specifically of billing and inputting your hour markings, or rather these days your minute markings.

Sometimes you are too busy with work, and want to finish that work. So the markings fall to the side, and even if you have notes, calendar entries, Slack discussions, emails, it’s not as easy to catch up as it is to mark them immediately when a task is done.

Journal is the same perhaps in that for it to work on a daily basis it needs to be practicated on a daily basis.

Is it “One of five” or “One out of five”? I imagine there’s a difference between the two. One out of five feels like this is specifically the first out of five posts that I’m writing to catch up with my daily journals.

Whereas one of five is just a generic term for something that is a group of five. As in one in five people enjoy reading. Which is rather alarming and hopefully not true statistic that is stuck in my head, and was most likely mentioned on some podcast.

Long story short (what a lazy phrase that is), I’m catching up on my daily journaling based on some loose notes, faint memories, and sketchy recollections.

This entry is number fourteen. Which means I’ve been journaling now for two weeks. Most of the time it happens on the same day, but lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting too busy and too distracted to write the entry on the day it’s supposed to be written.

I don’t know what that means, but I do know that trying to catch up days later and trying to remember what happened and what was important on those days isn’t the way to go about it.

Figuring out a way to make time every evening is a must, but I’m not sure how, and I certainly don’t want to go the podcast or other content creator way of pre-writing (or pre-recording) content for days ahead.

One thing that I will say though is that I like looking at previous entries that I’ve written and reflecting on them, and realising “Oh yeah, there was that”.

So.. at least one thumbs up for journaling?

Another long day at the office. Covering for some people while still trying to move things forward and unblock things for others, makes for a long day at work.

Explosions continue at the outdoor swimming pool area. Personally, I feel like it makes for a nice change, or at least a small surprise in an otherwise mundane day.

Meetings are had. Work is done. Lunch is eaten. Quite a stereotypical grey Finnish Monday in November.

There’s definitely a bit of pain going on today. While waking up that was made quite clear. It is the kind of pain that makes you feel like you’ve done something the day before. The good kind. But pain none the less.

And thus Sunday is mostly spent on chores at home, cleaning, washing up, vacuuming, shopping, and so on.

Speaking of shopping, there’s a new store in Kerava.

Imperial Market Kerava (what a name, or at least I’m amused by it).

It’s an import store, or an exotic goods store? Well either way it has groceries from across the world, the kind that you would usually not find in regular stores. So we went to check it out and bought a few items.

As someone who loves food and cuisine from all over the world, it always excites me when there’s a new store or a restaurant with something new on offer. Love it.

It’s a good store, and I hope they have success in Kerava. I know I’ll be shopping there again.

It’s Saturday, and this weekend I had promised a friend (former ex-colleague, now a friend, because once they leave the company that both of you work at, you become friends instead) to help move house.

There’s a classic meme that comes to mind every time someone mentions moving.

“If you’re over 35, hire movers. Your friends are too old. Ain’t nobody trying to slip a disc for pizza and a cold beer.”

The move went well. It was quick, efficient, and no one slipped a disc (as far as I’m aware). We even moved a washing machine by hand to the second floor.

I know that tomorrow won’t be as enjoyable, and I can already feel the pain, but I’m almost 40 now and didn’t slip a disc.

Helping makes you feel good, accomplished, and is the right thing to do.

Often if feels like it is much easier to write these journal entries about work. Maybe it’s because I feel like people would be more interested in those kind of entries. Or that they would find them more useful.

For example me spending most of Friday designing a database structure from scratch. It’s not something that you come across very often when most of your career so far has been working with content management systems, which for most part decide the structure for you, or at the least have a very strong opinion about it.

But this is what I did for most of Friday, database structure, specifically SQL. Columns, indexes, foreign keys, the whole lot. And I must say I actually enjoyed it. Especially the part where it was reviewed by the rest of the team and their feedback was then incorporated in the later versions.

Will have to figure out if that’s something that I want to post more about on the actual blog (front page) of this site.

On personal side of things, it’s Friday. Weekend is here. Although I already know that it’ll be a busy one.

It has been some time since I last visited Helsinki. The company that I work for has just moved office to a new location. It’s still in Ruoholahti in Helsinki. Just a bit closer to the metro station.

Today was the first “official” back to the office day, including an office tour by the property managers. The tour was fine, although cut short by the fact that quite a few things were still being renovated and weren’t ready to be shown just yet.

The best part was that I hadn’t seen this many people at the office in a while. So many people that we actually ran out of desks for everyone.

Can’t really say much good about the new “downstairs” lunch restaurant though. Some said it was okay, while others said it tasted just like school food, and even more harshly, some said that it tasted like prison food.

The office will get better as things settle down, and as more furniture and decoration gets added. Although, with my own new office, I’m not entirely sure how often I’ll visit this new Helsinki office.

In work unrelated matters, it’s been raining a lot. Sometimes the whole day. But that’s just how autumn is like in Finland.

Snowflake largely dominates my Wednesday. It’s a new piece of tech I’ve not used, or even heard of until a few months ago, and now for the last couple of weeks I’ve been staring at it, I’ve been reading its documentation, and I’ve been implementing things in it.

Not sure if it fits my job description, but as a tech lead you do what’s needed for the project, and you might not be the best person for it, but if you are available and it becomes a priority, then you move things forward and make it happen.

Explosions continue as part of the outdoor swimming pool renovations, there’s the odd message from a neighbour who hasn’t heard about the renovations and wonders if they should be worried about the sirens and the earth shaking.

A reassuring message from another neighbour says that it’s just because the apartment buildings here are built on top of the same bedrock and thus the feeling of a tiny earthquake every now and then.

The outdoor swimming pools won’t be opened most likely this coming summer I’m told, but the year after that. I’m still excited and looking forward to it.

Already on second day the new office excitement has mostly gone away. Not because new office isn’t amazing and just fits my needs perfectly, but because the work that is currently happening requires a lot of effort, thought, willpower, and seemingly to a degree, luck.

It’s demanding work, but in this case I feel like it’s work worthwhile doing, and work that.. yes will benefit a company, but it will also contribute to adhering and following a regulation that I feel like we should follow and implement.

That and I’ve been spending a lot of time with something called Snowflake, and no it’s not the derogatory slang term for a person that most people are probably thinking of.

Days are getting shorter as well, and it’s quite noticeable in Finland. It’ll soon get to the point where a regular person that works nine to five will wake up when it’s dark, and will leave work when it’s already dark.

Have to catch that daylight at least during lunch time.

Kerava isn’t that far away from Helsinki, and specifically my work office. In fact depending on where you live in Helsinki it might take you longer to get to said office than it takes for me from Kerava.

About 35km (roughly 22 miles for those using a different measurement unit), and even though Finland has excellent public transportation, it’s still a journey that takes almost an hour in one direction.

I know it’s not much. But if you had the choice and there would be almost no downsides, would you not work from home, or much closer to home?

That’s exactly what has happened, over the years I’ve always wanted to have a Kerava office, ideally one within walking distance. It would mean that I don’t spend as much time communiting, I could come home for lunch if I chose to, and I’d reduce travel costs significantly as well.

Without revealing too many personal details and just details in general this is something that has now come together and happened. A whole room, strictly for my work and work related items and equipment. No distractions. Most of the time no one else is there and I can work in peace and quiet. Well if you don’t count the bedrock explosions that are currently ongoing as part of the outdoor swimming pool renovations just some hundred meters or so away.

The day after Talkoot can go many ways, but usually it’s more relaxed, and in some cases might require some recovery and relaxation.

Which was the case for me.

I did however end up going for multiple and lengthy walks (some of them with our dog). Got to practice my car driving (only got my license at the beginning of this year), and most importantly setup a home (remote?) office that isn’t at home to reduce distractions and yet still not to have to travel all the way to the physical office.

Now there’s home office, remote office, and office office. Productivity!

Talkoot, as defined by Wikipedia, “is a Finnish expression for a gathering of friends and neighbors organized to accomplish a task”. In practice this means that housing associations, club houses, parishes, and other groupings organize together for a day of voluntary work. The work can be anything from raking leaves, minor repair work, cleaning & organizing, to bigger tasks like renovating common areas or even construction.

Many countries across the world have this concept, of course under a different term, for example Meitheal in Ireland, Dugnad in Norway, Mutirão in Brazil, and so forth.

In Finland it was where I experienced it myself for the first time.

In our housing association it typically includes the usual Talkoot tasks. Getting common areas ready for winter or summer, cleaning, organizing, moving furniture indoors for winter and outdoors for summer, pruning and trimming bushes, but also bigger, and as we call them “special projects”. This could be things like fixing outdoor stairs, planting trees, fixing and renewing garden furniture.

What I really like about it though is that not everyone can contribute to the actual work for whatever reasons it might be, but people are always welcome to contribute in other ways and they are just as valid and appreciated as the actual work. They may contribute food for the talkoot party, or act as a baby-sitter, or take care of other things that would otherwise be left undone because of Talkoot taking up time.

Once the tasks that were planned are either completed or postponed until next Talkoot, it’s time for a gathering which usually involves BBQing sausages (or at least food, snacks, and drinks), followed quite often by communal shared sauna. Which might or might not be your thing, but it certainly brings the community together.

Most of Saturday was spent at Talkoot and it’s one of many things that I love about Finland.

Today started as most days tend to, wake up, get ready for the day ahead, take Ahto for a walk. Business as usual wasn’t meant to last though, as reports from a client at work starting coming in that their site was slow and was even showing time out errors. We’ve seen this happen before so I know what to do and how to fix it.

So it gets fixed.

Only to be followed by another set of same error messages, but this time for a different client. Luckily the errors were coming from a third party and there was nothing we could do, and they did end up getting resolved by the third party.

Two rough, stressful, and annoying instances on a Friday, but you get used to that kind of thing.

What you don’t get used to though is using Excel and Word, especially when you have to use them both. Moving data from one to the other. My ears are getting hot from just thinking about it. How absurdly horrible those two things are, and just how frustrating it must be for a person who isn’t tech savvy to fix those issues, and it’s not just formatting issues. Random invisible character and cell divisions that appear and you can delete them by deleting the content… I’ll stop there. ARGH!

On a more positive side of things, I’ve been updating and improving this site in the evenings, and even have an idea for a blog post that I really want to write. It needs some research and thought first though.

Warning: this is less of a journal entry, more of a tech related rant about documentation and documenting. Back to usual style entries tomorrow.

Does it still count as a journal entry for today if I intend to talk about yesterday’s frustration? I suppose since I’m still thinking about them today, it does.

Running your own infrastructure, be it just a simple Raspberry Pi server in your closet, a cluster of Kubernetes in a cloud, or a virtual machine somewhere on the other side of the world can be exciting and worthwhile. Think of all the things you’ll learn and all the costs that you’ll save.

Until you don’t.

I’ve been running and maintaining my own server now for close to twenty years. The very same server that hosts this journal, and all of my other projects like UploadPie, multiple WordPress installations, an analytics platform, etc.

Has it saved me time? Most certainly not. Has it been fun? Sometimes. Has it been cheaper than managed and purpose built hosting? Maybe a little bit. Have I learnt important life skills? Yes, and no.

Would I do it again? Hundred percent.

But knowing what I know now I would do it differently. The biggest difference I’d make is to document everything. Every single thing and change that I make.

Every year — or if we’re more realistic every other year I decide to make some changes. Add a new domain, install some new platform to test, host my latest private project. And that’s where the trouble begins.

How have I configured certbot? What’s the process of adding a new site to my nginx configuration? When and how is logrotate setup. What kind of dependencies do I have in place and how do I even install them? Is it systemctl, service, or something else? apt-get or snap.

And this is what leads to still being awake at almost midnight, trying to make a small change from which path your webserver serves the site from without breaking automated certificate renewals, making sure automated GitHub deployments still work, and that security guidelines are still followed and implemented.

Anyway.

Document your projects as you go, even the small private ones, or you will pay for it every single time.

It has been a long, frustrating, yet ultimately a rewarding day. I’m writing this at half past eleven on a Wednesday. So it best be kept short.

Towards the end of work day, I received an email from a person I hadn’t interacted with or even heard about in quite a while, Derek Sivers. It was regarding my “What I’m doing now” page. He had re-built the functionality behind them and wanted to now if my profile and information was still accurate.

While updating said information, I found myself looking at other “What I’m doing now” profiles and stumbled across a fellow developer in Finland who has been writing journal like entries on his own site for years now.

Every single day.

Journaling is supposed to have a great many positives, and perhaps in one of these journals I’d like to talk about it, but not before I’ve done it for a substantial time myself.

I’d also like to talk about why today was such a frustrating day, but I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

Is this a promise, or an attempt at keeping a daily journal? We’ll see.