Happy April Fools Day, The World Is Fucked
Well, April Fools Day huh? Usually there'd be lots of funny stuff online, but considering that the world's fucked, I don't think there's going to be much funny stuff online today. Could be wrong, but I haven't seen much yet and really who's got the time/bandwidth to be trying to pull off funny stuff?
Can't believe how much the world has changed since my last entry. I mean you could see the virus was bad and that it was on its way around the world, but I would never have guess this effect on the world. It's crazy. Utterly crazy. It's going to take years to recover from it, and I expect the world wont' ever quite go back to how it was. Anyway, I'm not going to bore my future self with that blather.
Gosh I've tried to write this diary entry about 6 times I think, each time I've gotten so far into it then got distracted and forgotten to save what I've written and then closed the tab. Doh. I'll have to make sure I actually publish this. Anyway so of course we've all be locked down at home for the last week, almost two in fact. I've been working from home since Friday two weeks ago, when the company decided to make sure everyone could "Test working from home" for a few days in case we were all mandated to have to work from home. Which of course we legally are now, we're in Level 4 Lockdown which means you have to stay within your family bubble. No leaving home unless you need to to go the supermarket or other critical type store, or you're exercising. You're allowed to exercise locally, which means there's 1000 morns online all arguing what "local" means and complaining "local" isn't clear language. Like it's going to affect them. People are such dickheads.
Anyway so here we are at home. I went and picked Beth up on the day it'd been annoced schools were closing across the country, that was a bit surreal. Of course the kids didn't have any idea, Beth's teacher had just told them the extra books in their bag were in case they had to stay at home for a bit. Well it's not fair to say the kids have no idea, both places have been good at teaching the children about the Coronavirus, the way Theo says Coronavirus is very cute. And they're both annoyed by the Coronovirus because it means we can't go out, can't go to the playground or do any of the usual fun things that we do. At least they've got each other, they've been playing together so well together, all day they're out there taking each other for rides on their bikes, drawing big chalk drawings on the concrete, playing on the trampoline, climbing trees etc. It's one thing I never thought about buying this place, having a lot of space for them to play in case we went into lockdown for a month or more. But it's worked out quite well I guess.
What else has been happening, apart from lockdown? First beer brew went really well, really really well in fact! The first pour I had I was quite disappointed, very cloudy, very yeasty. I couldn't understand, the beer in the sediment bottle looked clear but coming out of the tap wasn't. Oh well, I thought I'd try it again in a week. Then I though I will clarify the beer again, and to do that you pour some beer from the tap back into the sediment bottle. Anyway I did that and hang on, the beer is coming out clean and clear this time! I tasted it. WOW it tasted GREAT! Turns out that during fermentation a bit of sediment/yeast sticks of course to the output on the keg, and so the first pour is quite often cloudly etc like mine was. I just had to pour a bit more through the line to clear it. So yes, it tasted great. Holly and Adrian came over (back when you were allowed to visit each other, seems so long ago now) and Bruce came up from down the road to try. Everyone had a glass and I thought that's OK, they're not too bothered and just being polite. But then when everyone went back for a 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th glass I knew it was tasty enough in its own right! Not many people every asked for a 4th glass of my beer-from-bottles homebrew.
Since the last entry I've also made a cider. I collected heaps of apples from around the property (We've got like, 6 Apple trees) and juiced them all up to make about 8L of apple wort. I boiled them up and then put them in the fermenter with some cider yeast and set it off. Long story short I let it ferment for too long and the yeast ate up ALL the sweetness. So I ended up with a very very dry cider, like SUPER dry. I chilled it right down and added a cup of brown sugar to it and that's bought it back and it tastes pretty good. It's out there chilling now, I still keep getting a lot of yeast when I go for a pour, but second and third pours are OK. This weekend I'll put it into the corny keg I bought. Oh I have to talk to that too, buying the corny keg hehe. Anyway I'll put the cider in there and make another brew in the keg when I clean it.
We rang Adrian for his birthday yesterday. It's amazing how much Facetime, Duo, Zoom Meetings etc have come into their own during lockdown. That's how you talk to everyone now, face to face on your phone. Imagine how crazy a lockdown would be without the technology we have these days. Very lucky to have super fast fibre at home. Oh yes that reminds me diary, I upgraded the home pfSense router from 2.4.4.p4 to 2.4.5 last Friday and far out, it just shat itself. I don't know what's wrong with FreeBSD 11.3 under KVM but it is not happy. Millions of other people reporting the problem too. So I finally bit the bullet and moved us to Vyos, something I've been meaning to do for ages. Far out it works so much better the CPU usage is way, way down and the performance is just as good. It's CLI based of course, so no pretty GUI, but I think for the few small changes I make to the network a GUI isn't really necessary. And Vyos just just a good job of being a Firewall as pfSense. Well, better, given how well it's performing.
So yea on the day before lockdown I rushed out and bought some pies from Goodtime, not nearly enough I guess but I don't think I knew at the time we'd be on lockdown for (at least) a month. And I rushed up to WilliamsWarn to buy some more brewkits, plus a corny key. A corny keg is just a keg to store you beer in, not one you can also ferment in like the two I have as part of my kit. I had to pre-order it online and there was a lot of concern about if I'd be allowed to pick it up, but I was. I arrived, I'd pre-paid, I told them my order number and they went and got it and said "There you go". No one got near me and I didn't get near anyone. It was all very bizzare. So now I have some supplies to see me through to next 4 weeks, probably (hopefully!) longer.
So yea, that's it really. Lockdown is lockdown. It's hard with the kids, though Sarah's doing a great job of giving them activities and jobs to do. Beth had her piano lesson via a Zoom video conference, which was pretty neat to see. Everything's been cancelled, swimming, school, everything. The weekends are the same as the weekdays pretty much except I'm allowed to not work. Sarah's been a few times to the supermarket, everyone has to stand metres apart, it's a queue to get in. She managed to get a "Click and Collet" order spot last night, amazing. Nee to get some more dog food soon, that'll be fun.
At least the Internet works! Video calling is saving the day. I talk to Dad on a regular basis, Mum and Bill a bit too though they've got each other so I worry less about them. Jeremy I've chatted to a few times as well though, but he thinks all these lockdown measures are stupid and pointless etc. I've tried to explain why we're doing them, but he's not interested and still thinks they're pointless, so I've kinda given up. It's a bit dissapointing really, to see a smart person dig their heels in about something. It's like seeing other smart people you know think we didn't land on the moon, or believe in Jesus. Anyway.
The dog's loving it. He's got us home all the time. And it's cool how everyone has put teddies in their windows, so as we go on out daily mandated by the Government walk, we can count them.
Diary updates will probably be few and far between, dear diary, because there's not really much to do expect work, watch TV and play with the kids.
Tim