Some Updates

It has been a while since my last post so I think it is time to give some updates:

• TV - I did not get a TV during the Black Friday sale on the various shops because none had the TV I was after on offer. Luckily, the week after christmas a large tech store chain did some early shopping - insane rebates activity - and even though they did not have the exact model I wanted they had a reasonably close one for a good 250€ below the average price - so I had to get it. Consequently I grabbed my father in the early morning hours and we drove to the store - waited in line with like 50 other people (remember, this is december 27th at 8am) - we got in relatively quickly and got the TV. It is a Samsung QLED (THIS ONE). I paid in cash since we had been saving up to it in our piggy bank and I am really satisfied with it. Great picture quality, good sound for built in speakers and all relevant features that I wanted (it even gets support for apple's air play in spring - so everything is golden there.
• Open Source Software governance - the scans of our software revealed some duplicate and outdated libraries - we updated what we could and got that out of the way - overall way less effort than anticipated.
• Basketball practice - I got back in the saddle really slowly. The orthopedist recommended not to play basketball like every again. But I love this sport and I need to do some kind of workout that I don't need to force myself to. I got a nice lower back bandage (prescription) and that makes it bearable even though it limits my flexibility and puts quite a bit of weight on my hip muscles - so I tire much quicker than before my back problems. But that should all sort itself out with more practice. I also started running (well, "running" - my pace isn't close to what it used to be) again to bring the weight down and get more fit. You can follow the results here. The first run was good and helped a lot with the back. Lazy as I am it lead to me reducing the back workout routine (because of reasons) and then the second run was not nice and set me back a bit - back wise. I have taken up the exercise part again and am looking forward to doing some running in todays lunch break. This is all part of my new years resolution (more on those later).
• In unrelated news - my oldest daughter turned 4 on Friday - what a party that was. We prepared for almost a week - she wanted an unicorn-themed party so we gave it our best:
  
  Decorated the house with unicorns, I even created some unicorn heads (made of plywood) - as part of the party entertainment the kids coloured those and I will finish them up with some varnish and glue sticks to them to create hobbyhorses. Here how they look in their raw form:
  

And hello again.

It has been a while since I wrote something here and wanted to give an update on all major things:

• Weight is a topic not to be talked about - I went up to around 105kgs beginning of August and started doing "interval fasting" - so I only eat (or consume calories for that matter) between 8am and 4pm. So far my weight has dropped to around 96kg - still too much but a bit better. With a bit more workout it should go down some more (needless to say I never reached the 82kg that I targeted an eternity ago)
• Basketball is also a bit of a sore point these past 2-3 months. My back has been in a really bad shape - hardly allowing me to walk fast - not to think about running and jumping. Went to see a doctor and he recommended not to play my most favorite sport any more. So, since my back has been much better this past week I am going to basketball practice tonight (because I love this sport and am a bit stupid) - updates to come on how this went.
• Marriage went great - never looked back. Even got two little offspring as well by now - but this is about me! And nothing else (besides basketball and technology).
• That brings me to the technology part: My love for JSF has died down quite a bit (as it has for most of the industry, I think). The new hype is Ansible and Docker (at least for me) - but I don't want to bore my 10s of readers with this now - more on this in a couple of days.

What else is there to say: Tomorrow is weekend which is great - this week felt a bit like two weeks with a lot of things going on work-wise and private-life-wise. I am a bit surprised that this blog still exists but I guess it is true: The internet never forgets.