My dishwasher just installed a security update.

Mōrena friends. Can you help a sister out?

Folks who follow my writing might remember I got myself caught up in a set of circumstances last year, supporting a friend running for local government.

As the situation spiralled into craziness and harassment, one of my discoveries was that local government electoral officers don't play the part you'd expect. In my situation, the electoral officer discouraged complaints and gave me incorrect information on his own statutory powers - even after I provided him with evidence of really concerning conduct by a candidate.

Other people started to reach out to me. My situation is far from unique - problematic stuff is happening around the motu.

The issue? In part, it's because councils, which are often small, don't have much choice except to contract out running elections. Contracts go to one of two private businesses. Businesses aren't subject to the OIA or Ombudsman, and don't have an incentive to actually deal with complaints.

A bunch of organisations, including Transparency International NZ, have asked lawmakers to consider bringing local government elections under the Electoral Commissioner. I think it's time to kick the issue up a notch, so I've done a petition.

I'd love you to sign! Once I've got enough signatures to be credible, I can start a bit of a comms mission, approaching people and organisations for support.

Love your work, friends!

https://petitions.parliament.nz/2fe0e8ed-1e3e-48d6-951d-08df19b09cf8?lang=en

"If you ever watch people type, see if they use shift or capslock to make capitals. It's not 100%, but odds are quite high the capslock people learned to type on an onscreen keyboard and not a real one."

The kids are not ok.

Reminder that April is procrastination month.

So, anyone else going to Kawaiicon at the end of the month?

Finally got Kim's hat storage sorted.

Ever had those books that you loved but when you came back to re-read them the spell had faded and the magic's gone? Here's my list of books that didn't stand up to a re-read:

- Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
- Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Any more suggestions?

All that child-raising and then one day they get to the point where they say "Dad, can I make pad thai for dinner tonight?" and they make it and it's good.

Next: cleaning up too!

The advantage of having a non-connected car, is that when Android Auto starts having problems connecting, I at least know that one side hasn't changed. #ConstantUpdatesNeverTerminate

@thomasbeagle @Seedoubleya I’m so old I can tell you when a company migrates to a new ERP just by looking at a handful of KPIs. If it’s a real dent, they’re moving to SAP 😆🤣

This is the entire classified ads section in the local newspaper. The newspaper is pretty skinny too, I don't think we'll have it much longer.

The pizza in question! It was pretty good. The 15yo had their regular tomato paste, onion, mushroom, black olives, and oven chips pizza.

I think I'm going to make my asparagus pizza with a basil pesto sauce, lemon zest, and fried tofu. With a sprinkle of olive oil.

No cheese because vegan and not really a fan of vegan 'cheese'.

'tis the season! So my question is:

Asparagus on pizza?

Many years ago I used to work on a Cobol-based application that ran over an 80x25 green screen terminal. People running 30 or 40 users on a 486 PC running SCO Unix hooked up to a multi-port serial card.

We'd never have tolerated the amount of waiting between actions or screens that is now considered absolutely normal on web-based cloud-hosted applications.

Weird how things change.

People talking about Japanese tech stagnating and came up with this wonderful line: "Japan has been living in 2000 since 1980."

If I'm selling a car for $2500 and they want to transfer the money from an ANZ account to a Westpac account.

a) How long does it take?
b) Is there any risk to me?

I'm apparently a bit out of date.

Edit: Apparently it's pretty well instant between accounts at the same bank, can take up to an hour between banks. Main advice is to wait for the money to show in your account as there are scammers who will fake the transfer.

The film Digger was both interesting and very odd. I couldn't say whether I liked it or not, but at least I wasn't bored.

A few years ago it really felt that vegan food was on the march - new products, better support in restaurants, life was just getting easier and more delicious.

Now that's all evaporated with products disappearing completely or just no longer being stocked by supermarkets, and once reliable restaurants dropping vegan options. It's a bit of a pity really. #Vegan #VeganFood

💚 #auspol