We started the month still recovering from a round of illness in the house in February. So an excellent start.

First weekend of March we got away to Balloch and met up with my brother and sister in law who were in the area on holiday. We haven’t seen each other in over 2 years so that was great. A good meal out at Slanj Restaurant which is a beautiful building and good food. Other than that we went to the rather excellent park around the crumbling castle at Balloch and the kids enjoyed going feral in a wide open space. The play park there is magnificent 10/10 would recommend and while they are occupied you can enjoy views of Loch Lomond and surrounding hills.

The second weekend was going to be a busy one for me. My partner was scheduled to go to London to see friends so it was on muggins here to look after both kids alone. I get anxious about that because a wee voice from nowhere goes: what if you collapse when in sole charge of two kids?

Well.. I have trained the eldest to unlock the door and get help from neighbours, and I have survived the worry a few times before. Take that anxiety! There is ever increasing evidence that things will be fine. Actually I wasn’t really thinking about this nonsense this time so I was in a better place mentally.

Unfortunately (on Friday 11th) she tested positive for covid by LFT test moments before leaving the house. Then a bunch of days later Kid A tested positive. This dragged isolation over two weeks. With kids going spare. All of us feeling “meh” it was a great time.

I had some annual leave when we were locked in. I used that time to do minor improvements to the house:

• I installed a full run of compliant fire alarms.
• I hung a fancy wall mirror.
• I replaced the toilet seat (yea.. It needed it).
• I built a new BBQ/Pizza oven for the garden.

Looky at pimping BBQ thing:

For the fourth weekend we were allowed out into society so we went straight to Blair Drummond Safari park and had a lovely time. Totally nailed it with the exact perfect weather and a long but eventually successful hunt for the fresh doughnut business (which has moved near the Dinosaurs). Not saying we only go their for the doughnuts, but definitely they need to happen.

In terms of exercise I was basically not at the races this month. I am learning to be kinder to myself by saying; we were sick, then covid trapped, and I now am still recovering from that. While I never actually tested positive I am definitely more out of breath than I was last month. So I have tried to ease back with walking again before getting the running shoes back on. The main thing is to ensure I do a little every day and then aim for fun weekends.

In the final week of March Kid A has managed four consecutive GOOD DAYS at school and home. This has never happened. They are trying things again (after being brave at Blair Drummond and doing a tonne of new things).

I have not felt this relaxed in a very very long time. If I can just get some exercise back on the agenda regularly I’ll be living my best life.

Media:

• 24 Season 8 – I love 24. I think it is absolutely hilarious and dramatic and brilliant. I am not convinced I have seen Season 8 before though. Surely I would remember Katee Sackoff and president “Nixon” coming back for more villainy? Or it could be that I am just simply old enough to have forgotten it. I have definitely seen the movie set after it with Robert Carlyle in it (Redemption), so the chances are high I have forgotten Day 8. Which is… Kind of great. Because I got to watch it again a-new.
• 24 Season 9/Jack goes to London – I finally saw this! It was everything I would hope it would be. The scene in Wembley stadium was particularly brilliant.
• 24 Legacy/the one without Jack – I can see why this season was not as well received. It just seemed that literally everyone was endlessly incompetent. Which I do think is mostly true of most seasons tbf, it was just more acutely felt. Early doors this features my favourite ever terror cell that totally fucked up their own shit without any CTU involvement. I found it hilarious. Honestly bravo. They were the best. It had some great moments but it was also a little under baked I think. I wasn’t aware it only had a 12 episode run so I was sort of waiting for more when it just sort of ended.
• Start Trek Enterprise – many people hate this series. I have always been a fan of it. You know that netflix can skip intros right? If you judge a series by its intro entirely then I think you might have missed some great shows. I think Season three with the Xindi is possibly the greatest single season of Star Trek as it has an overriding narrative with a mystery they are slowly piecing together. Then Season four is just criminally a short version of what should have taken 2 or 3 seasons to complete the narrative on.

Hacking:

• After about 4 months Mitre hit me with CVE-2021-44082 for the Textpattern XSS to RCE finding. The patch and details were already out there on pentest.co.uk.
• I posted a pentesting relevant blog on the physical security afforded by a Master Lock Key Box. I am in no way an expert on physical security. But I needed to crack the 4 digits to get one off a wall. Not going to lie, it was fun doing this. Doing things outside of your skillset is a great way to learn.
• I met an actual colleague in person. This has not happened in a pretty long time. So that was nice. Dare I say I might try and open the door to folks again to come and work from my gaff once Kid B is in full time nursery. I’d like it but maybe nobody could take sitting on hard chairs for a whole day lol. So maybe a bit of prep for that, I have time.

That was the month that was March 2022.