Matisyahu's Blog

It’s been over a month since making the move to Firefox due to the Chrome development team becoming increasingly hostile to end users and their ability to run content blocking extensions by creating a crippled extension framework in the name of ‘security and privacy’. The one thing you quickly learn as you get older is to be sceptical of those who claim that they’re doing something in the name of ‘security and privacy’ in much the same way when politicians start to take away your privacy and individual rights either in the name of national security or some moral crusade that believe they’re fighting on behalf of. With that being said, it is important not to become paranoid and end up down the rabbit’s hole only to end up with the real loonies such as the anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers etc. but a healthly level of scepticism is always warranted when those in power make decisions then try to justify it in a paternalistic way.

Next year at the end of May 2024 I am looking at travelling to France then through Great Britain on a guided tour and part of that has been making sure I have enough hours for the trip which means I’ve cancelled the extended time over Christmas which is ok since Monday and Tuesday are my days off which are also Christmas day and Boxing day which is good enough – I might ask my boss whether I can work from home over Christmas and New Years. I’ve also decided to not take the day off before I fly out along with giving me an extra day after I come back which saves 32 hours. Long story short, I’m now only 8 hours short which can easily be fixed up by working a few holidays to make some extra money and a lieu day.

When it comes to finances, things are going very well, things are back on track and although it is going to be a tough year ahead I believe that ‘short term pain for long term gain’ will pay off in the long run if it means that I can focus on putting a good amount of money aside in my Kiwisaver for retirement – although I have a feeling I’ll try to work as long as I can to keep myself occupied. The other part is getting into good health, losing some weight which will help when travelling and then finally if everything remains on track then the end of next year there will be the Pixel 9 and I’ll upgrade my phone to that assuming something remarkable didn’t happen such as iCloud allowing more than 3 email addresses per domain or by some miracle Apple fixes up the extension framework shortcomings that makes running uBlock Origin on Safari impossible because of the missing functionality that uBlock Origin needs so that it can run.