January has been full of events, big and small.
A dog which almost happened.
One of my big lifetime dreams since childhood has been to have a dog. First my parents didn’t allow to have one. In fact I think I didn’t even ask or insist much, maybe once. We had a very modest income in the family, and there wasn’t much left to feed another family member. Then I grew up and went to study in the University and didn’t have time and enough responsibility to take care of anyone other than myself. Long story short, after moving to the place where I currently live, I started thinking of getting a dog.
My first choice was to have a husky. I adored these dogs. And so I found several owners and met with them. Turned out that I don’t want husky and would rather enjoy looking at them on the street than having one living with me. Also a large dog wasn’t much of an option because my family members are afraid of them, and I feel like such a dog should live in a country house than a city flat.
Through friends I got to meet a dog trainer and border collie breeder. After having a long conversation with her and telling all about myself, my family, our activities, we settled on 3 breeds in the order of priority:
Boston is a perfect city dog, very friendly, loves to play with children, but if I want to take it hiking and camping, it would suffer greatly. Plus it would also attract all the mosquitos, ticks, and bugs.
After meeting a border collie owner, I decided that this dog while being really awesome is also not a perfect fit for me. I felt that it would be really hard to keep up with the amount of energy it has and the number of activities it needs daily in order to keep it healthy and entertained.
Finally, I found and met with a schipperke owner and fell in love with it. A relatively small dog with the character of a big one. Lives happily with children and other animals, relatively healthy (compare to other pure breeds), active enough to have fun with but not too much to get tired. And most importantly it’s a perfect companion during hiking.
With some help from a friend I got introduced to two breeders, both of whom expect puppies in Spring 2022. So it was set, I would finally have a dog! And then…
And a house which happened.
My other dream was getting a house. A proper house with a plot of land where I can grow vegetables and maybe have some farm birds like chicken or quail. I didn’t know if I wanted to build one myself or buy it from someone. So every now and then I was browsing ads and looking for land and houses that would fit my vision. And we found one in September. In fact it was so good that we booked it right away.
This January we have finally signed the contract and received the keys. The place doesn’t have any furniture nor kitchen inside, and we can move there after the kitchen is installed, which should hopefully happen in March.
And what about the dog?
Well, as of right now it would be irresponsible to get a dog because it requires a fair bit of money upfront: insurance, school, food, health checkups. So we decided to get a dog in a year or two when things settle down a bit.
Family school for adults
This January I started to attend family school once a week. This is fully sponsored by the company I work for. During the 3 hours and 8 lessons a certified psychologist will teach us how to better understand children and communicate with them using Thomas Gordon’s methodology. The main pillars of this teaching are active listening and conflict resolution. In addition to lectures, practical excersizes during the session, experience sharing, we are also given homework assignments. And I must say that on few occasions this has already been extremely helpful.
Security hackathon
There isn’t much to talk about it here as I have co-authored a blog post on Salv’s blog, with the help of my colleagues I organised a one-day security hackathon. It consisted of 2 parts:
- OWASP Top 10: theory and practice
- Analysis of Salv systems
Even though there were some hiccups in the process, I think overall the event was quite a success. And I enjoyed it myself too.