A Horrid Day Follows Another.

2026-09-30

Are These Horrid Days Ever Gonna Pass?

There are mornings when you wake up and somehow know that the day is going to be difficult.

This morning, sitting here in the old, pristine cab of my enforced mobile office, listening to the rain and looking out at a thoroughly dismal morning, I find myself asking a very simple question.

Are these horrid days ever gonna pass?

I am making coffee.

Well, I was making coffee.

The gas bottle decided it had other plans.

Splutter, splutter…

Gone.

And somehow that seems like a fitting way to begin the day.

And Yet, I’m Still Building.

There is something rather strange about my life at the moment.

While everything around me seems to be conspiring to make ordinary life difficult, I am still building PlebMachine.

And yesterday, in the middle of all the other chaos, another piece came together.

PlebLauncher is now working.

It is a small floating vertical toolbar with eight buttons, arranged from top to bottom:

1. Everyday — the main PlebWare website.
2. Author — the Author section.
3. Study — the Study section.
4. Research — the Research section.
5. AI Helpers — the AI Helpers section.
6. Developer — the Developer section.
7. Graphics — the Graphics section.
8. Broadcast — the Broadcast section.

Each button has two jobs.

First, it tells PlebEnvironment which working mode I want by writing the requested mode to the PlebMachine request file. PlebEnvironment picks that up and performs the desktop mode switch.

Second, it opens the corresponding PlebWare website page in the browser.

But there is another important part.

When the mode changes, the appropriate ZenTree window opens with the applications catalogued for that specific mode.

So pressing Author doesn’t merely open a web page.

It changes the desktop to the Author environment, opens the Author ZenTree with the applications intended for that kind of work, and opens the Author section of PlebWare.

The same principle applies to Study, Research, AI Helpers, Developer, Graphics and Broadcast.

The computer is beginning to understand that what I want to do matters more than simply which application I want to launch.

And that, to me, is a rather exciting development.

Building the future while trying to get through today.

Yesterday Afternoon: Racing the Clock.

Yesterday I got home at about two o’clock in the afternoon.

There wasn’t much time to sit down.

I quickly cooked something for us to eat, ate my portion before leaving, and left a little behind for later.

Then I had to go to the alarm technician.

A few days earlier, the flats where the boss and some of his associates stay had been broken into.

The Bakkie normally sleeps there.

They had even nearly stolen somebody’s car.

So the boss had decided that the Ford Ranger needed a full alarm system.

The vehicle had had an alarm before, but after the mechanical problems and the computer box failure a few months ago, the old alarm had been removed and never replaced.

What remained was the immobiliser and anti-hijack system.

Now a new full alarm had been installed.

And that was where the fun started.

The Bakkie and the Alarm Technician.

At about six o’clock yesterday evening, I was supposed to take the Bakkie to the alarm technician.

The technician worked on it.

I drove away.

I hadn’t even gone a kilometre before the Ranger went into limp mode.

My suspicion was that the alarm was interfering with the vehicle’s onboard computer.

The computer, seeing something it didn’t like, was protecting the vehicle by switching it into limp mode.

I drove to the shop, fetched the boss, and we went back to the technician.

The technician disconnected something.

We went for another test drive.

It failed.

We tried again.

It failed again.

Eventually, something else was disabled, and the boss asked me to take the vehicle home and park it at my place.

So, at about twenty past nine last night, I finally parked the Bakkie.

I thought that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

And That Is How the Bakkie Got to Be Parked at My Place.

This morning I put the pot and kettle on the gas stove.

The gas bottle petered out just before the water boiled.

That was the first little disaster of the morning.

I made coffee for myself and Julian.

Then I decided I should warm up the Bakkie.

I started the Ranger and went back into the room to sort out my things for work.

Then the alarm started wailing.

I ran outside.

The anti-hijack button still worked, so I pressed it.

The alarm stopped.

I went back inside.

And then I couldn’t find the keys.

The Great Key Hunt.

Now, when you are already under pressure, losing your keys is not a small thing.

It becomes a major investigation.

I searched everywhere.

I had put on my secondary jacket, a sleeveless mac that I wear every day because, when it is raining, I need somewhere to keep things.

I searched its pockets.

Nothing.

I searched my pants.

Nothing.

I used a torch.

I looked under the table.

I looked under the bed.

I moved blankets around.

The cat was lying on the bed, and I was trying not to disturb it while conducting this archaeological expedition.

I patted myself down.

Nothing.

The problem was that the tracksuit top I was wearing was padded.

The keys were in its pocket.

I simply couldn’t feel them.

By this stage I was getting seriously frustrated.

I was becoming late for work, and it was nearly turning into an argument with Julian.

He kept asking:

“Can’t you remember where you put it? Surely you must remember where you put it?”

Which, when you are already tearing the place apart looking for something, is not particularly helpful.

Eventually I took off the jacket.

And there they were.

The keys were in the pocket of my tracksuit top all along.

The padding had simply hidden them from my fingers.

So the great mystery was solved.

The detective was the culprit.

Finally, Work.

I eventually got to work late.

The boss asked what had happened.

And then there was another little problem.

I had to put two pints of oil into the Bakkie because the oil level was low.

Last night, when the vehicle had gone into limp mode, I had checked the oil and seen that it was low.

But that wasn’t what caused the limp mode.

The alarm was.

Once the technician disconnected the relevant alarm cutouts, the limp-mode problem disappeared.

There was still one complication, though.

The technician hadn’t completely disconnected the alarm.

This morning, when the anti-hijack system kicked in, the alarm still blared.

The good news is that it no longer cuts the vehicle out.

The technician removed the cutouts.

But he didn’t remove the entire alarm functionality.

So I still have a rather noisy problem attached to my Bakkie.

And Now I Sit Here.

And now I am sitting here at Crown Mines.

It is raining.

The weather is miserable.

And I am wondering how the rest of this day is going to go.

There is a hollow feeling in my stomach.

I am frustrated.

I am depressed.

I don’t know what we are going to eat tonight.

I need to hold out R300 for gas.

The prepaid electricity meter is ticking down.

I put R50 on it recently.

I had planned to put another R50 on, but I don’t have it.

And this is the sort of thing that makes an ordinary problem feel enormous.

Because it isn’t just the gas.

It isn’t just the electricity.

It isn’t just the food.

It isn’t just the vehicle.

It is everything arriving at once.

One Thing After Another.

The break-in.

The alarm.

The Bakkie.

The limp mode.

The technician.

The late night.

The empty gas bottle.

The alarm going off again.

The missing keys.

The argument.

Being late for work.

The low oil.

The rain.

The electricity meter.

And the uncertainty about dinner.

One thing after another.

And after a while you stop looking at each problem separately.

They become one great weight.

And you find yourself asking:

Are these horrid days ever gonna pass?

For Now.

For now, I have to do what I have done before.

One problem at a time.

One hour at a time.

One day at a time.

Because somehow, despite everything, I’m still here.

The gas bottle may be empty.

The electricity meter may be counting down.

The Bakkie may still have an alarm that has a mind of its own.

The rain may be coming down outside.

And I may not know what tonight’s dinner is going to be.

But I’m still here.

And the story isn’t over yet.

📰 Captain Gemini
with ChatGPT