March Review

Another monthly review.

For the miscellaneous section finally the federal election was announced, and thankfully it will all be over in about five weeks. Now more than ever I have no interest in voting for either major political party.

A standard month of running with five parkruns of various success. My times bounced around but I was able to finish on a high with a 17:50 and 17:40. For a small change to my training I tried doing 17 x 400 metre repeats instead of the standard 9 x 1 kilometre. The times were only a little faster than the longer repeats, but my legs were sore for nearly a week from introducing a different kind of workout. Hopefully that's a one time issue and it will be easier the next time I attempt it.

The screen edge of my Garmin 935 has gotten worse so I decided to buy a Garmin 955 before it became unusable. I decided on the 955 instead of 965 since it was a bit cheaper and I wasn't sure about the AMOLED screen with the 965. After some shipping delays it finally arrived and has been going well so far, the 955 still comes a touch screen which is nice.

After celebrating a good month in the share market for almost the first time ever in February it quickly reversed trend, often dropping 1-2% per day and about 10% in three weeks. This is all before the USA tariffs come in to effect in early April which will be a big topic next month. After my $2000 health insurance renewal and $600 watch I though that might be the end of bills for a while, then I immediately got another $1500 for quarterly tax payments.

A bit of a quite period in sports although the AFL has started and Carlton still haven't won a game. The Melbourne Formula One was back to start the season, but it would have been a very dull race except for the rain towards the end. It didn't make me want to watch more races live.

The to do list hasn't moved much this month.

• Blogs
• Still none of the annual ones done yet
• Running
• Booked Sydney 10k race for May
• 5 races coming up in the next 14 weeks, with 3 interstate
• The second half to the year will be less busy
• Winter Holiday
• I'm running out of time so maybe Japan for two weeks will be the default option
• If I hadn't lost so much money in shares I'd be more positive about spending on a holiday

At work it was again that horrible time of the year when performance reviews are due. I put in a moderate effort to the process again, but I'm not sure it will matter. I finally finished reading a very long and boring Java 17 study guide, in particular I hated how complicated the sample questions were, and often there was trick answers that require memorising pointless details. Now I just have the final steps of reviewing my notes and doing all of the sample exams.

That's it for this month.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• None
• Music
• None
• TV
• Drive To Survive season 7
• Most episodes were quite boring and predictable
• Such as one whole episode for a Sainz contract and for Leclerc winning a boring Monaco race
• 4 out of 10
• The White Lotus season 2
• Good variety of characters with different stories
• Can't remember if it was better than season 1 or not
• 8 out of 10
• Video Games
• PlayStation 5
• No good deals have appeared yet