Weeknotes #271 — Shout

It’s that short bit of the year where the lilac is out in full bloom.

Another busy week, but one that led into a three day weekend. Here in the UK we like to have our public holidays on Mondays, which means our ‘labour day’ holiday took place almost a week later than lots of other places around the world.

The weekend was as busy as the week. It culminated in me going out on Monday for my longest bike ride in years, a lumpy jaunt over the Chiltern Hills. Apparently, 25% chance of rain translates into ‘sunglasses until around midday then you’ll need a snorkel’. I broke a spoke early on in the ride and made a temporary fix by weaving it in and out of its neighbours. This was fine until it worked itself loose as I was hurtling down a hill at high speed. The noise it made was terrifying; both I and the rider behind me thought my wheel had completely given up. I managed to improvise a more sturdy fix and it didn’t give me any more trouble for the rest of the ride. The route was perfectly pitched for a longer day out. It was lovely to ride with some friends from the cycling club twice in one weekend.

Broken spoke, covered in road gunge, tired but happy.

This was a week in which I:

Had the regular programme and project meetings.

Wrote up the minutes from the previous week’s programme Steering Committee meeting.

Met with a sister company to review the latest design deck for our shared spaces in one of our offices.

Had a kick-off meeting with the various companies that will be involved in the design and specification of the audio/visual component of the shared spaces.

Met with colleagues to discuss the principles to be applied for an office seating plan restack.

Discussed our upcoming temporary move out and move back from/to one of our offices with the vendor that will be helping us with the changes.

Spent a day at a vendor’s office to take part in interviews for a general contractor for the construction/refurbishment that we need to do over the next couple of years. It was humbling to be knee-deep in a world that I haven’t spent a lot of time in — I’m a technologist, not a building or facilities specialist. The complexity of the work and the number of companies and individuals involved is mind-boggling.

Submitted my notes and a scoring sheet following the interviews.

Joined a meeting to kick off a conversation about how we will go about staffing and providing a technology support service to a sister company.

Booked some time off at the end of May. I’ve not had a day’s holiday since Christmas and I’m beginning to feel it. We don’t have plans to do anything but it will be good to be pottering around and not sitting at my keyboard.

Met with colleagues from our user experience (UX) practice to discuss how we might leverage their work in our small part of the organisation.

Had some good conversations about the positioning of my team and the work we will focus on in future.

Tried to diagnose an issue where I can’t decline incoming external calls to my Teams-based office phone number. I hit the red button but it just keeps immediately ringing back. Of course, I couldn’t reproduce the issue when we got someone from Microsoft on a call with us. I get so few external calls to my office number, I have no idea whether this was just a one-off or is something that will come back.

Got some objectives into the HR system. Before we know it we’ll be writing our annual reviews.

Said goodbye to our dishwasher after only a couple of years of service. Our kitchen refit has meant we have moved to in-built dishwashers, so we sold our old one. It sold after about 5 minutes of being listed on eBay; I guess this means that we could have got a little bit more for it, but we had to get it out of the way ready for the next phase of our kitchen refit.

Bought a chisel and then spent Sunday afternoon removing the final section of floor tile grout from the kitchen, ready for the new flooring to go down next week.

Before and after. Old towel to rest my knees and butt at various stages of the work.

Enjoyed a lovely lunch at Faire in Berkhamsted. Poached eggs, spinach and mushrooms on sourdough, all cooked to perfection. Pondered why nobody seems to give away toothpicks after meals anymore. I’m sure this used to be a thing?

Tasted as good as it looks.

Media

Podcasts

Inspirational interview with Hashi Mohamed by James O’Brien. A fascinating insight into the power of how you articulate yourself and taking things into your own hands.

Articles

Dismayed at the news that the Financial Times have agreed to a collaboration with OpenAI.

Baldur Bjarnason continues to write about the unsustainability of the AI bubble.

Video

Gave up on Netflix’s 3 Body Problem after eight or so episodes. The show had started to feel like work and I didn’t feel as though I cared about any of the characters. There was too much in the show and it kept getting more ridiculous. It was easy to switch off.

Audio

I’ve been discovering Tears For Fears’ 1985 album Songs From The Big Chair. The band’s hits were part of my life as a kid just by simply being part of our shared culture, so I knew some of the songs already. But the ones I didn’t know weave things together beautifully. It’s an incredible record. It starts with this which is a piece of pop perfection — what a vocal:

Books

Started reading Attack Warning Red! by Julie McDowall. A fascinating insight into Britain’s nuclear preparedness in the Cold War.

Had a chat with someone working in an independent bookshop about how much money they make from sales in the shop versus the contribution they might get from bookshop.org if they were the buyer’s adopted bookshop. She was very grateful for bookshop.org for saving so many shops throughout the pandemic, but it is still better to buy something from the shop than to order it on the Internet.

Next week: Kitchen progress, project progress a train strike and two online Album Club nights.