Weeknotes #289 — Three strikes

Early on Sunday morning we had an incredible thunderstorm, with a lightning strike that fried the routers for a swathe of people in our street. It also killed at least two TVs, including ours. Thunderstorms typically don’t scare me, but when the sound hits your ears before you see the lightning, it is terrifying.

The strike before the one that did all of the damage.

Ended up awake with my eldest son paying us a visit as it woke him up. Incredibly, our youngest slept through it.

I’ve captured footage from the two closest strikes that hit us about a minute apart, each from two different angles. It’s the second one that does all the damage. Unfortunately, the camera that probably had the best view was temporarily taken offline by the second strike.

One thing the lightning did highlight is the need for us to sweep the cobwebs away from the front of our house.

The earliest I can get an appointment with an engineer from our Internet Service Provider is next Saturday. So I’m now assuming that I’m going to be in the office all week next week.

This was a week in which I:

Suffered from jet lag following the previous week’s trip to New York. My eyes were falling out of my head on Monday and it was difficult to catch up with sleep as the week went on.

Had the regular programme and project meetings.

Spent a lot of the week reviewing and discussing the detailed cost breakdown of one of our projects. It’s going to be top priority for next week too.

Met with vendors to discuss acoustic panelling, decorating and signage in one of our offices.

Agreed how we would move forward with the proposed cost model for one of our shared spaces.

Reviewed the draft technical architecture for the new smart environmental sensors that will be installed in one of our offices, ahead of next week’s architecture governance authority meeting.

Continued with interviews for the role in my team. I’m hopeful that we will conclude the process next week.

Joined the interim design meeting for the shared space in one of our offices. When we start getting into fabrics and textures and there are already half a dozen different views and opinions in the room, I tend to conserve my energy and let everyone else make the choices.

Agreed on a solution for getting TV feeds onto the screens in a new office.

Reviewed the pricing of Microsoft Copilot and Teams Premium. As much as I think there is way too much hype about — and inappropriate uses of — AI, there is definitely some value in the technology. We are going to look and see if we can find some of it.

Completed our final review of our annual operational risk self-assessment.

Caught up with our audio/visual design vendor for the first time in a few weeks.

Had lunch with a colleague and friend who has been out of the office for an extended period. It’s great to see him and start to work with him again.

Attended our weekly Learning Hour meeting, with our host presenting on the topic of being a drone pilot in the UK.

Got struck in the face by a MacBook Air. A colleague and I had a one-on-one meeting; as we got up from our seats, he fumbled his laptop and it ended up skidding into my head, just above my right eye. The rim of a MacBook’s screen is sharp. It was painful — there was blood and bruising — but my pain was at least equalled by how mortified he looked.

Am still regretting being missold two pairs of shoes six years ago. The fact that they are so uncomfortable, and were completely unused during the period of the pandemic where I worked from home, means that they are still going strong.

Had a lovely meal out with my brothers and parents for our mum’s 70th birthday.

Deleted my Telegram account. The news coverage of Pavel Durov’s arrest has been an education in how the platform works versus those that are end-to-end encrypted. I don’t need it in my life, so it’s time to say goodbye.

Had another enjoyable Album Club evening, with brilliant hosting. I wasn’t keen on the album, but that’s okay.

Added Gabriel Birnbaum’s latest album to Discogs. I’d lazily waited a few weeks to see if anyone did the hard work of adding it before I stepped in and did it myself.

Enjoyed my first outdoor bike ride with the club for a few weeks. It was lovely to get out riding again. The weather has turned just enough so that I doubted my clothing choice for the first five minutes, but it soon warmed up once we got going. I’m going to try and keep my running going as well. I ran in the rain on Sunday and it was actually good not to be melting to death when I finished.

Had a look at potential new carpets for the stairs in our house. The current carpet was laid almost 20 years ago and is starting to look threadbare.

Media

Podcasts

WB-40’s episode on rebooting hiring came at a good time, as I’ve been interviewing for a role in my team. “Recruiting for the human skills” struck a chord with me.

Articles

I had never considered that ‘estimated reading time’ could be ableist. I don’t disagree with any of the points made, but I know that for me — an able bodied reader, typically reading via one or two different ebook or ‘read later’ apps — it has been very useful to see this before diving in to read something. Maybe I’d get used to a different measure such as number of words?

”AI worse than humans in every way at summarising information, government trial finds”. This has often been my experience too, so I’m not surprised.

Video

Finished watching Lady In The Lake. It took us three episodes to get into it; just as we started to enjoy it, the show went overboard with one crazy long dream sequence too many. I’d worked out the plot twist before the final episode and the end was quite unsatisfying.

Audio

Two great songs that have popped up in various contexts this week have been Pushin’ Too Hard by The Seeds and Hangin’ On A String (Contemplating) by Loose Ends. Both gigantic earworms.

Web

What’s halfway between two places?

Lovely to find searchmysite.net, a search engine that focuses on the small, independent web.

Books

Reached two-thirds of the way through The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969-73.

Next week: A special celebration.