It turned out to be a very low key weekend due to the weather, we basically stayed in. Some friends were due to come round on Sunday but we postponed this as they couldn’t travel, meaning that we had quite a lot of food prepared that we had to eat ourselves. It’s a really hard life. On Sunday I also learned that the Riverford Field Kitchen recipe for Beetroot Rostis is pretty good although - middle class problems alert - I couldn’t source any horseradish root.
Watched “Buy Less” on Netflix. Recommended.
Monday
5h 19m sleep: 66bpm resting heart rate: 14st 12.2lb weight. Earworm: Loser by Beck.
Went for a run first thing and managed 48 minutes of running in around 90 minutes, using 12 intervals of on average 4 minutes each. Since it’s been 11 days since my last run because of weather and illness, this hurt like hell. I’m warming up for the first 5k I’ve done in a very long time, which will be the Exeter Santa Run this coming Sunday.
I was at the Hub today and had no scheduled meetings, so got on with stuff. More dataset wrangling and bug reporting/testing for our main CKAN instance, mainly, but also did some data cleansing for another project. At home later I fell asleep during Only Connect.
QOTD: “Consider the situation. There you are, forehead like a set of balconies, worrying about the long-term effects of all this new ‘fire’ stuff on the environment, you’re being chased and eaten by most of the planet’s large animals, and suddenly tiny versions of one of the worst of them wanders into the cave and starts to purr.”
- Why humans like cats: Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat
Tuesday
5h 51m sleep: 64bpm resting heart rate: 14st 13.4lb weight. Earworm: Night School by Frank Zappa.
Early start at the Hub, I began by looking at cash flow and developing an algorithm to ensure we all get paid for our work whilst ensuring the company has enough cash to survive. This is in advance of an expected invoice being paid for one of our biggest projects.
Further preparations also for the CKAN switchover this coming weekend, and some backups being taken for another project. Things are ok but I’m starting to fret about how much upcoming work we have and how we’ll tackle marketing. I also need to get back onto the CPD wagon.
In the evening we watched an iPlayer documentary about ultra-processed food, interspersed with the Bake Off final, which made for some slight cognitive dissonance. To be fair I wouldn’t eat 80% of things that are made on GBBO - too much dairy and/or sugar content - I just watch it as it’s quite wholesome TV.
QOTD: “The collapse of civilization is kind of annoying for me, personally.” - @donni@mastodon.social
Wednesday
5h 59m sleep: 66bpm resting heart rate: 14st 13.8lb weight. Earworm: Starcrossed by Ash.
Began the day with some data export/backup type work, where data replication took longer than I expected. I was always wondering what was going on, but knowing that poking around in the database would probably kill it off, it was Schrodinger’s migration.
I then did a bit more preparation for our CKAN migration at the weekend, starting to feel quietly confident which is always a bad sign. This involved some swearing at a python script. My potentially unpopular opinion is that you should always do things manually rather than writing scripts to do them: this is contrary to what any data engineer or devops person will tell you, but frankly I’ve never done the same thing twice and I’m such a bad coder that it always ends up taking me far longer to code something rather than move a couple hundred rows around manually. This is also terrible advice, but it’s how I feel having spent most of the day swearing at code.
I also did some manual data enrichment and cleansing work for another client, low level stuff but this is 90% of my life it seems. Finally, I started to think about building a marketing system, and made up an invoice for a recent job. This is something that I hate doing but I always get a little glow once it’s done.
We rewatched the food documentary, as there were things we both wanted to get out of it, but unfortunately I fell asleep half way through. So corporations are bad, eat real food if you can, I might try again this evening.
QOTD: “Every once in a while, news comes to me that I have made a bad person angry and when that happens, let me tell you, it is an absolute delight.” - @evacide@hachyderm.io
Thursday
5h 28m sleep: 65bpm resting heart rate: 14st 13.8lb weight. Earworm: Open Up by Leftfield (feat John Lydon).
Poor sleep once again, and global events have been weighing on me. I know it’s nothing I can change etc but even so. Lots of changes coming. And then my partner confessed she’d assaulted me (gently) with a pillow in the middle of the night as I was snoring. That would do it.
Got to the Hub to the good news that we were booked for an event in Plymouth next week. Discussed that a bit with our data lead, Lucy. Then got massively distracted by some shithousery with the house sale. Tried to drag myself out of that and back to work mode.
QOTD: “There’s no feeling like getting a piece of code to work. I must have experienced it at least twice during my 40-year career in IT” - me
Friday
5h 33m sleep: 65bpm resting heart rate: 14st 13.2lb weight. Earworm: Pizza Boy by Everything Everything.
Spent the morning at my Dad’s house trying to work out why the buyer’s builder had been so scathing about it. To be honest I still don’t know. Sent all the emails anyway. My niece is in A&E and my thoughts are largely with my sister as a result: we will have to deal with the house stuff later. Did a client call from there over lunchtime, tethered and freezing cold.
In the afternoon I had a catch up with Lucy and we arranged to co-work one day next week. Reviewed my week and sent some more emails, then started preparing for the main CKAN switchover which will happen (mostly) on Saturday while my partner is babysitting her grandchildren. Tune in next week to find out how it went!
QOTD: “What I’m basically asking I think is ‘Can I cure travel sickness by dressing like a pirate?’” - @afewbugs@social.coop considers the potential benefits of only having one working eye.