I’m in danger of becoming a slave to my calendar again. I know this comes with the territory of being a technical leader, but I need to ensure I’m not slipping into old habits. As we’re users of the Microsoft 365 platform (or whatever they’re calling it this month), I have set up Viva to block out at least two hours per day of “thinking” time, plus remind me to be mindful at the end of the day. Hopefully this will sanitise my calendar somewhat, and keep me from falling into back-to-back calls every day.
Finally, I’ve been able to plan a trip down to London to see everyone in the office (I’m home-based), but I need access to the company travel booking system; the joys of a large corporate org!
My Aunt and I managed to get some Choir practice in this weekend, more than we’ve ever done together - hopefully we’ll be strong and confident. The songs this term are some of the best we’ve ever sung, including: Rivers of Babylon, Circle of Life, The Seal Lullaby.
D and I had planned to have friends over Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but all cancelled for various (very valid I shall add) reasons. So we ended up playing “Horizon: Forbidden West” for three nights on the trot! Plus we’ve now enough Chilli in the freezer to last through another pandemic.
D and I managed to get over to his parents too, which was a nice change. His mother cooks an amazing Sunday lunch to boot.
We had some very obscure downtime on HucklowNet this week, which we’ve still not got to the bottom of. It appeared that the host hardware (everything is software defined) couldn’t make a link to the breakout switch from our WAN connection. However, only some hosts were impacted, and the resolution path was different for each router installation. One for the “wow I have no idea what is going on here” pile! I made the issue worse when I thought I was pressing “Upgrade” on my firewall, when in fact I was connected to the HucklowNet install, so disconnected some customers for ~30 seconds. As ever with accidental downtime, the longest 30 seconds of my life.
Finally, I managed to clear out one (of two) greenhouses in preparation for “Project Veg: 2023”. We managed to cut back the wild mint too, so that should grow stronger this time. Not that there wasn’t enough anyway; one could make mint tea for everyone for a year with the existing growth.
In summary:
- Busy week at work (but rewarding);
- Great feedback on my new role so far;
- Amazing Choir session (the time just flies by);
- Missing friends, but getting to play games instead;
- Gardening (inside as everywhere was frozen);
- Visiting family (with a free Sunday roast thrown in).
