I just finished my first meeting of the day, next to come. Mostly listening in and asking some questions.
Then I have to do a small design of a conceptual integration with another IT system. A REST / JSON API connection. A simple connection only, one attribute, but loads of discussions ongoing. We try to keep it simple though.
Rest of the day is checking software developments and give feedback. Giving feedback is mostly asking questions, like have you compared the performance before / after this change, have you checked the rollback scripts of this change, have you completed tests’ etc …
At the end of the afternoon the kids will pull us into chaos and we need to prepare some food for us. Not sure what. I might prepare a quiche lorraine during lunchbreak intended for dinner.
If we are lucky we can watch one or two episodes of TBBT tonight.
Feel free to post anything you are doing today here. For those retired, preparing food, reorganizing books, cleaning up the attic, dropping off flowers at other people does defo count!
Adding filtering to the sort option on a web site that we provide.
Zoom Meeting.
Zoom Meeting.
Lunch.
Continue web dev.
Mow lawn ahead of bin day tomorrow
Feed family, tidy round, a bit of music later. Warning - may contain wine.
Treating Peening bench with Teak oil (day 2 of 3).
Pulling more nettles …
Preparing seed bed for last of the beans (very slow to germinate)
Sow peas in pots for new bed (this avoiding hens, rats and mice).
Water the garden.
All interspersed with music and reading.
Gardening day,trimming down conifers that belong to the property over the back fence,take them out altogether if they were mine,then some planting,but that’s down to my better half,and then finally the lawns,before settling down for a barbecue, of course that will lead to the best part of the day,Abbots Reserve !
A long day here. Liaising with my designer for a couple of bus lane trials, working on a couple of business case applications to government for some shared path (walkway / cycleways) projects for $20M or so of work, and finishing off a traffic assessment for a small extension of our local private hospital (funnily enough, where my wife stayed during lockdown).
Going to bed now. Tomorrow morning going to a high school to discuss the shared path connection to their school for one of the jobs I mentioned above, as we are preparing for construction. It’s the last stage of a large project that we have been building over the last 3 years, that I Project Manage for on behalf of the council.
None today, but yesterday evening I was working for a mental health charity and it wasn’t the easiest of shifts., so I’m somewhat exhausted today.
I’m retired, so I can take it easy today, but some of our volunteers work full time. I don’t know how they manage to do a shift and then go to work the next day; I’m absolutely in awe of them!
Yesterday was busy finishing repainting the inside of our garden fence and backdoor gate.
Sitting for a few hours amongst the bushes and shrubs with dappled sunlight and the odd bit of weeding was very uplifting for the soul. I can see why those hippies like to hug trees.
Today is a day off spent making use of the sunshine.
Working from home today. Currently going in to work about twice a week, with the workplace having a skeleton staff sufficient for the essential work requiring attendance, shared on a rota basis but flexible with demand. We initiated this as part of our own protocols to protect critical work capability by keeping people with particular skills from meeting and hopefully minimising the chance of everyone capable of doing a critical task simultaneously being ill or having to quarantine.
But I find working from home inefficient and frustrating, partly because online connection is variable, sometimes freezing up (possibly simply too many people working from home!). Partly because something like a quick stick head round a door and ask a question requires a phonecall and if the person isn’t free it means calling back or asking by email and waiting, or otherwise if I need a quick reference everything is there. And partly because there are too many distractions, things I’d normally do when at home that call to me. (And that is without young children around - it must be much harder in that situation.) The inefficiency means that in practice I am spending longer hours working (or trying to) than when I go in to work, and more time sitting. Current plan is that by week after next the default will be in work and exception at home, which will give me more of my life back.
We use MS Teams for meetings, which is OK as far as it goes, but the greater the number of people involved the more unwieldy, while some have poorer connectivity and have to turn off video. The start of meetings always takes a while because people seem to have varying difficulties getting in, and then of course (and it is an important part), there is time spent with people catching up with others they may not have seen for a while.
So this morning I’ve been sitting at a computer, with a tablet beside it for email and online meetings, right now needing a break from struggling to focus on a complex assessment - typing this giving me the break from it, something that in work I’d achieve by going and talking with someone about some other work matter. I’m in the music room, but most of the time I don’t play music as I’d end up listening to it not working, though I sometimes put something quiet on in the background.
I miss my daily cycle commute to work! I should really force myself to do something similar daily, but in practice I don’t. Instead I go for a longer ride once or twice a week: the last couple of times it’s been for about 3 hours.
On Teams and Zoom unless there’s a need to be seen, video is better off - it hogs bandwidth and offers too many opportunities for people to mess about changing backgrounds etc. Also set audio to mute unless you need to speak. Meetings end more quickly if people can’t be seen or heard. If it’s a social meeting ignore this.
Anyway. Tonight, 6:30 ITV4 a complete rerun of England v Holland from Euro 96. This was one of the best England performances I’d ever seen at that point. My lawn mowing can wait.
Yes, we do that, my observation was about people in locations with poor connectivity or bandwidth have problems with freezing or stuttering when it is them speaking, so end up turning video off. Length of meetings can be longer or shorter, but not inevitably either, though with larger groups in particular I’ve found it best if people flag up on the message board their wish speak - which is good if on a laptop, but on a tablet or phone the messaging seems to be possible only in a different view from the face screens.
Our Teams is the same although people are used to it now as we’ve had it for a year at least. No connectivity problems as they upgraded our VPN connection in March!
The new “hand up” facility looks good for controlling too many talking at once.
Every day now is mostly Teams meetings. No sign of us going back to offices for months I’d say.
Blazing sunshine here so out to sit in garden. Can check office iPhone for messages!
