Week Notes 20#53

A bit of a blue end to the year / start to the new one.

• Ended up spending Tuesday, my "secret" day off work (as it was going to be for travel back from the family, but then as it was outside the recommended dates, it would've been spent at home not with the family), working on my content-negotiation library before finding that the various Open Source libraries that do provide a MediaType are a bit too big / unlikely to be pulled in as a dependency
  • I'm going to pull out the MediaType code into a new library that mine can depend on for ease of consumption
  • Been really frustrating tbh, and has taken a fair amount of time and back-and-forth when I just want to get it done!
• Found Wednesday and Thursday difficult to focus, get work done given none of the team were in, and generally have motivation. This wasn't helped by the fact that on Thursday morning I came into my laptop not charging, and having some calls with support to get a new laptop sent out before next week's planning week. Fortunately it started charging and I got backups, but new laptop should be arriving tomorrow to de-risk it!
  • That being said, I did some log digging and found some error conditions one of our services isn't handling well, so it's going into my value improvements epic which is good!
• Not sure I'm super ready for work to start again, as I don't feel like I've had enough time to really relax amongst everything else - although we're more unpacked, the house needs a bit more tidying and cleaning and not being able to outsource some of it is making things difficult
• Potentially having my Dyson bust didn't help, and with motivation pretty low, I ended up not doing anything about it (yet)
• Had a lovely social time with Emma and Andrew
• New Year's Eve was a bit different this year - we had a chilled night, but similar to the year at large, we enjoyed our own company, me playing some Apex Legends for hopefully the first time of many with Andrew, and Anna watching TV, after a nice chat with my fam, and the not-usual Asda pizza and some prosecco, and keeping an eye on Morph with the fireworks that ran until 0130
• New Year's Day was especially blue, but was a good sofa day - we watched Death to 2020 and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2020 to put an end to the year, and chatted with the gang
• Forgot to put the green bin out, and missed the second chance I could've got it emptied due to lack of motivation
• Got our Hues set up around the house with motion sensors, making the house much more homely and feel nice to just walk in and out of rooms and lights be on!
• Morph's still doing OK, and feels really settled. But having two cats enter the garden this week and stand off with him has been not as much fun for him, but he's still OK and enjoying inside. Thinking this week we'll let him roam the house a bit further, before maybe letting him out the following week
  • This evening he walked up to where his water usually is, and just sat there looking at the empty space despite it being pretty near, and waited for us to move it back 😹
• Thrown my hat in the ring for organising an EU-based IndieWebCamp which will be exciting!
• Had a two-part meal tonight cause KFC sent a cold half of the meal with only one burger, but it was OK in the end
• Been enjoying reading folks' "2020 in review" posts and am a bit gutted I've not done mine yet - especially as I need to do 2019's too, and don't want to let that get too far behind either
• Requested my Spotify data so I can write up 2020's music in review
• Found that Google's integration with Hue is bust, as I finally unboxed my Nest Mini that I got through Spotify last year, which has been pretty annoying - not least becuase it's been dead for several months!
• Taken the Christmas decorations down
• Enjoying our new Laconian overlords, but also disappointed we won't (maybe yet?) see them in The Expanse's TV adaptation
• It's been super chilly, but we've also got some great snow this week
• Hoping to get to bed early and start Ring Fit to kick off the week in the right way!
• Watched a lot of Saturday Night Live on YouTube
• Watched Office Christmas Party
• Watched The Bourne Identity
• Anna got a bread maker, which has been very exciitng, and we're hoping to start reducing our need to go outside for key supplies (i.e. bread)
• Realised we probably should've cut my hair, as it's very much getting in my eyes