Week Notes 21#42

My first week at the Data Standards Authority!

• A quiet week starting things off - everyone's been reminding me that's normal, but I'm not used to being not busy!

  • Found that there's a really great life-work balance so far in the organisation, and the super flexible approach to working habits is making it really chilled
  • Without a tonne of things to immediately jump into, it's been easy to log off at a reasonable time, and be much more restrained with my time, and ease in - hopefully that'll set me into a good rhythm that'll lead to a good life-work balance!

• Did my first bit of code review on my first day, and got my first PR in on the second day 👏

• First trip to the office on Wednesday:

  • Was nice to meet people in person, especially so soon since starting
  • Had some great sessions in person that would've been different if remotely - sticking post-it notes on a page, or sitting around a table just chatting!
  • Was a very reasonable start (0813 train) and managed to work on both journeys, so banked some hours, and found like it was a great commute as I didn't feel tired, and had a good productive time
  • Went out for a drink after work, and was nice to get some social time with the team
  • Felt surprisingly COVID comfortable, likely because it wasn't super packed, nor rush hour
  • Was happy cost-wise too, and managed to get a cheap first-class ticket on the way. I grabbed a bacon sandwich at 200 Degrees, and then managed to get one in First Class too 😋

• Been nicely welcomed by everyone, and it definitely feels like how I'd expect being in a startup / small company - DSA is over a dozen people!

• Managed to get most of the training sorted, so should be free to start getting stuck in a bit more this coming week

• It's been very odd being on my desktop for work - I've been so used to the split between work and home that it's odd there now not being a split. It's also quite nice, because I've been able to manage my music more easily, and with i.e. using the same GitHub account, it's not a problem. On the other hand, I'm finding multiple Google accounts a bit awkward, and I've definitely joined a few meetings with my personal account

  • It has been nice because I've been able to reply to OSS projects' conversations at the same time as being at work, whereas I used to be cautious about doing anything at work because of the Intellectual Property risks (a la Silicon Valley) I'm thinking at some point I may get a new laptop, as my XPS13 is getting on a bit, and it'll be a good travelling machine for both home and work

• Was good to start thinking about what we want to do in the future, and starting the process of defining our ways of working

• Got my API-related links in for Link Friday, which was pretty cool!

• Had a good start to the community side of things with the GDS folks, joining Infrastructure Weekly, #club-blogging, and learning about at least how the GDS approaches their tech

• Been nice but weird being on the same Slack instance as Anna and being able to share things

• With things being not that busy so far, it meant that I was able to pop in and chat with Anna a bit more

• After listening to Why Neovim?, I've taken this week's new machine setup to give myself the chance to test the waters

  • Really enjoying some of the nice things like the first-class LSP support, or the way that :%s/ shows updates in realtime

• Started work on migrating to using Spring Security's OAuth2 resource server, and enabling JWT support

• Morph's got back to being on edge, which has been pretty frustrating after so long of having a happy house

• Morph was snuggled into the blanket, and then stretched out, accidentally catching the blanket with his claws, and wrapping himself up in it, which was super cute, and it's the first time he's actually stayed under the blanket!

• Replaced the knackered central heating control with a new one - and even gone smart with a Nest!

  • Missed the initial chat on Wednesday, but was glad to be there for the install
  • Noticing around 1700 on Friday that the heating was showing as being "up to temperature in 30 minutes" for over an hour, which didn't seem right. Turns out that it just wasn't on at all, and after waiting some more to see if it worked, realised none of the radiators were on. Had a bit of a frustrating time trying to get it on manually - thought the boiler, the Nest overrides, but no dice so got in touch
  • Setting up a schedule for the electric blanket overnight definitely helped, and luckily it wasn't too cold a night
  • Fortunately they came early in the morning and it turns out a wire got nudged, and was all sorted. Still, not ideal
  • Been very cool having the ability to actually schedule it - after the controls being bust, and us only having to boost it - and keep an eye on it much more easily

• Finally set up the Google Nest Hub

  • Set up the photo frame mode with photos that I should really have got printed by now, but it's a nice touch, and it's especially nice getting to see all of them

• Had someone reach out to me on LinkedIn about supporting some calendar work, which I'm looking forward to seeing if I can do anything with

• Reminded that these are read by quite a lot of people

• Finally got around to calling John Lewis about my headphones, and having to send them off for repair is gonna be a pain with some commuting coming up

• Been getting the house ready for Rich and Soph next week, which we're really looking forward to

• Had the first mince pies, and found that Lidl are doing especially good Xmas muffins 😋

• Got a COVID exposure notification from one of the Pandas - who's fortunately feeling OK now - and fortunately we're still negative

• Got a tankard from Ikea to be my new preferred water glass

• Finally sorted out verifying my GitLab bot account so CI gets run against my projects for i.e. Whitesource Renovate PRs

Watched:

• Chaos Walking
  • A good adaptation of The Knife of Never Letting Go
• Modern Family
• Night Teeth
• Inside Job
• Atypical