Week Notes 22#12

The bee I tried to save last week did not survive long, even after having a bit of water and honey

• Stayed in London for Cat's 30th birthday!
  • Was lovely to be there for the day, having a chilled day in Marlow, lunch at The Ivy and enjoying the nice weather
  • Had a very yum dinner at Social Dhaba
  • Had a very yum Mojito cake for Cat's birthday cake, which I was very glad to get a good takeaway slice to enjoy over the next couple of days
• My last week at The Cabinet Office:
  • Nice to have a few folks turn up to my farewell, although I'd not been there that long, and that lots of folks are on holiday!
  • Finalising contracts in next couple of days so will have a post out to announce where I'm off to next
  • Sad to leave so soon, but still very invested in the work the team are doing and excited to see where it goes. Also very excited for my next step!
  • Had a lot of pain trying to send passwords for accounts in an encrypted form, despite a previous article on it, and found that it's likely that I only tested Linux → Mac, not vice versa
• Cookie the doggo arrived in our lives!
  • First of all, she's so cute! Lovely little girl, and she's quite nice and affectionate, but also happy to just sit and nap
  • She's been doing especially well given the fact that she's been through such a tough week - with the 48 hour drive from Romania to the UK, and then a day in kennels before travelling with us
  • It's definitely been a bit of a shock to the system for us, and we're already seeing the impact of only fairly minor sleep interruption on our Wordle/Quordle games
  • I'm absolutely loving the cute way she just plops herself down i.e. on a blanket, when she's ready to settle. Reminds me of - an albeit vaguely aggressive - plopsy that Morph does
  • She's a little bit bigger than we thought - probably closer to 40cm, not the 20cm we'd been told, but as it's been a couple of months since she was first put up from adoption, she's grown a bit
  • She's got the cutest floppity ears, and it's been so fun watching them bounce as she walks or runs around
  • Morph and her haven't successfully met yet, and there's been a lot of hissing and growling, but Morph has been coming closer, spending more time near her, and being comfortable with her presence. He's not taking food from hands that smell like her, but he is still taking the food which is good
  • Found that my Zak George preparation has largely gone out of the window, and I definitely need a refresher - "No Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy", and all that
    • Potty training hasn't been going well, and we largely think it's due to Morph and him being around when she's going out, so she's a bit more stimulated than need be
  • She's been a little more confident trying to leave rooms through slightly open doors than Morph has, but we've only had one escape
  • She's teething, which doesn't help, and we've had at least one tooth come out already which is good
  • Definitely seeing some separation anxiety that we're trying to work on - mostly for Anna, but both of us do have an impact if she can't see us - whether we're getting things from the kitchen and she can't see over the island, or we're out of the room
  • Listened to a lot of "calming music for dogs"
  • She was a bit of a stinky girl, and we had a very successful first shower with her this morning, which although it may not have been as completely deep a clean as we'd want, she smells and feels a lot nicer, and seems happier too!
  • Getting a bit of garden envy of the other Paws2Rescue folks, who have "normal" gardens with flat grass and no 🦀 cats
  • It's felt very surreal having her here, after wanting her for some time, and waiting for ages, to now just be a doggo parent
  • Starting to feel a bond grow with her for both of us which is nice, and hoping that this weekend gives her a bit of time to settle in before we bring about some routine this week, while we're both on holiday
  • Got through a lot of comfies and PJ bottoms, as I've got them quite muddy with kneeling outside
  • She's really loving sofa cuddles
  • She's been doing a weird growly nom on her leg just before she settles, which we're hoping will reduce
  • Lots of crying/barking as part of her separation anxiety, leading to a rather noisy day 😅
  • Finding it much harder to pick her up than Morph - not just because she's less comfortable, but also a much less bendy composure than a cat!
• Lots of personal website/Micropub work:
  • Largely around Micropub, and making it possible for full context support, so a listen/read/like/bookmark/etc shows more information about what it's related to
  • Been some rewriting of internals, making it more generic for retrieving context for posts, and a fun technical interview style "how do you de-duplicate this list of objects"
  • Made some caching and general Hugo improvements on my site which have shaved ~25 seconds off a build on a GitLab shared runner, which is pretty ace, but still very slow - hoping to make progress with my site being rendered in CloudFront Functions / Lambda on-demand
• Started work on IndieAuth token exchange for micropub-go, but ended up just ideating as I didn't have time to actually get hands on keyboard this weekend!
• Got a fair bit of traffic for my post last week about OpenSSF Scorecards, as it's appeared in a few security-related newsletters
• Lots of time in the garden, listening to podcasts, and mowing the lawn, pressure washing the steps up to the parking spot, and tidying it up
  • Which has been very good cause it was very long grass, and means that we've been a lot more comfortable with Cookie sniffing around in it, because we know there's likely to not be much hiding in the remains
• Got a Pixel 6 Pro, as my phone caused too much anxiety, and I didn't want to be stressing more about my phone, not having the ability to take (good) photos, etc
  • Moving around money late on Wednesday
  • Ended up ordering it in the middle of the night, as I needed the loo and saw all my money was moved around, but ended up not checking the delivery address 😬
  • So Friday afternoon I had to walk - in 18° heat - to and from Capital One to pick it up 🙈
  • Was well worth it though, I've had no stress because of it, and have got some great photos with the new camera
  • Not a great idea not getting a case as it's so slippy and has been quite frustrating really
  • With it being considerably wider than the Pixel 3A I was on before, one-handed browsing (i.e. while brushing teeth) is much more awkward
  • Was a bit of a pain migrating to a new device for my Okta Verify passwordless auth for my website, but got there in the end
  • Really enjoying having wireless charging, although it's weird having the hum of the charger next to my head
• It's wild how quickly the house has descended into chaos because she's been taking up a lot of time, and we're avoiding doing too much when she's around - partly to keep her company, but also to reduce other noises, albeit it won't help as much with separation anxiety
• Been enjoying having peanut butter for quick energy boost and to keep going until next meal
• Very surprised that sofa with pizza and Cookie didn't go perfectly first time, and we had to fight her off from eating pizza, but she settled in the end and it taught her that it's our food, not hers

Listened to:

• 1984

Watched:

• Zak George's Dog Revolution
• Couples Retreat
• The Lovebirds
• Special Correspondence
• The Boys: Diabolical