Work
I went back to work on Wednesday this week, to find a crazy number of emails, almost none of which I actually needed to read. Maybe I should set up some filter rules.
After wading through the emails, I removed some docker stuff, which is no longer necessary now that we’re using SageMaker. I also redid a little of the RFC work, after it turned out that some confusion had occurred: there’s going to be an amendment to the RFC doc to clarify matters.
On Thursday afternoon, I visited the FCO to talk about searchy things. This was my first visit to another department, which the person I was going with found really surprising. I think it’s easy to miss out on that sort of thing as a dev, normally it’s the product managers and content designers who go for visits. Sadly, I didn’t catch sight of Palmerston, despite entering the “Palmerston Zone”.
Miscellaneous
Books
I read volumes 4, 5, and 6 of Overlord, which included some good setting information which the anime didn’t really convey at all. I wish it were more common in book adaptations to have a narrator who can explain things, rather than trying to convey everything visually, or through characters awkwardly talking about things which are common in-world knowledge, just so the viewer knows what’s going on.
I ordered a few more volumes, which should be arriving next week.
Coronavirus
I went shopping earlier, and noticed the toilet paper and hand sanitiser sections looking a bit barren. Earlier in the week, there was a message sent around the whole office, saying that people have been taking the hand sanitiser from the toilets, and to please stop.
It’s a bit silly, and I hope things return to normal swiftly, when all of the hoarders realise they’ve got three months of supplies.
It’ll be interesting to see what the long-term effects are (other than people dying), will remote working become more common once people have got used to it? Or will employers say “right, crisis over, everyone back in the office”?
Self organisation
I’ve been using fortnight-long “sprints” as part of my self organisation system for about a month now, and I think it’s working pretty well. I’m not yet very good at estimating how much stuff I’ll get done in a sprint, but I have been more focussed in what I get done.
It’s easy to feel productive by doing a dozen small tasks, but if there’s a lot of more important tasks you’re procrastinating by doing those small tasks, are you really being productive?