A month of a new job, more hospital visits, fresh #FinesseFriday music, another football calendar project and retro vinyl indulgence.
Work #
It was my first month back at ASOS, albeit in a different role and domain. It was made slightly shorter with a week off for Easter with the kids but it’s been quite full with onboarding and learning the environment.
Some highlights include:
- Getting to know 12 different engineers I’m responsible for line managing. Everyone has their own story and personality which makes it a curious process understanding their motives and development plans.
- Organising my thoughts, days and actions with a new Trello arrangement that I could use cross-platform (Mac and Windows); a column for each team with cards (plus photos) for each profile and checklists for actions (one for me, one for them).
- Encouraging and facilitating everyone to make the most of our revived monthly day of learning (known as Tech Develops), helped along with a little order of Moo stickers to motivate some engineers sharing their knowledge at the end of the day.
- Getting back into the community of practice model with fellow EM’s - something I struggled to get moving in my last role, especially with lack of peers to bounce conversations off. I’ve already jumped into some global initiatives such as Returners to Work (women who took a career break now ready for a new job), Coffee Roulette (meeting others) and Lightning Talks (to encourage engineers knowledge sharing).
Home #
Bit of a mixed bag this month as spent a lot of time with Mrs J in and out of hospital with ongoing chronic illness problems, to the point we even called an ambulance out last week.
Side tangent: 999 told us they wouldn’t send anyone and to call 111, they immediately initiated a call out but that took nearly 4 hours to arrive. Paramedics suggested we drive to A&E as it’ll make no difference if they took her. It took 2 hours to be seen and another 4 hours before they sent her home with pain management. On returning for scans in the morning, no records were available despite 2 medical staff typing away duplicate notes plus a folder of paper going missing. I love our NHS but somebody needs to manage the process better.
Mrs J wasn’t the only one with health woes; Princess had measles and The Boy shingles (again!) over the school Easter break. My custom-fitted orthotics were collected from the clinic with rehab exercises now a daily habit in Ticktick. No noticeable improvements yet but give it time. Follow up assessment is in 6 weeks and I’ve got 40 odd years of bad posture to correct.
Sides #
- #FinesseFriday has continued to engage with the subscribers and listeners as weekly download counts seem to be growing week on week, thanks to a guest mix from Ben Hedley, an adhoc session from LYP and some great fan selections from the archives
- With #FinesseFriday gaining traction and listening back to the archives, I decided to re-register funkyhousefinesse.com for anyone who tried to find them. For now, it’s just redirecting to the archives list but there’s lots of audio content that needs restoring from my backups.
- In preparation for the upcoming EURO 2020 competition, I’ve started to build another football calendar platform with the inspired name FootballCal. Focus is on MVP with rapid iterative releases; content is already published but the design needs desperate attention with new features and improvements planned on the Trello backlog
- Time Journal needs some love. I’ve been meticulously recording my half hour units for several months now but really need to revisit what I’m trying to measure and work out how to get that.
- Whilst sitting around in hospital, I took the chance to review the content on Mrs J’s young adult novel website, Astral Lariat - only minor updates but a good reason to keep the domain handy for when she finally has something to publish and share.
Entertainment #
Some TV highlights from the past month include:
We also inherited the Jobling family vinyl collection which was a welcome surprise from my dad. He was clearly more rock focused with plenty Led Zepellin and Thin Lizzy whilst my mum more disco/pop with Diana Ross and Whitney - guess which one I prefer? Something for everyone though as even the kids enjoyed some of music’s finest moments on a physical medium.