So last week, my boss and I had a one-to-one review going over things that had happened since the last review. Generally OK, but he was definitely not sounding right.
Turned out that he had picked up covid, and since I was both sitting next to him and had a face-to-face meeting with him, I decided to test myself, but gave it a day before doing so to make sure if I did have symptoms they would have enough time to manifest properly.
I was clear and tested negative.
However my boss was bedridden for about two days before he started answering some of his slack messages.
Now, over the weekend, his bad luck got even worse, and we found out his dad passed away. So not only is he recovering from Covid, he now has to deal with the end-of-life stuff for his dad.
There's an expression in Chinese which literally translates to "misfortune doesn't come alone"
Wishing him a speedy recovery and I'm sorry for his loss.
This weekend was the coronation of King Charles III, the first new monarch for most of the people in the UK. Some may have been alive for the late Queen Elizabeth II's coronation but the are few now.
I was working coronation support cover on the Saturday from around 6:30am to about 3pm. Fortunately no major issues. One alert towards the tail end of the day, but that was about it.
Sunday were the street parties. Our local one was relatively small compared to the one during the Jubilee celebrations. Was great for the local kids though, and the weather was perfect for it.
Monday is a Bank Holiday so no-one was working in the London office, although the other offices were still working.
I chose today to retry doing my Manjaro file copy, and again it failed with checksum errors when I tried to back it up (even the btrfs check didn't manage to fix it)
I guess I'll have to restart my Manjaro attempts and not use btrfs -- probably return to using ext4 and lvm.
I'm still here, covid and the flu didn't take me out. Just been occupied by other things in life, including moving house. That is now pretty much finished.
My role at work has now changed and I'm now a Senior SRE, and with this comes a host of other tasks, including interviewing prospective new
So I went to the local McDonalds to pick up a coffee and light breakfast and they were doing takeaway only, and only providing seating for delivery partners, like Uber Eats and Deliveroo.
My normal local cafe has turned into a KFC-like chicken shop and now opens at 10am instead of the usual 6am. Disappointed, but I can understand why.
At McDs, I placed my order just as the manager was asking a customer to leave. As he was, I noticed he had a bottle in his hand. Originally I thought it was a Maker's Mark bottle, but actually looked more like a Courvoisier 1L bottle, which retails for around £35-£40.
This guy was nearing the end of the bottle when I arrived. Had he finished an entire 1L, 40% ABV bottle of Cognac at 6am in the morning? No wonder the boss asked him to leave. The boss was then on the phone, not sure who to, though. I waited for my breakfast outside, monitoring the display screen.
I've decided to put the McDs app on my phone in case that helps for the next time I'm ordering.
After my breakfast, I went to Tesco for the weekly shop.
I parked up and then noticed nearby (like three spaces away) was another Yaris. It was a black Yaris Hybrid, like mine, with a 68 plate (mine is a 67 plate). I thought "that's ironic", and went to do my shopping.
Came back after shopping, loaded up my boot, then sat in the car and tried to get phone paired with my car's Bluetooth so I can listen to my Spotify music on the journey back.
Just then I felt my car's back shaking. Looked in the rear view mirror and found someone trying to get into the boot. I'd already central locked the car, which means the boot won't open. So I opened the window and said "Wrong Car". The guy realised immediately what had happened, and so did I. He's the driver of the _other_ black Yaris Hybrid, parked but three spaces away!
Well, it’s the day after Boxing Day. The day where the majority of people who haven’t taken the interim days off on holiday, go back to work.
There was definitely a run-down feeling on the train ride into work and the trains were running a reduced (probably a Sunday service), so I ended up running for the earlier train since my normal one wasn’t there today.
Tine: I hear you have some vacation days coming. Planning anything big? Dilbert: I plan to catch up on all the work I couldn’t get done here because people keep interrupting me. Tina: That’s a sad vacation. Dilbert: Then why am I craving it right now?
For the next 90 days, devote the first 90 minutes of your work day to the one best opportunity in your life. Nothing else. Zero distractions. Just get that project done. Period.
Something interesting I found out yesterday. I was clearing out some old junk on my laptop and I came across a recording of a phone job interview I had a long while ago. Curious, I listened to it, and cringed. I made so many mistakes on that interview I couldn’t believe it, but during the interview, I felt I did pretty well. Surprisingly, I got the offer. I was in that job for a few years before being made redundant.
So, point of the post. If you can, record your interview if it is a phone one, and you can refer back to it later like I did and learn from it. If you got an offer, you can see what helped push your image across. If you failed to get an offer, you can see if you can determine why you didn’t get it by listening as a third-person.
A couple of months ago, I got hauled in front of one of the directors and given a formal written warning for both performance and going over the line in terms of access and what I was allowed to do.
A few months later, the company is offloaded with a high-priority (CEO-driven) project, onto which they put all their best and most-knowledgeable people (myself included). Now, one more than one occasion on this uber-high priority project, I’ve had to write things like scripts and conversion routines which are out of my jurisdiction, to which I previously got into trouble with, but they’ve been accepted for this project, presumably because they saved the company, and saved time. I also wasn’t supposed to touch a machine without being watched by a member of the tech team, but the same director that gave me the lashing and the verbal warning, asked me to come in on a weekend, work on one of these machines - and unsupervised, I might add.
So I get in trouble for using a machine, but then am asked to work on it without supervision?
A really nice article about Intro and Extraverts. My favourite quote:
General Charles Krulak, the former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, introduced himself to me as an introvert too. When Krulak took over as the CEO of a bank, he sat down with his vice presidents and said, “Everyone around this table has forgotten more about banking than I know. And because of that, I’m going to need and seek your advice. I may not always agree with you, and if I don’t, I’ll let you know why. If you get to a point where you don’t feel you can come to me, I’ve failed as a leader.”
To put it in perspective, a medium fries from McDonalds is 330 calories, so heading to and from work will burn this off.
This DOESN’T however, mean you can slack off the trip to gym.
Managers and businesses can be so hypocritical, it sometimes drives me up the wall.
I have a holiday allowance and I’m only allowed to carry over 5 days of holiday leave over to the following year - any extra days, I lose. I’ve been lectured by my boss many times about not taking all my leave. So, this year, I booked everything in advance. I had to pull one week off due to work load, and now my boss wants me to pull ANOTHER week off my holiday. When I told her about the excess doing this would cause, she told me “don’t worry, it’ll be approved”.
So, they can make me lose holidays when it suits them, and keep them when it doesn’t…
