weeknotes for w/c 21/10/24

another incredibly busy week, and another Monday update. had a very long trek all over London on Sunday which meant i was absolutely shattered when i got home.

• on Monday morning, woke up with a really bad pain in my upper back. I think I slept badly, the pain kept going into Tuesday. it started improving over the next week, though! 😄
• had an incredibly busy week at work 💼
  • i handled an incident first thing on Monday with incredible grace and decorum, it was very fun (not!)
  • we welcomed a person who's just off sabbatical into the team
  • engaged with a handful of sessions at work for Black History Month, including a session on personal branding and confidence, and a session on careers and progression. they were rather interesting
• got new glasses from ace & tate, and they're quite the adjustment! they've definitely upped the astigmatism on this prescription. 👓
• i felt a little under the weather from the flu jab last Sunday, but powered through 💉
• discovered Excalidraw, which i've been using at work, is open source software
• went to rock karaoke on Friday night, followed by a techno gig until 1am. got home at 4am on Saturday morning, and slept in until midday. 🎸
• managed to knock out some life admin 🖇️
  • ordered some birth certificates
  • my Mous phone case is falling apart, and i need to replace it soon-ish. regardless, it shouldn't be too bad if i break my phone, because it's insured
  • renewed a domain, and moved a mailbox over to iCloud Mail
  • booked some holiday, finally! a few days over November, but at least it's something
• did some fun homelab stuff 🥼
  • set up node exporter on sunset, and configured a grafana dashboard. tailscale makes networking between my machine and my docker containers so easy
• over the weekend, i built a media server! 📽️
  • the build itself was unremarkable, but Fractal's Node 804 is a massive case. it's incredibly heavy because of all the drives in it, for sure
  • right before i started on the build, i realised needed an Ethernet cable to connect my PC to my network. i stealthily avoided what I call "the Curry’s tax" (Curry's exorbitant prices) by buying a 5m one from Screwfix
  • once i'd completed the build on Sunday, i realised i didn't have a keyboard. to avoid the Curry's tax again, i caught the bus to Richmond and back to pick up a gaming keyboard from Cex. Paid £1.50 for a keyboard that works, and i feel that's a steal
  • removed some crappy social apps that sucked up a lot of my time. i'm incredibly proud of myself