Weeknotes for week 10, 2023
The week of March 6th.
We have a remote "code fika" at the end of the workweek.
It can get faltering and awkward if there's no clear plan or topic, so we've tried to be more intentional lately. This week it was my team's turn to come up with something, and we wanted to break away from always doing presentations.
We started by doing the HTML Tags Memory Test together. Sad to see it did not include deprecated oldies like or , but we had fun and got to 100 out of 113.
Then we looked up the ones we hadn't gotten or weren't sure what they did.
After that, we looked at one of the core classes (Company) of our monolith. Explaining concepts to newer coworkers, cleaning up code, discussing approaches etc.
It's a rich vein – there's a lot more to look at.
The movie theme of the week was Harrison Ford on the run.
First The Fugitive (1993), then Witness (1985).
The Fugitive was good but not as good as I remembered. The plotting was rather lazy – convenient things happen so the plot can move forward, and Dr Kimble survives one-in-a-million gambles because he does. It also had a weirdness to it (not the good kind) perhaps due to a high degree of improv.
It was great when he drive-by doctored. I'd watch more of that.
Witness was excellent. Very well plotted – everything just followed inevitably from what happened before. The ending steered clear of tropes a lesser movie wouldn't have.
Work on the house continues.
We had both a plumber (fixing a minor leak) and a roofer (fixing a downpipe and, turns out, a fair chunk of roof) come unplanned the same day, which was a bit intense.
I think the painting of the dining room table and chairs is all done. Upholstery fabric has been decided and ordered.
Bedroom curtains have been decided and ordered. The price made me think twice, then I realised I could knock a third off it by making them 4 cm less wide – fewer rolls of fabric 🧠
I think all cables for my desk are finally acquired and tamed. I'm very pleased.
I got a new, neater cat tree for the home office and it was graciously accepted by the clients. Always a worry.
We went to Manchester Museum to look at dinosaurs and mummies.
While we waited for our time slot, we looked at the stunning old university buildings next door. I'm not sure I like Manchester on the whole, but it has some very nice buildings in it.
On the day of unplanned tradesmen we also had the pleasure of receiving a planned friend.
We passed on two jigsaw puzzles. One is accruing artefacts – a note from the previous owners, and now from us. A tally of missing pieces, a date and location, and a soundtrack recommendation.