I’ll try to be a bit positive this week, or at least less negative. Things are resolved, even if not in the way I’d have liked. Fortunately I’m not a monarchist, so events of the week haven’t conspired to darken my mood any further. As usual I’m mildly surprised by a lot of people’s reaction to a royal death – not saying there’s a right or wrong way to feel, but personally I don’t find it any sadder than the death of anyone else I don’t know.
Most of this week feels like it was taken up with preparation for the next edition of our modern software development practices “bootcamp” (it’s not a bootcamp) for more of our Indian colleagues, which started on Friday (half a day a week for a month or so). Despite the fact that we’ve been running variants of the event for the best part of a decade (well I have – other people have been and gone), we kept up the tradition of making substantial changes at the lest minute – this time by creating an example Java project to use for demos and (hopefully, with a bit more work) some of the practical exercises. Have I mentioned that I hate Java? I realise I’m being unfair, and it’s improved massively since I last used it in anger (around the time when Java 7 came out), but I’ve never really used any of the new stuff so there’s a lot of looking up to do. Everything feels ten times more complicated than it should be, coming from the dynamically typed worlds of Ruby and Elixir.
As of Wednesday, I’ve been working at BT for 30 years, and without (touch wood) having taken any time off sick. I got a very pro forma recognition note, which is a bit ironic given that personal is one of the company’s three core values, but also £500, which makes it churlish to complain. Unfortunately it’s not cash, so I have to turn it into a voucher for one of a choice of retailers to be able to spend it. First world problems.
A fairly busy weekend (apart from this afternoon). Started Saturday with parkrun as usual, then popped round to Jane’s to lift up the slabs that used to be under the greenhouse I dismantled earlier. To be honest it wasn’t a hugely useful job, as all I’ve done is move them to the edge of the garden where they’re still slightly in the way, and I still need to pick them up again when I eventually sort out transport to bring them and the greenhouse parts from there to here. At least we established that they were just laid on a layer of sand (which Sky immediately went and lay in) rather than concrete, which will make turning it back into lawn much easier. Then after waiting for a gap in the rain to ride home (and a chat with her mum, who’d turned up to visit and whom I hadn’t seen for ages) I headed back out to Caroline’s 40th birthday party, which was enjoyable although I’m not really a party person. I even had a quick go on a bouncy castle. I was very restrained and left before 10pm after only a couple of beers (cans mind, not pints), on the basis that I was racing in the morning.
I’d entered the Langham 5k/10k, even though most other people were doing the Ipswich Half, and ended up only knowing one person there (they’d have made a killing if they’d reopened entries after the announcement that Ipswich was being postponed). I thought it would be amusing to enter both distances, with the 5k starting at 9am (actually ended up being 9.10, which cut heavily into my recovery time!) and the 10k at 10. The plan was to hit the 5k hard, then see what I had left for the 10, and it didn’t go too badly (20:23 and 44:25 respectively). Despite being Billy-no-mates I hung around afterwards for a burger and just in case I’d got the age group prize in the sparsely-attended 5k, but I missed out by one place.
My Beer52 delivery arrived today, so that’s another month when I’ve failed to cancel it. If you want me not to do something, make it involve phoning up a human.
I’ve fired up the pizza oven for dinner, and decided that not only was it too cold outside this evening for shorts, but that I needed to put a jumper on too. Nearly Christmas.