December 2021

Wrapping up the 2021 MonthNotes format with plenty festivities amongst family ailments, busy month with people movements at work, ramping up House Finesse efforts and identifying my audience with a content playing field.

Life

Tough month caring for my Gran with ongoing health problems
Finished decorating bedrooms, now with a dark decorative wallpaper in the master room (see featured image)
Wrote a family edition of “Night Before Christmas” as our Christmas card
Took Princess and other Brownie friends ice skating at Whitlock
Breakfast with Father Christmas back at Whitlock
Got my Covid booster before the big push from Boris
Trip to Leamington Spa for some private healthcare consultation for the Boy and a last Christmas shop (including a little vinyl indulgence with House Gospel Choir and a disco double)
Setup an old iPhone 6 Plus for Princess’s Christmas present #upcycle
Enjoyed BrewDog’s advent collection of (almost) daily beers
Full house of family for Christmas Day with Gran, Mum and Sis (plus partners) joining
Wiped out for 4 days over Christmas with NotCovid
Aladdin panto back at The Deco in Northampton
Trip to Birmingham to see old uni friends with all the kids
Bought a Smart ForFour from Cinch to replace the unreliable Mini Coops
Only 9 workouts (compared to November’s 17) – you can tell it’s December!

Work

Only the one office trip early on with Omicron causing concern and team absences
Joined Google’s DisCo (Disability Conference) for some enlightening talks, insights and formats which I shared with our in-house Disability Network (working title)
Started recruitment for another SSE but with revived standard TAG approach
Workshop with PSE’s to discuss how we could revive the Tech Grad Scheme
Self-assessed against the shiny new EM competency toolkit as a guinea pig for Gareth and Ed
Helped interview a new EM, Jamie – my first peer interview in the role – who was successful and accepted
Welcomed new SSE, Sertan, to the team, fast-tracking his onboarding before Christmas absences
Finally got the rubber stamp to proceed with the tech podcast but re-baselined expectations around timelines
Plenty engineer feedback sessions with LSE x EM x Eng tripods and 2 team Speedbacks
Invited Laveena along to discuss accessibility in teams at our (early) Tech Develops
Investigated Medium analytics using their API and an internal tool to get weekly / monthly impressions & engagements from our Tech Blog
Virtual festivities with the whole platform to have some Covid-friendly fun and downtime
Initiated handover notes from a fellow EM who’s handing over 5 engineers in January
Wrapped up for the year on 23rd December, downing tools for 2 weeks.

Sides

Fixed an overlooked HTTPS certificate issue on this blog following the EasyWP migration
Posted a month of #VinylAdvent on my Instagram, a mix of charity shop/eBay finds and archives from my collection
Tested out Exist app to compare with my Personal Dashboard and my PETALS model
Downgraded 6 Nations KickOff to a free Heroku dyno to save unnecessary costs
Introduced Disco77 to the House Finesse residency
Invited old chum David Dunne along for a Christmas Eve guest mix
Compiled my quarterly mix for the annual NYE celebrations
Lined up 3 international recordings for Make Life Work S08 including old F1 Calendar chum, Andy
Worked on a Content Playing Field to identify my blog (and socials) audience

Entertainment

Watched 📺

Deck The Halls ★★☆☆☆
Justice League ★☆☆☆☆
Back To The Future ★★★★★
Die Hard ★★★★☆
Don’t Look Up ★★★★★
Click & Collect on Netflix
Office Christmas Party on Netflix
The Social Dilemma on Netflix
The Girl Before on BBC
A Very British Scandal on BBC
Death to 2021 on Netflix
Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material on Netflix

Read 📚

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Blue Christmas Balls by Nick Spalding
A Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Secret of Giza (The Kwan Thrillers #1) by Ken Warner