November 2021

A month of complicated blog migrations, new iPhone 13, plenty decorations, personal training, engineer recognition, Finesse milestone, Personal Dashboard focus, revived 80s movies and dyslexic heroes.

Life

Loads more decorating and DIY in the bedrooms to get ready for Christmas (thanks to local handyman help)
Viruses doing the rounds with the Boy off school for at least a week, me off for a few days and Mrs J fighting through
Christmas tree and lights went up mid-November to get the feels going
Trip to Birmingham’s German market marred by The Boy randomly fainting on the train
Princess featured in school newsletter dressed in full Children In Need outfit with her “unicorn” teacher
Compiled a presentation of dyslexic heroes with Princess for her school class
Swapped my iPhone 11 for iPhone 13 using Apple’s trade in and switched from Three to Vodafone – now cheaper and more reliable
Restarted personal training in the London office gym with focus on core, stretches and toning up
Kept a food diary in MyFitnessPal for 2 weeks to understand the nutrition balance of my average week (focus on protein rather than calories)
17 workouts totalling 7 hours 53 minutes (according to Personal Dash Strava data)

Work

Successfully got three engineers promoted from End Of Year reviews, my main goal in the EM role #AchievementUnlocked
Another successful probation review with our latest recruit
Resignation from one of the team’s LSE’s, spurring some creative thinking around people movements
Joined one of our WITs on their STEM Social virtual panel discussion
Lined up Laveena for next month’s Tech Develops
Three steps forward, two steps back on the podcast project (pilot episode, business proposal and OKR shared, still pending feedback and agreement to continue)
Presented a PETALS framework for measuring morale (blog post pending)
Prototyped objectives in GitHub projects alongside our new inner-sourced competency framework with Ryan

Sides

Outlined a high level roadmap for the next 12 months based on primary personal goals in Confluence (to be published in 2022)
Recorded guest podcast with Matt Asbury from Gymshark on Leadership in Engineering
Started booking in (relatively successful) international guests for Make Life Work S08
Impressive weekly downloads on House Finesse thanks to two guest DJ’s, Disco77 (our 100th episode) and Black Dynamite
Subtle growth in engagement with our On The Side community following the October slump
Loads of updates and improvements in my Personal Dashboard (inc tech/entertainment Monzo split, Twitter metrics and Untapped feed parsing), along with a (prolonged) blog post explaining my process
Several failed attempts to migrate my blog from Linode ($120/yr and difficult to maintain) to EasyWP (£30/yr and managed)
Recognised 15 years on Twitter
Let jobl.in go (again!)

Entertainment

Watched 📺

V for Vendetta (timely)
Ghostbusters: Afterlife at Cineworld (reminiscent)
Red Notice on Netflix (indulgent)
Home Sweet Home Alone on Disney+ (disappointing)
Last Christmas (festive)
Brassic S03 on NowTV
Expanse on Prime
Mr Robot on Prime

Read 📚

Pandemic: Extinction Files #1 by AG Riddle
The Extinction Trials by AG Riddle
This Is Dyslexia by Kate Griggs
The One Hour Content Plan by Meera Kothand