Week Notes – Nov 12 to Nov 24 2024
- 💻My work laptop was super slow and crashing a lot, especially after the company installed a zero-trust service called Zscaler on all computers. After complaining with IT, they said I was due for a laptop update anyway, because my current one was 3 years old. They issued me a new laptop, a Thinkpad with 32Gb RAM, intel i7 vPro processor latest generation with Windows 11. All I can say is that I’m not impressed. I mean, it’s not crashing anymore, but I expected it would be a faster machine looking at the specs. There is so much bloat, and everything is scanned five times in the name of cybersecurity. Very annoying.
- 🚗 Ours cars were all changed to winter tires, but we didn’t have any snow yet around here. It seems like the true Canadian cold is coming later this year.
- 🥂 Me and my partner attended the company’s Holiday Party this Friday. It’s the first year we had positive temperatures, it was +8C that night. It was weird not having to wear a full winter coat on top of my dress to get to the event.
- 📺 I watched this series on Nebula by Polyphonic “Hit Record: An Incomplete History of the Music Video” (it’s also available for free on YouTube). It a wonderful series of video essays, exploring the first attempts at making music videos, the rise and fall of MTV, VEVO, YouTube music and how we got to TikTok.
- ☑️ I had some back and forth with to-do list apps, but Nirvana is still my trusted system. I just can’t use any other app for more than a week. The issues I’m having has more to do with my habits and frequency of reviews, rather than the tool itself. Time to polish up my routines.
- 📚 We did a “Book Choose” meetup for our Book Club to choose the books we will read in 2025. We want to re-read the classic Neuromancer by William Gibson, get into the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (maybe we will read all the books in the series as an alt-read throughout the year), The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, among others. I’m excited!
- 📥 I got a new in-tray for my work office with more tiers to store my notes and reference materials. That freed up some space on my desk space.
- 🪑 I also got a cushion my work office chair because I’ve been having some low back pain while seated. I wanted to be a bit higher while seated and my current office chair doesn’t go any higher.
Currently reading
- Children of Memory (Children of Time #3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson
- Butcher & Blackbird (Ruinous Love #1) by Brynne Weaver
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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.