Weeknotes 246

Hello. Yesterday was probably the last day of the warm and sunny weather, and today it’s turned cooler and rainy for the coming week. Right now I love it. Ask me again in a month.

Thank you to the several readers who sent advice on which washer dryer to buy. Unfortunately most of the specific suggestions were ruled out by my need for an integrated machine, which apparently means everything’s twice as expensive and the choice is so limited that some popular manufacturers (e.g. Miele) don’t even make one.

In the end I checked Which? and bought the model they recommended — a slightly better version, in fact, because it happened to be on sale. I can’t believe how expensive washer dryers are but society dictates I continue to clean and wear clothes regardless of the inconvenience. I suppose if this one lasts me another ten years it won’t be so bad.

I live on the top floor and spent days fretting over the prospect of some poor soul having to lug a heavy object all the way up (and the old one all the way back down) several flights of stairs. But the two people who delivered it were very professional and it went surprisingly smoothly; an appliance delivery is an exceptional, world-stopping disruption from my perspective, but of course they do it ten times a day and just wanted to get it over with.

I’d preemptively bought “normal milk” so I could make a cup of tea to quench their thirst and my guilt, but they worked with such ruthless efficiency that there was no opportunity to offer one. After they left I broke the seal on the cow juice and tipped it straight down the drain, a full pint’s worth of cruelty needlessly exacted. hashtag ethical consumption

Anyway, it’s an AEG 7000 ProSteam® Condenser 8 kg (Which? chose the 7kg version) and I’m really happy with it so far.

It’s virtually silent compared to the bone-rattling monstrosity it replaced, so I no longer need to plan laundry around when I’d like to use my living room. Its beep is so gentle and melodious that, while it can be disabled, I have no desire to do so. And its door is openable immediately when a wash finishes, a qualitative improvement over the previous regime of having to stew for five minutes out of concern for the safety of my imaginary children.

Oh, and the clothes come out clean too. Whatever.

Being freed from the tyranny of a noisy, broken washing machine is such a significant quality of life improvement that I’m kicking myself for waiting until it nearly died instead of replacing it years ago when it was already obvious it was making me unhappy.

Records show that I said pretty much the same thing about my TV stand, mouseproofing, limited company and of course gutter. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, I don’t know what it is.

Work continues to be incredibly busy. Writing worknotes every Friday isn’t making me any less busy but, workload aside, I’m enjoying the opportunity to reflect on the week and pull together everyone’s work into a coherent narrative. I doubt anyone’s reading them yet but I’m already finding it a helpful exercise and I like the idea of building up a recorded history of the project instead of allowing those distinct little sedimentary layers to get washed away by geological time.

We have three overseas teammates visiting next week. Exciting/exhausting times.

High Agency Individual Contributor is slightly too real.

I’m still absolutely loving Astro Bot. What a game!

No spoilers: some of the levels are almost unbearably delightful. Any one of them could (and in many cases did) form the mechanical basis for an entire game, but instead you get ten minutes of fun and then it’s over and you’re whisked off to the next one. It’s an amazing flex to be so relentlessly inventive. I hope no marriages were ruined.

Also, one of the challenge levels is like… twice as hard as all of the other ones? I got through it but it felt like it came out of nowhere.

Anyway, nearly finished, but also ekeing it out for as long as I can.

I’m so tired of mistakenly thinking that things happened more recently than they actually did because I’m not properly accounting for COVID Time. Can we standardise on an exchange rate and stick with that? Like, January 2020 to December 2022 counts as one year?