Weeknotes 81

Back to work, just in time for one of the periodic internal hackathons. I got to contribute to a regular expression implementation which was a fun change of pace and tied nicely into my interests. The timing was accidental but it turned out to be a nice way to ease back into work after a holiday so I might try to arrange it intentionally next time.

I’m feeling a bit better this week. The holiday blues have lifted, and the heat’s eased off enough that I could enjoy a sunny ride across London to meet friends for an ice cream and a walk along the river. Today there’s been a thunderstorm which has helped immensely. The air conditioner has been stood down.

We started the new season of Ted Lasso which was reassuringly fine. The previous season was long enough ago that I can’t quite remember what was so good about it, but this latest episode was wholesome and watchable if not actually funny. Maybe that’s what it’s like.

The Last of Us Part II continues and is still exactly as great as I remember. Annoyingly it’s giving me a bit of motion sickness so I can’t play it for as long as I‘d like to. I’ve had this for first-person games in the past, particularly walking simulators, and apparently my brain is now having problems with third-person games too. (It can’t be because of the higher frame rate, right?) I’m a bit sad about this cognitive deterioration but I’ll just have to work around it and limit the length of my play sessions.

Amazingly there are three separate threads of energy-supply drama running concurrently in my life at the moment. The least tedious one to explain is that a neighbour discovered “his” gas meter is actually supplying my flat and vice versa, which means we’ve been unknowingly paying each other’s gas bills for the last five years.

I’m hoping our energy companies can sort this out between themselves, although it seems inevitable that either I or my neighbour will have paid a large amount of money for gas we didn’t use, so I’m apprehensive about whatever drama that might cause. Because I have zero appetite for this sort of complication, my ideal resolution would be for everyone to move past it and chalk it up to experience, even (or perhaps especially) if it turns out that I’m the one who’s been overcharged. No more jobs.

I’ll spare you the even less interesting details of the other two threads… for now.

Due to a farcical sequence of events I’ve ended up with four varieties (plus decaf) of Dark Arts Coffee beans at home, so I get to pick which kind to make with breakfast every day. This isn’t the sort of thing I’d do deliberately but it’s really nice. Coffee’s delicious isn’t it? Try coffee.

Book nerds will be relieved to hear that I did eventually get the second edition of The Elements of Computing Systems. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I hope it’s got Tetris in it this time. 🤞

I’m beginning to lose hope that the 2020 Olympics will be cancelled.

11.6kg down. Clawed back a little progress, but can I keep it going?