Weeknotes 148

On Monday we needed to drive back from our new house to collect our cars. Of course there was also more stuff to move. I hurt my back loading the car but luckily this was after the vast majority of the carrying had already been done.

It seemed fine on Tuesday. Is this a sign that my time in the gym has made me more resilient to injury or do I need to spend even more time focussing on my back?

Speaking of which, I have been to the gym 4 times this week as planned. I’m pleased about that. I don’t love the gym I’ve joined but that was almost inevitable as all change is bad. I’m going to try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes. At least I’m exercising in the meantime.

Food has been less successful, but not horrendous. Just too many bad foods rather than any bingeing behaviour. It’s hard to be super healthy when you’re driving for hours and trying to find your forks.

As you’d expect, this week was dominated by moving-in activities.

• We can now wash clothes as the washing machine is plumbed in and working well ✅

• The fridge incident was resolved by some joiners who cut down the worktop a tiny bit and removed a skirting board ✅

  It was a stressful experience as they enthusiastically started cutting within much consultation, but the worktop was left in a good state. However after they left we discovered that the fridge was missing some paint from when they helpfully moved the appliance into place. Oh well.

• Trip to IKEA (on a Saturday!) for random bits of “make do” furniture just to make the place habitable for now.

• I’m experimenting with new shower heads because I’m a fun guy.

• Still no sign of our bed frame…

Hardest Problem in Computer Science: Centering Things

Even if it’s hard. Even if tools make it inconvenient. Even if you have to search for solutions. Together, I trust, we can find our way back to putting one rectangle inside another rectangle without messing it up.

Why do programmers love complexity? Most claim to hate it, and espouse their desire to simplify. Until, that is, you try and replace their clever code with something simple.

They’ll make excuses to justify what they want the code to be. They’ll cite readability like its some form of objective measure. Readable doesn’t exist except for the original author of the code.

The code isn’t just for you. It’s for everyone else later who has to make a change. Every time you’re clever, or overly concise, you’re making it harder to change.

This bikeshedding is burning me out again.

I discovered LYFT via Paul Battley this week. It’s a hardware and software project to replace the controller on IKEA Bekant desks to add features it doesn’t have like presets. I am the owner of an IKEA Bekant so I might look into this or other similar projects.

I had planned on replacing this desk in the next few years, but the in meantime it would be nice to enhance it with more capabilities.

My new chair started squeaking a month or so ago (can you sense a theme?) so I contacted Steelcase support to see what they could do. They surprisingly offered to replace the entire chair, which is the correct thing to do, but still a surprise.

You’re not going to believe this – another pair of shoes (a different brand) starting squeaking!

Yes, I’ve emailed them too.

The move seems to be affecting my car usage as I had hoped and anticipated.

We drove up on Monday and I only used the car once during the working week, and that was to pick up some large items from the supermarket which we couldn’t reasonably carry whilst walking. Over the weekend we took a couple of trips, and I’d expect this to be more the norm.

The first week in a new place is not a normal week, so only time will tell what routine I settle into. The impulse to “just drive” is still in me after needing to drive to do almost anything before.

Less driving means my step count is increasing. I’m now getting around 4000 steps in before I start work just walking to the gym and back. This was often the total amount of steps I would get in a day before 📈

You’re not Facebook. Why use their tools?

I have come to believe that “whatever Facebook does is an anti-pattern” is a much more useful heuristic.

My reasoning goes like this: you are not Facebook.

I obviously totally agree with this article.

They can afford to pay developers obscene salaries to compensate for the moral injury of working at Facebook

I. Love. It.

We’re now moving in to the honeymoon period.