This Week
I’m trying something new here, kind of a “state of the union” only the union is a person and that person is me and this might just be awkward and strange but we’ll give it a go anyway. I like the idea of writing a weekly report to keep myself accountable of how I’ve spent my time and where I am at with my goals. Hat-tip to Cate Huston for the idea. She’s a software engineer and all-around interesting person I met through … something I’ll mention later. Here we go!
Life
The sun is coming back!
I saw Postmodern Jukebox in concert on Wednesday at the Queen’s Hall. Their performance was energetic and joyful, but I was pretty disappointed by the lack of Robyn Adele Anderson.
FunkyPlaid and I celebrated Valentine’s Day over sushi dinner. <3
Fitbit step-count: ~40,000 steps out of my 70,000 weekly goal. Although I have recovered from the latest nasty bout, I’ve been hiding indoors a bit this week. However, I just started a 12-week wellness programme with a super-duper coach and I’m feeling very positive about it.
Work
We’re almost done coding the naming authority data in JDB1745! This means that if we search for persona records with the first name “Robert” it’s going to pull up transcriptions like “Robt.” too. This essentially enables fuzzy-text searching on first, middle, and last names, and allows us to say things like, “Hey, when you see ‘Robt.’ also look for Robert, Bobt, Rob, etc." This may seem like the simplest thing but 18th-century data sets are anything but simple.
I joined the Women in Technology Slack this week. Or maybe that was last week? I’m counting it for this week. It is filled with good people like Cate, and I look forward to the conversations there.
My weekend gig required more hands-on supervision than it usually does, which reminded me of two things:
- I enjoy teaching people, being enthusiastic about minutiae, and light record-keeping. But mostly I enjoy the teaching people part.
- Sometimes I have no idea what people here are thinking or feeling. That is mildly disturbing.
Writing
Scrivener word-count: 0 words of 1,750 weekly goal. Holy ugh. When I say my writing mojo has bottomed out, that’s what I’m talking about.
Hobbies
I didn’t volunteer at the Community Virtual Library this week; I’m trying to limit my in-world time while I get my writing schedule back on track. I visited my virtual cats, and that’s about it. (Yes, cats really do rule all of my worlds.)
My knitting projects are languishing just now because my arms and shoulders have been very sore.
Media
I finished reading Emma Healey’s “Elizabeth Is Missing” (my review is here) and started Laline Paull’s “The Bees”. I’m at 10% of my goal of reading 50 books this year.
The Daily Science Fiction story “Chocolate Chip Cookies for the Apocalypse” by Claire Spaulding got me all teary.
Top artists I listened to this week:
- Postmodern Jukebox, obviously.
- They Might Be Giants, because of Dial-A-Song Direct and also … I just love them.
- Punch Brothers, because Rdio said I might like them and the cover of their album is a Magritte painting. I wasn’t thrilled by the music.
FunkyPlaid and I started watching the TV series “Dead Like Me” (first time for him, a re-watch for me) and I am enjoying it immensely. I am not sure that FunkyPlaid likes it quite as much, but at least I knew where to find more Mandy Patinkin to tide us over until “Homeland” returns this autumn. #quinning
I finished watching the fourth season of “The Walking Dead” and I am so conflicted about this show. Mostly it just makes me want to play the game.