🗓️ Weeknote 2024-W47

2024-11-24 21:24

Some random front-of-mind pieces from my week.

Rambled a bit. Sorry not sorry.

🩸 Health - My nose and cough have improved, but still battling the headaches. I'm weening off the drugs so hoping all will come right this next week.

🏢 Work - First week in my new job down. I am absolutely loving it. Perfect amount of physical and technical work. The role is Installation Technician for "smart home" technology. It is very varied work, predominantly on residential new-builds, with some retro-fitting. High-end stuff, connecting devices across a home (heating/cooling, security, lighting, audio/visual systems, wireless access, roller doors etc) into control systems (network hub and touchpad consoles). All low-voltage so we're not stepping on the toes of sparkies, though they contract us out and we work closely with them.

I'm coming in fresh. No experience in electrical, but I have had a history in trade (landscaper), and software back-end stuff (surveying, GIS, asset management). We're going full hog with training me up as quick as possible. Feel like I picked things up relatively quickly already. Everything felt right. I could drill through timber and concrete no problem, climb a ladder, use a circular saw, screw in bits and bobs, talk crap at smoko. I knew most the tools they were using, picked up some others. A lot of it is about leaving enough "insurance" of extra cabling and wires, in case a decision is changed down the track, or some other tradie chops through something.

I left some notes down further in Daily Notes, but first couple days, after I was onboarded, was "pre-wiring" - running cables on a new-build before the ceilings and walls are put up. Incredible how much cable runs through the walls.

Then moved onto another job further down the way (walls and ceilings were up and painted, or being painted), so we were fitting switches, testing all the connected devices into the network hub, installing TV brackets, and a dish on the roof.

Last place was a retro-fit, replacing a security system and remounting a 75in TV to a wall.

So yeah, a lot of different stuff. I enjoyed getting on the tools again. Getting along well with the small team of 5. All very supportive, professional, good human beings.

🏃 Ran 17.01km / 641m - Pretty chill. Trying not to put too much on my plate right now with the new job. Plus, the headaches!

🍴 Dad got me onto mussels. Can't get enough of them now.

🌱 Planted some Chinese Cabbage. A friend has recently made some baek kimchi (I think from memory) which includes pears from her tree, so I'm going to grow the cabbage and in a few months hopefully we'll do a big brining session and get jars and jars of this yum gut explosion.

Mowing the lawn regularly now. Seem to be getting a good amount of rain between sunshine which is keeping us all on our toes. I saw one of Council's contractors out there yesterday who I know through my last job. Had a good chat and she said it's a bit bonkers this year. Sounds like a new contract manager is working closely with them to tackle the priorities right.

Broad beans are ready to harvest.

💻 Last week I decided to remove myself from Windows, and try out Alpine Linux (which I had installed on my older laptop but hadn't really used too much). It was way more than I could chew off. Simple tasks like reading a USB or adjusting sound was a nightmare. I eventually got stuck in the console, and cracked it, so went to the shops on Saturday, bought a couple of USB sticks and went all out trying to get a couple of bootable USBs up and running that weren't Alpine - Ubuntu and Debian. After a few trial and errors I finally got the sticks ready with dd (and blood, sweat and tears), and my two laptops had a race installing Ubuntu and Debian simultaneously. My old one got Ubuntu while my new one got Debian (new laptop + Debian won the race, naturally). And boy am I happy with Debian. It is so refreshing after all the farting around with Alpine. I jotted down some notes while I was at it. I'm sure Alpine is great if you have more experience than me. I don't regret trying it, certainly learnt a heap of stuff.

💻 I forgot to backup my buku bookmarks before wiping my laptop, but managed to write a script to convert the HTML of my links page into the right format to pull back in. I'll get back on to some link stash posts this week.

💻 Website - I broke the RSS, but fixed it again, due to Alpine requiring an older version of Zola (my static site generator).

💻 Tools

• lazygit - Such a clever effecient little tool for git in the command line. I've got it sitting at the ready now for this website. Once I've published I'll just press a couple of commands to get it pushed to GitHub. The colour theming help remind me of unstaged works and things.

• debian OS - So far this distro has been a very pleasant experience. I think I'll be here a while.

🎧 Listening to...

• Chilltrax online radio - The guys at work had this playing in the office and I thought it was such a chill playlist. Got it playing at home right now. Community supported. Love it.

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