zkbro

🗓ī¸ Weeknote 2025-W18

2025-05-05 20:04

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

🚴 Rode 76.4km / 881m profile - I did a big 60km ride on Saturday around our popular gravel trails, some of which I haven't done before. It was good fun. It was an easy grade trail, though my butt was hurting by the end of it, being out there for four hours. Hoping to keep the riding up. It's been a good substitution while the knee is recovering. I might do a separate post on that ride, but the photos are down the bottom.

đŸĸ Work has been interesting. On a positive, I've felt I've been providing a lot of value to the team, making decisions now on tougher problems, even directing the more senior staff. I pick up on things the other guys miss, liase a lot more with builders on site and generally feel like I'm maturing into my new career.

Sounds like I'm going to be taking the lead in hosting a Unify server on a Raspberry Pi for our clients who don't have Unify routers (use of Raspberry Pi to be decided). My tinkering at home has paid off. Love this intersection of hobby and work. I'm new to both the hobby and the work but I'm finding I seem to do well at being thrown in the deep end, so looking forward to this.

We've got KNX training coming up at the end of the month, and in the interim I need to tick off the KNX Basic Course (online module) for preparation. I'm really excited for this stuff, and the boss is backing me to become our expert so we can stop using a contractor and bring it all in-house. It is the core of what we do - integrating home systems.

On another note, given our job covers a lot of ground, I have felt a bit overwhelmed with how much I have to be onto it. There is one job in particular where me and another junior were on a site by ourselves with another 10 odd tradies doing their thing. The builders are starting to seal the walls, which means we need to make sure all our cables are run, and they have landed in the exact place where we need them so we can drill them out of the wall later. There are all sorts of little things happening like:

Might not sound like much, but all those problems take a lot of decision making. Might have to look at new paths, dive into the specs of the housing measurements, understand what material and tools we have on site.. etc etc.. And yeah, I feel like I had to make a few tough calls. I banked a lot of follow-up questions to make sure all was sweet, and since learnt I made all the right decisions.

All in all I think I'm stepping up my game well at work, if a little daunting sometimes.

🕹ī¸ I played some Hotline Miami 2. Only about 30 minutes, but it was fun. A lot like the first one, which I loved. I'm not a gamer, but this is just about perfect for me. Violent, retro, cinematic and non-technical.

đŸ’ģ I reinstalled Debian on the weekend. Really happy with all the things I learnt in the process. There's been a lot of subtle changes which are making a big impact on my workflows (is it actually a workflow? More like hobbyflow). I feel like my foundations are stronger.

One of the best outcomes is my folder restructuring, and in particular how I've synced my files across to my Android. I've made it in a way that all my notes are exactly where I need them in Obsidian (on phone), but also where I need them on my laptop.

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