To infinity and beyond

As I’m writing this the final games of the Premier League season are being played. Man Utd are blooding quite a few youngsters and yet they’re a goal up. A good sign for the future.

Monday was the first day of work, and getting back into the swing of things. It didn’t take long for the desk area to get cluttered with multiple laptops and keyboards. A 34" ultrawide and laptop arm are on their way so this weekend will be dedicated to rearranging the workspace.

As with any onboarding process there’s a lot of admin to get through. This is my first role in the US and benefits such as health insurance, pensions et al are handled differently and need some getting used to. The staff has been super helpful with the new terminology and mechanics. One of the technologies I’m working with is K2 workflow with a SharePoint back end — previously I worked with JIRA. Workflows are much of a muchness in that sense. Making a piece of toast? Grab some bread, chuck in toaster, and off you go. But what if the toaster isn’t working? Oh… forgot to plug it in! You amend the workflow to include that check as a step.

Where things get interesting is the approach. You may have heard of DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Implement, Control) — applied to a process one should expect to see an improvement. I’m reminded of Brailsford at British Cycling and “the aggregation of marginal gains”.

Midweek I had a further 2 wisdom teeth extracted, this time from the right hand side. Previously I had one on the left hand side lower jaw and it wasn’t too bad. Soft foods certainly assisted with weight control. Something different this time was that the bleeding continued well after it was supposed to according to the check sheet. I was concerned but eventually replacing the gauze with a tea bag stemmed the blood and helped the healing process.

The following day a speed cube arrived — basically a souped up version of a Rubik’s cube. I was surprised with how smoothly it turned and how easy it was to manipulate. A pleasure to fiddle with. A couple of years ago I was able to solve 2 layers and I was happy I was still able to do that. Now I have an opportunity to work towards solving the entire thing!

And finally, Kennedy Space Center! When sat in amongst these beasts it’s mind blowing to see what was achieved so long ago and it puts things in perspective. Some of those older rockets with their rivets hanging and exposed wiring didn’t look like anything you’d expect to see taking someone off this planet. I felt spoilt by the movies and their vision of technology all sleek and simple. The intro to the Atlantis Space Shuttle was amazing — all the documentaries at KSC have been given the Hollywood treatment to heighten tension and drama. Not a bad thing as it was quite inspiring AND kept the kids engaged.