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What did you do this week (and weekend)?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I got an interview for a promotion at work. Normally I'd be happy but I'm very "meh" on it.
Just last month I had an interview for a promotion at work, I prepped like crazy, aced it, and got the job. However, it's a 2-year secondment, so after the 2 years are up I'll end up back in my old role losing out on money in the process, which sucks.
My senior manager was sad to see me leave the team I'm in, but she told me there were jobs coming up at the same pay grade as the secondment I've got. She even spoke to HR and one of the directors on my behalf and found out if I went for it and got the role I could do my secondment and then just take up the new role in two years time.
When the role came up I almost felt like I had to go for it. It is a role I want don't get me wrong, but I'm burned out on interviews, especially since I went all out on the one I got. Either way, I applied and got an email today confirming that I've been offered an interview next Wednesday at 9am. It'll be competency based and I also have to give a 5-10 minute presentation.
I genuinely have zero desire to do all this again, my weekend has disappeared under interview prep, and I just feel no drive to work on it but I'm gonna drag myself to do it anyway.
Sounds stupid and it is, I should be happy, but in my head I can't get into it, I'm just done for the time being. I want to sit back and enjoy the work I put into getting my new role, instead it's like I'm being told I can't just take a moment to relax.
Other than all that, it was my daughters 2nd birthday yesterday, we went to a safari park and she loved it seeing the lions, monkeys, tigers, rhino, and giraffe.
I don't think that sounds stupid at all. Interviews, especially ones that require you to do presentations (the worst!), are stressful AF. And having to do that immediately after interviewing for another temporary position is crazy. Hopefully all that hard work will be worth it in the end though, if you land the permanent position. So good luck on the interview/presentation! :)
Yeah, the last interview I did for the secondment I just got was difficult, felt drained after it and now I've got to go through it again for a job I won't actually do for two years.
Having the security that I'm not gonna drop back to my old role and pay after the secondment is over will be good and it is nice to know the senior manager and director she spoke to think that highly of me that they've looked into sorting this for me.
However, like you said, it's so stressful and putting myself through this again is just making me anxious. Thanks though, fingers crossed its not for nothing.
If you prepped that heavily before, maybe give yourself a little bit of break this time. You probably know most of the answers already!
I've always found I'm better off being happy and 90% prepared than miserable and 100% prepared. YMMV, but consider it.
Cars cars cars cars cars....
I bought a 2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS last week. I finally got my hands on a manual one after having a very shitty and very rusty automatic a few years ago that I sold. It needs some work, though. I'm putting in new suspension this weekend and I also have some body work to do, it's otherwise in pretty good mechanical shape.
I then had an issue come up with my Miata that I'm fixing, it has been running lean and now the O2 sensor is yelling at me, so I have some diagnosis to do.
Lastly, I'm gearing up to sell my 2001 Saturn SL2. As much as I want to keep all three cars, I just don't have the space right now, so the Saturn is being yote.
I love working on cars, but it's a bit annoying when my Miata started having an issue right when I was trying to fix my newly acquired car and get my other car ready for sale...
I've had a pretty eh week looking back at it. I'll leave my rant for a different thread but essentially my company started tracking "developer productivity" numbers a few months ago. The results are in and the team/org I'm in has some low productivity by their standards. Management and leadership are effectively cracking their whips to get to start working faster which is hurting team morale a bit. Looking at the pure figures, I'm relatively low on developer productivity as a junior engineer. However, that's a bit out of my control as the tickets I get are poorly defined and often require me to bother various other people to even understand wtf they want me to do. I've been picking up some smaller tickets just to inflate my numbers a bit but I'm pretty unmotivated :(
On a much much brighter note, I've been enjoying myself outside of work, finally making progress on my little media server project. Bought the hardware finally and got the software up and running. I did run into two issues however. A minor one was that there was no included hard drive mounting hardware in the PC I bought. I had to buy some special mounting screws off of ebay to properly mount my hard drives in the chassis. The other problem I ran into was that I may have killed our Google router? Not entirely sure but when I first connected everything and had qbittorrent download something, it killed the internet connection on all my other devices. Quick research told me to set limits on qbittorrent but that didn't seem to help. Even completely stopping qbittorrent didn't seem to help. Our ISP requires us to basically chain 3rd party routers off the ISP included one and then just turn off the radios on the ISP router so I simply turned off the Google router and turned on the radios on our ISP router and things seem to be working fine now. I also turned off some discovery settings so that could've also helped, not sure though. Hopefully over the weekend, I can dig a little deeper and reconnect our Google router because it was so convenient being able to control your router through a phone app.
I’m sorry your work is doing poopy tracking, that’s sucks :(
The media server sounds like fun though! Not only is it a fun project, but it’s a good way to give a middle finger to all the overpriced streaming services now. I’m currently running everything through a WD red drive that lives in my normal desktop, but I’ve been thinking of setting up a dedicated media server instead with larger drives in raid 1.
Yeah the stuff at work sucks but unfortunately it's becoming more and more common in the tech industry so I can't really run away from it.
Your media server sounds exactly like what I had previously set up, though I was using an ancient WD Blue drive. I've had the dedicated setup for almost a week and it's been great. I'm using an HP small form factor PC just tucked away next to our router so it's easy to forget that it's there. Glad I've gotten rid of basically all my subscriptions, though it'd still take a few years for the cost of the subscription to match the cost of my server haha.
Moving. 34 years if accumulated life being moved in a couple of days. And I'm so worried about my kitties making a 4 hr drive when the only travel they ever had was from the Humane Society. (We had a mobile vet). Wish us well, expecting to be unloaded tomorrow, then drive back to the old place and grab the little fuzzies. They will love the new place, lots of windows and wildlife. Gipsy loves woodpeckers and we have a local pileated woodpecker along with downey and hairy woodpeckers. I hope they acclimate quickly.
As stressful as the travel might be for them, it sounds like they’ll be really happy in the long run! I’m excited for you and your kitties!
Thank you! We made it safe. Lighto is curious but still a little wary, Gipsy has been under the bed since she got out of her carrier. Honestly I just plan to let her be. She'll venture out when she's ready.
I have been wrapping up work on a project as im switching teams next week. Its been a rough couple of weeks of trying really hard to get as much done to leave the current team's folks in a good place while trying to figure out what is going on with my ex (i found out that they're now in the hospital), while their mother is playing weird mental games with me while im still adjusting to my diet/calorie deficit while being pulled around to other little issues on the work project.
Its felt like ive been completely scatter brained for a while now, i have no interest in doing anything other than walking the dog when i get spare time. Ive been working late into the night so ive not even been able to enjoy Baldurs Gate. Its all a mess. I feel like Im barely holding it together and that its just not enough. I feel like everything is about to crumble around me.
I have a wrestling match i want to go watch tonight. After 6pm i am done work today and i am hoping my brain lets me relax a bit so i can reset for the new work monday. I might go catch a late night showing of the old dune movie afterwards or i might just wander around downtown all night.
I became a registered inhabitant of Getxo. Aupa!
Amazing!!! The north of Spain is gorgeous and Basque country in particular is so special. I'm so jealous!!!! Bilbao and the surrounding area have such a fun, accessible feel to them.
What brought you to Getxo?
A
It's a fantastic place to eacape the dungeon that the UK is becoming. The promise of mmufh adventure awaits!
Added a headphone jack to a pair of Sony MDRv6 headphones. I wanted to try this on something and got them for $50 used. I like them, but the cable transmits movement noise into the cavity so the 7506s at my desk won't be modded. The only solution I can think of is to create a shock absorber for the jack of some sort, but there is no room for it.
In an hour I managed to whip up a Docker image for Ubuntu via Fedora's ubuntu-toolbox image, wkth KXStudio's repo configured so I can use its applications in Distrobox more easily with manifests. The image should rebuild weekly, and I plan to track it to get it on 24.04 ASAP, and come up with a system to see changes to the kxstudio package so I can upgrade the dockerfile I made.