Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

I learnt a lesson I’ve already learnt many times at work, spending most of a day trying to implement something in too big a chunk, driven only be tests at the boundary of the module I was working on. It felt like it was just about simple enough to get away with doing that, but then I realised I’d misunderstood the requirement, and it was actually even more complex. At least at that point I had enough sense to stash my changes, start again, and build it up in smaller chunks, with more focussed unit tests. As you’d expect, the resulting code was simpler, more modular and easier to understand. Don’t do as I do etc.

A mostly low-mileage running week, with a 5k race on Tuesday, a 5 miler on Friday, parkrun on Saturday and very little else … until today, when I decided to make up for it with a long run. I did a loop of Alton Water, but also ran there and back, and after a few route tweaks (some intentional; others less so) I ended up doing just over a marathon distance. Oops.

On Thursday I got to dog-sit for Sky the greyhound, who was very well-behaved (mostly she just lazed around, which I think is pretty much par for the course for greyhounds). I also took her for a walk in the evening, and I’ve never known a dog so good at walking to heel. She pretty much spent the whole time with her head level with me, and the lead hanging loosely. Very impressive.

I very rarely watch any sport, but decided on a whim to stick the telly on for the England/Germany game. As far as I could tell the standard was extremely high (but then I used to get subjected to watching the occasional Ipswich Town match, so I might just be easily impressed). I’d just about got to the point of assuming England would lose on penalties (I thought that was the rule when playing Germany), so that third goal was a nice surprise. Well done group of people who happen to live on the same side of arbitrary historical map lines as me, I guess.

The fox has been back again, but I haven’t seen the badgers again yet. I was hoping to have cameras set up by now, but I made the mistake of ordering them from somewhere cheap on the internet, and they seem to have sent me a random battery pack instead.

Every time I come to my blog to post a new set of weeknotes it asks me to log in, and every time I tick the “remember me” box in forlorn hope that it actually will. Thanks to lethargy this is all still the same self-hosted WordPress installation on Dreamhost that it’s been since 2006, so presumably I could fix that, but … yeah, lethargy.

On Monday I actually had to do a scheduled upgrade to the EE network monitoring application that I’m responsible for (ie design, develop, test and support. I know, single point of failure and all that, but I haven’t failed yet). Normally I just deploy changes as soon as they’re ready (usually at least once a day), but this one involved a fairly major change to the main dashboard, switching over to the reworked version we’ve been building up as a beta for a while, so they went through the official change process so the network operations people weren’t taken by surprise. Naturally an hour beforehand my broadband went down, but fortunately it returned in time (and actually tethering to my phone would have been fine), so all went well. Also, no-one complained about the change, and one person said they liked it, so I’ll count that as a win. Still a few performance kinks to iron out, but the GenServer actor model makes it relatively easy to reason about and benchmark the way messages sometimes backup.

Also two rare trips to the office, both for completely separate interview/assessment processes (I was on the assessing side of the table). One was for a group of applicants for a new cohort of women developers in conjunction with Code First Girls, and the other for an internal promotion. Thankfully these things are generally pretty informal these days, as I used to find interviewing almost as stressful as being interviewed.

Friday evening saw one of the big Ipswich races – the Twilight 10k – with the temperature already starting to ramp up (though nowhere near as bad as it could have been). It didn’t feel great, but it turned out I’d got my fastest time yet for that event (though a way off my PB time). We went for a couple of beers (literally just two, mainly thanks to the rather glacial service in Wetherspoons) afterwards, but it felt like I’d had far more when I woke up on Saturday, which I guess was probably dehydration.

I got woken in the night by some loud scuffling outside, which didn’t quite sound right for the fox or the cats, and when I shone a torch out of the window there was a badger on the patio. I went down to have a proper look, and it turned out there were two or three cubs running around, which was pretty cool. They didn’t hang around for long as I couldn’t see them in the dark and they didn’t like it when I turned a torch on (hence no photos), but I’ve ordered an infrared trail cam to see what else it detects in the garden.

Not looking forward to the heatwave, and glad it’s not going to be quite as bad here as in other parts of the UK. It’s funny how when you say you don’t like the heat people tell you you shouldn’t complain, as though they somehow haven’t grasped the concept of not liking something.

Oops, completely forgot to write up any notes on Sunday. Or Monday. It must be because my life’s so eventful and busy …

So, um, what did I do last week? Hmm.

We’ve started running an agile development primer thing for some colleagues in India, based on the one we used to (and may soon again) do for new graduates. We cover the basics of clean code, refactoring, automated testing, test-driven development and so on, with a mix of talking, demos and hands-on exercises. We’re using Java because that’s what people are familiar with, although “people” doesn’t really include me (last used the language in anger around 15 years ago) or Anders (who had to learn it specially). It’s harder to do this kind of thing remotely, but unavoidable, at least for now. At least doing it one morning a week is less intensive than three or four days straight.

With no racing this week I managed to run 57 (slower) miles, which is my highest weekly total since last October. I also added graphs to ytd.kerryb.org, so I can see my cumulative mileage starting to move towards the target line again rather than away.

Some of those miles were a massive group run round the Big Hoot Trail owls in Ipswich (and then to the pub). I took my usual “hiding at the back” position for the group photo, but as we were on the town hall steps I ended up less well-hidden than usual, on the apex of a pyramid.

I made some ginger nuts for the first time in ages. In a remarkable display of restraint, I still haven’t finished them.

And, um, I think that’s about it.

Well I successfully made it into the office on Monday and Tuesday, for the first two full days since March 2020. I remembered how to get there, I eventually found the old lock I’d left in the bike shed, and I forgot neither my laptop nor its power supply (although a 15″ Macbook is a bit less wieldy than the 13″ one I had two years ago, especially as I had panniers then and only a rucksack now). What I did forget though, at least on Monday, was my pass card. Particularly annoying given that security on my building has been tightened up even more, so I couldn’t even escape without someone letting me out. Also, thanks to some bizarre design decision, the toilets are outside a door that needs a card to get back in.

The office itself has been “upgraded” in the intervening time, so now instead of having our own desks where we can leave whatever possessions we see fit, it’s now first come, first served for any of a whole roomful of identical sterile desks, all lined up in neat rows, with stupidly wide monitors that block your view of whoever’s on the other side. Anyway, it was a nice change to see people, and at least I got a few games of table football in.

A surprisingly successful week on the running front, starting with the second of the Ipswich Summer Series 5k races in Christchurch Park. These seem to be getting less and less popular (probably thanks to a combination of the price creeping up and them no longer handing out bottles of wine as prizes), but I’d already paid for all four in one go, and with only 50 entrants I finished in a frankly ridiculous fifth place, picking up another age group trophy.

Then we had the last of the Friday 5 [mile] races, and despite it being on a fairly flat course at Great Bentley, and not too hot for once, I didn’t feel particularly optimistic. I was quite surprised, then, to still see a 33 on the clock as I turned the last corner to the finish line, and just about managed to sprint to a 33:59, which I then realised was a PB. Maybe I’m not quite getting irredeemably old and slow quite yet!

For some reason I then decided not to take it easy at parkrun, and managed a half-reasonable time, then ignored my original intention to skip today’s planned 13 slow miles, instead accidentally extending it to 18 (well mostly accidentally – some of that was a slight detour at the far end to a pub to refuel with a pint and some crisps). The main purpose was to get this month’s hollow tree photo – it’s an excellent tree that you can actually climb up the inside of, but that doesn’t really come across in the picture.