Tagged “work”

Recently, during a period when pandemic woes were taking their toll and likely making me a little cranky at home, I found some funny and helpful words of wisdom on Adam Buxton’s podcast and when re-watching Ricky Gervais’s interview with Larry David.

On sustaining a happy marriage, Buxton said:

Every now and then you think “they’re not doing what I want them to do and I think it’s important that they do do this thing that I want them to do! (But) you have to think really hard: is this thing actually important? Is it worth getting bent out of shape about?

It’s good advice. He mentioned that he’s slowly getting better at that, and I’m trying my best to, too.

Meanwhile, on the reasons why he got into acting, Larry David said:

it gets you out of the house!

So simple but true—it’s good to get out of the house! We’re now emerging from a period of sustained isolation and I should probably avoid being completely remote (and going stir crazy) and get back into the office occasionally.

Basecamp—makers of project management, team communication and email software—have taken a controversial new stance against (amongst other things) political discussion at work, “paternalistic benefits” and 360 performance reviews.

These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well.

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Since November 2019 my day job has involved working on a “Majestic Monolith” coded in Ruby on Rails. I loved this conversation with Rails’ creator DHH in which he speaks with great passion and makes interesting points about finding a programming language that speaks to you; why single page apps and microservices are not for him; and how our working days have too many interruptions.

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My first Christmas working at FreeAgent. Strong Christmas Jumper game!

I just made a first visit to Chicago. It was primarily to attend An Event Apart but I was lucky enough to have a little time to check out the city, too.

Firstly I want to thank all the friends who provided tips for things to do and see in The Windy City – Aleks, Susan, Jenny, Lucy, Alan and Karen, Collette etc – cheers!

Thanks also to Davie for jetting in from NYC to join me and Liam for a couple of days. I doff my cap to your knowledge of beautifully designed restaurants with really expensive menus 😉.

I also got the chance to catch up with old friend Nick Calingaert AKA Common Factor, a lovely guy and talented producer who DJed for me and my friends at a couple of our club nights back in the early 00s.

We only had a few days, but I felt we managed to cram in some good stuff. Here’s a summary of the highlights.

Eating out #

• Swift & Sons
• Momataro
• Chicago Athletic Club (with its appropriately posh tag-line “Dine and Libate”…)

Bars #

• Danny’s Bar
• Rainbo Bar

Record Shopping #

• Gramaphone Records
• Dusty Groove
• Shuga Records, 1272 N. Milwaukee Ave
• Reckless Records

Cool Neighbourhoods #

• Wicker Park area

Culture / History #

• Architecture Boat Tour
• The Art Institute of Chicago

Things to do #

• Millenium Park
• Cloud Gate (AKA The Bean)

And if we’d had more time… #

• Go see the Cubs playing baseball at Wrigley Field
• Green Mill Jazz Club

Rubadub have a new mobile app that delivers the RaD crew’s top vinyl recommendations (the best around) direct to your phone.

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