No – it isn’t a typo. This week is a not working week. Yesterday ended up as a working day, helping out somebody that has recently started to cover this area of work and is working at home. Normally people starting work have the ability to chat to colleagues to find out how to do things, but that isn’t easy. So instead she called me to work out the best way to work together.
Today was a non-work day which turned out to be another work day. It would be nice if things didn’t go wrong during a pandemic – but unfortunately they do. So today was spent on international incident work – but it did give me a chance to chat to an old friend.
I notice that car use has increased again today. The fact that accidents still happen is the reason we are asked not to drive – because accidents involve scarce resources.
I had to laugh at the BBC coverage of the daily briefing. They were running two sets of subtitles, one commenting on the briefing and another a rolling set of breaking news. The mixture was a bit unfortunate at times.
This evening I ran a meeting on-line. People are getting better at working in on-line meetings. But working on smart phones is very limiting. A lot of advances in technology have been focusing on getting things really small so it can fit in a phone, to the extent that many people just have phones or tablets. Yes, the apps work on them, but there are so many limitations – personally I have trouble working with only one screen on a computer.
Another example of where our lust after the newest best technology seems to have been more important than having something that can be used. At the start of the home-working there was quite a rush on computers as people discovered their efforts to keep up with the Joneses meant they were limited.
Watching the advert tonight where the couple make a video for themselves about their wedding in 6 months – where they say their meal might be a bag of crisps. People do seem to be re-appraising what is important.
It seems that connections with real people is becoming important, and everything else is being judged in relation to that.
Not sure how toilet paper hoarding fits in to that idea though.